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When Timera Millanaise was seven years old, she often travelled with her grandfather who is a pastor, and on one memorable flight, a pilot invited her to tour the cockpit and speak on the intercom.

That moment – being surrounded by the maze of controls and the sounds of the aircraft – sparked a passion in her that fuelled her ambition and her drive to help black women thrive in a male-dominated space. Growing up in Temple Hall, St Andrew, Millanaise always dreamt big. But becoming a pilot felt like an impossible reach.

“Being raised in Jamaica, you don’t really see a way to do it. Resources are limited, and when you’re black and female, the odds are even more stacked against you,” she said.

Her journey into the skies was not without turbulence. After moving to the US in 2016, she started at American Airlines as a ramp agent, hauling bags and loading aircraft. It was an unglamorous, exhausting job, but it was her foot in the door.

“I started from the bottom,” she recalled. “Being at the gates gave me the chance to meet pilots, and I’d tell them, ‘One day, that’s going to be me.’” But her ambition was met with scepticism and outright discrimination.

“I was the only black woman at my first flight school and one of two females. They didn’t make it easy for me. There was constant pressure, and I wasn’t getting the help I needed,” she said. The environment was toxic enough that it pushed her to resign from her job.

“They gave me an ultimatum: quit your job or quit school. I took a leap of faith and left the job, but it backfired. I ended up sitting at home, broke and defeated.” Millanaise’s struggles extended beyond school. Financial roadblocks seemed endless, with the cost of becoming a pilot hovering around $100,000.

“It was daunting. The lenders told me they couldn’t approve another loan because I had already dropped out. I remember working at Publix, a grocery store, feeling like my dreams were slipping away,” she shared.

It was only with the support of her aunt, who co-signed a crucial loan, that Millanaise found a way back into the cockpit.

“That conversation was hard. She told me, ‘Don’t disappoint me.’ It was a lot of pressure, but I knew I had no room for failure,” she said. Despite finding a more supportive environment at another flight school, the challenges of being one of the few black women in the field persisted.

“When you walk into a room and no one looks like you, it’s isolating. Finding people to study with or who would even talk to me was nearly impossible. Sometimes, I had to pay for outside help just to keep up,” she said. “There were times I’d ask myself, ‘What am I doing? Am I really going to make it?’ But then I’d think about the future. I didn’t want to be the person saying, ‘I could have been a pilot, but I gave up.’ Five years was going to come whether I succeeded or not, so I decided to push through.”

At 27, Millanaise is a certified commercial pilot and flight instructor, sharing her passion with a new generation of aspiring aviators.

“I tell my students, especially the women and black girls, ‘If I can do it, so can you.’ It’s not easy, but nothing worth having ever is,” she said. “Getting to teach students from Jamaica, where I started, is huge for me. I see myself in them, the same wide eyes, the same dreams, and I want them to know it’s possible. When I was in Jamaica, I exhausted a lot of resources in order to get me to this spot. So I know it’s not easy for the students; it was really big for them to even be able to find somebody that share common ground as them.”

Her sights are set on returning to American Airlines — this time as a pilot.

“It would mean everything to come full circle,” she smiled. “I want to show Jamaicans and young black girls that it’s possible. You can break into this field, you just have to fight for it.”

She reasoned that many persons want to become pilots, but don’t have the foundation.

“So for me, it was a hurdle, but my biggest success is being able to help my people – creating a path for them to know that even if it takes 10 years, at the end of the day we’re still accomplishing the same goal. So don’t give up on it, or don’t think it’s not doable, because there’s a point in time when I thought the same thing.”