Honoring CDR Meredith Schley, USN

Commander Meredith K. Schley
U.S. Navy
Commanding Officer Information Warfare Training Command, Corry Station

Commander Meredith Schley a native of Akron, Ohio, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Microbiology from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 2002 before commissioning as an Ensign in the Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) community. Upon completion of SWO School, Commander Schley reported to USS O’BRIEN (DD 975) out of Yokosuka, Japan as the Fire Control Officer. She then reported to Afloat Planning System Pacific on Camp Smith, Hawaii in 2004 to serve as the Detachment Officer in Charge (Det OIC) deployed on the USS NIMITZ (CVN 65) completing over 300 contingency and operational planning missions.

In 2006, Commander Schley selected for lateral transfer into the Cryptologic Warfare community. She reported to Navy Information Operations Command (NIOC), Hawaii serving as a Division Officer. In January 2007, Commander Schley reported to Joint CREW Composite Squadron 1 (JCCS-1) to serve 10 months in Iraq as an Electronic Warfare Officer for 1-40 CAV on Camp Falcon. In 2009, Commander Schley reported to Commander SEVENTH Fleet staff onboard USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC 19) in Yokosuka, Japan serving as the Fleet Signals Intelligence Warfare Officer participating in Operation TOMODACHI and earning a Masters of Science in Leadership with a focus on Crisis Management and Disaster Preparedness from Grand Canyon University.

Commander Schley left Japan to serve as a Det OIC assigned to the NIOC Hawaii Direct Support Australia in Canberra, Australia embedded within the Australian Signals Directorate Support to Military Operations Staff. Following on from Australia, she served as the Force Cryptologist/ Cryptologic Resource Coordinator for Commander FOURTH Fleet/U.S. Navy Southern Command (C4F/USNAVSO) in Mayport, Florida.

Commander Schley went on to serve as the U.S. Cyber Command Deputy J2T/Asia Pacific Branch Chief in Fort Meade, MD where she directed/coordinated joint target efforts in support of U.S. Cyber Command. Commander Schley subsequently was assigned as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Information Operations (IO) and the Information Warfare Commander on the Carrier Strike Group.

As we go about our busy days filled with meetings, operations, and training we should take a moment to pause and reflect on the contributions over the last 150+ years that women have made to the Navy. Since the first women served as nurses aboard the Navy’s first hospital ship USS Red Rover in 1862 to now, women have consistently challenged the norm of “you don’t belong”, greatly impacted the Navy, and established legacies.

Integration into the Navy took time with women unable to join service academies until 1976 and combat positions until 1994 but today roughly 70,000 women (20%) are leading and serving in the Navy. Each generation has faced their own unique challenge that has enabled women serving today to serve, commission, promote, fly, dive, etc as part of the norm. Each step that we take moving in a positive direction helps the next generation of women and overall benefits the Navy’s mission.

From the earliest involvement of women the reason they joined and continued to serve was they had a sense of patriotic duty and wanted to help. Many of the women who first served were nurses, yeoman, machinists, metalsmiths, draftsman, interpreters, couriers, translators, and instructors. During World War I nearly 11,000 women were serving in order to free up male personnel for duty at sea. Post World War I, the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) was established leading into World War II where nearly 100,000 women served in the WAVES, many in administrative or office jobs, but nearly one-third of WAVES were assigned naval aviation duties. The Women’s Armed Forces Integration Act of July 30, 1948, allowed women to serve in the peacetime military with some restrictions.

Submarines have been one of the last to take on women. Female officers first started service in 2010. In 2015, 38 women were selected to serve aboard USS Michigan (SSGN-727) as the first enlisted sailors, starting in 2016.

As you reflect back on some of the Navy women pioneers, try to put yourself into their shoes. What obstacles and challenges did they have to overcome? What was their drive and motivation? Every women pioneer had the resiliency, determination, and aspiration to make the Navy better and provide a path for future women to walk.

Chief Yeoman Loretta Walsh

She was the first women to enlist in 1917 serving as a Yeoman during World War I. She later became the first woman to achieve the rank of a Chief Petty Officer. She broke the barrier that women could only serve as nurses at a time when the expectation was women had no outside the home employment.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Harriet Ida Pickens and Ensign Frances Wills

Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJG) Harriet Ida Pickens and Ensign (ENS) Frances Wills became the first African-American women commissioned as Officers in the WAVES (1944). LTJG Pickens, a top ranked officer candidate, served as a physical training instructor while ENS Wills served as a classification test administrator. At the end of World War, LTJG Pickens and ENS Wills were the only two African-American women Officers among the Navy’s 86,000 WAVES. Not only were their advancing the rights for women to work outside the home but as African-American women they were breaking social norms their male counterparts were also struggling to overcome.

