Starr Tailor, 17, will graduate from Alliance Piera Barbaglia Shaheen Health Services Academy on Thursday with plans to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Prescott Campus in Arizona this fall.
Starr Tailor’s love of airplanes began when she first boarded one at 9 years old to travel to her grandmother’s homeland of Belize.
“They’re my version of shooting stars,” said Starr, 17, adding that she loves looking at planes through windows as they fly over her Vermont Knolls neighborhood in South LA.
Now, as a high school senior, Starr’s plans to become a commercial pilot are in full swing.
She will graduate from Alliance Piera Barbaglia Shaheen Health Services Academy on Thursday with plans to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Prescott Campus in Arizona this fall.
“She’s a young person with a lot of potential and the sky is the limit for her, no pun intended,” said Christopher Estrada, principal at Alliance PBSHSA.
Starr’s journey is especially significant because Black women remain severely underrepresented in aviation “with less than 200 Black Female Pilots who fly professionally for the airlines and military combined,” according to Sisters of the Skies, a nonprofit organization founded in 2016 by two Black women pilots, Nia Gilliam and Angel Jean-Charles.
“Initially, that was what discouraged me from pursuing aviation,” Starr said, referring to the industry’s lack of diversity. “There’s only 1% of Black women pilots in the United States, and that is a very small number.”
Despite the odds, Starr was determined to fly professionally.
