Episode 131: Proudly She Served — with Linda Maloney

Linda Maloney served 20 years in the Navy and was one of the first women in U.S. history in 1993 to join a combat military flying squadron. She was designated a Naval Flight Officer (NFO) and is the recipient of numerous military awards, including the distinguished air medal for combat. She also was the first woman to eject from a Martin Baker ejection seat from her A-6 aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean. She retired from the Navy in 2004 and started her second career as a defense contractor, author and business owner.

Linda is currently the CEO of Women Veteran Speakers, the first speaker’s agency of its kind that exclusively offers exceptional women military veterans as event speakers, trainers, coaches and facilitators. She is also the Project Director for the Proudly She Served project, which highlights women who serve or who have served in the U.S. military and tells their stories.

During this episode, Linda shares:

• Her story of ejecting from her aircraft
• What it was like being one of the first women in a combat military flying squadron
• Her transition from the Navy to business ownership
• What inspired the Proudly She Served project, and how it honors the service and stories of women military veterans

Learn more about Linda’s work at WomenVeteranSpeakers.com and ProudlySheServed.com and find her on LinkedIn.

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The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Hello, and welcome to the Beyond 6 Seconds podcast. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel and on today’s episode, I’m really excited to be here with my guest Linda Maloney. Linda served 20 years in the Navy and was one of the first women in US history in 1993 to join a combat military flying squadron. She was designated a Naval Flight Officer and is the recipient of numerous military awards, including the distinguished air medal for combat.

She also was the first woman to eject from a Martin Baker ejection seat from her A-6 aircraft over the Atlantic ocean. She retired from the Navy in 2004 and started her second career as a defense contractor, author and business owner. Linda’s currently the CEO of Women Veteran Speakers, the first speaker’s agency of its kind that exclusively offers exceptional women military veterans as event speakers, trainers, coaches, and facilitators.

She’s also the project director for the Proudly She Served project, which highlights women who serve or who have served in the US military and tells their stories. Linda, welcome to the podcast.

Linda Maloney: Thanks, Carolyn. Thanks for having me. It’s so great to be connected with you. We’ve been trying to do this for a little while, right?

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, we have. It’s been a while. I actually met you in person, like way before this whole pandemic. It’s it seems so long ago, but I’m glad we were able to reconnect now during this time and absolutely learn more of your story. So yeah, I’d love to start off and just learn more about your your, your big story of being the first woman to eject from the Martin Baker ejection seat from your, from your aircraft. So how did you even wind up in that situation, in that type of aircraft?

Linda Maloney: So I was stationed in Key West. It was a support squadron, which meant that it was not a combat squadron. It was before the combat exclusion law was repealed in 1993. So this was 1991 and I was flying as a Naval flight officer in the A-6, and we were flying with another A-6 up off the coast of Jacksonville, we were doing training missions against an aircraft carrier.

And so we came off of the ship and we were going to go get some gas and then go back out in the afternoon to do some more runs against the ship when our aircraft experienced a total hydraulic failure. And so for those that are not familiar, your hydraulics lubricate all the surfaces of your aircraft.

And so if you don’t have control of your surfaces, like your, your flaps, your slats, your landing gear, I mean, that kind of puts you at a great disadvantage. You can’t really control your aircraft either. If you don’t, you know, you don’t have control of your flaps and slats and so is the A-6 is a two seater aircraft and the pilot’s in the left seat and the flight officer’s in the right seat.

And we went through our emergency procedures. I pulled out the pocket checklist. We contacted air traffic control, let them know that we had an emergency and that we were going to have to take an arrested landing. So what that means is that you have to put your hook down and get the arresting gear at the At the airfield, because you won’t have the ability to stop your aircraft.

Once you blow your gear down, you electrically put, put your flaps and sleds down. Then you have to take an arrested landing. So we let them know that we were headed over to an Navy base to land when we lost all of our hydraulics. So the A-6 has a dual hydraulic system, and that also has a backup system.

