Leading at the frontline of Elroy Air’s success has been a more than a gratifying experience for Asante, but he would be remiss to not acknowledge the void of the Black community working in aerospace. Although Asante is grateful to be in the space, he aims for it to become normalized for Black execs to be in the room.

“I think my goal as a Black executive and frankly, one of the only ones in the world at an aerospace company is to just continue to open the door and show people that this is possible and that it’s for them. Same as the way my dad and my mom have kind of set that for me with entrepreneurship like it’s for me. I just hope that we can humanize it and they can see someone with braids [like me] and walk into the room without necessarily needing to look like the traditional homogenous older white man from aerospace.”

He continued: “I hope that helps other people know that they can do it too. That’s honestly one of the reasons that I get pretty excited each time that we hit any of our milestones — not necessarily because of just the company we’re building, but because I think as you enter into more places and more boardrooms or in more investor rooms, become an investor or an executive or executive rooms, that you start to humanize a person that looks slightly different than them in a way that maybe makes it easier for the next person to walk in.”

Uber Freight

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