Stay Current PSA Newsroom
June 17, 2026
Pride Month: He saw a gap — and created space where it didn’t exist
While in flight school at the University of Oklahoma (OU), Grant Tumey, a flight safety analyst at PSA, noticed something missing. Other aviation programs had active chapters of the National Gay Pilots Association (NGPA), spaces where students could connect, share experiences and find community. OU didn’t.
“There wasn’t anything there,” Grant said. “And after a while, I started thinking… I guess I could start one.”
So, he did.
What followed wasn’t immediate traction. It was paperwork, coordination across organizations and showing up even when it felt uncertain. Promoting the chapter came with a level of visibility he hadn’t fully anticipated.
“You hear conversations, you know what the traditional Oklahoma environment can be like,” he said. “Putting it out there felt like making yourself visible in a way you can’t take back.”
There were moments it could have stopped there. Instead, he kept going, helped in part by finding support from the Assistant Director of the School of Aviation — also a member of the LGBTQ+ community — who stepped in as the chapter’s advisor and became a steady source of encouragement.
“That made a big difference,” he said. “Having someone who understood and was willing to stand with me.”
Even with that support, growth came slowly. For two years, the group remained small. But it existed — and that mattered.
Ask Grant how he approaches things when he sees a gap, and he keeps it simple:
“At my last job, the door to my office squeaked every time you opened it,” he said. “They told me it had been like that for years. So, I grabbed some WD-40 and fixed it. It was easy. People just hadn’t done it.”
The NGPA chapter wasn’t as simple as fixing a door, but the thinking was the same. By the time he graduated, the chapter was still small. But after he left, as the aviation program grew and became more diverse, so did interest in the organization he helped start.
“I knew it could be better,” he said. “So, I did something about it, and it has grown since then. There are more members, they’re doing events. It’s cool to see something you started become something people can actually be part of.”
Not long after, additional organizations like the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP) and the Professional Asian Pilots Association (PAPA) chapters were also established at the university, a shift that the environment was beginning to change.
Looking back, his perspective has shifted.
Growing up and going to school in smaller, less inclusive environments, it was easy to believe that kind of community didn’t really exist. But as he moved further into aviation, and eventually to PSA, he saw a much broader picture.
“When you zoom out, you realize there’s a lot more community than you thought,” he said. “It’s just not always visible depending on where you are.”
As PSA continues shaping its culture through the people who keep the operation moving, stories like this reflect what that looks like in practice: Not something created top-down, but built day by day by individuals who choose to step in, take ownership and make something better.
