The sky is the limit for female leaders

Choi Hoon

The author is the chief editor of the JoongAng Ilbo.

In a historic move, U.S. President Joe Biden last month nominated Adm. Lisa Franchetti, current vice chief of operations for the Navy, to lead the service. If confirmed in the Senate, she would become the first woman to lead the U.S. Navy in 248 years. Warships has long been off limits to women just like the ring for sumo wrestling. The U.S. Navy allowed women to serve on battleships and fly fighter jets from 1994 — 74 years after women were given voting rights in 1920. In Korea, female officers started to command fast attack vessels in 2012 and were assigned as the captain of a battleship in 2020.

The chief of U.S. naval operations commands 430,000 sailors and officers, 302 battleships, including aircraft carriers and Aegis destroyers, 74 nuclear-powered submarines, as well as over 3,700 aircrafts. Last year, Biden appointed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first African American woman to sit on the Supreme Court bench. She is believed to be a descendant of a plantation slave. Americans of color make up only 4.7 percent of the lawyers, and fewer than 2 percent of the federal judges are female black women. It took 233 years for a black woman to break the high glass ceiling at the Supreme Court. The milestones of these two women gives out valuable guidance to the younger population of their sex to make strides in their career and life.

Franchetti studied journalism at Northwestern University with hopes to become a journalist covering the Middle East. But she changed course and joined the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program that awards scholarships. She first talked about her path while receiving an alumni medal of honor from her alma mater in 2019.

Above all, she advised the students to move forward with conviction in the choices and goals one makes in life. “Life is not like I-95, which is fairly straight. It’s more like the meandering Potomac River. And there’s going to be lots of turns and twists and things you didn’t expect along the way […] and just walk through the doors whenever they open.” She also shared a story she had heard in the 1960s. When President John F. Kennedy asked a NASA janitor why he worked so merrily, the janitor said, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

Delivering a commencement speech to her daughter’s graduating class at Georgetown Day School last year, Jackson, as a Supreme Court justice-designate, implored the young people to choose their own “adventures.” They would face pressures to conform to what others are doing and thinking or to what is expected from them by others, but she wished they would make their own life decisions and adventures. “I encourage you to listen to your inner voice, the things that make you say, ‘This is great, I want to do more of this.’”

Networking with people, teamwork, and good mentorship are the values the two successful female leaders emphasize. “So when I came in the Navy, there was only one admiral, and she was amazing. And she was a great mentor, and she took all of us under her wing […] And I feel I am the beneficiary of all the people that went before me,” Franchetti recalled.

When she first joined the Navy, she could not go onboard a ship. “I didn’t join the Navy to fly a desk. And I figured that was the end of my career.” She thought of getting out after finishing her required service of four years. Then her boss said, “We really need to get you to a ship. You would be a great division officer. Let’s figure out how to do that.”

In an interview with the Washington Post while she was still waiting for the Senate confirmation, Jackson said that having “someone who takes an interest in you” has helped her to get to the current position.

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Admiral Lisa Franchetti, left, was chosen to lead the U.S. Navy by President Joe Biden and Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first female African American member of the Supreme Court bench. [YONHAPAFP/YONHAP]

They include the high school debate coach, parents who lived through racial segregation, and female local judges were her life’s mentors. She was most inspired by a district judge in Massachusetts who had four children and juggled work and life as a working mom.

Like those before them, the two women have removed the barriers for others. The survivors must have lived with the pressure to leave an impression. But the two advised the opposite — against having impatience and an over-achieving impulse. “Not all roses open on the same day,” said Franchetti. Jackson advised, “I think you have to be comfortable with perhaps not being perfect at everything all the time. There are things that you have to let go — ‘This is good enough’.”

Brianna Banks, a black student at Harvard Law School where Jackson studied, said that she cried upon the nomination announcement and felt they — black women — also could dream what had not been imagined before, because “the sky is the limit” now.

I like to cheer on all women’s challenges and growth, and hope the society can be a good mentor to women with dreams.