Flight Path

Look up, and there’s a chance you might glimpse one of these women shaping the aviation landscape above Southeastern North Carolina.

From saving lives to building an enterprise to training the next generation, these women work in different sides of the industry. They all have one thing in common: At one point, they had their heads in the clouds, and now they’re flying through them.

For almost as long as she can remember, MICHELE BOURK’s eyes have been fixed on the sky. Luckily for her, the forces of aspiration, inspiration, and opportunity converged her senior year of high school.

“As a high school senior in Palo Alto, California, in 1987, I was taking a typing class. We were the first class to transition from using typewriters to using this newfangled thing called an Apple Macintosh,” she says, recently recalling her start in aviation as she was finishing up a weeklong Aviation Career Education Camp for area middle schoolers at ILM’s Modern Aviation facilities.

Because of her prowess in using a computer, Bourk was offered an internship after graduation at the NASA Ames Research Center at nearby Moffett Federal Airfield. Her job involved using Apple computers to enter research statistics and information. Inspiration loomed just outside her office – in a giant hangar that housed blimps in World War II.

“As I stood in the giant hangar on a lunch break one day and saw the amazing NASA ER-2 and U-2 (planes) used in the Space Sciences Division, I knew the time was coming to turn my dreams of becoming a pilot into reality,” she says.

Bourk also knew her future had to be grounded in reality, since few women pursued careers in aviation at the time. She enrolled at a local community college, working toward a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science. But she also stumbled across the college’s private pilot ground school course and signed up.

“Twelve weeks later I’d begun taking flight lessons,” she continues. “By 1993, I’d become a private pilot on my way to advanced ratings while working full time in human resources. That first community college course inspired me in ways I could never have imagined, not coming from an aviation background. I had no idea flying would ever even be an option for me.”

Bourk was determined to become a pilot. She also vowed she would find a way to help others achieve the same goal.

The late 1990s were pivotal for Bourk. She moved to New Jersey, gained her Instrument, Commercial & Flight Instructor ratings, met her husband JEFF, and became a First Officer flying for a corporate charter company while he pursued a career in airport management.

Their next move – to Portland, Maine – allowed Michele to spread her wings. While Jeff managed the airport there, the couple developed a flight school and aircraft service company in nearby Biddeford, and she began realizing her dream of helping young people learn to fly.

The next stop on the Bourks’ flight path was Branson, Missouri, where Jeff Bourk began building the nation’s first privatized airport. Michele Bourk, choosing to ground her aviation career to take care of the couple’s two young children, established the Branson Humane Society and headed it up, while getting involved with the local Civil Air Patrol.

A new job opportunity beckoned: In 2022, Jeff Bourk became executive director of Wilmington International Airport. Although no longer together, the couple still work closely to support the area’s aviation community.

Michele, together with his ILM team, developed the nonprofit ILM Aerospace Foundation to give local young people the opportunity to learn about and pursue careers in aviation. Soon after, she met members of Cape Fear Community College’s Economic and Workforce Development Department, and, with grant support from the New Hanover Community Endowment, in August 2024, they launched aviation programs at CFCC’s Castle Hayne campus and on-site at Ashley and Laney high schools.

Noting that aviation is an expensive field to enter and compete in, and that women are still vastly underrepresented in commercial aviation’s leadership positions, she champions CFCC’s brand-new Aviation Management and Career Pilot associate degree programs as an accessible entry point.

“With my instructor position at CFCC in Castle Hayne,” Michele Bourk says, “I hope to have an impact and to teach students that anyone can pursue their aviation dreams, even women from underserved communities or without any aviation background.”

To view more of photographer Daria Amato’s work, go to dariaphoto.com

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