This is two and a half hours. [applause] good morning everybody. Good morning. The all right, well good morning. Maam i am honored moderate with you this morning. As was mentioned we are talking about new book. Its absolutely amazing but i will say to you today thats what we are going to talk about. First and foremost to break the ice what inspired you to tell your story . Throughout my life and as you have heard ive been active in our National Security for actually closer to 40 years. Times go by since the pie was written. I have worked in congress. Ive been to in the pentagon and ive been in private industry always working on defense issues. As i was making my way up and you can figure out my career and the ups and downs of life i would always look up to the people above me and they were very few women at that point to look up to. There were a couple and there were some men and i always wondered to myself wow their lives must be perfect that they were able to attain these great heights and here was my life which had plenty of failures. I felt like a hot mess compared to these role models that route there. If course i found out that wasnt true that everybody has something. I wanted to see the next generation of women who may some way look at me and wow she must have had a perp a career without any problems. It aint so so im trying to share some of those challenges because you learn as much from your failures in life if not more. That was. 1. Ive had a great beneficiary coming up through the ranks of the mentor who help me along the way and i believe very strongly that its incumbent on all of us to reach a point where we need to pay it forward. I do quite a bit of it actually but by writing the book and getting the story out there was a way of mentoring at a higher level. Those were a few reasons and then i had time on my hand. Thank you maam, very good. The first thing i would like to say is those of you who get the book the first part talks about how you navigate your course. In the book id like to ask you what daily insights you developed for your roadmap and charting your course and career . I want to begin by explaining the book is laid out into three main parts and there strategies under each one. Believe me when i was in my 20s and 30s this wasnt some formula that i basically knew about and that i follow. Rather the age and experience i am in looking back and reflecting and trying to put down my Lessons Learned. When it comes to some of those Lessons Learned some of it was just instinctual with me. The other came to me through trial and error of things that either i did ride and they worked or sa said some stories of failure and what ive learned from that failure and its also from being an observer and the careful listener and watcher of others and how others succeeded or failed. I do believe first of all to navigate you have to take control of your own life and everywhere anyone at all times regardless of where they are have to have a plan a lets call it great heres where i want to go and here are my ideas and what are the steps i have to be taking to achieve my goals were the same time be prepared to pivot because you may reach the goal and find out that you dont like it went once you get there. May not give you that the myth will foment you are searching for or you may not reach it would happen to me in my early life. My first three years literally went up in smoke so i had to pivot. Plan b whatever that pivot could be me be even better. Always have a plan a but we prepared for plan b. Hes spoke about their plan a didnt quite work and in the book the secretary recounts working for the state department and not being able to do that. I think you used the term uber rechecked it. How did you move forward and he kind of recount saying something wanting to Say Something to secretary carey that did not and he said that was a big turning point in your career. When i was a young person i had my plan a and i wanted to be a diplomat that i wanted to travel the world and work on for an policy matters at the state department. This was throughout high school, college and graduate school i took all the right courses. Learned a Foreign Language and i lived abroad for a semester. I was even able to attain a highly coveted internship within the state department. When i got out of graduate school and moved to washington and applied i felt i had everything going my way. What more could anyone expect of the young person at that time i was 23 or 24 years old. As you say i applied and i got rejected and it was the first big rejection that i had in life. I just remember crashing through their member of literally going to bed for the better part of a week and crying i was so depressed and dejected and felt my life was flashing before my eyes. Of course one has to get out of bed because i needed a paycheck. We all need a paycheck and life so i started applying elsewhere. I landed a job he only offered or received as a civilian with the department of the army. [applause] that was very exciting except at the time it was an exciting to me because what did i know . Im being truthful here. What did i know about the army or the military at large packs i had no real exposure. I never thought of it before and i was still feeling dejected from this whole state department experience. I took the job and i did my best and after few months the most remarkable thing started happening. There was really interesting work that i was engaged in and i was feeling a sense of purpose. I was working on in my own little blade majors affect teen National Security. I had camaraderie. They cared about me and i learn from them and i had a first rate boss who was my first great mentor. After that one thing led to the next and lead to the next that became what i think was a fantastic and fulfilling career for me and capitol hill the pentagon the Business World and before you know it 35 years has gone by and i get to be the second woman ever to lead the military service. All of this i want to remind you started with a big failure and a plan a that turned into plan b or the john kerry story im hobnobbing with the big