Captain Joy Bright Hancock

She started out her Naval service as a Yeoman (F) during World War I and commissioned as an Officer in the WAVES serving as the Director of the WAVES during World War II. She was instrumental in crafting and securing passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act in 1948, which allowed women to serve as permanent, regular members of the U.S. armed forces. She became the first woman to hold a regular commission in the U.S. Navy (1948). Without her efforts the integration of women into regular service at the best would have been delayed and at the worst never realized.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

She was a computer science pioneer and programmer for the Harvard Mark I computer recruited into the WAVES in the final years of World War II. She oversaw the development of the first compiler and the first programming language (COBOL) to use word commands in the 1950s. Her contributions to the Navy’s computing infrastructure made her an invaluable asset to the service. Science, technology, engineering, and math are disciplines dominated by men. Not only did she excel as a programmer but her work allowed the Navy to advance ahead of the adversary.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Peggy Sue Griffith

She was the first of 60 enlisted woman to report for duty aboard a ship (USS Sanctuary (AH 17)) in 1972 as part of a pilot program to evaluate the possibility of women serving on board ships. All the nuances required in berthing, heads, ships store, etc. were new challenges that women today don’t give a second thought to.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Barbara Allen Rainey

In 1974, she was the first woman to earn wings and was among the first women naval aviators to qualify as jet pilots. In 1982, when filling a shortage of flight instructors assigned to VT-3 at Naval Air Station Whiting Field, Milton, Florida, flying the T-34C Mentor, she was killed in a crash while teaching touch-and-go landings at Middleton Field near Evergreen, Alabama. She was an achiever all her life and being a pilot allowed her to go where no woman had gone before. Prior to her untimely death she was working on her goal of being the first woman to land on a carrier.

Hull Technician (DV) Third Class Donna Tobias

She was one of the first women to become a Navy deep sea diver in 1975. When asking her recruiter about becoming a diver she was told “no way, women can’t get in.” Undeterred, she chose hull technician because she liked the physical labor and knew it would teach her a useful skill. She undertook the lengthy process of acquiring a dive school waiver that eventually allowed her to circumvent the gender restriction then in place to become the first woman to graduate from the Navy Deep Sea Diving School. She proved that with the right goal and motivation, women are capable of achieving outstanding levels of fitness required to be a deep sea diver.

Captain Wendy Lawrence

As a 1981 U.S. Naval Academy graduate she became the first woman Naval Academy graduate to go into space in 1995. A Navy helicopter pilot with 11 years of service, Captain Lawrence earned more than 1,500 hours flight time in six types of helicopters, made more than 800 shipboard landings and was one of the first two women helicopter pilots to make a long deployment to the Indian Ocean as part of a carrier battle group. She was selected by NASA in 1992 to be an astronaut logging over 1,225 hours in space. Since watching the Apollo moon landing at the age of 10 she dreamed of flying into space. To be perceived as good as the men, she had to be better.

Admiral Michelle Howard

As a 1982 U.S. Naval Academy graduate she went on to be the first African-American woman to command a U.S. Navy combatant ship, USS Rushmore (LSD 47) (1999). She was the first woman promoted to the rank of four-star admiral (2014) which at the time was the highest ranking woman in U.S. Armed Forces history and the highest ranking African-American woman in Navy history. Admiral Howard also became the first woman four-star admiral to command operational forces when she assumed command of both U.S. Naval Forces Europe – Naval Forces Africa and Allied Joint Forces Command Naples (NATO) from 2016 to 2017. She actively demonstrated a path to success for women and more specifically African-American women.

Senior Chief Cryptologic Technician (Interpretive) Shannon Kent

A specialist in cryptologic warfare and fluent in seven languages, Senior Chief Kent served multiple tours in Iraq, participating in numerous special operations that contributed to the capture of hundreds of enemy insurgents. As one of the first women to pass the Naval Special Warfare Direct Support Course she paved the way for greater inclusion of women in Special Operations Forces before she was killed in action in Syria Jan. 16, 2019. Today women are now serving as instructors at the Navy Special Warfare Training Center and women have been chosen for Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewman training, with one completing the course and becoming the Navy’s first female Naval Special Warfare operator (the boat operators who transport Navy SEALs and conduct their own classified missions) in July 2021.

Master Chief Information Systems Technician Angela Koogler

In 2022 she was the first woman to be selected to be a submarine Chief Of the Boat. She reported to her first submarine, USS Michigan (SSGN 272) Blue crew, in 2016, after a career as a Surface Information System Technician. She completed multiple deployments on Michigan and served at Submarine Squadron 19. Besides special operations the submarine force was the last bastion of a male dominated community.

These are but a few examples of the pioneering women that have and continue to make up the women serving in the U.S. Navy. They embody our core values of Honor, Courage, Commitment. Against all odds, women continue to show that yes we do belong and we make our Navy Team stronger for our service.

Station HYPO

Celebrating the Past, Present and Future of Navy Cryptology