The Lioness Origin Story Podcast

In this episode, we visit with two very special guests: retired Army Colonel Kate Guttormsen and Army Colonel Anastasia Breslow-Kynaston. The highest ranking women in the original Team Lioness group (Ramadi 2003-4), both were captains at the time making them the perfect guests for a look back at the Lioness experience. We discuss what it was like to adapt and train-in-theater for the unexpected Lioness missions, the lessons they le...

With 28 years of service behind her, Army Colonel Ellen Haring, a West Point graduate, realized she’d hit the brass ceiling. As a woman, she’d been excluded from combat arms specialties, a career requirement to reach the military’s senior ranks. Then, in 2011, she read about The Molly Pitcher project. Led by Professor Anne Coughlin at University of Virginia Law School and her four dedicated students, the goal was to develop a lawsu...

Our guest today is retired USMC Sgt. Major Raquel Painter whose extraordinary nearly 27 year career landed her at some of the most pivotal moments in Marine Corps history. She has the rare distinction of serving as both an FET (Brigade Headquarters Female Engagement Team Leader) during her 2009 deployment to Afghanistan and as a Lioness during her 2007 deployment to Iraq. But working with local communities in difficult situations w...

When former 1st. Lt. Colleen Farrell joined the USMC in 2008, becoming a trailblazer was the furthest thing from her mind. But by the time she left active duty four years later, she'd become part of two historic turning points for women in the military.

Starting out all she wanted was to serve her country, an ideal that resonated with her Quaker upbringing. In 2009, she left her MOS as an Air Support Control Officer to join the new...

For retired Army Warrant Officer Raquel Patrick, an impressive four deployments, one to Somalia and three to Iraq, wasn’t enough. The moment she heard about the Cultural Support Team program she knew it was for her. Motivated by a life-long desire to serve, she was confident she could make a difference. Even her children supported her decision to apply. Not only was Raquel selected, but after grueling physical training and cultural...

Today, we are honored to have retired US Army Captain Christina Trembley join us and talk about the eight months she spent as a Cultural Support Team member attached to Special Forces’ elite Operational Detachment Alphas in Northern Afghanistan in 2011. Responding to the needs of the local women and children in various villages, Chris spearheaded a partnership with the Afghan Ministry of Education to train women teachers, supported...

At this point in the series, Shannon and Daria have the perfect guest to help put in perspective the "hot potato" position women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan found themselves in. Helping us understand the political resistance back home –including Congress’s inability to openly acknowledge what women in the Army and Marines were being asked to do – is retired Navy Captain Lory Manning, a policy expert on laws governing women’s pa...

With stories and insights from USMC Colonel Maria ‘MJ’ Pallotta and retired USMC Colonel Maria Marte, this episode reveals how the same conditions that led to the creation of the Army’s Team Lioness in 2003 affected the USMC in Afghanistan in 2004. Colonel Marte describes how she and her female Marine ‘searchers’ attached to combat units on missions that took them outside the wire for three to four weeks at a time. Like the Army’s ...

Shannon and Daria talk to retired US Army Colonel David Brinkley who, as Commander of the 1st Engineer Battalion in Ramadi in 2003, created the Team Lioness program. He recalls how the Lioness soldiers’ ability to connect with Iraqi women helped avert conflict and what happened when General Mattis confronted him about sending female soldiers outside the wire in defiance of the Combat Exclusion Policy.

Reviewing Episode 3 of Paramou...