FlightWave’s Nicole Jordan is Ready for Takeoff in the Drone Industry

Commercial drone company FlightWave has discovered another new power source in Nicole Jordan, the new VP of Business Development.

Nicole Jordan is one of the women you’d like to introduce to your daughter, or have speak to a group of teenagers about STEM education.  Originally from Columbia, Jordan came to the U.S. with a dream of becoming an astronaut.

“I’ve always had a passion for rockets, airplanes and boats,” she laughs.  After earning her commercial pilots license, Jordan went to work at NASA Ames, where she participated in work on the Google Lunar X prize – a dream concept about putting the first person in space. (Entrepreneur Richard Branson later bought the concept.)

She next moved on to another dream job in aerospace, working for CASIS, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, where she worked as a liason between different industries and the space station.  While with CASIS, Jordan attended her first AUVSI show, and found herself quickly hooked on the next frontier of the industry: drones.

“It was overwhelming,” says Jordan. “I really started to be curious about it.”  It wasn’t long before the right opportunity in the drone industry came along.  With a strong technical background and a talent for connecting businesses with new technologies, Jordan took her position at FlightWave after meeting the team and seeing their fixed wing commercial drone solution, the innovative Edge. “The game changer here is VTOL [vertical takeoff and landing],” says Jordan.  “When you really look at the characteristics of the technology, this has a lot of possibilities.  It’s weather-resistant, it can take of and land anywhere, without a runway… there are so many opportunities there.”

Jordan hopes that U.S. regulations will evolve to allow them to take advantage of those opportunities.  “We have to start expanding testing sites,” she says.  “The more opportunities we have to test, the more we’ll be able to demonstrate the capabilities.”

“Line of sight is a real limitation,” she adds.

Jordan’s a believer in FlightWave’s commercial drone and the drone industry as a whole.  When asked what she sees as the next big development, she’s thinking big: “Air taxis and passenger drones,” she says.  “Those could solve so many problems – not only in the U.S. but especially in undeveloped countries.”