Our Modern Rosies Present a Reckless Idea at the  Generator 

Written By Beth White

We packed the house at The Generator for April’s Reckless Ideas—10 presenters on stage, more than 100 guests in the room, and a whole lot of spark. Our WOMEN BUILD PLANES crew shared how our hangar in Franklin County has become a launchpad for builders, flyers, and maintainers—one Sunday, one rivet, one young person at a time.

The team—our Modern Rosies—kicked it off with stories of why the industry needs us now, how we’re building more than planes, and the ways in which we are cultivating belonging along the way. I followed by tracing the flight path that led us here—earning my pilot’s license, meeting an 80-year-old master mechanic who opened his hangar door to me, and walking through breast cancer with a renewed purpose: to foster the next generation through real work on real airplanes.

Reckless Ideas regularly features bold Vermont innovators, including our friend Kyle Clark of BETA Technologies. Standing on that stage, with our team beside me in Kyle’s former footsteps, felt like a handoff in a relay we intend to keep running—toward a future where women lead visibly in aviation and the trades.

Thank you, Generator, for a celebratory night. Our team left energized and ready for the next chapter and for new Vermonters to join us on Sundays as we BUILD, FIX, and FLY airplanes.

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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Emma Cornett’s Flight Path to Avionics