Between work and my personal life, I travel a lot.
I mean, a lot.
And yet I can probably count on two hands the number of times I've looked into the cockpit of a plane and seen a woman pilot, let alone a woman pilot of color.
But today we're going to hear from someone who beat those odds to become the first black woman in South Africa to fly helicopters, a flight instructor herself.
She's here to tell us how thoughtful mentorship changed the course of her life and how she applies it to her own teaching.
I'm Adupa Akinola.
This is TED Business, a podcast from TED.
Rafilwe Ledwaba started out as an air hostess.
Now she's a pilot and the founder of Girls Fly Africa.
In this talk, Rafilwe breaks down how her mentors went out of their way to understand her untapped talents and the systemic barriers she faced, and how that approach made all the difference.
Then, after the talk, we'll reflect on the power of proactive mentorship and how to bring that energy into our own workspaces.
But first, a quick break.
And now, Rafilwe Ledwaba takes the TED stage.
Sometimes we tend to make people part of the problem only, but we don't make people part of the success.
We're quick to say oh, these were my challenges, but we're not quick to say, but this person removed this barrier and this person removed this one.
We need to start telling those stories.
My name is Refilwe Ledwaba.
I'm a helicopter and aeroplane pilot.
I'm also an educator.
I'm a founder of Girls Fly Africa, an organization that is teaching the next generation of young people, especially women, to learn how to fly.
I started as an air hostess and then transitioned into a helicopter pilot, then an aeroplane pilot for an airline and then a flight instructor.
I was the first black woman in South Africa to actually fly helicopters.
When I was the cabin attendant, some of the pilots used to come to me and they're like you're so smart, you should be flying.
You know the aeroplane.
They would call me during landings, you know, during takeoffs.
And I remember the captain.
He actually looked at me like can you see what you know, what you're kind of missing.
I'm like, oh, this is awesome.
This is what I want to do.
That was the turning point where I actually started taking seriously that this is something that I really, really wanted to do, because it was beautiful, but I had major challenges along the way.
When I was training as a helicopter pilot, I had difficulty with a maneuver called hovering.
It is a highly coordinated maneuver.
My helicopter will move from one corner to the other because I'll put like one hand and then one hand and it just didn't click.
And I was really on the verge of being let go from the program.
At that point they changed an instructor.
My new instructor actually took some time to get to know me.
He asked me my background, how i grew up, what are some of the activities that i did, because at that point i didn't have a driver's license.
I've never driven a car.
I didn't have a bike when i was growing up.
The people that normally come to flight school they have much more developed motor skills.
He understood that traditional training wasn't going to work for me.
He sort of went back and redesigned the program.
And I mean within two flights of just doing that, I overcame that obstacle and I went on to finish ahead of everybody else.
He actually didn't have to do what he did.
It wasn't part of the syllabus, just to go out of his way to assist me.
The way he looked at context, which is something that people don't think about.
That inspired me to become an instructor as well and perhaps do what he did for other people, recognizing that there's a whole lot of people that are coming from similar background that I did.
That will probably struggle as much as I did.
Girls Fly Africa inspires young people, especially young women, to learn how to fly.
Most of our students, they come from rural areas that have never been exposed to the industry.
And our program is set up in a way that it kind of look at what are some of the challenges they might encounter.
We identify five areas.
The first area was most of them don't have information, just like me.
I knew about only Tom Cruise and he certainly didn't look like me.
So they don't have role models not role model to them, but to the communities as well, because most of the communities that we work with, they still have preconceived ideas of what women should be doing.
We'll go and land in those areas, and so they will see us coming out of the aeroplane.
Now they can see some people that look like them that have actually flown in.
One of the first few people in the program, we actually landed at her school.
And I remember she ran to the helicopter when I landed, and she came and she spoke to us.
And she's like, oh, wow, can she take our numbers?
And then she attended our camps and workshops you know some of our programs and then we assisted her and today she is an aeronautical engineer.
The second thing that we did, we needed to build skills and capabilities.
Like, for example, we put them in a simulator before they can even start flying.
We have engines that we can show them, you know, they can work on those engines.
Now they have a clear idea of what an engine looks like before they can even start training.
We've got programs that expose them to 3D, where they build rockets, they build aeroplanes using like 3D models.
And then the third phase.
Most of these young people come from backgrounds where they can't afford to go and fly.
It's too expensive.
Like, if I had to tell my mother that she had to pay for my flight, she was probably going to like, smile and like yeah, right.
Because it's the same amount as a house.
Through our scholarship program, we've been able to train 100 plus pilots, drone pilots, flight instructors.
The fourth phase is networks.
Most of these young people, after they get trained, there's not a job waiting for them.
We sort of advocate for them.
We connect them with those job prospects so they can be able to build hours to be able to go into the airline.
And then the last phase is the continuous support.
We believe that true empowerment is when they're at the top of their game.
So they need to become training captains one day.
You know, they need to become astronauts, you know, not just study their degree and that's it.
So they need to progress.
So we create that network for continuous growth for them.
So we have interacted with more than half a million boys and girls, and then about 200000 have gone through our programs.
That will mean the workshops, simulator workshops, and we've got five-day camps.
And then in terms of the training or the girls that we've supported or partnered with multiple organizations for them to get trained.
It's about more than 100 girls.
It looks like a small number, but to train a pilot, it takes quite long.
The young people that are coming after me, they've got different challenges.
But I've always said to them, go back and look at how many people have actually helped you.
You will find out that more than 90% of the people, they actually want you to succeed.
It's just that a lot of times we tend to maybe dwell on the negatives and we don't actually highlight the positives.
I had a community of people that were behind me.
My mom, all the pilots that called me, you should be in front, kind of nudging me.
My instructor, all of them were like, you know, you can do this, you can do this.
They've inspired me and they've made it normal to do for others what they did for me.
I think for me, that's the most rewarding part.
That was Rafilwe Ledwaba speaking as part of the TED Fellow Films 2025.
I admire Rafilwe so much.
Her journey is amazing.
And I think the way she calls out every mentor or teacher or co-worker who went out of their way to help her realize her potential really speaks to her character.
And then the fact that she used her success to build a platform to help other girls become pilots and break barriers, just like her.
It all speaks to how powerful mentorship can be and how it can have ripple effects far beyond an individual encounter.
Positive, lasting mentorship like this is rooted in context.
Being a mentor is about more than just offering career tips.
Taking the extra step to get to know someone's history makes all the difference, like Rafilwe and her flight instructor.
Once he understood that she didn't grow up with access to a bike or a car, he changed the way he taught her.
And with that adjustment, she was able to hover almost immediately.
The same principles apply here on Solid Ground 2.
It's not enough to just open the doors to your organization to smart and capable and talented individuals.
You have to invest in the people you work with.
And by that I mean, you really have to understand them, their context.
Did they receive a different kind of education than you?
Did they have a wildly different experience growing up than you?
Maybe it means getting a little creative, the way Rafilwe's flight instructor deviated from the traditional training manual to address her specific motor skill needs.
Maybe it's material support, like the scholarships Girls Fly Africa provide to their students to help cover the cost of flight training.
Maybe it's networking help, so like Rafili says, the growth is continuous.
So next time you're chatting with a colleague, ask yourself what can I do to better understand this person's context?
You never know where their story might take you.
That's it for today.
TED Business is part of the TED Audio Collective.
This episode was produced by Hannah Kingsley Ma and fact-checked by Julia Dickerson.
Special thanks to Maria Lavias, Farah DeGruyne, Daniela Balarezo, Tansika Sangmanivong and Roxanne Hotsan.
I'm Madhu Paginola.
Thanks for listening.
