We recently connected with Heather Pierce and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Heather, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I believe that my work ethic comes from two places. The first being from my experience as a gymnast. I was in gymnastics for 15 years and was very competitive. In high school, I was on the Varsity team and also competed club gymnastics. Gymnastics, as an independent sport, taught me that my results were my responsibility and mine alone, and that success comes from working hard, failing, and trying again. I learned discipline and how to work through the pain to achieve a goal. There is another time in my life that created good work ethic in me. There was a time in my teenage years when my family went through a difficult time. For about two years, I was the only person holding a job in my family and earned $80/month by teaching gymnastics. On that little money, I was able to feed my brother and I while we worked through that hard time. Struggling in that way taught me that I never wanted to be in that place again, nor did I ever want to see my family go through that experience; wondering if and when we would have our next meal. I work very hard to find a financially stable future for myself and my family and will work as hard as I need to to earn it.
My work ethic has helped me to achieve almost every goal I have set my mind to, no matter how hard or hopeless things feel along the way. Though there were difficult times in my past, I feel grateful to have learned from them and used them as a way to develop a strong work ethic.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I currently work as a commercial pilot for a major airline. I fly the Boeing 757 and 767. I absolutely love my job. It took me a while to get to a major airline, lots of school and flying hours went into this journey, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Flying allows me to travel the world and flexibility in schedule so that I can focus on other things important to me, like my family or restarting my clothing line. It’s also a lot of fun.
Female aviators at the commercial airline level are still few and far between. I’m hoping to reach as many ladies interested in aviation as possible to motivate them to follow their dreams and reach the finish line.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The first quality or skill that was impactful in my journey was determination. Once I set my eyes on my goal of being a commercial pilot, I did not allow anything or anyone (including myself) to derail me from that goal. Changing my life and my career was hard and scary, it didn’t help that there were many along the way that tried to make me change my mind. What kept me going most nights was my pure determination to fully achieve my goal and accept nothing less. At the end of the day, only you get to make the decision of whether or not you succeed. The next skill that impacted my journey was my ability to accept failures as learning experiences. As a perfectionist, I take failing hard, but after making a mistake I would often go home and study up on what I missed or retrain the maneuver that I needed work on in my head over and over. I practiced it until it was right and didn’t give up until it was, even if it felt like it took forever. I did my best to learn from the mistakes the best I could (and to not make them again), forgive myself, and move on to be a better person and pilot.
The last quality that impacted my journey was my independence. Improving myself and my life through a new career is an extremely independent and sometimes lonely experience. There were people that didn’t understand why I was missing a party, why I had to say no to hanging out because I had to study, or why I was making this change in the first place. To them, the further I walked down my path towards my goal, the further I walked away from them. It’s unfortunate that they saw it that way, but some do. I lost friends, I missed out on fun things. I made new friends, I had experiences that helped me grow, it was worth it. It is important to keep in mind that moving forward doesn’t necessarily mean that your entire posse of friends is moving with you, and that’s ok. The right ones will support you.
What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
My biggest area of growth or improvement over the past 12 months is to find balance. For the past 8 years, I have done everything possible to achieve my goal of being a commercial pilot for a major airline. I worked two jobs, no days off, took out student loans, burned the candle at all ends, and in March 2022, I did it. My biggest area of growth now that I have achieved what I set out to do is to let go of the feeling of constant hustle and find my peace again. Spending so much time working as hard as I did put my mind into a constant fight mode. I realize that it’s important to my health and to my relationships with others to find time to slow down and be at peace. I’ve started gardening, which has been beautiful, spend more time with my family and friends, I’m making new friends. I’ve started doing things I once loved to do again, like rock climbing and designing clothes. I started volunteering for the fire department and am getting my EMT certificate. I’m still busy but I am making a point to find time for the things and people that I love and really enjoy the life that I built for myself.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @blueskyheather
