Hi everyone and welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condonast Traveller.

I'm Lale Aricoglu and with me, as always, is my co-host Meredith Carey.

Hello!

The past year has been a strange one for air travel.

So this week we're talking to two incredible pilots about how they got into the skies and what the last 12 months have looked like at work.

Joining us from Fort Lauderdale is Stephanie Hartsfield, a commercial pilot and commander in the naval reserves.

And from Atlanta, Kelly Young, a flight instructor, cargo pilot, and the first black female pilot for the Coca-Cola company.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. So to kick it off, I figured we'd go back to the beginning. How did travel or flying factor into your lives growing up? I will say that I come from a traveling family.

My mother's nickname is Go-Go, given to her by my cousin, who witnessed her always going, going,

and was like, I want to go-go.

And so it became Auntie GoGo. And my grandparents

would travel all over the world. They were both ordained ministers in the Baptist Church, American

Baptist Church. And so they traveled. I remember my first passport was when I was, I think, two years old. And I had to get

updated when I turned four to go on a family trip. We did a flight from JFK to Lagos, Nigeria, and then multiple countries in West Africa at four years old.

So my earliest memories of my grandparents are related to traveling, and they nicknamed me their

traveling buddy. So I would say I have a wonderlust gene. I'm obsessed with go-go. That is so great.

Yes.

Kelly, how about you?

When I was six years old, my mother took a job with Delta Airlines working for their credit

union, which she did intentionally so that we would be able to travel as kids.

She never left the state of Georgia until she was 21 years old, married to my father, and pregnant with me.

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