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Navya Pottumutu is pumped, all squared away for the flight to Ontario.

No surprise there. The Langford teen is motivated and self-disciplined, just the qualities you’d figure they’d want at Royal Military College in Kingston, which is where she’s headed today.

How many of us know what we want to do at age 18? Many are still sitting on the launch pad at 30, waiting for someone else to push the button.

Navya? She already has her personal flight path marked out: 10 years in the air force working in aerospace control, including four years earning an aeronautical engineering degree at RMC.

It’s a natural trajectory. The aviation world is her happy place. Flying is where she feels calm and serene. “It’s my safe haven.” With dad Praveen shuttling her back and forth from lessons in Port Alberni, she earned her glider’s licence a week before getting her learner’s permit for the car. Then, last year, came her pilot’s licence at 17, the minimum age. She flies Cessna 172s.

Really, she was on this course before she even came to Canada.

“It’s been my dream to be in the world of aviation since I was little,” she says. “I had toy planes instead of cars, or Barbies, or whatever.”

She was nine when her family emigrated from India. Moving here really wasn’t that much of an adjustment, she says. “I’m a social person.”

She’s also a go-getter. Her dad says she spoke English and three Indian languages by age three. By 12 she was jumping into charitable work, first through Victoria’s Hindu temple and the air cadets, then through Belmont Secondary, where she also took on a leadership role in the music program.

In Grades 11 and 12 and again while at UVic last year (she had scholarships and didn’t want to step off the learning train while waiting to get into RMC), she organized Relay for Life events. Her bio is dotted with awards.

She sees the military as a good fit. “I’m a person who likes a scheduled life.” The air force combines her belief in serving the community with her passion for flying.

She is, as far as she knows, the first woman of colour from Vancouver Island to go to the college. That means something to her. “It gives me lots of hope that I can step forward and set a standard.” Here, she wants to tell others, is an opportunity, a way to serve community and country while doing something you love.

Well, that should be music to military ears because, frankly, this hasn’t been the best year when it comes to the subject of the Canadian Armed Forces and diversity.

While the CAF’s website boasts that Canada’s allies regard us as being “at the forefront of military gender integration,” allegations of sexual misconduct are shaking the upper reaches of the leadership.

In March, the newly appointed acting chief of defence staff, Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre, was blunt. “Parts of our culture are exclusionary,” he said. “They’re harmful. They contribute to an environment that in some corners is permissive of racism, discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct.”

Females make up 20 per cent of officers and 16 per cent of Canada’s military overall. If that doesn’t sound that high, note that the CAF website says Canada is “a world leader in terms of the proportion of women in its military and the areas in which they can serve.”

Remember that it wasn’t until the late 1980s that women were permitted in many roles. In 1989, Pte. Heather Erxleben became the first woman to graduate from infantry school, and was subsequently posted to the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in Victoria.

In 2006, Capt. Nichola Goddard became the first female Canadian soldier to die in battle, in Afghanistan. In 2012, platoon commander Capt. Ashley Collette’s courage under fire, also in Afghanistan, made her the first woman to win the Medal of Military Valour.

Ask Navya about her ultimate dream and she mentions, way off in the future, the possibility of the Canadian Space Agency. That would put her in the footsteps of the likes of Chris Hadfield, who, before he became an astronaut, spent 25 years in the air force after graduating in 1980 from what was then Royal Roads Military College.

The thing is, there wouldn’t have been any female graduates in Hadfield’s class. Women weren’t admitted to Canada’s military colleges in 1979.

Of the 268 Royal Military College graduates this year, 59 were female. The number who identify as visible minorities is harder to come by, though the college speaks of the need to reflect the diversity of Canada.

That matters. Any business will tell you it makes sense to fish from the deepest talent pool possible, to open doors that people can see themselves walking through. Who wouldn’t want someone like Navya Pottumutu?

jknox@timescolonist.com