A career in aviation was never part of the initial plan for Dr. Tamara Pejovic, team lead for aviation sustainability at pan-European, civil-military organisation EUROCONTROL.
As a young student in Serbia, Dr. Pejovic was obsessed with physics and nuclear reactors. Genuinely convinced that she would become a nuclear physicist, she studied electrical engineering and had a completely different future in mind.
Then an unexpected conversation with a friend changed everything.
“I remember talking with a friend about how nice it would be to work at a small airport somewhere on an island,” Dr. Pejovic says. “There was something romantic about it — this idea of movement, travel, people constantly coming and going.”
This convinced her to switch to a career in aviation. That same year, she transferred into aviation transport and traffic engineering at the University of Belgrade. Even though she did not eventually end up working on an island, Dr. Pejovic is convinced she is exactly where she was supposed to be.
“And once I entered aviation, I completely fell in love with it. I realised aviation is not just about aircraft. It is about humanity, systems, technology, psychology, politics, cultures all moving together at the same time,” she shares with Runway Girl Network.
The journey did not end there for Dr. Pejovic. Beyond technical knowledge gained across multiple institutions, she strongly believes her educational background has shaped her leadership.
“People sometimes forget what it was like studying in Serbia during the 1990s under sanctions and instability… During the NATO bombing in 1999, I was taking some of my final exams while air-raid sirens were going off outside. That experience changes you,” she says.
Her experiences have made her resilient and changed the way she views the world.
Today, Dr. Pejovic is making a difference in aviation across sustainability, climate change and diversity. Starting out in aerospace safety, she has worked through various roles, including leading two multimillion-dollar projects at aviation consultancy Helios, as funded by the European Commission (EuropeAid). Also in academia, she became an adjunct professor at her alma mater, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Dr. Pejovic is currently the team lead for the aviation sustainability unit at EUROCONTROL. She has also co-founded a non-profit organisation, ‘AviAll‘ (Aviation for All), which promotes diversity, equality and inclusion in the aviation industry.
AviAll is billed as an open and safe space that’s accessible to everyone interested in aviation. “We wanted AviAll to be a space to help people discover aviation regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, age, background or network,” Dr. Pejovic explains.
This focus was particularly important to her given her lived experience as a woman coming from the Balkans into Western European and international environments.
“There were moments where I felt people had already formed assumptions about me before I even spoke,” she says. “I often felt I had to work two or three times harder to demonstrate that I belonged in the room.”
Going further, Dr. Pejovic wants women to be genuinely allowed to lead, speak, fail, learn and take up space while being given the opportunity to grow and gain confidence.
Her focus is rooted in diversity, equality and inclusion, which she approaches as practical and strategic rather than just symbolic.
“For me, diversity and inclusion are not HR topics sitting separately from strategy,” she says. “They directly influence the quality of decisions, innovation and long-term resilience.”
Dr. Pejovic advises young girls not to be overwhelmed by uncertainty when pursuing non-traditional careers in aviation. “You will fail sometimes. You will fall down once or twice,” she says. “But that does not mean the story ends there.”
A big leap of faith and conviction was the start of a fulfilling career for Dr. Pejovic. And through AviAll, she hopes to make that journey feel possible for many more people around the world.
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All images credited to Dr. Tamara Pejovic