people and i got to meet the secretary of state john kerry. It was all i could do to contain myself and not say to this man thank you, thank you, thank you that you rejected me 35 years ago. Life turned out. Doggone well for me. But of course i said none of that. I think we talked about the weather because thats what diplomats do. They talk about the weather. Thank you maam, thank you. As you discussed it briefly highlighted your first year with the army which turned out to be an amazing job and it was also the first time you got a great launch can you articulate how youve paid it forward in your career . Ive done mentoring oneonone. I think thats very important and when i got into a position of authority and business and when i was secretary of the air force i insisted that we launch a mentoring program. I spent a dozen years with the company headquartered locally here and when i had was this meeting of my own i required of my direct report that all of us mentor others and we have a dandified it as being the next Generation Leaders that we wanted to bring up along the way. I did it myself and i raided my people on the requirement to do it and how well they would do it and so on. We set up a program surrounding it. In the air force and i hope it still exists we launch something called my vector. This was in existence that we beefed it up and we enlarged it and made it bigger. If you havent heard of it its a match. Com like approach to people all over the world in the air force. They can go on line and say they like to be mentor don certain subjects and mentors, people like me who were willing to mentor others could go on line. We would give out wearable to give advice on and then there would the matches created. I expect it when i was secretary of the air force trying to encourage others. There are different ways to pay it forward but the most important thing is to do it oneonone. Thank you, thank you. In your book you highlight the importance of having a Diverse Network as well. Talk about the network of those, the community you live in a visio forcht with. Can you expound on it raid network . Absolutely. I know this is obvious but everyone in this room although there are 1000 people and he wont able to get to know everyone in this room but please dont leave here for the next two days without at least 10 new people that you can keep in touch with and become part of your greater network. With the exception of the state department where i was applying to the department of army i can honestly say ive never applied for a job again and its thanks to referrals that i would get and gifts i would receive from someone who i consider to have been my mentor in life. All of my mentors were informal so ive never myself been in one of these programs. I just mentioned mention it to you. Mentored for the network essentially opening a door and of course it was up to me to walk through that door and be able to tell my story, to be able to secure that job but the network i owe a great deal to that in a great deal of continual learning. Thats another important aspect in life. You can never rest on your laurels. Keep learning and your networks and mentors can help you do that. During your tenure as secretary of the air force we have had experienced a nuclear incident. Can you talk about how you rally the Team Together through that incident and then he went on to do an investigation. Can you talk about how you transformed its . Nothing up by the way. Whenever you say nuclear you have to make sure was an incident that nothing skyhigh. Three weeks into my tenure as secretary of the airport, here i am. Im brandnew and i have my plan a. I have six months of the travel schedule all laid out, my mantra as secretary of the air force and boom i get an email informing me and other Senior Leaders that there has been a cheating incident out west at most from air force base which is the site of one of our icbms the young officers who are standing watch and prepared to use these weapons were caught cheating. Some of them were caught cheating on a proficiency exam. Washington anything that we are immediately the word is going to go nuclear. A president has to be informed on the press is all over you about it. Im brandnew and i didnt exactly know what to do at first but i knew was a big deal and i had better get on top of that fast. It took a few days but i got myself prepped up with the team, the air force team surrounding me about the checks and balances and was able to convince myself that the Nuclear Enterprise is safe and secure. Still we have this matter in front of us. Why did happen and what are we going to do bob about . We decided to go public with the information. In Washington State secrets leak anyway and ive learned of my life that it only gets worse with the passage of time. Get out there and tell people and be forthright with the congress. We did with it with their own airmen as well. Heres what we know, heres what we dont yet know but we are going to find out hed stay tuned and well give you periodic updates. After that press conference i remember lifting up the travel schedule and i focused on the Nuclear Enterprise for the next six months. I discovered that it went way way beyond just a handful of airmen cheating. There were issues, cultural issues and there was under manning and the training was encouraging cheating but i hate to say that but they were promoting airmen who got 100 of these tests of the airmen as it turned out cheated to get 100 . There were a lot of changes that came out of that training people for modernization which i think overall were good changes even though it all started with a bad incident. That is how much of the way live is. Have to take the bad and pull from it a Lesson Learned leavitt in a a better position he founded them. Thank you. One of the other things you talked about in your book was about diversity and how to attain a more diverse force. Diversity is a big topic do you think women and minorities in your book are important tool and what can america expect from the military likes there continues to be a lack and we just saw a lot of first. Last year