6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Defne Özcan: TIME's Girls of the Year List
'I could see a future of me becoming a mechanical engineer. So why couldn't other women and young girls feel the same way?' she says. She decided to change minds by literally taking flight. 'I wanted to create a ripple effect of inspiration.'
She enrolled in flight school at 15, and a year later, on October 27, 2024, she found herself taxiing down the runway in a single-engine Aeroprakt-22 by herself. It was a windy day, and she had considered aborting her first solo flight, 'but then I thought to myself: am I ever going to feel 100% ready? Probably not.' Belting out the lyrics from her favorite Broadway musical to soothe her nerves—"Defying Gravity' from Wicked, naturally—she pulled back on the plane's control column and found herself airborne.
She dreams of becoming a mechanical engineer like her father, but with a focus on biomedical systems in order to 'make a positive impact in people's lives.' Now that she has defied expectations, she hopes that other Turkish women will be inspired to do the same, in the sky, and in STEM.
