Steffanie Rivers, who runs TCB Drones Academy in Dallas, announced a national program on July 4 to steer students at historically Black colleges and universities toward careers in drones and aviation. She is calling it the National HBCU Aviation and Drone Leadership Initiative.
Rivers, a Tennessee State University graduate who describes herself as the first Black woman to launch a drone academy in Texas, says the goal is to show HBCU students that a drone certificate can open a paying career, not just a hobby. She plans to bring training, career events, and mentorship to campuses through the rest of 2026.
Rivers Frames Drones as a Career Path, Not a Toy
Rivers built her announcement around one correction she repeats often: that flying a drone commercially is a paycheck, not a weekend pastime, and that too many Black and minority students never hear the field is hiring at all.
She points to public safety, construction, agriculture, mapping, and infrastructure inspection as work already open to certified operators. The entry credential is the FAA’s Part 107 remote pilot certificate, an aeronautical knowledge test that lets a pilot fly drones for money. Certified pilots turn up inspecting roofs for insurers, mapping construction sites, shooting real estate, and scouting crops for farmers.
As reported by Ein News Desk, her academy TCB Drones, prepares students for that certificate and the commercial work that follows. The new initiative extends that pitch to HBCU campuses, where Rivers argues the message about drone careers has been slow to land.
The commercial drone workforce has grown steadily since the Part 107 rule took effect in 2016, spreading into county governments, utilities, farms, and film sets. What the FAA does not publish is a demographic breakdown of who holds those certificates. That means the underrepresentation Rivers describes is easy to see at an industry event and impossible to find in any official count, which is part of why she leans on her own visibility as the argument.
The first time I touched a drone, a thousand ideas ran through my head. I’m lying. A million. It was my legendary DJI Mavic Air, and I can promise you I put every battery in that Fly More combo through at least 500 charges.
I opened my YouTube channel for one reason: back then almost nobody was teaching people how to fly. Going from teaching myself to fly to writing about drones for one of the biggest drone sites in the world is something you have to live to understand. And even while living it, it’s hard to believe. Hobby to career. It’s worth it.
The Initiative Is an Announcement, With Two Campuses So Far
For now the effort is more announcement than institution. Rivers says it will grow through 2026 with workshops, keynote talks, career events, and mentorship, and she is inviting colleges, workforce groups, and corporate partners to sign on.
The concrete work she names is smaller than the national framing suggests. She cites classroom instruction and curriculum discussions at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, plus an ongoing relationship with Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock.
No funding figure, formal partner list, or campus schedule was announced. The release was distributed through a commercial newswire, and the “first in Texas” line is Rivers’ own description rather than a verified record. What exists today is a founder with a track record in Part 107 training putting a name and a goal on her next phase.
Rivers founded TCB Drones after earning her own Part 107 certificate, and has run the academy as a small operation built on virtual and in-person certification prep. The HBCU initiative is a scaling ambition layered on top of that base, not a separate institution with its own staff or budget. That is worth stating plainly, because national-sounding program names and single-instructor academies often blur together in the drone-training business.
HBCUs Already Carry Deep Aviation History
The idea of historically Black colleges feeding aviation is not new, and that history gives the effort real ground to stand on. The lineage runs back to the Tuskegee Airmen, trained through a civilian pilot program that put close to a thousand Black military aviators in the air during World War II.
Tuskegee University today runs an aerospace engineering degree, one of the few at any HBCU. Delaware State University operates what is widely described as the largest aviation program among HBCUs, with its own aircraft fleet and a pilot pipeline agreement with United Airlines.
Drones are the newer branch of that same tree. Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina holds state authorization for drone research and training, and several HBCUs have added uncrewed systems coursework as the commercial market has grown. Rivers is not inventing a lane here so much as trying to widen one that already exists.
The cost math is what makes drones a real opening. A crewed aviation degree runs years and a fortune, and groups like the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals have spent decades trying to move those numbers on the cockpit side. A Part 107 certificate takes a knowledge test and a few hundred dollars. That is the exact door Rivers is trying to hold open, and it is a lower one than the one her aviation predecessors faced.
DroneXL’s Take
The part that doesn’t make the headline is where the real work begins. Getting certified is the easy step. The hard one is landing clients who pay for the value you bring, instead of becoming one more operator among the thousands who have already been flying for years.
That is exactly why this deserves to be celebrated. Rivers is putting more people on the path, and that counts for something. From Quito, I applaud her, and I wish her nothing but the best.
Photo credit: Ein Press Wire