d. O. T. Did a report that talks about female officers i have an africanamerican female and i noticed that we dont have any in the air force and havent sent 75. Can you talk about what you believe are the barriers to women and minority women preaching those heights . We need to fork is on recruiting more in the front door so focused on doing a better job of bringing women and people of color and minorities on board and retaining them. Its better retention and how do you do that, i think there was go back to what i call the three ds develop policies, youve got to look at people programmatic issues so by that i mean for example during the 10 years that i served in some of this was affecting the entire military and some of it was specific leave the air force which was in my control but sometimes policies are outdated. For example the Maternity Leave policy for women during that era. We advocated for tripling it. The navy did it for a few months because everybody had to be the same. An example of Work Life Balance is the key reason why and by the way we extended Maternity Leave as well. We allowed more ban as well. Postpregnancy deployment used to be six months and we extended that in the air force to when youre so no mother would not face the climate for one year out as opposed to what it had been. Issues of flexibility in all of these are examples of policies. Process, we found a process with how we gained exceptions for people of charters thatcher may be frequently when but not always. We expanded the pilot deal and opened up the aperture for more women to be pilots which in the air force as you know is a big deal. Most Senior Leaders are pilots and this is mentoring and focusing on people and their Leadership Development and their professional development. I think these are the three key areas that we need to do more of an imap believer in measuring. One of the things again that i did during my tenure i gave officer sessions. A member of the time we had 25 women entering the air force academy as firstyear students and i said give me 30. I pretty much made that up. It was a stretch. He was give me more, lets do better. That caused the academy and the other officers to go out and search out more qualified women. Youre one of memory serves me we made 28. We might not have even made that if i hadnt sent the goal out some measurement helps and the followup is crucial. As we are about to close i do have one question. If i could take you back to the point in time where you were serving as secretary of the air force what was your ahha moment where you were operating in your zone and you were like wow this is what i do. You were there. I think it may well have been after that Nuclear Matter that we talked about earlier. That was one that was highstakes. Not everybody was in favor for example of making this a public matter. They felt like this was sensitive and could remain private and whatnot so i use my own leadership and i followed my own instincts. Because that at the end of the day was a bad situation but because we are able to make it better and the transparency Congress Gave us kudos for being transparent about it. That made me feel like following my instincts and having the confidence that i was in a good place. The very beginning. Thank you secretary. Ladies and gentlemen if you would like to purchase a copy of the book it is an incredible masterpiece. You can do so by purchasing it at the bookstore and i do know secretary will be around to sign the book as well. Thanks everybody. [applause] sin on behalf of the association of flight to present a token of our appreciation. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] now i would like to introduce one of my cochairs mr. John bittner who was the only man on our leadership toward and the founding president. John has worked for us for 26 years. Hes an advocate for women in the military and this conference wouldnt be as successful without you john. Im proud to introduce to you john bit her. [applause] bittner. Im Lieutenant Commander john bittner. Im also a founder of ss l. A. And its my 24th year. One time i was in bosnia and at the time i was in cuba. Its really been amazing watching this group of years. I was remarking to one of my friends that rommell 30 years back in the day we were lucky if we could get 100 people in the room and now we have over 1000 so thats just amazing and its part of a lot of hard work dialogue people. Part of todays success belongs to one special person id like to thank Martha Mcphee the direct your events and social products. In addition to being the woman behind the scenes shes also a captain in the marine corps reserves so she is actually one of us. Go martha. Thank you. [applause] next time honored to introduce the panel to you all. On the frontier changing culture is a group of women or the coast guard and marine corps who have been placed and mailed dominated units and just as a personal note i understand because i was a man and a predominately female field so i understand there are certain ways you need to kind of bland and then work effectively in those fields. I have no doubt they will have interesting stories watching the cultures. Please welcome the members of this panel along with their moderator hope hodge seck military. Com. [applause] thank you all for being here this morning. This is an extraordinary privilege for me and i am very excited to hear from this panel and learn their insights as well. As a military journalist and i think im the first email editor of military. Com. Im not supposed to play favorites but ive been covering the marine corps and the coast guard for a long time and you all are my favorite. If you want the full ranking semi in the back later. So both of these services have been on the frontlines of service and ongoing conversation about gender equality and inclusion and representation the military. Albeit in different ways its been an ongoing conversation. Without further ado lets dive into the discussion. Panelists who can take a minute to talk about yourself so we will go ahead and start with chief carter. Its great to be here. This is my second year. I am