Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Pierce.
So, before we jump into specific questions about what you do, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My story is a long one, I suppose. It feels like I’ve lived a few lives within my one so far. I was born in Utah but moved about seven times before I was 12. No military family, my parents just got bored I guess. During that time of constant transition, family life was also a little rough, so I found a home on trail. Every summer from the time I was 11, I would take canoe trips near and in Canada that gradually got longer and longer, ranging from three days to 36 days being the longest. I eventually started leading the tours. I found that being on my own and almost totally dependent on nature was my favorite place to be.
After high school, I decided that staying in once place wasn’t my cup of tea and pursued a career in the US government. The application process for this particular position required me to live and work abroad, adapt to foreign cultures, and learn foreign languages. Because of this requirement, I found a volunteer program that worked abroad and sent me to Ecuador for the first time. I worked for five weeks in the Ecuadorian cloud forest making bricks out of mud to build a library for the community and doing some deforestation work. I fell in love with that country, but, determined to learn another language in as little time as possible, I moved to São Paulo, Brazil to study International Relations and Foreign Policy. I returned to the United States to complete my last semester in college and get a US degree, then decided to return back to Ecuador where I led two-week “adventure tours”. On these tours, I led groups of up to 30 people mountaineering up Cotopaxi (the world’s largest active volcano), white water rafting, rock climbing, hiking through the jungle for days at a time, mountain biking, then finally surfing on the coast.
After working for a while in Ecuador, I decided I wanted to live there indefinitely. But first, I wanted to see what the other side of the world was like. I took a job for eight months in Changsha, China, in the Hunan province. After leaving China, I explored Thailand and Indonesia before returning briefly to the States, then back to Ecuador.
I ended up not being selected for the government position that I was striving for in school and took a job as a flight attendant for a major airline, while living in Ecuador, for roughly eight years. During that time, I explored Peru on several occasions, hiking six days through the high pass from Cuzco to Machu Picchu, and traveled along the Peruvian coast. Working as a flight attendant also led me to many other adventures. For a few years, I owned a clothing business called Rays Hanon making and selling women’s swimwear inspired by my travels, but that came to a temporary end.
Eventually, life threw me for a loop and I decided to look for a career change and became a pilot. I studied in an accelerated program in Denver and received my FAA pilot certificates up to multi commercial and multi-engine instructor in the United States, then returned to Ecuador and got my Ecuadorian pilot certificates up to multi-engine commercial in the jungle, hoping to find a pilot job there. However, pilot jobs are hard to come by in Ecuador, and I was forced back to the USA two years ago to work here in California, since June of 2017. I love my job and can’t wait to see where it takes me next!
I am still an avid traveler and I especially love to hike and camp these days. I recently visited Joshua Tree National Park, hiked the Mineral King Loop, and explored some trails around Utah and Arizona. I’m constantly planning the next trip and looking for new places to visit!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s never a smooth road!!! But I wouldn’t have it any other way. It wouldn’t be an adventure if it were easy and I believe that life should the best adventure ever told.
I think that most of the struggles come before the trip even starts. It’s the mental preparation that can lead to psyching yourself out, the fear of the unknown, that can scare some out of taking the first steps out of the door. But I can say from experience, the hardest step of the entire journey is the first one. After that, everything falls into place one way or another, the road sweeps you up, and you’ll wonder why you were so afraid in the first place. It can also be lonely from time to time, especially traveling in a country where you don’t speak the language. However, I’ve found that that loneliness eventually leads to me filling the empty space with new experiences or meeting new people. For example, I felt especially lonely and out of place while living in Brazil. I didn’t speak Portuguese and didn’t know anyone in the city, so I decided to join a gym and learn a martial art, something I would have never done with my group of friends back home. Within four months I was competitively fighting Muay Thai and made an entire community worth of friends that are lifelong. Learning martial art also saved my life a few times in my travels.
My advice to new travelers, especially women, is to not let anyone talk you out of pursuing a dream. A lot of people like to tell girls what they can’t do in life. Don’t listen to them. They’re wrong. Prove it.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I am currently a commercial pilot. I fly the Emb135 for a small airline out of Orange County, California.
I’m proud to be a female aviator. Women only make up about 8% or the world’s commercial pilots and I feel proud that I am one of them. I was surprised at how much resistance I had along the road to becoming a pilot. Like I have mentioned before, people like to tell girls what they can’t do in life. I feel proud that I can show them that there is no reason that I can’t have the career of my dreams and be completely happy, both inside and outside of work.
We’re interested to hear your thoughts on female leadership – in particular, what do you feel are the biggest barriers or obstacles?
This is a complicated question. I want to say that the biggest barrier to female leadership in society telling us that we need to stay at home and not have a career in order to be a good wife or mother. Or that women are generally unaccepted and unappreciated in a “man’s career” such as aviation. That women are constantly held to higher standards or that we constantly need to prove ourselves and our place. All of which would be true.
However, I feel that the biggest barrier to women can be ourselves. Because though friends, family, society, well-wishers, etc. can say anything they want to discourage us, we are the ones that choose whether or not to listen. I personally think that the biggest barriers to our success are the excuses we make, the delays we fabricate, the procrastination, the fear. No one person or thing can stop us from achieving our goals except us. Because, despite what anyone says, there is always a way to reach our goal, we just have to realize that we are the only ones that can take the steps to get there.
Contact Info:
- Email: heathpierce@hotmail.com
- Instagram: @blueskyheather , @rayaheather
Image Credit:
Eric Watkins
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