Afghan Pilot Sabira Rezaie on freedom, resilience, and learning to dream again.

Welcome to Season 8 of the AVIATE podcast. This season is all about the change makers, young leaders, innovators, and builders who are reshaping aviation in bold ways.

In this episode, I sit down with Sabira Rezaie, an Afghan woman pilot who is rebuilding her life and aviation path in the United States.

I met Sabira during the Dreams Soar Global Flight, when I made a stop in my homeland, Afghanistan. It was an emotional day for many reasons, but one of the biggest was meeting a group of Afghan women pilots and cadets.

For most of my aviation career, I did not have many people who could understand what it means to love flight while carrying an Afghan identity. That day, I found a sisterhood. Women who looked up at the sky the way I did. It felt like meeting a missing piece of myself.

Sabira’s story is also a window into what “starting over” really looks like in aviation. When the U.S. exited Afghanistan, she had to leave everything behind, including her family, her community, and the future she was building, along with her dream of flying helicopters. Today, she is resettled in America and working toward her instrument helicopter rating. Restarting in aviation is hard under normal circumstances. Doing it after grief and loss is something else entirely.

This episode is for anyone who has had to restart in aviation after something broke, and still chose to keep going.

Aviation has always been global, and the workforce is no different.

In 2023, the United States was home to 47.8 million immigrants. In 2021, foreign-born workers made up 19% of the U.S. STEM workforce, about 7.0 million people, the same talent pipeline that aviation and aerospace rely on for safety, innovation, and long-term capacity.

Even on the flight deck, visa pathways show up in limited ways. Allegiant has shared publicly that it employs about 62 foreign pilots through visa programs, roughly 4% of its pilot group.

At the same time, the long-term demand signal remains clear. Boeing’s latest Pilot and Technician Outlook forecasts that over the next 20 years, the global commercial fleet will need 660,000 new pilots, 710,000 new maintenance technicians, and 1,000,000 new cabin crew.

When immigrants can train, certify, and build long-term careers, it strengthens the workforce that keeps aviation safe, resilient, and moving.

Aviation as freedom, then aviation as resilience
What flying represented to Sabira as a girl in Afghanistan, and how that meaning shifted after everything she has lived through.

The moment everything changed
How she experienced the collapse of Afghanistan in real time, and what it meant to realize women would be pushed out of education and work overnight.

Starting over is not a clean reset
Why restarting is not just logistics. It is rebuilding hope. Sabira names it clearly- learning to dream again.

Helicopters, precision, and a long-term goal
Why she chose helicopters and what she is building toward, including her path toward becoming a professional helicopter pilot.

Inclusion is not charity
Her message to aviation leaders is to recognize skill, hire for capability, and make room for diverse backgrounds, as they strengthen the industry.

What she would tell an Afghan girl watching from the ground
A reminder that dreams are valid, and capability matters more than gender.

“Starting over, for me, is learning to dream again.”

Sabira Rezaie is an Afghan woman pilot rebuilding her aviation career in the United States. In this conversation, she shares what it took to keep moving after loss, how she found community, and what it means to keep pursuing aviation when the path is interrupted by forces far beyond your control.

Sabira will also be joining me at the WAI 2026 Conference in Dallas, and I hope you will come say hello if you are there.

Until next time,
Shaesta