Le Vital Corps Salon

Back in April, the idea for this podcast came to me while I was plunked at the airport. I was wondering about what some of the most stressful jobs for women were. Bam! I immediately thought of air traffic controllers. Enter Patti Wilson, who has been in the air traffic control industry for the past 29 years. She’s the Operations Manager at Northern California Terminal Radar Approach Control, and is currently in her second term as President of Professional Women Controllers. If that wasn’t enough, she’s also very involved in nonprofit work with Zonta International. She’s also a pistol deeply committed to pulling up a seat for more women at the aviation table. Patti brings both a breadth and depth of experience and wisdom to our conversation. She paints a picture of what being an air traffic controller is like (the good, the stressful and the invisible to us non-controller folks). She also talks about the difference between communication at work versus everyday conversations (like the risk of talking to people