Scholarship awards may have been the headliner for the annual Women in Corporate Aviation (WCA) NBAA luncheon, but networking was definitely the theme of what is becoming one of the more prominent little meetings taking place within this one big meeting of some of the best minds and creative energy in business aviation today.

The awards, now totaling nearly $50,000, were for airline dispatcher license training, aviation management, professional careers, aviation maintenance technology, management of in-flight illness and injury, an Aircare Facts training program and corporate flight attendant training. Because of the storm in the northeast, only one scholarship winner was present, Asela Calvert, who was awarded the aviation management scholarship of $3,000 by Home Depot chief pilot Joe Coates. Calvert is president of Worldwide Simulator Training Center, located in Las Vegas, Nevada, a Part 142 operation she and her husband founded in 2009. She will use her scholarship to attend the 2013 NBAA Leadership Conference in Austin, Texas.

Calvert personifies the typical WCA member–self-made and determined to rise to the top. Among the people in the room were management from Fortune 100 flight departments, professional flight attendants, high-end in-flight caterers, association presidents and corporate top management from Home Depot, Gulfstream, Med-Aire, AirCare Facts, Universal Weather and Coca-Cola. They are today’s aviation professionals who know that networking and mentoring are key to their businesses and this industry’s tomorrow. For more information about the organization and its mission, go to www.wca-intl.org.