IMOGEN MANN that’s me! Years ago, I wrote my master’s thesis on the wet leasing of commercial aircraft. An editor found it. A brief interview followed with him and his publisher – in The Cockpit pub, of all places. And the next thing I knew, I was writing on a major title aviation magazine. My thesis was later key to me being headhunted as an analyst to a specialist wet leasing airline. While it’s clear that my early career flowed directly from my supervising lecturer’s green light to research and write about the subject, there’s more to it than that. 

The true legacy of that thesis is in the enduring profundity of the lesson it taught: be curious, explore unearthed nuggets, write what interests you to the best of your ability and let the results take care of themselves.