This article is part of our Women and Leadership special section, which focuses on women challenging traditional ways of thinking.

Danielle Williams has been skydiving since 2011. Whenever she shows up at a new place, even when she is carrying all her equipment — a sign she is no novice — the staff assumes she is a beginner.

After shrugging it off at first, she began to believe that people made that assumption because she is African-American and a woman.

“There’s a pretty common phenomena for black skydivers — regardless of where you are in the world,” she said, “that when we travel to a new drop zone, we’re always ushered to the tandem area” — where new skydivers jump connected to an instructor. “It doesn’t matter whether you have a year in the sport or 25 years in the sport.