Jenna Bordieri

I think I am someone who, as soon as I have an idea, I do it. So personally, I think I'm just stubborn enough that once I switched careers, I was like, I'm doing it, I'm in this now. I will say my parents definitely instilled very hard-working skills and hard work and good ethics in me, and so I was provided the tools growing up to know how to make something work. I like to give them credit for that too.

I think general career advice, not even just aviation-specific, is that you have to like what you're doing. That was a big reason why I did switch, because I do enjoy teaching, but I did want it to be a little bit more intense in what I was teaching. I found that thing where there are so many layers to aviation, and it did apply. I just wanted to love what I did every day and never have that going-to-work dread. I think I've found it, but I think that's always a very simple piece of advice people say, but I do think it makes a really big impact on your life. You work happy, and you get to come home feeling good about what you did.

It's a growing industry, and this is a male-dominated industry for sure. But if there's any interest at all, I say go for it. We do something called Discovery Flights, and if you could just get the courage to at least do one of those and see what it's like, I think that would be the life-changing moment for someone. Throughout my training, I am mostly working with men, and you know, I'll get little jokes and an elbow here and there, but as long as you just know what you know, you have to be your own confidence and your own backup sometimes to prove that, hey, I'm just as good, if not better. As long as you can instill some confidence in yourself too, just have it ready, but it's a great industry in general.

I'd say my values cross over with each other, which is really nice, because I'm still working with people every day at my job. I think being morally and ethically a good person is always great, because I'm in charge of charging my students based on what we did, and there are some people in the field that will upcharge for certain things just to make that extra couple dollars a day. I pride myself on being very morally correct with it and being very reasonable about things. You need to be very calm, cool, and collected, even in very stressful situations, and I think if you are someone that can really handle the bad along with the good, then this is a good fit. You also need to be able to have fun. You can be silly, but you have to be able to, at a snap of a finger, lock in and be a little more serious when needed. There's a lot of fun in training, but if you are versatile and can switch between silly and serious, this is a great field for you, because you have those moments where you can just relax and have fun with your coworkers and fly planes, and then there are times when the engine just shuts down and you need to lock in and remember everything you've trained for.