And the backup system really is for just if you’re straight and level and, but your other hydraulic systems, if you lose those, you have to pretty much reject unless you’re on final and you’re getting ready to land. So that’s what we had to do. We had to eject 15,000 feet over the ocean. It was in February and I went first and then my pilot went second and there’s rocket motors in the aircraft that basically propel the seat.

I’m giving the simple version, propel the seat up out of the aircraft and you get a parachute and there’s all, there’s lots of other things you have to go through on your way down when you’re in your parachute to prepare for water entry. And there’s actually a raft that’s attached to your seat pan.

And that you release that and it inflates automatically. So then whenever you get into the water, You can climb into your raft. And so that’s what I did climbed into my raft and waited for rescue basically. So it was about an hour and long story short, but my radio was dead. So whenever they were calling, you know, I was trying to call them.

There was no communication and whenever the search and rescue helicopters were trying to contact me, they couldn’t contact me either. But Thank goodness. You know, they, they did find me and a rescue helicopter came overhead, a rescue swimmer came down wrapped me up in the horse collar, reeled me up and I’m off to the hospital.

I went just very few injuries, actually. So it was, it was yeah, a fortunate situation, unfortunate situation, but neither my pilot nor I were are seriously hurt so that was good.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. That’s incredible because when you injected didn’t you briefly lose consciousness in the air?

Linda Maloney: I did. Yeah. I passed out because I can’t remember the, the amount of instantaneous Gs but there’s a large amount of instantaneous Gs once you eject. And so I lost consciousness and then I came to in the tug of my parachute and yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. So you came to in the air?

Linda Maloney: In the air. I’m actually more afraid of it, thinking back on it now than I was at the time, you know? Cause you’re young, like when you’re young, you’re just kind of, you know, living life and nothing really scares you really.

And also, your training is really great. Like they, in the military does a really great job in training their aviators and So you feel like you’re well prepared for an emergency when it does happen.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. So out, so when did you find out that you were there first woman to eject in this type of ejection seat?

Linda Maloney: Martin Baker? So I was actually we’re over 6,000 ejections at the time. And yeah, I was the first woman and they called me a couple of weeks at the Martin Baker company, which is out of England, had called me a couple of weeks after the ejection and asked me. You know, what do you want? Because normally what they do is they give the guys ties, Martin Baker ties whenever they eject and you get, you have a certain number, like your ejection number.

And so though they’ll give you a tie and they asked me what I wanted since I was the first woman. And I really just left it up to them. And so what they did was they made this beautiful little pewter pin for the first woman ejectee and they presented it to me at a big event that they had in Washington DC, about six months later.

But the interesting thing is they wanted me to come over and receive the pin from princess Diana. And the Navy did not allow me to go over and get it, which I’m really, you know, so disappointed now, you know, But anyways, so I went to this event that was actually said celebrating 6,000 lives, right around the time of the Gulf war, the end of the Gulf war.

And so there were the 6,000 crew were there and then there were several people there from Vietnam era who had ejected, like two and three times. And so really amazing heroes, you know? And so it was, it was a really wonderful celebration and wonderful to meet those people, those men.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. That’s incredible.

Linda Maloney: Yeah, it was really cool. And Martin Baker has been really great to me over the years, you know, I’ve kept in touch with them and yeah, they’ve been really great.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s really cool. Did you wind up getting a watch or something or did you buy the watch?

Linda Maloney: So I should have brought it out for this call, but so my husband bought me a watch there. The Bremont company has some agreement arrangement with Martin Baker and they have a watch that’s just for ejectees. And so it has a red band around it, which delineates that you’re an ejectee. And so my husband bought me the watch. They offer you like half price on the watch because they’re really expensive.

And so he got it engraved on the back of it. And so he said, I think it’s on my initials. Number one and the year I ejected. And so he got me that a couple of years ago, so that was really nice. It’s a big watch though. It’s definitely a guys watch, but I do wear it every now and then. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Awesome. Yeah. Wow. So this actually happened relatively early in your Navy career? But you were actually in the Navy for many years afterwards, including when, you know, when women finally got the ability to fly and, and participate in combat. What was that like?

