Pan Am Museum Gala: Cheryl Boone Issacs (September 4, 2025 in Seattle, Washington)

Cheryl Boone Isaacs’s career began in the 1970s as a Pan Am stewardess, but she soon set her sights beyond the skies, leaving the airline to follow her brother into the entertainment industry. There, she built a remarkable career as a public relations and marketing executive in Hollywood.

Over the years, Cheryl collaborated with some of the industry’s most influential figures—including Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind—and contributed to iconic films such as Forrest Gump, The Right Stuff, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Wedding Singer, and The King’s Speech.

Her leadership and vision culminated in her election as the 35th president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2013, a role to which she was re-elected in 2015.

Like so many Pan Am alumni, Cheryl’s journey illustrates how the airline served as a launching pad for extraordinary careers—hers reaching, quite literally, for the stars.

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