Thank you for having me here today. This is a great honour.
You are all aware of the shortage that is facing the aviation industry. Right now we have an industry that's looking very hard to fill positions, but is the industry also open to those positions being filled by women?
My name is Kendra Kincade. I am a very proud employee of Nav Canada, working as an air traffic controller for almost 20 years, and now the employer brand specialist. I am the founder and chair of Elevate Aviation, and privileged to be the honorary colonel of the 417 Combat Support Squadron, 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alberta.
Elevate Aviation is a non-profit organization that promotes the world of aviation to women and indigenous people, and we do not turn any men away. One of the first things we started at Elevate Aviation was a mentorship program. This mentorship program has extended into both civilian and military worlds and we are working on creating a five-tier mentorship program.
We are currently in the middle of a project supported by the Status of Women, which gave us $426,410 in funding, to do a nationwide project to determine why women aren't looking at careers in aviation for economic security, and to create recommendations to the industry with our results.
We are just concluding the first phase of this project. We have collected data from across Canada from teachers, students, cadets, industry professionals, etc. A sneak peek from our surveys, which went out to industry professionals, reveals that 63% of people inside the industry believe there is a lack of awareness, 48% believe there is a lack of encouragement and 40% believe there is a lack of interest. We are now working on focus groups and will create a tool kit with recommendations to help companies encourage more women into aviation.
Elevate Aviation gives out bursaries, conducts speaking engagements across the country in schools and organizations, and provides tours in the industry. This year, we will be going to 20 locations on our cross-country tours, adding locations, such as Iqaluit, Prince Edward Island, Gander, Goose Bay, Kelowna and Vancouver to our already existing locations, such as Edmonton, Ottawa, Moncton, Winnipeg and many more.
What we have concluded from our cross-country tours is that bringing people inside the industry is so much more impactful than going to career fairs. This has led to the exciting opening of the Elevate Aviation learning centre. This is a learning centre that we want to take across Canada, with some of your help.
We were honoured to have the Alberta Minister of Labour, Christina Gray, fund our first year with $230,000. We will be running this week-long exploratory learning centre for 10 weeks in our inaugural year in Edmonton, Alberta. Thanks to CEO Tom Ruth and his team at the Edmonton International Airport, we have been given space for a three-year term, and we are thrilled that Nav Canada is on board for a three-year sponsorship.
What we do during this week is allow people to come out for an entire week and explore aviation through fun, hands-on learning. For example, Canadian North has a half-day where it is showing off aircraft mechanics. It knows that not everyone is really interested in that, so to get people's interest, it's going to drop hints all morning and those hints will be used later in the morning to escape out of the Boeing 737 airplane which will be turned into an escape room.
At the end of the week, we pair everyone up with a mentor to stay connected with someone in the aviation industry. We leave time at the end of the week for those who are eligible and who would like to apply for jobs and receive guidance on how to apply for careers they may now be interested in.
During one of the two weeks that are reserved for female adults inside the Elevate Aviation learning centre, we are welcoming some women from an organization called Lives in Transition. The organization helps women who have been in violent relationships restore their lives and find careers. We hope that by bringing these people inside the learning centre, we can help them change their lives through the wonderful world of aviation; find a job to sustain themselves and their families; and create a life they love. As aviation helped me many years ago, and has helped others since, we want to see it help them.
To answer the question, “Is the industry ready for women?”, in my opinion, yes, of course it is. The same survey I mentioned above that came back from participants in the industry showed that only 1% believed that women were not suited for aviation. Although we do hear stories that do reflect the 1% of the survey who said women weren't ready for aviation, I believe there will be fewer and fewer of those stories as we go forward with organizations such as Nav Canada, Transport Canada, Jazz, WestJet and others, all doing things in the aviation industry to create inclusive environments for women and minorities.