As Mary Saunders ’78 rose to become a major general in the United States Air Force, she held positions that oversaw tens of thousands of military and civilian personnel and managed multi-billion dollar budgets. Her work environment was dominated by men, but during her 34-year military career, she became the first woman to serve in the Pentagon as the Air Force Director of Transportation and the first woman to serve as commander of the Defense Supply Center-Columbus.
Did her gender ever present particular challenges to serving as a military leader?
“Not as much as you might think,” Saunders says.
Her advancement was aided by a straightforward dedication to principles she discovered as a high school student in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) — orderliness, hard work and a no-excuses approach to execution. Those values have culminated in her most recent appointment as executive director of the new Institute for Women’s Leadership at Texas Woman’s University.
“I went to college in the ’60s,” Saunders says. “If you were African American, you were already disadvantaged. But being a woman, that was a double whammy. What I learned from my teachers and my parents was that you had to have skills to offer people and make yourself an invaluable asset.”
She chose in part to join the Air Force after earning a bachelor’s in social work from Texas Woman’s University because she saw a greater chance for equal opportunity and advancement in the military than in the civilian world. When Saunders first joined the Air Force, she recalls long days and nights and a lot of hard work. “I didn’t know you could be up for 32 hours without it being at a party,” she says. “But my uniform was always squared away and looked top notch. You have to make an impression and demonstrate you have a level of confidence in yourself.”
While stationed in Japan, she looked back to the U.S. for an opportunity to continue her education, which she found in Rider’s graduate program in counseling. “The Air Force believes in advanced training,” she says. “Being a lifelong learner has always been part of my process. I wanted to continue to grow and was looking for a degree that would help. I thought I would have an increasing amount of responsibility in the Air Force and I needed to sharpen my skills. Rider helped me do that.”
Throughout her time in the military, Saunders says she witnessed what women are capable of, and following her retirement, she was attracted to the idea of cultivating female leaders. “I was given opportunities, but so many women are not, which makes it incredibly difficult to thrive,” she says.
The goal of the Institute for Women’s Leadership is to help enable more women to enter politics, become successful entrepreneurs and executives, and provide professional leadership skills and experience. It has received more than $9 million in state and private start-up funds. Construction began this fall, with plans to move in set for summer 2019.