With so many pilots retiring during the pandemic, American Airlines needed to ensure a future workforce by recruiting thousands of students to join its Cadet Academy.

We built a storytelling series to do it. As on-set producer, I conducted on-camera interviews with aspiring pilots, guiding them toward honest, compelling stories that would resonate with the next generation of aviators. The goal wasn't just to produce content, it was to make a career in aviation feel accessible and real to students who might not have considered it otherwise.

Content was optimized for multi-platform use across social media, digital recruitment campaigns, and internal communications, giving the Cadet Academy the kind of authentic storytelling that a brochure never could.