Mandy Hickson

Why organisations work with Mandy Hickson

• Combat-tested authority on decision-making in time-critical, high-consequence environments, drawn from three operational tours and around 45 missions over Iraq.
• Formal Human Factors training as a Civil Aviation Authority facilitator, which translates cockpit Crew Resource Management (authority gradient, threat and error management, communication failure) into a vocabulary boards and operational leaders can actually use.
• A specific argument about how high-performing teams handle ambiguity, debrief honestly, and challenge senior voices, grounded in fast-jet practice rather than generic teamwork content.
• A track record of being one of two women on her squadron, which gives substance to sessions on inclusion and authority without resorting to slogans.
• A Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and Aviation Ambassador for the Department for Transport, with an Honorary Fellowship at the University of Winchester to anchor the credentials.

Biography highlights

• First woman to fly the RAF Tornado GR4 on a front-line squadron, No. II(AC) Squadron, after joining the RAF in 1994.
• Three operational tours and roughly 45 missions over Iraq, including No Fly Zone patrols.
• Trained Human Factors facilitator with the UK Civil Aviation Authority, working on Crew Resource Management.
• Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (FRAeS) and Honorary Fellow of the University of Winchester.
• Aviation Ambassador for the UK Department for Transport; Trustee of the RAF Charitable Trust and the Victory Services Club.
• Author of An Officer, Not a Gentleman (2020), TEDx speaker, and named “Inspiration of the Year” at the Veterans Business Awards.

Biography

Combat aircrew do not have the luxury of a long meeting to weigh options. They have seconds, partial information, an authority gradient between cockpit seats, and a debrief afterwards that is brutally honest about what happened and why. That operating model is the source material Mandy Hickson brings to corporate audiences.

She joined the RAF in 1994, failed the pilot aptitude tests twice, served as an air traffic controller, and refused to leave it there. She qualified as a fast-jet pilot and went on to fly the Tornado GR4 on No. II(AC) Squadron, completing three operational tours and around 45 missions over Iraq, including patrols of the No Fly Zone. She was the first woman to do that job on a front-line squadron.

After leaving front-line service, she trained as a Human Factors facilitator with the UK Civil Aviation Authority. That credential is the part that matters for business audiences. Crew Resource Management gives her a structured vocabulary for the things organisations talk around: authority gradient, threat and error management, communication breakdown, fatigue, the difference between a confident decision and a defensive one.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Honorary Fellow of the University of Winchester, Aviation Ambassador for the Department for Transport, and a trustee of the RAF Charitable Trust and the Victory Services Club. Her book, An Officer, Not a Gentleman, was published in 2020 and tells the story without the gloss; the discipline she has built around it is what leadership teams actually buy.

Key speaking topics

• Decision-making under pressure
• Crew Resource Management and Human Factors in business
• High-performing team behaviour
• Calculated risk and risk literacy for leaders
• Honest debriefs and learning from failure
• Inclusion and authority in male-dominated environments
• Resilience and composure for senior leaders

Ideal for

• Boards and executive teams facing decisions with incomplete information and short timelines
• Operational leadership in safety-critical industries: aviation, energy, healthcare, infrastructure, financial services
• Transformation, risk and crisis management leads building decision protocols for their organisations
• Women’s leadership programmes and mixed audiences working on inclusion as a performance issue, not a compliance one

Audience outcomes

• A working vocabulary from Crew Resource Management for talking about decisions, authority and error inside their own teams
• A sharper view of what an honest debrief looks like and why most corporate post-mortems avoid the real questions
• Specific behaviours that distinguish high-pressure teams that perform from those that fragment
• A more useful definition of calculated risk than the one most leadership decks default to
• Confidence to challenge upwards and to invite challenge downwards, with a clear reason why it matters