When she was four years old, Susan Mashibe’s parents and younger siblings flew to Dar es Salaam, leaving her behind with her grandmother standing at the airport in Kigoma in Tanzania.

As the plane carrying her family flew off, Susan didn’t cry; instead, she wished she could fly the aircraft herself “so that my parents would not leave me behind again.”

Today, not only can Mashibe fly a plane, being Tanzania’s first female FAA-certified pilot and mechanic, she also owns and operates VIA Aviation.

Founded in 2003, VIA Aviation, the first of its kind in Tanzania, provides world-class private jet handling and hangar services. The company has grown to be a multimillion-dollar organization, and her clients consist of monarchs, heads of state, and the military.

Mashibe is also Director of Universal Africa Logistics Ltd. and Kilimanjaro Aviation Logistics.

When she was 19, Mashibe left Tanzania for the US to learn to fly jetliners. She studied Aviation at Western Michigan University.

Mashibe was honored as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2011, and consequently completed leadership modules at Oxford and Harvard University. Other accolades include Archbishop Tutu Fellow in 2009 and a 2011 Fortune Most Powerful Woman Mentee in 2011.

In 2002, a year before she formed VIA Aviation, Mashibe used all her savings to rent a small office in the Dar es Salaam airport to start her company, TanJet, which provided technical and logistical support to

visiting private jets throughout Africa. Her first client was Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018, who was on a visit to Tanzania at the time.