From Aviation to Automotive - Visiting Aubrianna in her Auto-Element

There are moments when you see someone truly in their element—and that’s exactly what Beth White and Granny Tatro witnessed when they each visited Aubrianna Mayette, one of our inspiring Modern Rosie builders and Harbor Freight Fellow from Habitat for Aviation. Aubrianna is a remarkable young woman with a clear passion for mechanics, and her goal to become an airplane engine mechanic is not just a dream—it's a path she’s pursuing with focus, skill, and heart.

Beth White, Pilot in Command and founder of Habitat for Aviation, and Granny Tatro, one of our dedicated builders, each visited Aubrianna separately to show their support. What they found was nothing short of inspiring. Aubrianna gave a tour of the state-of-the-art facility at Cold Hollow Career Center, where she studies automotive technology. She proudly shared the detailed documentation and recordkeeping work she does daily—something she approaches with impressive diligence and pride.

Aubrianna’s commitment hasn’t gone unnoticed. She has earned several awards at Cold Hollow, including the prestigious Automotive Technology Award for her outstanding attendance, initiative, and professionalism. She's the first to arrive, the first to set up the day’s work, and consistently uses her job skills to support her instructor and peers. Her leadership, even as a student, is a clear sign of her bright future in the aviation world.

Granny was especially impressed by both the advanced equipment Aubrianna works with and her deep knowledge of how to use it. To see Aubrianna in her element—confident, capable, and full of purpose—was an absolute pleasure. She embodies what it means to be a Modern Rosie: driven, skilled, and building her future one bolt, one blueprint, one goal at a time.

Beth White

Education Possibilitarian, Artist, Writer, Doula, Mentor, Aviatrix, Breast Cancer Survivor, Pilot-in-Command at Habitat for Aviation


In the spring of 2022, Beth White emerged from a 10-month battle with breast cancer with an idea: to create an apprenticeship program at Franklin County State Airport where youth work alongside adult mentors servicing conventional and electric aircraft. A pilot and airplane mechanic apprentice herself, and with family roots in the trades, Habitat for Aviation provides an taxilane for world learning opportunities for youth and adults who love to work with their hands to enter the FAA’s apprenticeship certification track. Each day she puts systems in place that make real John Dewey’s philosophy that we “learn best what we live” – a deep throughline from her time at Antioch University New England and as Regional Director for Big Picture Learning. Each learning experience is grounded in relationships, relevance, and practice. In October, 2023, Habitat for Aviation launched its Women Build Planes program, where an all-female team of Modern Day Rosies is building an airplane at Franklin County Airport, in northwestern Vermont, to show folks everywhere that despite the fact that only 2.6% of airplane mechanics are female, women BUILD, FLY, and FIX airplanes.

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Women Build Planes Team interviewed on WDEV’s Vermont Viewpoint

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Habitat for Aviation Visits BETA Technologies: Wings in the Making