Dr. Botsai spent twelve years in Operations before she was selected for a tour as the NSA representative in the White House Situation Room, the first NSA woman to hold this position. After her two-year tour she was asked to return as the Deputy Director of the White House Situation Room. She also attended the National War College, the first NSA woman to do so, graduating in 1977.
Vera Shoffner Russell graduated from West Virginia State College as a math and physics major in 1951. She took the government employment math test and was offered a position at the NSA. She reported to the Agency in 1951 and was assigned as a programmer on the early computers, ABNER 2, ATLAS 1, and ATLAS 2.
Dr. Joycelyn Elders was the first person in the state of Arkansas to become board certified in pediatric endocrinology and the first African American and only the second woman to head the U.S. Public Health Service.
Japanese-American artist, children’s book author, and civic activist who worked with the OSS (predecessor to the CIA)
Washington socialite on the eve of the Civil War and a spy for the Confederacy
Ruth Wilson was hired by the NSA in 1918 as a Spanish linguist for the first peacetime cryptologic service MI-8 better known as the “American Black Chamber.”
When Dr. Jeannette E. South-Paul was appointed chair of the University of Pittsburgh department of family medicine in 2001, she became the first woman and the first African American to serve as a permanent department chair at the university.
Vera Ruth Filby served with the Women Accepted for Voluntary Exceptional Service (WAVES) and the Communications Supplementary Activity, the Navy’s cryptologic organization, during World War II.
Montes was spying for the Cubans from inside the U.S. intelligence community itself—as a senior analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA.
Iva Toguri D’Aquino, who gained notoriety as the mythical Tokyo Rose, was the seventh person to be convicted of treason in U.S. history.