Carole Hopson Changing The Aviation Industry

People always ask me, “where do you get your stories from?” - The answer: a variety of places. But what’s most amazing to me is, my interconnection with people who often come to me without realizing that they are in fact, the bridge to the perfect story.

Carole Hopson, is one example. I met her at my son’s high school basketball game. Her son was also a Seton Hall Prep basketball star and we’d often cheer on our boys in the stands. 

One day, I learned that she was a United Airlines pilot and I was aware of the tiny number of African American women, and women over all, in that field. I was fascinated by her verve and her ability to juggle it all. Little did I know that she was also this incredible mentor to young people in aviation.

Her goal, set years before I met her, was to place 100 black women into flight training school and graduate them through to become pilots and flight instructors. And she it was something she’d already set in motion. 

She also told me about the (OBAP) Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals that she was incredibly involved with, setting up a flight training school because cost was the number one barrier for access. But really the cherry on the top, was when she called me in the mist of Covid.

This was a full two and half years after her son left my son’s high school. They’d gone on to graduate and were in their first year of college. She announced to me that she’d also written a book about the premier African American Aviatrix, Bessie Coleman who received her pilot's license 100 years ago.

I was amazed. Here’s this woman flying across the country, sometimes across the world, who has children, who is being a mom but also being a mentor and still found time to write 400 plus pages. A book that was actually a pretty good read. Not pretty good, it was damn good! Going through the process of writing a book myself, I was quite frankly in awe.

Reading the book, knowing the 100 year anniversary was upon us, and then already being engaged to tell the story of these professionals who have launched this incredible flight school in Olive Branch, Mississippi… A school that cut the cost of flight training in half. And you have to understand that flight training cost is on top of any college level Bachelors degree that they would have received - that’s crazy expensive. And this school dropped it in half and if not half, by 2/3rds.

What they're able to do for black women, minorities, and really people all over the world, it's really phenomenal.