Linda Maloney:  So, yeah, that happened when I was a young Lieutenant, I was a nugget at my squadron and that was 1991. In 1993 is when the combat exclusion law was repealed.

And I actually was able then to transition to a combat squadron. And I was then flying as a Naval flight officer in the EA-6B, which is a four-seater jammer jet. And so there’s a pilot, then three Naval flight officers, and either sit in the front as a navigator, basically handling all the radios, the electronic weapons systems all the navigation or there’s two electronic countermeasure officers in the back that handle all the electronic countermeasure things like jamming and also the harm missile.

It’s a high speed anti radiation missile. And so that aircraft is now retired. I feel a little bit old saying that, but It was a national, it was a national asset and it flew on and off aircraft carriers. So when I transitioned over to a fleet squadron to fly in combat I was in the first group of women on the West coast aircraft carrier to join that air wing.

And uh, that was I went on cruise a six month cruise in 1995 and. It was difficult. I mean, it definitely was challenging. Out of about 5,000 people on the aircraft carrier, about 500 total women at the time. Maybe I don’t want to say about 20 women aviators, total. And it was, it was definitely challenging.

I mean, yeah. I, I learned a lot. I probably would have handled. I know I would’ve handled things so much differently now, knowing what I know now as more of a mature person, you know? And so, I mean, I made a lot of mistakes along the way and I think the military, the Navy handled it as best as they could.

It definitely comes down to leadership. Because, you know, if you have a commanding officer who’s very supportive, it rolls downhill. And but if you have, you know, a commanding officer or leadership that’s not supportive or they give mixed signals, it just makes it difficult. And. One of my good friends who was a woman died on that cruise before the cruise, she flew F-14s.

She was the first woman F 14 pilot. Her name was Kara Hultgreen and it just created a whole hornet’s nest of because, you know, then the press was in the middle of it. Was she really qualified? She, you know, she crashed at the boat at the carrier. And so it just, it was, it was painful, you know, it was, it was definitely living life in a fishbowl because anything, any mistake any woman made was, you know, really highlighted and So you know, many of the guys were really great were really supportive, but there were the ones, there were also ones that absolutely hated us and didn’t want us there.

So, you know, it was just, there was a whole bunch of different types of personalities. And but again, it was you know, a good learning experience, life experience because. You know,  what encourages me now, I have boys, they’re teenagers now. And I hopefully try to instill in them to just treat everybody with respect and courtesy.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. If you’re qualified to do a job, you should be, you know, given the opportunity.

Carolyn Kiel:  Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like despite all that you were still able to, you know, become a Naval flight officer and flying missions and different sites, and now you really had that experience there.

Linda Maloney: And I’m glad I did. I mean, you know, it was a great life lesson and it offers, the military really just offers great, I always call it the military advantage. And because I really believe that the military, whether you serve four years or 15 years or 20 years or 30 years, it really sets you up for life because you know, the military is always all about mission accomplishment working as a team and you know, there’s just no room for, you know, people will ask me, how is it when different types of people come together? And I said, I loved it because I didn’t see racism. I didn’t see, you know, even though there were some issues with women and men and the guys kind of sometimes, you know, not wanting us there, bottom line, I think the military was really good at presenting a level playing field.

And it’s really based on how well you do and how hard you work and you know, just great leadership skills and that, and I loved that about the military. If you want to do well, you’re going to do well.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that’s great. And that sounds like such a great experience. And you had that for many years and really awesome.

And so you ended up retiring from the Navy, you said in 2004, right. So, and then kind of started your career in the business area contracting and such, and then your own. Now you’re a business owner yourself and also working on some volunteer projects. So since then you’ve started Women Veteran Speakers, which is you’re your own business. So what inspired you to start that business?

Linda Maloney: So when I did retire 2004, that also happened to be the first year or the year I had my first son. So I started later in life. And so I had both of my kids in my forties. And so I just thought a lot about you know, the legacy that I would pass down to them and especially being an older parent and they weren’t gonna experience my military career with me because I was, I, you know, I had ended it.

