Profiles In Resilience: The Fighter Pilot
Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security
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13-Nov-2025
Colonel Nicole Malachowski is a groundbreaking fighter pilot who served in the US Air Force for 21 years. She was the first woman to join the elite Thunderbirds Air Demonstration Squadron in 2005. But her career came to a screeching halt when she contracted a tick-borne illness and was forced to medically retire. She tells her story of resilience, both while serving as an Air Force pilot and how she coped with her illness and discovered a new career and calling as a speaker and patient advocate.
The Profiles in Resilience series, produced by the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative (AANSRI), spotlights individuals in the national security community who have faced significant hardships or experienced especially challenging circumstances in the course of their work, and, importantly, what lessons in resilience they can draw from those experiences.
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