Heroines of Past, Present, and Future
The focus of this year’s Naval History Conference—hosted by the U.S. Naval Academy and U.S. Naval Institute and made possible by a generous grant from the William M. Wood Foundation—promises to be truly special. While it always is difficult securing star-level participants for any program on any subject, we have been blessed by the engagement of proven women leaders across the nation and the military services for the Athena Conference, 8–9 September, at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Confirmed senior government and military participants are:
• The Honorable Janine Davidson, Undersecretary of the Navy
• The Honorable Deborah Lee James, Secretary of the Air Force
• U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
• Major General Lori E. Reynolds, USMC, Commanding General, Marine Forces Cyber Command
• Vice Admiral Jan E. Tighe, USN, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare.
Senior confirmed civilian participants include:
• Ms. Mary Barra, CEO and Chairman, General Motors Company
• The Honorable Michèle Flournoy, Cofounder and CEO, Center for a New American Security, and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (2009–2012)
• Dr. Kathleen Hicks, Senior Vice President, Henry A. Kissinger Chair, and Director, International Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Ms. Ellen Lord, President and Chief Executive Officer, Textron Systems Corporation
• Ms. Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo.
Before you write us off as too focused on senior trailblazers, other confirmed participants include:
• Lieutenant Kayla Barron, USN, Submarine Officer
• Ms. Anuradha Bhagwati, Writer and former Marine Corps Captain/Company Commander
• Commander Holly Harrison, USCG, Drug and Migrant Interdiction Chief, Coast Guard Office of Law Enforcement; member of the Institute’s Editorial Board
• Major Katelyn Van Dam, USMCR, Marine Attack Helicopter Pilot.
We also will have Naval Institute Press authors with us signing books; September Proceedings authors Navy Captain Dave Smith and Dr. Brad Johnson will be signing their new book, Athena Rising; and Naval History Essay Contest winners will be announced and recognized.
We hope you will join us for all or part of what will be a groundbreaking event for the 143-year-old U.S. Naval Institute.
All Proceedings Content Is Searchable
As a result of a concerted push this summer, all 140-plus years of Proceedings articles and other content are now available and fully searchable on our website. This fulfills a key component of our strategy to “keep alive the lessons of naval history to benefit current and future generations.”
Use your member privileges and take advantage of this amazing resource!
This summer, we also began the process of digitizing more than 180,000 photos in our archive. Our approach and implementation have been guided by industry experts in digital asset preservation and are the result of three years of careful study and planning. A team of bright, young, hardworking interns, most of whom are in various states of completing their master’s degrees in library information systems, has been translating the information about these physical assets into the digital world as metadata. With the aid of our newly implemented Digital Asset Management System, these images will become findable, available, and usable to an extent not before possible in an analog world.
Peter H. Daly, VADM, USN (Ret.)
Life Member and Member since 1978