After The Nudge Podcast Ep. 5 | Creating Pilots Straight From Compton | Toyota
Welcome to After the Nudge Podcast. I’m Soledad O’Brien. And I’m J.R. Smith. So on this podcast, we chat with some of the nation’s most outstanding and grassroots organizations, all of whom received a grant, a nudge from Toyota. And it was in the form of a $10,000 grant.
Today we have Demetrius de Harris, who is a pro who is also president and co-founder of Fly Hampton. He literally teaches you how to fly. Welcome to teachers. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you, guys. We have it’s so nice to have you on.
So when you think of Compton, you think of a lot of things. Yes, but not necessarily like a place where they’re going to train pilots and young people who are interested in aeronautics. Right. Right. How did you get started? Well, I actually got I became a pilot later in life.
It was at the age of 40 when I boarded a commercial. Careful, careful lady. I mean, you know, it was at that age that I boarded an airliner. And for the first time in my entire life, I saw two African-American pilots were in the cockpit.
And up until that point, I had never even seen one African-American pilot. So that visual just unlocked my motivation to want to become a pilot. How old were you? I was 40. 000. I was. I was I thought you were talking about being a little kid. You were 40.
And that was the first time you’d see the first time I had seen a black pilot. And I’ve been well-traveled, you know, throughout my career in politics and investments. But I just never seen and it didn’t dawn on me until that moment that I had never seen one before.
So, you know, that visual just unlocked my motivation to want to do it. And so I enrolled in flight school three months after that incident, and I got all of my readings within 11 months. And began a career as a corporate auto pilot. Wow. That’s amazing.
Yes. Like you said, you’re your roots are from North Carolina. I’m from North Carolina. I attended North Carolina. We do. We’re going to need a moment for you. Take which what’s your background in Carolina and moving obviously across country to Compton.
Like, how did you feel as though the community was going to embrace, you know, flying and teaching kids and teach people how to fly? Yeah, well, like I said, I’m originally from Wilson, North Carolina. I grew up on a farm, so, you know, I was never exposed to
Things like this or becoming a pilot or anything like that. So it wasn’t something that, you know, I could believe that I can attain or even thought about going after. And so I went to North Carolina and my major was business finance. And then I moved to California to work in investments,
Then started working in politics for 15 years. And then it was during that time when I took that flight to see the African-American pilots. And so one of the things when I started working as a pilot was just realizing
That there’s just not a lot of black and Latino people working in that field. In fact, less than 6% of the entire pilot workforce is black, African-American or Latino, right? Yes. Wow. And so that was one of the things you know,
I wanted to just try to do something to change that and just try to help, you know, a couple of kids in the community to just be exposed and know that this is an opportunity. On top of that, the airline industry is really suffering from a pilot shortage right now.
So they’re you know, they’re offering all kinds of sign on boards and bonuses and scholarships and things like that for people to become pilots. And so what I did was after I became a corporate pilot, I realized there’s not a lot of us. I wanted to go and try and find more pilots
That look like me that come from the same background. And so, obviously, you know, where do you go find black pilots? Compton, California. You know, and Compton actually has an airport, which most people don’t realize. I did not realize, though it makes a lot of sense that you’re flying right out of Compton.
Yeah, it has a small municipal airport. And so I went there and I met other black pilots who actually a lot of them grew up in a program similar to Fly Compton when they were younger at Compton Airport. And so it’s seven of us as founders.
Four of us, four of the founders actually went through that program. And so we just kind of restarted a program that was existing back then that didn’t exist any longer. And honestly, we we just wanted to help a couple of kids in the community. We had no idea
The response that we were going to get from the community and the void that we were actually fulfilling. And so we just want to do two things, which is expose young black and brown kids to the aviation industry, not even just to become pilots, but there’s so many other
Jobs that you can have in the aviation industry, like being a mechanic, which is very important. The mechanics are like super important. Being a drone pilot, you can become a drone pilot at 60 years old and start earning money as a drone pilot, engineering,
Air traffic control, all those things we want to expose the kids to. I’m so curious what makes somebody like see two black pilots and then go become a pilot? Like, it’s one thing to say, well, that’s unusual and then go about your day. Well, that’s about it. I mean, exposure is everything.
