Naomi Shiels

The longer story

Naomi Shiels has spent the last two decades as a publisher, writer, and solo operator. She built Wild Hearts Publishing from the ground up — which means she's done every job in the company at some point, from cover design to customer emails to accounting.

When AI started getting talked about seriously, her first reaction was the same as most people's: a mix of curiosity, anxiety, and mild exhaustion at the idea of learning yet another thing. She wasn't going to learn to code. She wasn't going to watch forty-five-minute YouTube tutorials. She didn't have time.

What she did instead was start using it. Badly at first. With a lot of frustration. Then less badly. Then, eventually, with genuine confidence — and a proper system.

She calls it her AI crew: a set of tools and habits that let her run her publishing operation the way a much larger team would, while still sleeping and occasionally going outside.

Why Cleared For Take-Off

Naomi built C4TO because the courses she found when she was learning were built for people who already knew too much. They assumed technical vocabulary. They rushed past the basic questions. They treated "just try it" as advice.

The adults she talks to — friends, readers, people in her network who are smart and capable and completely stuck — needed something different. They needed someone to explain what AI actually is, help them choose a tool without it becoming a research project, and show them how to do something useful before the first lesson was over.

That's C4TO. Practical. Warm. No condescension. No hype. And aviation-themed because once Naomi started writing the curriculum, she couldn't stop seeing the metaphors everywhere.

Wild Hearts Publishing

Wild Hearts Publishing is Naomi's independent publishing house. It operates as a small-but-serious outfit, producing books and courses for adults who want to think clearly about the world. C4TO is its first major course offering.