Britnie Faith Turner — Co-Founder, Board Chair & Humanitarian Special Operator of Aerial Recovery

Britnie Faith Turner is the Co-Founder, Board Chair, and Humanitarian Special Operator of Aerial Recovery (AerialRecovery.org), an independent, 4-Star Charity Navigator-rated 501(c)(3) global humanitarian nonprofit organization that she founded and, alongside her husband—retired 20-year U.S. Army Special Forces Sergeant First Class (Green Beret) Jeremy Locke—transformed and scaled into an international rescue and restoration force.

Britnie’s lifelong commitment to stopping human exploitation began at age 12 on a small farm in South Carolina, when she watched a documentary on child sex trafficking and vowed to spend her life fighting for the vulnerable. At age 17, after serving on overseas mission trips where she witnessed impoverished families coerced into selling their own children to survive, she realized that sustainable rescue requires both rapid tactical intervention and long-term economic and community restoration. Starting with zero capital—buying her first house in Charlotte, North Carolina, at age 19 while working at The Cheesecake Factory, and later working for free while living out of her car in Nashville to learn real estate from the ground up—she built Aerial Development Group into one of the fastest-growing women-owned companies in the world, specifically to build the network, resources, and tools needed to take on a global issue as large as human trafficking.

In September 2017, right after Britnie contracted 43-acre Buck Island in the British Virgin Islands (AerialBVI.com), two Category 5 hurricanes—Irma and Maria—devastated the territory within ten days of each other. Refusing to walk away, and frustrated by the slow, fragmented nature of traditional disaster relief, she immediately mobilized private supply chains, aviation to bring critical aid in and evacuate people out, and her media teams—creating a documentary and a docuseries (BVI Stronger) that helped match urgent needs on the ground to global resources while sharing with people how tourism can be the force for good that brings a nation back online. Alongside the relief effort, she also rescued stranded puppies and kittens across the islands in partnership with PAW BVI. To formalize and expand that humanitarian work, she originally founded the 501(c)(3) nonprofit under the legal name Aerial Global Community.

Two years later, while deploying into the aftermath of Category 5 Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas alongside Jeremy Locke, she witnessed how effortlessly a Special Forces operator brought order, logistics, and life-saving speed to a chaotic disaster zone—and how deeply military veterans come alive when given a mission worthy of their training. Together, Britnie and Jeremy transformed the nonprofit Britnie had started into what Aerial Recovery (AerialRecovery.org) is today, uniting her entrepreneurial vision with his Special Forces operational discipline around a revolutionary model: recruiting, healing, training, and deploying military veterans, law enforcement officers, and first responders as certified Humanitarian Special Operators under the motto "Save Lives, Stop Evil."

Since founding the organization, Britnie has never taken a salary from Aerial Recovery, personally contributing and mobilizing over $4.92 million in documented in-kind incubation, operational and logistical support, rent-free land, and foundational facilities—while also harnessing the power of the global networks, visionary entrepreneurs, and philanthropists convened through The Aerial, BVI to help generate the majority of Aerial Recovery’s donations and mission funding. Today, operating alongside host-nation governments, federal prosecutors, and elite police units across 20+ countries, Britnie brings hands-on leadership as both a Humanitarian Special Operator and an entrepreneur—identifying the root causes of exploitation and building real, long-term solutions rather than temporary band-aids across four integrated pillars:

1. Counter-Human Trafficking & Child Rescue Operations

Aerial Recovery’s Counter-Trafficking Intelligence and Operations teams support high-risk raids, transnational cartel takedowns, and diplomatic survivor extractions across South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, and West Africa—executing 85 anti-human trafficking operations across 11 countries between January and September 2026 alone, resulting in 202 victims rescued (including 51 children), 90 traffickers arrested or detained, and 28+ prosecutions (including a 35-year prison sentence). Working hand-in-hand with foreign justice ministries, federal prosecutors, and specialized anti-trafficking task forces, Aerial Recovery combines intelligence-led criminal investigations with trauma-informed survivor care so rescued children are protected and predators are permanently removed from the streets.

