PEOPLE | SPOTLIGHT
A New Frontier In a plane, ship or control room, one Orange Beach woman is in the pilot seat, and she wants to bring other women with her. text by K ARI LYDERSEN
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s Hurricane Katrina brewed over the Gulf of Mexico in 2005, Michele Finn piloted a powerful jet up from the Yucatan Peninsula toward the storm, in a “jagged” pattern designed to collect data about the hurricane’s path and intensity. She was the first female “hurricane hunter” pilot for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and was also the first woman to pilot a Gulfstream IV jet for the agency. The aircraft, which is used for hurricane surveillance, can fly 4,000 miles without refueling and more than 40,000 feet above the earth. When Finn graduated high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1984, “Nobody was telling women, ‘Hey, you can go be a pilot’, period, let alone do something like that,” recalls Finn, who was born in Pennsylvania and moved to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, as a child. “Nobody was telling a girl in Oklahoma graduating in 1984 that she could drive a ship,” something Finn also did during her career with NOAA. In 2010, Finn moved to Orange Beach, Alabama, to take a job as deputy director of NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico disaster response center. She retired from NOAA with the rank of captain in 2013. She is now starting her next role: supervising coastal restoration projects for the engineering firm Volkert, funded with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill restitution money. In November and December of 2019, Finn was part of the largest-ever all-women expedition to Antarctica, among more than 100 women convened by the organization Homeward Bound. Its aim is to build women’s leadership over the next 10 years by bringing 1,000 women in science, technology,
engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) fields to the awe-inspiring frozen continent. Immersed in an ecosystem that differs vastly from the Gulf Coast, yet faces parallel environmental challenges, Finn and her cohorts underwent intensive leadership and strategy training meant to help them elevate other women and build their own careers. Finn says she applied for the highly competitive program in part to discover what trailblazing means for her after retiring from NOAA. “I haven’t come up with any answers yet, but I’ve discovered new questions to ask myself,” Finn says on day three of the
left Michele Finn stands amidst the penguins and icy peaks of Antarctica, as part of Homeward Bound’s all-women expedition. right Finn and fellow voyagers experience whale sightings at the southernmost tip of the world. PHOTOS BY KARI LYDERSEN
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