And so I just thought a lot about that. And so I put together a book called military fly moms, and it’s a story about 70 women aviators for all military services who are moms. And so I did some speaking after that book was published in 2012, but my husband was pretty busy in his career and traveling a lot.

So I wasn’t, and my kids were young and I wasn’t able to travel. And so I had teamed with another woman veteran. And we started a women’s speakers agency with women veterans. And we did that for about four or five years. We learned the business, we learned the industry, and then about five years ago, I wanted to grow the business, but she like me just filled up her plate.

She was too busy to put more time into it. You know, she owns a publishing company and she was just very busy. So I took the business over. I changed our name to Women Veteran Speakers. I changed up our business model. And we started growing. And so I’ve been doing that for the last five years. I, you know, I work a full-time job.

So I do this, you know, in every other second hour, minute of the day you know, at night it early in the morning. And I love it. And so. Interestingly enough over the last year, you know, a year ago, you know, obviously with the pandemic, we saw a lot of just major changes in the speaking industry. And at the time we were primarily you know booking speaker booking agency, and we booked speakers, coaches, trainers, facilitators for all different types of clients, corporate, colleges and universities, professional organizations.

And we still do that. But over the last year, we decided to change to tweak our business model a little bit. And now we’re primarily a marketing agency, like where we really like seventy-five percent of our time. And I have an executive assistant that works with me, who I just love. And she’s the glue that kind of keeps us together.

And so we Probably about 75% of our time is, is focused on highlighting and marketing our members. Our members pay an annual membership, very low fee to be part of our agency. And we market them via email marketing and social media and all different types of platforms. And so that we still do, you know, book our speakers, coaches, trainers, and facilitators, but the majority of our members have very established businesses.

So they, we give them the option of whether they want to us to book them, or they can use their own business model to book themselves. So there’s a lot of great flexibility, but at the very basic foundational level, they get all these marketing and you know, highlighting opportunities with a, you know, established speaking marketing agency.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, wow. Well, that’s really interesting. Wow. So how do you, how do you get the women veterans speakers? Like, I mean, even starting out, I know you’d written a book that had so many different profiles. Did you draw on that to get your first sort of speakers?

Linda Maloney: A little bit. I, you know, I Googled and I also used my network. I mean, I have a very wide network of women veterans that I know. And so I started reaching out and a lot of them came to me too. And I, you know, I, we’re not exclusive. So what I would do is I would look at where the women veterans were, where the speakers, coaches, trainers, facilitators were. And if they weren’t exclusive with another agency and they wanted to join us also, we invite them, if they have materials ready to go and they have a professional social media following and they have a pretty much established business.

Most of our members have established businesses, although we do bring in some up and coming speakers and other types of members. And we also offer, we have a lot of connections with speaker coaches, speaker business coaches, so that it may be, if somebody is newer to the business, they can go get some coaching first and, you know, get their feet wet and get their foundation.

And then we’ll bring them on board. So I, so even now I probably get, you know, Two three, five requests a week to join the agency. But we’re, I mean, we really do try to, we’re pretty selective, you know, I’m really protective of our brand. And so you have to have a, you know, an established, relatively established business to be invited into the agency.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, wow. Well, that’s really cool.

Linda Maloney:  Yeah, I love it. I really do love it. And the women are just amazing, just really and the thing I love about it too, is that they all have the common denominator that they’re veterans, but they all have a bunch of other varied skills in their toolbox. Like some have doctorates, some are authors and lawyers, you know, just a wide variety of different skillsets.

Some, you know, some just do coaching all the time. Some do a variety, some do coaching and training and some just do webinars. Obviously the last year has been difficult. The women who have been able to pivot. You know, pivot quickly to virtual type of events have, have, you know, haven’t seen much of a change in their business, but it’s definitely impacted everyone.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I could definitely see that.

