BELLEVUE, Wash. — Three decades ago, Cecilia Aragon made aviation history as the first Latina to earn a place on the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team.
She went on to write a book about it, titled “Flying Free.”
Today, she’s still flying free, as a professor and data scientist in the University of Washington — and as the co-founder of a Seattle startup that aims to commercialize her research.
Aragon recounted her personal journey today during a talk at the Women’s Leadership Conference, presented by the Bellevue Chamber. The conference brought nearly 400 attendees to Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center to hear about topics ranging from financial literacy to sports management.
Aragon’s aerobatic days began in 1985, when she accepted an invitation from a co-worker to take a ride in his flying club’s Piper Cherokee airplane. “The first thing I thought was, ‘I’m the person who’s scared of climbing a stepladder. I’m scared of going in an elevator,’” she recalled.
But then she thought of her Chilean-born father. “I heard my father’s voice, saying, ‘What is stopping you from doing whatever you want?” she said. She swallowed her fears, climbed into the plane, and was instantly hooked.
“It’s so gorgeous to fly out into the water and see the sun glinting up on the water, like a million gold coins,” she said. “And when we got down to the ground, I said, ‘I want to take flying lessons. I want to be the pilot of my own life.’”
