Melanie Curtis believes that allyship goes beyond empty words and using a rainbow filter in June. "It's one thing to put up a square that says, 'I'm an ally,' but then how do you do that?" Curtis said in an interview with the SGN. "How do you show up in real life, and what is that grassroots, rubber-meets-the-road action you're taking?"

The answer for Curtis may not be a common one. She shows her allyship by jumping out of planes. As a professional skydiver and co-founder of the Highlight Pro Skydiving Team, Curtis uses her sport to celebrate the accomplishments of women and advocate for the rights of all people.

Supporting the LGBTQ+ community is a foundational pillar of the organization, which has performed dives holding the Progress Pride flag and the Transgender Pride flag, barreling toward the earth through clouds of rainbow-colored and pink, blue, and white smoke, respectively, and celebrated some of the biggest LGBTQ+ heroes.

Honoring Megan Rapinoe
The latest one honored by Highlight was Megan Rapinoe, a fierce advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and a professional soccer player, who began her professional career as the second overall WPS draft pick in the inaugural year of the Women's Professional Soccer League, playing for the Chicago Red Stars.

In 2012, Rapinoe joined the Seattle Sounders women's team as she trained for the 2012 Olympics - her first time competing for Team USA. After a brief stint in France, Rapinoe announced her plans to transfer to Seattle's newly formed OL Reign for the 2013-14 season.

Rapinoe stepped onto the turf at just the right time. OL Reign was struggling, with a 0-9-1 record. Thanks to her tenacity, Rapinoe turned the team around and became its highest goal scorer. Over the next decade, Rapinoe used her leadership to inspire a generation of women to rise to greatness. She played in four World Cups and two Olympics.

Off the field, Rapinoe is an activist. She has proudly spoken out about her identity as a Lesbian and encouraged LGBTQ+ youth to find pride and community through sports. She has never hidden her Queer identity, and through her visibility inspired other LGBTQ+ athletes to come out during their careers.

Rapinoe doesn't sing the national anthem, and in 2016, she made headlines when she knelt ahead of an international match, in solidarity with Black victims of police brutality. She was also one of 27 female soccer players who sued the United States Soccer Federation because they were paid significantly less than their male counterparts. She has also worked as an ambassador for GLSEN and Athlete Ally.

Following her retirement, OL Reign retired Rapinoe's jersey. Recently, the organization reached out to Highlight to make a special jump to celebrate her. "She's such an inspiration to us, using her sport and platform to uplift other people, to champion the underrepresented and the underserved, and it's a real honor to be able to [jump for her]," Curtis said. The jump occurred on August 25.

Pioneers
Like Rapinoe, Curtis is a pioneering athlete in a male-dominated industry. "I didn't even realize that I was in a male-dominated space, I just grew up around it," she recalled. "I just didn't have this awareness of misogyny and these exclusionary ideas, and this idea that I was an underrepresented group. -In recent years, doing more healing work of my own and doing more learning about how to be in service to people that have fewer rights, it's been a cool thing to go, 'Oh, we can do more here.'"

Influenced by Rapinoe, Curtis helped form Highlight, an organization that inspires women and girls to push the limits of where they can go. "Skydiving is a male-dominated sport. Women represent only 14% of skydivers, so part of our goal is to inspire women and girls to join us in skydiving, but in a broader sense, it is to inspire women and girls to live bold lives of their design, and to show up in these spaces where we've been historically underrepresented to open up doors of opportunity for all of us."

Though she has done over 12,000 jumps in her 30-year career, Curtis still gets nervous ahead of an event, especially one honoring her hero. "I don't think vast experience means you never get nervous," she said. "We can liken this to showing up in different spaces. We're going to feel that when we step into these spaces where we feel underrepresented and like we don't belong, but we feel this calling inside us to show up in a certain way or champion a certain idea or activity or way in the world. If you are an edge-pusher, a person who wants to be bold, who cares about that kind of leadership and modeling, you're going to feel that fear, and that nervousness percolates pretty much in everything you do. That's okay. That's normal."

Even though doubts and nerves can creep up ahead of a jump, Curtis knows what's waiting on the other side is the same sense of freedom that compels women in all spaces, like Rapinoe, to continue their quests for greatness.

"For me, it is the physical manifestation of freedom," Curtis said. "It radically brings you into the present moment. Worries and fears and things your monkey mind is wrapped around - you get a break from that, even if only for a short time, but you also get access to the idea that anything is possible."