Alumni Speaker Series - Rear Admiral Deborah Loewer

Join fellow alumni and current students for our virtual Alumni Speaker Series featuring Rear Admiral Deborah Loewer '76! Rear Adm. Loewer will talk about her military career as a female officer in the U.S. Navy and her Wright State experience. She will also take questions from attendees. *Registration is REQUIRED

About Rear Adm. Deborah Loewer:

Rear Admiral Deborah Loewer, having completed 31 years of honorable service with the U.S. Navy and four years of public service with the Federal Government, most recently served as a volunteer Advocate for Senior Citizens with Arlington County Human Services Division in Arlington, VA. During her years of public service (not in the U.S. military), she served as a Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary for Intelligence & Analysis, the Chief Intelligence Officer, at the Department of Homeland Security and as a Program Manager for the US Army’s Prevention of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Program. 

During her 31 year military career, she served at the White House for the President as the Director of the White House Situation Room and the Director of Systems and Technical Planning Staff, worked on the immediate front office staff of two Secretaries of Defense, and also worked directly for the President’s National Security Advisor. In other military capacities she managed extremely large budgets (as high as $2.2B) and led groups of co-workers large and small (from 8 to 8,000 personnel). Rear Admiral Loewer also spent more than 13 years working onboard Navy ships, finding herself among the vanguard of women serving in a combat role for our Nation’s military. She commanded two ships and was, in 2001, selected as the “first” warfare qualified woman to the rank of Rear Admiral in U.S. military history. Following her promotion to flag rank, she commanded all of the U.S. Navy’s mine warfare assets -- forces located in two widely separated theaters of operation—Korea and the Persian Gulf. Her operational assets consisted of 28 warships, 30 helicopters, defensive & offensive mines and their associated mine assembly groups, 11 explosive ordnance teams and all of the U.S. Navy’s marine mammal systems. 

Immediately following her retirement from the U.S. Navy, she worked in the private sector as Vice President for Homeland Security at Advanced Acoustic Concepts, a high technology small business with its headquarters in Hauppauge, New York. In this capacity Rear Admiral Loewer directed a dynamic workforce of systems and electrical engineers in the company’s multi-million dollar effort to use successfully demonstrated dual use passive acoustic technologies in the protection of our Nation’s coastlines, harbors, ports, and waterways. Following this experience in the private sector, Rear Admiral Loewer returned to service in the public sector at the Department of Homeland Security. 

Her professional areas of expertise include National Security Strategy, Continuity of Government Policy, Crisis Management, Inter-Agency Coordination & Operations, Maritime Domain Awareness, Maritime Transportation Systems and the Prevention of Sexual Harassment/Sexual Assault Awareness. 

In addition to Wright State University, Rear Admiral Loewer is a graduate of Kenan-Flagger Executive Business Course, University of North Carolina; the Executive Leadership Program, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, NC; and, was a distinguished Olmsted Scholar at the University of Kiel, in Kiel, Germany. She is a published author on the issue of “women’s leadership,” and a frequent speaker at myriad institutions on topics including U.S. Foreign Policy and Crisis Leadership.