GLENVIEW, Ill. — Women and Drones will bring five authors to its booth at Commercial UAV Expo next month for a rolling, three-day book signing aimed at the people side of uncrewed aviation.
The signings run September 1–3, 2026 at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, with each author taking dedicated time at Booth #340 to talk with attendees about their work and sign copies of their books. The lineup — Desi Ekstein, Jennifer Pidgen, Dr. LaQuata Sumter, Dr. Renee Welch and Sharon Rossmark — comes from the organization’s network of operators, educators and industry leaders working across workforce development, safety and STEM education.
Rossmark, founder and CEO of Women and Drones, said the group wanted to put those conversations in front of attendees directly rather than leave them to the margins of the show floor. She described the participants as “the voices shaping how our industry thinks about people, not just platforms” and argued that talent, safety and education are foundational to the sector rather than adjacent to it. Rossmark is the author of Future Flight: How Talent, Capital and Manufacturing will Shape the Next Era of Uncrewed Aviation.
The framing tracks with a constraint the commercial drone and advanced air mobility markets have been running into for several years: hardware and regulatory progress has outpaced the pipeline of trained people needed to operate, maintain and manage these systems at scale. For lidar and mapping firms in particular, the shortage tends to show up less in pilots than in staff who can handle the data workflow end to end.
Attendees are welcome to stop by the booth without an appointment, Rossmark said, both to get a book signed and to meet the authors behind the work.
Event details
- What: Multi-author book signing hosted by Women and Drones
- When: September 1–3, 2026, with dedicated signing times for each author across the three days
- Where: Booth #340, Commercial UAV Expo, Caesars Forum, Las Vegas — www.expouav.com
- Who: Desi Ekstein, Jennifer Pidgen, Dr. LaQuata Sumter, Dr. Renee Welch and Sharon Rossmark
Full author and title information will be available at the booth throughout the show.
About Women and Drones
Women and Drones connects operators, educators, investors and policymakers working to build the workforce that uncrewed aviation needs in order to scale. As the commercial drone and advanced air mobility sector grows, the talent pipeline has become one of its most pressing constraints.
