#clearedtoland Crew

Our founder is a woman of many talents: this West-Berlin native toured Europe for five years as a drummer with her band «Even Cowgirls Get The Blues». She obtained her degree in business administration with emphasis on marketing and held several leading marketing and project management positions before founding her own communication agency in Berlin.

Rahel also is a private pilot. Professionally, she landed in Switzerland almost 15 years ago, where she resides with her family and works as Head Visitor Services and Events at Zurich Airport. She has been working as a consultant for several clients, among them the international medtech company Quotient. She is also Co-Founder of the successful «Zauberpark Music and Light Festival» at Zurich Airport. In May 2021, Rahel becomes Head of the Coaching and Education Department (SEB) at the City of Zurich.

In 2018, Rahel founded #clearedtoland. In 2020 she finished her degree as a «Systemic Solution-Oriented Coach» and the degree for Change Management in September 2021. In 2022 she finished her MAS in Leadership & Management and specialized in the topics of Change Management and «True North Star Journey», the vision development and realization of organizations, teams and individuals.

Since May 2023 she is CEO of FRZ Flughafenregion Zürich. (www.flughafenregion.ch)

She is also mother of two teenagers.

There is no category for Edith. She is a helicopter private pilot who started her academic career in the United States of America, where she was awarded a full scholarship due to her athletic excellence. During her years abroad, she competes in university and professional tournaments. After studying Media and Communications and English Literature she returned to Switzerland where she also graduates as a business economist and earns a post-graduate diploma in applied psychology.

Her professional milestones include working as a Resource Deployment Manager at IBM before joining Credit Suisse as a Consultant. Most recently, she worked at Flughafen Zurich AG where – amongst others – she built up and managed the market research department. In 2014 she obtains her private pilot’s license for helicopters.

In addition, Edith is a certified coach and consultant in the area of self-management, dealing with contradictions and compatibility of work and family with a focus on stress, resilience, high-performance, comeback and change. Edith is co-founder of #clearedtoland and mother of a son. 

This crew member is a woman with a very unique career: The world of aviation fascinated Susanne from an early age on. She is barely 17 years old when she starts her aeronautical pre-training at what is today SPHAIR. While still in school she gets certified as a private pilot (including glider towing) before starting her military career. At age of 23 she becomes a professional military pilot, is holding an airline transport pilot license (ATPL) and has instructor ratings on PC-7 and Alouette III. 

In addition to her military career Susanne holds a degree in Business Administration with a focus on Communication and Marketing from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. Today, she works part-time as a military pilot. Susanne has two children. 

Growing up in Zurich, Simone studied Psychology and Environmental Sciences at the Universities of Zurich and Hagen and supplemented her knowledge with further training in General Management, Lean Management and Customer Experience. Her first career station leads Simone to the USA in the marketing department of a biotechnology company. After a long period as a project manager at a global financial services provider, Simone moves to Zurich Airport. There, she continues to develop the service quality and optimizes the contact points for customers as part of the management team, reporting directly to the management board in this function. Always looking for inspiration, Simone also still takes on a role as a Lean Master (Kaizen Master), contributing to the continuous improvement and process optimization of the company.

Since 2021, Simone has been a member of a senior management board in the public sector, where she is responsible for digital transformation, among other things. She is also founder and managing director of Emptor Consulting, an agency for business transformation, strategy and customer experience. In her spare time, she is involved in empowering employees of an aid project in the Philippines, where she is co-founder and co-leader of the Swiss offshoot.

Esther Zwygart is a pilot by passion and already looks back on a career of more than 25 years as a pilot with over 12’000 flying hours. At the age of 17, she got her pilot’s license before she could even drive a car. Originally, Esther set her sights on a career in finance and, after completing her banking apprenticeship, navigated straight towards her business studies. However, a four-month stay in Arizona/USA right next to a “Flying Ranch” interferes and since then it is clear: Esther decides to consequently live the dream of flying.
At the beginning of the nineties, she became part of the era when women were increasingly drawn into the cockpit of airliners. In the meantime, as Senior First Officer, she pilots various wide-body aircraft for a German airline (A330 and A340).

Esther is the mother of two teenage children and knows what it means to balance such a demanding job with family life. She is an expert in topics such as leadership, dealing with the unexpected, communication and decision-making – in line with the #clearedtoland success principle. As a keynote speaker for #clearedtoland, she enjoys sharing her experiences from the cockpit with her audience.

Melissa was born in Alaska and grew up in Talkeetna.
From a young age, she grows up with aviation, where her father Don Lee ran his flight school right on idyllic Christensen Lake.
Missy gets to know all of Alaska from the air at an early age. The passionate pilot is also an adventurer and at the age of 20 climbs Mount Denali.
Her distinctive skills in mental strength, self-leadership and leadership as well as an extraordinary goal orientation support her to eventually stand on top of the highest mountain in North America and one of the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountain of each of the seven continents.

Her second passion is to support people make the most of themselves. And so her professional background is first in education. She studied education at the American College of Education in Colorado, eventually training teachers, and worked as a college professor and instructional coach for Public Education Business Coalition in Denver.

Along the way, she has completed her master’s in leadership. When the opportunity to take over the company “Alaska Floats and Skis” (www.alaskafloats.com) comes up in 2020, her great passion for aviation catches up with her again.

She becomes the owner and CEO of the company and since then has been helping pilots from all over the world achieve their personal True North Star and get trained and certified in bush flying and seaplane flying.

Missy is the mother of an 11-year-old son and lives alternately in Alaska and Colorado.

As the keynote speaker for #clearedtoland, she takes her audience on a breathtaking True North Star Journey.