July 9, 2024

Kimberly Perkins: 2024 IPhD Graduate

Could adopting a safety-centered approach to improving cultural inequities in the aviation industry increase both safety and diversity in the field?

For Kimberly Perkins (IPhD ‘24), this was not an abstract question but one born from years of personal experience as a pilot. Just 5% of professional pilots are women and only 6% are not white. Industry research has showed that a negative culture is the single biggest barrier to increasing representation of these groups.

Perkins’ unique approach was to try to fix the culture problem by focusing on safety systems rather than directly trying to elicit a change in behavior.

This approach would require insights from a variety of academic disciplines, which made the Individual PhD program the ideal place to tackle this research problem. Perkins was co-advised by Profs. Cecilia Aragon from Human-Centered Design and Engineering and Crystal Hall from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance and also received support from committee members Linda Ng Boyle (Industrial Systems & Engineering) and Sapna Cheryan (Psychology).

In the aviation industry, the primary model for the management of safety concerns relies on pilots to speak up to admit mistakes and ask for help when needed. However, the efficacy of this model is predicated on pilots experiencing psychological safety—without this they often do not feel free to report openly as needed. Perkins’ research found that underrepresented groups were more strongly in favor of training pilots on interpersonal skills to enhance safety, suggesting that the negative culture persists and that a systems-level approach is needed to address this.

Prior to beginning the IPhD program, Perkins was a captain on a business jet while advocating for women in aviation, founding a not-for-profit organization that distributed school supplies to places of need around the world, and, not least, raising her two daughters (now aged 12 and 8).

Now having completed her doctorate, a primary goal is to “advocate for the formation of an industry Human Performance & Pilot Development (HPPD) Working Group to address the negative culture experienced by women and minorities in aviation and improve workforce development.”

She adds: “Can we make flight decks safer by incorporating social psychology and emotional intelligence into pilot training within the safety framework? I believe we can, and I am hopeful to be part of making that happen.”