You know, That’s one of the things we want to try to do is make sure young black and brown kids see people that look like them. We go to career days at high schools, community and the community college district in Los Angeles
Because that visual actually makes a difference when people when kids can see somebody that looks like them doing extraordinary things, that makes them want to do it as well. What’s the age demographic you work with as kids are like a certain limit or. Yeah.
So we start we actually start training kids at eight years old. So what? Eight years old? Yes. Way to fly a plane? Yes. Yes, we do. So we we have a our program is every other Saturday at Compton Airport. The kids come to the airport. They do a ground lesson in the classroom.
They eat lunch, and then we actually take them up in the airplane just to get them acclimated to the look and feel of the horizon. When you the airplane, the movements that it makes. But then we start actually fully training them at age 16
Because you have to be 17 to get your your pilot’s license. And so when they reach the age of seven, 16 or 17, those are the ones that we we provide scholarships for to completely pay for their training to get their pilot license.
And so up to this point, we’ve been operating for three years. We had our first fundraising gala just last week where we presented the kids that actually received their private pilot licenses through us because we actually paid for it. And so we had six kids that received the private pilot license,
And then we had another 11 kids that had gotten to the point of soloing an airplane by themselves. So, you know what? We’re doing is working. You know, we have that every other Saturday. It coincides with the school year. And then in the summer, we break the pilot classes and start doing workshops
Around engineering and drones and things of that nature. Wow. That’s that’s amazing. You said the community is very supportive. Yes. Why were you surprised by that support? I was very surprised. I didn’t realize that, you know, the void that we were filling, because there’s really not
A lot of programs like this that expose young black and brown kids to aviation. So once we once we started and we’re starting to get out, we actually had started to get a lot of news coverage, both local and national. And we even had Secretary of Transportation Pete Bullard
Just found out about us and actually came to Compton Airport to visit us and see what we were doing. So once all of that coverage got out, you know, we got donations from all across the country. We have students that come from Arizona, even as far as Chicago, Illinois,
Every two weeks to L.A., just to be part of our program, because there’s not a lot of programs that exist out there like this. When you see when you see kids who were maybe didn’t even know they were going to be into this or we wanted to be a pilot or whatever,
And then you go from getting a license to actually being able to do it. That’s kind of give you some type of joy of thinking like if I was 16, 15, opposed to being 40. And fortunately, you still, you know, found an avenue to help.
What is that feeling like when you look at those kids in those and they feel that self-confidence of being able to fly a plane? You know, that’s that’s actually one of the things that keeps me going or keeps us going with doing this, because it is a lot of work.
You know, I know people that are not in the nonprofit industry don’t realize how much work running a nonprofit is. And so on those days, sometimes you feel like, man, this is too much. Then you see the faces on the kids, you know, when they come down from a plane.
Or a lot of kids have never even been in an airplane before, you know, And they take that first flight and their face is just light up and they eat and they say, I know what I want to be for the rest of my life.
Now, you know that that’s just a fulfilling thing for me to hear, that knowing that we’re actually changing the trajectory of kids lives and also the parents, you know, parents come up to me in tears thanking us for this type of program because they just didn’t
Have a way to expose their kid to it, even though they knew their child was interested in it. They didn’t know how to do it. And then also the financial burden. It is very expensive to become a pilot. You’re going to spend about 80 to $100000 to become a commercial pilot
To the point where you can work as a pilot. And so, you know, a lot of people from our communities don’t have that type of money. So the money that we raise from corporations is what we use to provide scholarships, actually pay for their training completely.