Linda Maloney: Even the clients, I mean, we’re starting to see, you know, an increase in bookings, but it’s, it’s definitely been slow. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. So, and as people, you know, the speakers that you work with, have they come from all different types of backgrounds, even though they have that sort of common military service background, I would imagine they probably speak on a variety of different topics. It doesn’t necessarily have to be military.

Linda Maloney:  You know, the interesting thing is, is that in order of revenue generating, cause obviously I’m a for-profit business. So in terms of our target market, Obviously corporate’s number one, you know, and then colleges and universities, professional organizations, and last, but not least are veteran related organizations, which is unfortunate, but.

But many times veteran related organizations don’t have the funding to book speakers or to book, you know trainers, speakers. And so it, you know, one of the next things that I would love to do, if I could just fit it into my day, I’d like 10 more hours, is. I would love to get sponsorship from corporate sponsorship to offer funding for veteran related organizations that don’t have the funding to bring in a speaker, bring in a trainer. But that might be the next year or two down there, you know, down the road. So, yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, well, that sounds good. Wow. So, you know, you’re, you know, you’re very busy with the, you know, you have your full-time career and then you have Women Veteran Speakers. I understand that somewhat recently you became involved in your volunteer project related to the military called Proudly She Served. So tell me, how did you hear about that and get involved with that?

Linda Maloney: So probably about three years ago, I received a phone call from this artist and out of New York City, his name is Steve Alpert and he was referred to me by another woman who’s part of my agency. And so she said, you have to meet Linda Maloney.

So he calls me up and starts telling me I have this great idea about this project! That he had painted one woman veteran, Dawn Halfaker who owns a defense company in Washington, DC. And she had lost her arm, I think over in Iraq and Steve painted her and he just, he had this vision that he needed to paint other women veterans.

And so he and I pretty much started the project from the ground up. We, you know, came up with the name, Proudly She Served, our logo our website. We also have a small team. Everyone works pro bono. It’s a total volunteer event. I’m the project manager, Steve’s the executive director. And so. We have 12 women, 12 women veterans, what is no two are active duty, but the rest are veterans.

And Steve has painted huge portraits of each one of these women. He’s met them and we found them a variety of ways and most of them are women that I I knew of or had in my network. Some are very, well-known probably the most well-known is Senator Tammy Duckworth. And then yeah. Nicole Malachowski who’s the first woman Thunderbird pilot, also Bee Haydu, who was one of the army women, air force, service pilots from World War II.

And she just died in January. She was 100 years old and she just passed away. But so we have 12 women, you know, like I said, some are just everyday heroes. Some are more well-known. And we also have a coffee table style book that also is going along with the portraits. And so we’re going to have a portrait unveiling and book launch in August of 2022 at the women military women’s Memorial in Washington, DC, which is actually in Arlington right next to the Arlington national cemetery.

Beautiful. If anyone has never been there. Absolutely beautiful. It’s the military women’s Memorial in Arlington. And so right now we’re starting to raise funds for, you know, to get the book published and to have the portrait unveiling and the book launch. It’s going to be a huge event in At the Memorial and then a year following after the portrait unveiling and book launch, we will have a national exhibition tour where the portraits will travel to 10 key locations throughout the country.

And there’ll be a curriculum that goes along with the portraits and hope to have speakers. And some of the women that are portrayed in the portraits, speaking at the events and, and it’s the mission of the whole project is to number one, highlight why women serve. And it just the importance of service, maybe it’s not military service, but to hopefully encourage young people to serve in some way, whether it’s with the military or some other way to serve.

And then another mission of the project is to also is to inspire young women and young men to really reach for their star, reach for the stars and that they can do whatever they, you know,  whatever they dream of because in each one of these women’s stories, you’ll just see how, you know, how they grew up and what their dreams were and how they accomplished their dreams and how they’re still serving after the military.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. That’s amazing how that idea went from basically, you know, an idea or a seed three years ago to like a coffee table book and yeah. A tour and an unveiling and everything kind of …

Linda Maloney: Just day in and day out. Like Steve and I are, I always say we’re like siblings from another mother, I mean, we’re so different too. Like, you know, he is very artsy and, you know has these great ideas, I’m more of the, you know, black and white, you know, to the point, you know, more type A, I’m very type A. And so he and I work really well together. We’ve actually met with our spouses for dinner and he and I talk a couple of times a week and it’s just, yeah, it’s just day by day, you know, just working on it and having that dream that it’s going to happen. We’re going to do it. It’s just going to take some time. And yeah, we’re just right now, we’re in the phase of trying to raise funds and our team is just amazing. Like we have a really amazing group of volunteers and the website is ProudlySheServed.com. If anyone wants to take a look.

