This piece originally ran in the January 2026 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.
Tina Druskins, EAA Lifetime 1060950, has long been inspired by aviation, having grown up with a flight instructor for a mom. Now as a first officer for United Airlines flying Boeing 757s and 767s, Tina is passing along that inspiration and giving back to the community as a volunteer mentor for EAA’s GirlVenture Camp.
In high school, Tina attended a couple different aviation camps, including at her local EAA chapter and EAA’s Women Soar You Soar program, which was the predecessor to GirlVenture. It was through programs like these that she started seriously considering aviation as a career rather than a hobby.
“It was cool to get to go [to Oshkosh] and have other peers and girls who were my age who had mutual interests. I still have good friends from it,” she said. “It was all the fun parts of a summer camp, but then also had these women that I really looked up to and was really inspired by the careers and choices they had made…. Because I got to form these personal relationships with them, it felt super attainable to have goals that were that big as well.”
Tina became a mentor in 2015 during her junior year of college. “I was a flight instructor at the time and just starting my career, and I got to help [campers] with those little baby steps because I had just gone through it pretty recently,” she said. “Because I started mentoring pretty early on in my career, I’ve gotten to share my career developments with the other women who I mentor with as well as the girls.”
What’s been most impactful to Tina is the change in confidence — for both her campers and herself. “It’s awesome to see the girls gain confidence throughout the camp. That’s one of my favorite things. And, frankly, it’s something that’s helped me also be more confident as a leader and as a woman in the industry as well, being able to see the impact that you’re having on the future generation,” she said.
“As a woman in this industry, at least for me, it’s been easy sometimes to feel like my voice is a little bit harder to hear because it is such a male-dominated industry. So being around other women who are constantly building each other up and working together as a team, it’s really easy to then carry that into the flight deck or different spots of my career.”
Tina’s main lesson she hopes to instill with campers is to be themselves. “No matter what you do, you just want to do it confidently, and you don’t need to blend into the stereotypes that exist within it.”
And for anyone who’s considering becoming a mentor, she has a lesson for you, too: “It’s very easy as people to underplay your own successes in life and in the industry, the hurdles you’ve overcome,” she said. “Your education, your career, and the messages you’ve learned will have an impact on people, and it’s worth sharing.”
Volunteers make EAA AirVenture Oshkosh — and just about everything else EAA does — possible. This space in EAA Sport Aviation is dedicated to thanking and shining the spotlight on volunteers from the community. Sadly, it cannot capture all of the thousands of volunteers who give so much to the community every year. So, next time you see a volunteer at AirVenture or elsewhere, however they are pitching in to make EAA better, be sure to thank them for it. It’s the least we can do. Do you know a volunteer you’d like to nominate for Volunteer Spotlight? Visit EAA.org/Submissions.