Pilot and pioneer

As one of the few Black female pilots in the U.S., Carole Hopson is committed to her role as a trailblazer. A first officer for United Airlines, she balances her job, piloting a Boeing 737, with inspiring other women of color to follow in her footsteps. She hopes to help 100 Black women to become pilots through her nonprofit organization, Jet Black Foundation, and has written a novel about her predecessor, Bessie Coleman, who became the first African American to have a pilot's license more than 100 years ago.

It's still unusual to see a Black woman in a pilot's uniform. When people see her at airports, they respond with a barrage of questions — many asking how they can help their daughters or nieces to start a career in aviation. "You're a pilot? How did you get started? Who do you work for? What do you fly? The questions run faster than I just said them," Hopson told Business Spotlight. "It is incredible to people that I exist."

Changing course

While Hopson was a child, however, it seems that many of the people around her weren't ready to have a pioneer in the family. When she was growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was considered "strange" for wanting to fly and was discouraged from following her dream. Instead, she built a successful career as a journalist and then an executive, working for the National Football League, the sports retailer Foot Locker and the cosmetics giant L'Oréal.

It was after meeting her future husband, Michael, that Hopson's career (and life) took an unexpected turn. On a date together, he asked her what she really wanted to do in life. "I said it for the first time," Hopson explains. "I had to be about 30 years old. I said: ‘I want to fly an airplane.'" A few weeks later, Michael gave her a gift certificate to begin flight lessons at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. At age 36, Hopson gave up her high-paying executive job to become a full-time flight student.

Reflecting on this transition, which she described as "humbling," Hopson said: "I could have gone on doing what I was doing for a long time. It was good. I was fine. I was, by the American definition, successful. I made plenty of money. I lived in New York City. I was doing my thing. But when I thought about looking forward and doing the same thing, to me, that was scarier than quitting and doing what I had always wanted to do."

Promoting diversity

Once Hopson had built a successful career as a pilot, she began to focus on promoting diversity in the aviation industry. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there were just over 100,000 commercial pilots employed in America in 2020, but just seven percent of them were women. And the advocacy organization Sisters of the Skies says fewer than 150 Black females hold one of the four types of pilot's license recognized in the U.S., either commercial or military.

In 2021, Hopson started her nonprofit organization with the aim of boosting diversity in the industry. Through this, Hopson hopes to raise the money needed to finance her 100 Pairs of Wings Project — to help 100 Black women enroll in flight school by 2035. In her free time, she visits schools to share her story, hoping to inspire students from minority groups to follow their aviation dreams. "If you can see it, you can be it," she says. And she donates all of her speaking fees and 20 percent of her book proceeds to the foundation.

Diversity is important in all industries, Hopson says. "When we have a diversity of thought, we have better problem-solving." The main barriers to entry to the aviation industry are the same ones minorities face in other industries, exposure to it in the first place and the cost of getting the right qualifications. Hopson encourages anyone who is trying to break into an industry in which they are underrepresented to volunteer with nonprofit organizations that are in a position to help.

The inspiring Bessie Coleman

For over 100 years, Black women have been breaking barriers in the aviation industry, beginning with Bessie Coleman. As she wasn't allowed to train as a pilot in the U.S., Coleman did her training in France. In 1921, at the age of 29, she became not only the first African American woman, but also the first Native American, to get a pilot's license — and the first Black person ever to get an international pilot's license.

Despite Coleman's incredible achievements, Hopson had never heard of her until a friend gave her a cup with her image on it. "I was 34 years old, the same age Bessie Coleman was when she died [in a plane crash], and I had never heard of her," Hopson says. "I was beyond upset and embarrassed. I had been to the University of Virginia, Saint Louis University in Madrid, Columbia University, and I had never heard of Bessie Coleman. How was that? Why was that? What happened? Who hid her from me? I decided I must do something." Hopson spent the next 15 years working on a novel about Bessie Coleman, which was published in 2021 under the title A Pair of Wings: A Novel Inspired by Pioneer Aviatrix Bessie Coleman, and became an Oprah Winfrey book recommendation a month later.

Asked if she finds it sad that, more than 100 years after Coleman got her license, Black women are still so underrepresented in the aviation industry, Hopson says: "Why is it that I am a statistical insignificance? I'm not insignificant. I'm very opinionated. I always try to be diplomatic and gracious. My goodness, I am one of fewer than 20 Black women at United Airlines, and we're 14,000. And we have the most. Why? Let's fix that!"