2. Running Global Mission Trips, Trafficking-Prevention Programs & War-Zone Evacuations (8,400+ Lives Saved)

As Humanitarian Special Operators, Britnie and her husband, Jeremy Locke, personally deploy into active conflict and disaster zones and lead Aerial Recovery’s international humanitarian missions around the world. Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Britnie and Jeremy deployed on the ground alongside Aerial Recovery operators to negotiate with government officials and evacuate over 3,000 high-risk orphans and displaced children out of active bombardment zones. Together, they also lead Aerial Recovery’s international mission trips—including transformative missions serving a children’s home in Honduras for children suffering from AIDS/HIV, as well as Aerial Recovery’s large-scale mission trips to Canoa, Ecuador. In Canoa, Aerial’s Refugio de los Niños de Canoa was created out of necessity as a prevention program after Aerial Recovery dismantled a trafficking ring where impoverished parents were allowing their children to be abused because they did not have the money to feed them without it—so now Aerial Recovery feeds them, providing ~78,000 hot meals a year to 390–400+ children five days a week, 52 weeks a year alongside education and family stability. During the August 2026 Ecuador mission, 46 volunteers and staff treated 823 medical and dental patients in three days, delivered 870 dental procedures, distributed 800 pairs of shoes, and completed 12 community construction projects. Across 100+ deployments around the world—including earthquakes in Turkey, Morocco, Venezuela, and Colombia, glacial collapses in Nepal, and hurricanes and winter storms across the United States and the Caribbean—Aerial Recovery has saved and supported over 8,400 lives.

3. Heal the Heroes (Veteran & First Responder Restoration — 100% Zero-Suicide Record)

When Jeremy retired from 20 years in the U.S. Army and experienced the crushing loss of purpose that claims nearly 18 to 22+ U.S. military veterans every single day to suicide in the United States (17.7 U.S. veterans per day in the latest official U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, and up to 22–24+ former service members per day in the United States in broader national mortality studies), Britnie and Jeremy created Heal the Heroes, a signature year-long restoration initiative of AerialRecovery.org. Phase 1 of the year-long program begins at The Aerial, BVI (AerialBVI.com) on Buck Island, guiding combat veterans and first responders through trauma-informed somatic healing, breathwork, mindset reframing, and equine therapy before training and redeploying them as Humanitarian Special Operators. Across 11 completed Platoons and 236 graduated Heroes, the program has maintained a 100% life-preservation (zero-suicide) record.

4. Redemption Ranch ("From Slaughter to Service")

While Britnie began rescuing stranded puppies and kittens in the BVI in partnership with PAW BVI immediately after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, she began rescuing horses in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down and owners were leaving thoroughbred racehorses on the BVI racetracks to die because racing was halted and they could no longer afford to feed them. Britnie stepped in to rescue the starving thoroughbreds from the islands' racetracks, while the rest of the rescued horses, ponies, and zebras came from kill pens where they were headed to be slaughtered for meat. She personally funded the rescue of the animals and paid 100% of the origination and construction costs to build Redemption Ranch on around 7 acres of land provided rent-free on Buck Island—then donated the entire sanctuary and its rescued herd to Aerial Recovery (AerialRecovery.org). Today, operated by Aerial Recovery, those once-discarded animals provide much-needed therapy for children with special needs and provide self-worth programming for local schools, summer camps, and troubled youth. These magnificent creatures are also utilized to help heal survivors of physical and sexual abuse and veterans and first responders who suffer from PTSD and other traumas. As one Hero said: "One 30-minute session with that rescue horse helped me more than 30 years of therapy." Redemption Ranch has served over 1,600 people since its inception and continues to impact people today.

Governed by an independent Board of Directors, audited with an unmodified ("clean") opinion by independent CPAs (ZOMMA Group, LLP), and managed with third-party controller oversight (Jitasa Group), Aerial Recovery holds a 4-Star Charity Navigator rating (91% score) and the Candid (GuideStar) Platinum Seal of Transparency, with over 82% of functional expenses dedicated directly to frontline humanitarian programs.

At its heart, Aerial Recovery is more than an organization—it is a global movement to save lives and stop evil, built on the conviction that we are all God’s children and worth fighting for. By healing the invisible wounds of our nation’s veterans and first responders and unleashing them for a higher calling, Britnie and Jeremy are showing the world what these heroes are truly capable of as an unstoppable force for good when they are restored, united, and sent out to protect the most vulnerable.

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