But we have some college interns that do a lot of our social media. Like, I, I know nothing about Instagram. Like I, LinkedIn is kind of my thing, but one of our college interns Bella is just amazing at Instagram and she just has put it together. It’s just really amazing social media and we have another intern who does a lot of our videos and Tori she’s wonderful.

And so yeah, these, we have you just, some really great people who have, like I said, they’re all working pro bono. So hopefully at some point is sometime we’ll be able to reimburse them for some of their time, you know? So.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that is really cool. So, and the coffee table book, it sounds like, you know, obviously the portraits are in there, but it sounds like there’s also some stories from the women or about the women, or how did that come together?

Linda Maloney: So we also have an amazing writer and editor, Sarah Woodfin, who’s a Navy veteran. It’s interesting how I found Sarah. I had posted on LinkedIn that we were looking for a writer and editor and her husband actually sent me a note. Sarah’s not even on LinkedIn. And her husband sent me a note and he said, my wife Sarah would be perfect for this.

He said, I don’t think that she’ll send you a note because I don’t think she thinks she’s qualified. And we, I reached out to her as she has been amazing. I mean, just so perfect. She’s really brought the stories to life. And so initially what happened was, is I had researched information about each woman and I had asked each woman some questions, the same questions and had her respond to them.

And then I gave Sarah all that content and Sarah added to it. She interviewed some of the women and she put together these beautiful stories that in addition to this, Steve writes an intro to each one of the stories. And I didn’t know, he was a beautiful writer. In addition to being a great artist, he’s a beautiful writer.

And so he put together beautiful introductions to each one, one of the women’s stories. So in addition, yes, to their portraits and photographs in the book will also be their stories.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. And so it sounds like the book is, it sounds like it’s basically done or close to done, and now you’re in the final stages. Very cool. And you’re raising the funds now to print it or publish it or?

Linda Maloney: Yes. Yes.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, that’s wonderful. Yeah. Well, Linda, that’s amazing. You’re involved in so many, like really awesome and cool things that are just like so meaningful and especially, you know, this podcast is all about sharing stories and really elevating the, the stories that people may not necessarily know of all the amazing things that people have done in their careers and, and their past. So I think that’s really exciting that you’ll be sharing.

Linda Maloney:  Yeah. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about it.

Carolyn Kiel: So yeah, I mean, this has been great. You know, how can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about Women Veteran Speakers or Proudly She Served?

Linda Maloney: Well, they definitely can go to WomenVeteranSpeakers.com. They can find me on LinkedIn at Linda Maloney. They can find me at ProudlySheServed.com. So I’m all over the place so they can easily find me or they can find me through you, right?

Carolyn Kiel: Yep. And I’ll put links to the two websites. And I’ll put your LinkedIn link in as well in the show notes. So people can just click on it from there.

Linda Maloney: Thank you so much.

Carolyn Kiel: Sure. And you know, as we close out, is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything else that they can help or support you with?

Linda Maloney: Oh, well we will be pretty soon doing a crowd fund raising opportunity for the Proudly She Served project. So we will be posting that, look for that over the next couple of weeks.

Carolyn Kiel: Perfect. All right. Sounds great. Right. Thank you so much, Linda, for being on my podcast.

Linda Maloney: Oh, you’re so welcome, Carolyn. Thank you.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help us spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend. Give us a shoutout on your social media or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of our episodes on our website and sign up for our free newsletter at www.beyond6seconds.com. Until next time.