{"id":20447,"date":"2018-10-15T18:57:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T18:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.flywheelsites.com\/?p=20447"},"modified":"2023-10-29T19:12:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T02:12:43","slug":"meet-deb-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/blog\/meet-deb-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Deb Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One Of Our Very Own Badass Female Skydiving Instructors Tells Her Story<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Deb Brown has always been a gravity fan. She started out by using a combination of gravity and snow to make magic — competing in snowboarding in her native Oregon. She loved it for many years, but in time the pursuit started to lose its luster. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter my snowboarding career had ended,\u201d Deb muses, \u201cI was on the hunt for something else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And hunt she did. She went all-in for change. Indeed, she decided to switch it all the way up from snow pants to grass skirts, and moved out to Hawaii. When she got there, she was in the mood to explore some new adventures and turn up <\/span>all<\/span><\/i> the dials on her life. Sure enough, skydiving was at the top of that list.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credit: Dennis Sattler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen, of course, it went how it always goes,\u201d she laughs. \u201cAt first, it was a group of six girls, and it whittled down to two.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you might imagine, the jump went <\/span>very<\/span><\/i> well. \u201cHalfway through my tandem skydive,\u201d Deb remembers, \u201cI knew I couldn\u2019t <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> do this.\u201d She showed up for her first day of solo skydiving training within two days of that first tandem. Deb earned her license in record time and spent the next couple of years honing her skills and earning her ratings in the singularly intense conditions of that beautiful North Shore dropzone.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deb came to our gorgeous Southern California home soon after that. Her goal: to pursue and grow her full-time skydiving career, which had been decidedly aligned towards teaching skydiving to military personnel. This year, Deb became one of the elite professional female skydivers to hold a Tandem Instructor rating from the United States Parachute Association. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re incredibly lucky to have Deb on our team–which is a pretty unusual team, if we do say so ourselves. Skydive Perris is pretty unique in the world for the unusually high number of fantastic female instructors we employ on our dropzone. That\u2019s by design; we love to inspire the people who come through our gates with the proof that professional skydiving is by no means gender-exclusive.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThere are four awesome female Tandem Instructors at Perris, which is so, so cool,\u201d Deb enthuses. \u201cWhen I started skydiving, my understanding was that females did not instruct tandems. The implication was that it just isn\u2019t a job women could do. We\u2019d just be told, <\/span>Don\u2019t even try. You\u2019re not strong enough.<\/span><\/i>\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I got into the military work,\u201d she continues, \u201cand I started seeing some really badass females that my mind started to change. It <\/span>had<\/span><\/i> to change. There were several female tandem instructors, too, who I saw doing great work, and they weren\u2019t the tall, built women that I had previously seen in the job. Those women really made me start looking seriously into it. I was meeting these female smoke jumpers, too. I thought, \u2018Y\u2019know what? If she can jump into a fire with a chainsaw, I think I can skydive with another human being.\u2019 And I did it! I can truly say I love my job. It is so freaking cool.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a female tandem instructor, one of Deb\u2019s favorite parts of the job is getting to relate to her female passengers.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credit: Dennis Sattler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cAs a woman,\u201d she explains, \u201cIt is easier to be more in tune with all types of tandem passengers, but especially females. At first, most of my female students had made requests for a female tandem instructor due to religious beliefs. These days, it\u2019s a little different. I am getting a lot more requests from females who are just more comfortable jumping with females. It is really cool. I feel like I can relate even more.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Deb isn\u2019t working, she sometimes takes off for the beach to surf — after all, she\u2019s lucky enough to work at a dropzone where she can see the ocean from the door of the plane — but she\u2019s almost always still on the dropzone on her off days, tirelessly dialing in her skills.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you one thing about the team of female Tandem Instructors at Perris,\u201d she smiles. \u201cWe don\u2019t just want to be the best <\/span>female<\/span><\/i> TIs. We want to be the best <\/span>TIs<\/span><\/i>. Right now, I\u2019m focusing on making each and every tandem skydive I do perfectly seamless for my student. Aside from that, I\u2019m working quite a bit on my canopy work; on perfecting that part of my flying.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a TI, I feel like my biggest role is a safety officer,\u201d she explains. \u201cI need and want to escort this person on a truly great experience, but overall my biggest goal is to keep them and myself safe. I\u2019m really serious about it, and I really seriously love what I do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One Of Our Very Own Badass Female Skydiving Instructors Tells Her Story Deb Brown has always been a gravity fan. She started out by using a combination of gravity and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":26680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people-of-perris","category-women-in-skydiving"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20447"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26683,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20447\/revisions\/26683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skydiveperris.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}