Unbelievable stories about what happens when the plan doesn’t go to plan.
Former Airline Captain. Author. Keynote Speaker.
Michelle spent more than two decades flying aircraft, leading crews and making calls when there wasn’t always a neat answer.
She has ferried light aircraft across the Pacific, been struck by lightning in cloud, flown through emergencies, been told no repeatedly, become an airline captain and then had to work out who she was when flying was suddenly gone.
Now she uses those experiences to talk about judgement, capability, adaptability and what we do when the answer isn’t obvious.
Stories. Lessons. Takeaways.
EVERYONE IN THE ROOM SAID NO.
She said yes, then
figured out the how.
Michelle wanted to fly from the age of seven.
She was told women shouldn’t be pilots. She was refused finance. She sold what she owned, moved home with her young son and kept going anyway.
Eventually, she became a Boeing 737 airline captain, one of relatively few women in the world to hold that rank.
The interesting part isn’t that she proved people wrong.
It’s everything that happened along the way.
You could have heard a pin drop as Michelle blew the audience away with her storytelling. She was the stand out of the event, everyone loved her.
Monica Rosenfeld
Founder – Global Stories that Stir Movement
TRUSTED BY.
LADY MACGYVER
Unbelievable Stories with Altitude
Michelle spent 23 years in aviation, eventually becoming a Boeing 737 Captain and one of fewer than 500 female airline captains in the world.
Getting there was another story.
She was told she shouldn’t fly, couldn’t get the money to train and later that she wouldn’t make a good Captain. Then there was the flying itself. A lightning strike that took out her instruments and radios. Flying small aircraft solo across the Pacific. Challenging a senior Captain when she was six months into a new job. And quite a few situations where there was no obvious answer to what happened next.
Somewhere along the way, Michelle earned the nickname Lady MacGyver.
Her keynote brings these stories together with others from outside the cockpit, including breast cancer, losing her flying career and starting again.
They’re great stories, but that’s not why Michelle tells them. She uses them to show what it looks like to make a decision without all the information, speak up when it would be easier not to, deal with a plan that has gone completely off course and work out what you can do with what you’ve got.
Best for: conferences, leadership events, company kick-offs and teams dealing with change.
EXTRAORDINARY
STORIES
From the cockpit and beyond.
VERY HUMAN LESSONS
Judgement, capability, adaptability and people.
PRACTICAL TAKEAWAYS
Ideas people actually use when they walk back into work.
DELIVERED WITH ENERGY & HUMOUR
Engaging, entertaining and always real.
HOW DO PEOPLE BECOME CAPABLE?
Pilots don’t become Captains because they’ve memorised all the right answers. It takes years of experience, training and increasing responsibility.
They work alongside experienced pilots, practise what they’ve learned and deal with situations they haven’t seen before. Over time, they develop the judgement to know when to follow procedure, when to question it and when to speak up.
Eventually, they’re the person in the left-hand seat.
Michelle brings this experience to conversations about leadership, judgement, decision-making and the changing workplace.
As technology takes on more of the work people once did themselves, there’s an important question for organisations:
If people no longer do the work they used to learn through, how will they develop the judgement and experience they’ll need when they become the senior person in the room?
Bring Michelle to your next event.
If you’re looking for a speaker who combines extraordinary stories, humour, hard-earned perspective and ideas your audience will still be thinking about after they leave the room, let’s talk.
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