Cmdr. Holly Harrison

ehash Job description: National Security Affairs fellow with the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

ehash Personal: First female Coast Guardsman to earn a Bronze Star, volunteer firefighter, sexual assault prevention and response advocate.

ehash Harrison was the first woman in the Coast Guard to command a cutter in a war zone, deploying in support of Operation Iraq Freedom as a lieutenant and skipper of the Island-class patrol boat Aquidneck in 2003. That deployment also made her the service’s first female Bronze Star recipient.

ehash She was also the only woman in the contingent of four cutters on that deployment — they all carried an all-male crew, including the crew she commanded.

ehash “To be honest, the ship was picked to go over because the hull was in very good condition,” she told Navy Times. “The Coast Guard didn’t care if the commanding officer was a female or a male.”

ehash As a 15-year-old, she recalled, she pulled a body out of the water, busted a couple of drug smugglers, and saved a couple and their dog who had been stranded at sea. She was hooked, she said. She graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 1995.

ehash She joined Virginia’s Fairfax County volunteer fire department during her last assignment, in Washington, D.C. She said she’d always been one of those kids who loved to watch the fire trucks go by, and she figured her experience at her day job made her a great fit.

ehash Harrison’s now serving as a Coast Guard fellow with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. The first part of that fellowship is about as far from campus as one can get — she’s wrapping up a monthlong Arctic cruise aboard the icebreaker Healy.

ehash “I think this is going to be a major issue, not only for the Coast Guard but the nation,” she said. “So it would be really nice to fully understand it, and as it’s growing and developing, hopefully have an opportunity to influence the direction we go in, so then we get it right the first time.”

ehash