Born in 1960, Heather Wilson grew up around aviation. Her grandfather was a WWI pilot with the Royal Air Force and her father, a commercial pilot and U.S. Air Force veteran. Graduating from the Air Force Academy in the third class to admit women, Wilson earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Following Air Force tours in Europe, Wilson joined the National Security Council under President George H. W. Bush. She went on to serve as a member of Congress for ten years and then as President of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Wilson was named Secretary of the U.S. Air Force in 2017 and was responsible for organizing, training and equipping 685,000 active-duty, Guard, Reserve, and civilian forces. In 2019, Dr. Wilson was named President of The University of Texas at El Paso.
