International Women's Day 2021 - Leah Jeffreys

This International Women’s Day, we bring to you inspiring stories of women of Guernsey Ports, who manage various aspects of our organisation.

Leah Jeffreys is our Head of Air Navigation Services and manages a diverse range of teams undertaking many highly specialised roles including Air Traffic Control, Air Traffic Engineering and Guernsey Met.

Leah says: “Initially in my career, I faced a number of challenges. One of the major barriers was training local people in Air Traffic Control, as at that time there was a preference for recruiting Air Traffic Controllers from overseas airports, and there was no training regime available for islanders to become Air Traffic Controllers. Thankfully those attitudes have changed, and we have now successfully trained seven Air Traffic Control Officers through our training program.

“Aviation across all sectors still needs to encourage women to take up the roles and careers that have traditionally been held by proportionally more men than women. At Guernsey Airport five of our ATCOs are women, five are Air Traffic Service Assistants and two are Met Officers, which accounts for around a third of each of those teams. For me, we should not need an International Women’s Day to highlight the work we do, our biggest challenge is encouraging women to realise the range of careers available to them in the aviation industry."

"It is an exciting industry to work in with a diverse range of employment opportunities. Just ask the women who have been working in it for years, 30 years ago I was employed by a woman who was Manager of ATC and the Senior Air Traffic Assistant was also a woman.”