The first female four-star admiral in the Navy, the highest-ranking African American woman in the military, visited Ivyland, Bucks County, on Thursday to speak about women as leaders. Adm. Michelle Howard, the vice chief of naval operations for the Pentagon, spoke at a banquet held by the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce that emphasized diversity in leadership. Howard is known generally for leading the strike force that freed Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates who commandeered his ship, Maersk Alabama, off the coast of Africa in 2009. The mission was later the subject of a movie, Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks. Howard, who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1982 and was the first African American woman to command a Navy ship, said she had been on the job only three days before the Maersk Alabama was hijacked. She quickly made two teams, she said, combining enlisted sailors, Marines, an FBI agent, a Somali interpreter, a meteorologist, and a lawyer to come up with ideas for rescuing the captain.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 01:41:00 +0000