What does «Opening Doors» mean to Carola Wimmer?

Story: Tanya König

Carola Wimmer (27) is a globetrotter sharing her impressions on Instagram and her blog cthesky.com. She started working as a flight attendant in 2010 and has since 2015, been studying Journalism and Media Management in Vienna. In 2016 she further expanded her horizons and spent some time in South Africa, volunteering for the global White Lion Protection Trust.

What does «Opening Doors» mean to you?

If I think of my job as Maître de Cabine, I open the door after every flight. Passengers leave the aeroplane and the others enter. Opening and closing the flight door, we travel to another place, sometimes a different time-zone and always to another culture. My work and passion literally involves Opening Doors. Opening Doors for me is about the opportunities you create for yourselves and others in life. Sometimes a door may close, which causes much sadness but, for every door that closes another always opens and things fall into place.

I realize that by sharing my Instagram and blog posts, I open the door to the world for people who don’t have the time or the money to travel.  There are some who thank me for taking them on my journey and others who are inspired to become cabin crew members themselves.

We don’t have to try hard to Open Doors – by being empathetic, compassionate and our natural selves – we can open doors for people and others, for us.

Sarah Ebling

          Sarah Ebling holds a professorship in Accessibility Studies at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and is a senior researcher at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on natural language processing in the context of disabilities and special needs, specifically, sign language technology and automatic text simplification. Her groups’ contributions involve artificial intelligence techniques with a strong emphasis on user involvement. She is involved in various international and national projects and leads a large-scale Swiss innovation initiative entitled „Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies“ (2022-2026; https://www.iict.uzh.ch/).