I’ve always loved meeting people who resist summarization. So when Jai told me about his conversation with Candy Suits, a former model turned aerospace CEO, I knew that I’d love spending time with her. How does a fashion model start selling control panels for fighter jets? What kind of person is as comfortable wearing Oscar de la Renta down a runway as she is negotiating contracts with Northrop Grumman? I had many questions. 

But when I met Candy, I quickly realized that these questions barely scratched the surface of her life. Over many hours of conversation, we covered everything from her relationship to Area 51 to the year she spent as a weather presenter in Reykjavik. By the end, it was clear that Candy’s story was one worth telling, and she graciously agreed to let us share it in the form of a short documentary. 

Legacy aerospace has a reputation today of being impersonal and dull, but stories like Candy’s show that the industry is much richer than most people think. Never one to let who she was yesterday define today, Candy brings alive a phrase I once read—that life can only be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forwards. The most rewarding actions you can take almost never fit a clear narrative, but these are exactly the ones that make a life worth living.