Commanding a ship, she tells me, has always been the job she enjoyed the most and the one that 'resonated.'Īll the while, Howard was moving up steadily through the ranks. Two years later, she graduated from the Army's Command and General Staff College, and the year after that, she took command of the USS Rushmore.

In 1996, she became executive officer of the USS Tortuga. From there, she reported to the USS Mount Hood as chief engineer and, in the summer of 1992, assumed duties as first lieutenant on board the USS Flint. Naval Academy and began to distinguish herself quickly during her initial sea tours, she received an award given to one female officer each year for outstanding leadership skills. (She considers Colorado her home state.) In 1982, she graduated from the U.S. It also entails looking at the business end of the Navy, and that, Howard says, means 'sitting down with the providers, working our way through their budgets, what their missions are, and whether they have the right resources to meet their missions.'īorn in Riverside, California, Howard and her family moved frequently when she was young because her father was in the Air Force. What it does involve is assessing the Navy's war-fighting requirements and capacity, and making sure the sailors have what they need to do the job. When I visit Howard in her office in the outermost ring of the Pentagon, she seems perfectly relaxed she may now be the second-highest-ranking commissioned officer in the Navy, but at least her day-to-day doesn't generally involve pirates. And this past year, Howard, 55, became the first African-American and the first female vice chief of naval operations. She was the first woman to graduate from Annapolis and reach the rank of flag officer, the first African-American woman to command a ship, the first African-American woman in any of the armed services to reach three stars, and the first four-star female admiral in the Navy. (Chet Susslin)Howard, however, is no stranger to firsts. Michelle Howard is the vice chief of naval operations. 'There certainly wasn't anyone I could turn to and say, 'How do you rescue someone from a life raft? How do you do negotiations with pirates at sea?''Š' Howard recalled in an interview last year. She did (the incident later inspired the 2013 movie Captain Phillips), which was no minor feat. Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama, was taken hostage in the waters southeast of Eyl, Somalia, and transferred to a small life raft it was Howard's job to get him back. Navy task force charged with countering piracy in the Arabian Sea, when a cargo ship sailing under a U.S. In April 2009, Michelle Howard was just three days into her new job as head of a U.S.

The Second Ship by Richard Phillips