Coe College to welcome Col. Nicole Malachowski, USAF (Ret.) for the 2026 Contemporary Issues Forum
Coe College is pleased to announce that the first woman Thunderbird pilot, combat veteran, fighter squadron commander, White House Fellow and advisor and indomitable spirit Col. Nicole Malachowski, USAF (Ret.) will be the 2026 K. Raymond Clark Contemporary Issues Forum speaker. Malachowski will be on Coe’s campus Thursday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m., and her speaking engagement in Sinclair Auditorium is open to the public.
Malachowski is a leader, fighter pilot combat veteran, the first woman pilot on the Thunderbirds Air Demonstration Squadron, a White House Fellow and an inductee into both the National Women Hall of Fame and the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame. She even has a Star Trek Federation starship named after her.
While other high school students were practicing for their driver’s license, Malachowski was accumulating flight time. She was 16 years old when she took her first solo flight and from that point on there was no stopping her. While in high school, she joined the Civil Air Patrol and participated in Air Force Junior ROTC. Malachowski’s professional story began when she earned her commission from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996. Following graduation, she attended Undergraduate Pilot Training and began her career as a pilot. Competitively selected to fly combat aircraft, she was among the first group of women to fly modern fighter jets. As a career pilot, she served in combat as an F-15E flight commander, evaluator, instructor pilot and flight lead with over 188 combat hours. Her proudest moment as a fighter pilot was leading the first fighter formation to provide security for Iraq’s historic democratic elections in 2005. She was also selected to fly as Thunderbird #3 with the United States Air Force (USAF) Air Demonstration Squadron – the first woman to fly on any Department of Defense military jet demonstration squadron.
On the ground, Malachowski was a White House Fellow from 2008-2009, where she served on the Presidential Transition Support Team (PTST). The White House Fellows Foundation and Association awarded the 2019 IMPACT Award for demonstrating both remarkable achievement and transformational contributions in her field. Malachowski also served two high-level staff assignments at the Pentagon and was the executive director of the White House’s national “Joining Forces” initiative where she directly advised former First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden on all topics relating to service members, veterans and military families.
Malachowski earned a Master of Arts, with honors, in national security policy from American Military University and a second Master of Arts, with highest distinction, in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College. While there, she earned the Admiral Stephen B. Luce Award as the class honor graduate, the first Air Force officer in the history of the Naval War College to do so.
While Malachowski’s Air Force career has exceeded her wildest dreams, it all almost came crashing down when a devastating tick-borne illness left her struggling greatly to speak or walk for almost nine months. An indomitable spirit, Malachowski fought back against overwhelming odds and prevailed. Drawing on stories from her career and personal life, Malachowski inspires audiences to rethink the challenges they face every day. She urges them to go beyond resilience and become resurgent with a message that empowers people with three key beliefs: failure and risk is the price of entry for achieving something great; sometimes you need to yield to overcome; and her personal mantra – “Nobody wants to lead a scripted life.”
Tickets are available at Coe’s online box office. The general public can purchase tickets for $10, while non-Coe students and seniors can purchase tickets for $5. Virtual tickets to view a livestream of the event will also be available for $10.
Established by the late K. Raymond Clark ’30, the Contemporary Issues Forum presents the views of distinguished leaders whose work has shaped and altered the course of world events.
The forum has featured former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, former Poland President Lech Walesa, deep-sea oceanographer Robert Ballard, civil rights activist Myrlie Evers-Williams, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau, ecology expert Jared Diamond, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts, celebrated author Sir Salman Rushdie, former Senate Majority Leader and Special Envoy George Mitchell, Pulitzer Prize-winning global health expert Laurie Garrett, legendary soccer player Abby Wambach, leading commentator on race Jelani Cobb, environmentalists and social entrepreneurs Yvon Chouinard and Craig Mathews, pioneering astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, MIT AgeLab Director Dr. Joseph F. Coughlin, Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen, Negro Leagues Museum President Bob Kendrick, influential data scientist DJ Patil and inventor-entrepreneur Daniel Kraft, MD.