And not only that, we make sure we make connections with a lot of airline companies so that when they’re qualified, they actually have job interviews already lined up so they can go to work in the field. If other companies absolutely need employees and a win win win for everybody.
Absolutely. What do you love about flying? The freedom. The freedom, The feeling of freedom. And, you know, it’s a totally different world up in the air than it is down here. You know, you just feel free. You feel at peace.
And it’s it very exhilarating to be able to manage the energy of a huge machine like that, you know, going 500 miles an hour in the air, you know, it’s just a wonderful thing to do. And I know a lot of people are afraid of flying,
But it’s really the safest way to everything you’re describing. I’m like, managing a five mile an hour is what is like. It is very exhilarating, very exhilarating. I had some teammates back in the day. They’re actually twin brothers. They they both played in the NBA and they’re both pilots.
They both fly and everything else. And they continuously invited me. But for me, I was like, Nah, hey, I will go fly with somebody. On the commercial reality flight. What you wrote is legal, right? Well, just to see that, like just, you know, as a just like you were saying,
To have two black men in the cockpit, I didn’t see it before and seeing the two brothers doing it right. So to even as much as I travel now, I still can’t recall ever seeing that right. So I can imagine the culture shock
It is for even like you say, 6% of the pilot businesses. It is kind of brown. So that number so small. We’re like in the next because it’s when what’s it’s 2015, how how do you try to continuously increase those numbers and continuously increase corporations like Toyota to give those grants to to
Fill the void of lack of, you know, lack of a better word in that brown community? I probably yeah. I mean we the corporate sponsorships are absolutely dire for us. Like I said, it cost so much to become a pilot. It really takes a lot of money to do so.
The $10,000 grant that we got from Toyota actually went to help a couple of the kids who received their their private pilot license. So that was a major win and then a major thank you to Toyota for doing that. And so our major goal is to increase within the next five years.
Our goal is to increase the number of black and brown pilots in the workforce by at least 5%. Do you ever think about your legacy? Like I think it’s amazing that you already had a bunch from your experience of seeing two black pilots, you’ve now spawned a whole bunch of other dozen
Young people who are either pilots right now or on their way to becoming pilots as a as a career. Yes. I mean, it’s surreal. I mean, like I said before, when we started this, we just wanted to help a couple of kids in the neighborhood. We had no idea that we’d have,
You know, up to 100 students right now that come every Saturday. And we still got another 100 students on the waitlist. So, you know, we just waiting till we get more resources to be able to open it up to those kids as well.
But, you know, the response from the from the parents, from the community and from the airline industry in general, you know, has been overwhelming, you know, and it’s been such a joy to be a part of how can somebody help if they’re like, well, we could help you. yeah, raise some money?
Well, we can always use money. And, you know, people can go to our website, Fly Compton Foundation board, there’s a donate button on there. And those funds go directly to scholarships to help kids receive their their license and their certificates. Or you can just find us on Instagram at Fly Compton as well.
Amazing to me. Just congratulate what you’re doing is incredible. Great. Thank you. It’s awesome. And I look forward to you guys coming out. And let me fly you around with me. Yes, I’m here. I’m completely in. Yeah. I appreciate it. And thanks for joining us on the After the Nudge podcast.
And thanks to all of you for watching as well. And as we like to say, never underestimate the power of a nudge. You’ve seen the amazing impact that that’s able to have. Thanks for joining us.
Join Soledad O’Brien and J.R. Smith as they chat with Demetrius D. Harris, president and co-founder of Fly Compton Foundation, about the power of exposure. Fly Compton is an innovative training program in Compton, CA, that introduces and prepares urban youth to capitalize on the range of rewarding career opportunities in the aviation industry. See Terms & Conditions at AfterTheNudge.com: https://www.toyota.com/content/dam/toyota/after-the-nudge/after-the-nudge-term-and-conditions-2023.pdf
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In this episode of the After The Nudge Podcast, Soledad and J.R. Smith meet with Demetrius D. Harris.
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