Pilots: Flying Ph.D.

“Everyone in my family knows I’ll be happier after that flight,” she says. “I come back with a smile from ear to ear.”

Anderson learned to love aviation from her father, a pilot for Avianca Airlines in Colombia. He encouraged her to fly gliders at age 14—she soloed at 16—and helped her through pilot training, sadly passing away one week before she earned her private pilot certificate in 1999. She attempted to follow in his footsteps, to fly for Avianca, but there was a hiring freeze, and political and economic tension in her native country was high. With an engineering degree from Los Andes University in Bogota, Colombia, she worked as a field engineer for an oil company, but after a truck was blown up at her base camp, she realized it was time to leave Colombia.

“The highlight was always when I was flying; I was always wishing I was up there,” she said.

She completed her master’s degree in aviation management and advanced certificates at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University campus in Florida. “I love being in a country where you can feel safe, can own your own aircraft, where there is the freedom to fly,” she said. “I fell in love with general aviation in the United States—and the opportunity for women is better in the U.S.”

She became a flight instructor at Embry-Riddle, became a check pilot in 2000, a training manager in 2004, and joined the faculty in 2011. Along the way she met her husband, Pat, also a professor at Embry-Riddle. In 2013 she earned her doctorate “in a big hurry—it was personal. I was pregnant.”

The couple has two daughters and flies from a small grass strip in Florida. “This is the only country in the planet where you can do that,” she said. “We take it for granted—until you go someplace else.”

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