Wonder what the Washington State delegates here in Paris with the Governor are doing here?

As I left Le Bourget Monday, trekking to the buses that shuttle Air Show attendees to the train station that runs into the city, I happened upon a friendly face from Seattle. Laura Hopkins is one of those at the Air Show to promote Washington State's aerospace interests.

Hopkins is executive director of Washington's Aerospace Joint Apprenticeship Committee (AJAC), which is an organization sponsored jointly by aerospace companies in the state -- some of them intensely anti-labor -- and by the Machinists union.

Both sides of that disparate partnership have a common interest in what AJAC does: it creates programs around the state to train aerospace mechanics and machinists.

She heads a too rare example of business and labor working together. And at the Air Show, where most attendees are men in business suits, she is a rare bird herself.

Energized by her first Air Show, Hopkins beamed as she outlined what she's here to do.

Raised in Japan by American missionary parents, she came to the U.S. to go to college. A social worker early on, Hopkins gave that up for hands-on aviation work. She earned a helicopter pilot license and an airplane mechanic's Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) license.

She worked a while at Boeing as a mechanic on the flight line. Later, she became Dean of the Aviation Maintenance program at South Seattle Community College, then Dean of Transportation programs.

Geekily enthusiastic and intense, Hopkins said her twin career goals now are furthering her passions of aviation and education.

Monday, she spent most of her day in meetings with EASA, the European equivalent of the Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA). Her initial goal is to try to get EASA certification for A&P airplane mechanics schools here in Washington State.

That would mean graduates of those schools in Washington would be able to work in the U.S. or Europe. And she thinks it would attract people from all over the world to come to Washington to be trained to both EASA and FAA standards.

Hopkins also aims to learn the process through which small suppliers in Washington can get EASA certification for their parts, allowing them to sell to Airbus as well as Boeing. The big companies in Washington know how to do it, but smaller ones don't.

After Paris, she travels with Gov. Gregoire to Germany to visit airplane maintenance facilities run to EASA standards.