President's Biography
Rear Admiral Wendi Carpenter, USN, (Ret.)
Rear Admiral Carpenter is the daughter of an Air Force veteran of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Raised throughout the United States, her family settled in Georgia when she was a teenager. She graduated from Westover High School in Albany, Georgia (1974) and the University of Georgia (B.S. Psychology, 1976) before she entered the Navy in 1977.
Rear Admiral Carpenter holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from Salve Regina University and is a distinguished graduate of the US Naval War College. Additionally, she has completed executive programs in business, strategic planning, and innovation at National Defense University, Defense Acquisition University, UNC Business School and Babson College, as well as the NATO School in Germany.
Rear Admiral Carpenter has served in the Navy for thirty-four years and is among the pioneers of women in Naval Aviation. She was the 31st woman to be designated a Naval Aviator and was the Navy’s first woman aviator to attain the rank of rear admiral. She deployed throughout the Pacific, western United States, and Alaska in support of the nation’s strategic nuclear mission, flying the EC 130 Hercules. She also operated VIP aircraft in support of numerous high level officers and dignitaries and has accumulated 3500 military flight hours.
Rear Admiral Carpenter has held a total of five commands at the Commander, Captain and Flag level in the areas of logistics, training, and aviation in fleet, joint and coalition operations, giving her a unique warfighting perspective and extensive business acumen. In June 2008, she assumed command of the Navy Warfare Development Command where she and her team worked to deliver operational capability for Navy, joint and coalition forces through concept generation and development, doctrine development, modeling and simulation, and experimentation and analysis.
Rear Admiral Carpenter’s flag assignments have been widely varied: Naval base and regional management; development of information and security plans while assigned to the Chief of Naval Operations Staff; development of plans and operational procedures and processes for joint deployment staffs; and development of concepts for operational command and control by Navy forces, as well as training and standardization processes for Navy Fleets. She has represented the United States in a number of coalition and NATO forums in Europe and Africa.
Rear Admiral Carpenter’s awards include Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (3), Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Commendation Medal (5), Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, and various unit awards. She is most proud of the team award received under her command when the 75 member Fleet Readiness and Logistics staff shared the 2001 Department of the Navy, Chief of Information Award for “e-Business” in government for the rapid prototype and deployment of the Navy staff’s first web portal. Deployed four months early, this innovation was a vital tool for communication and operations for the senior Navy staff after the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.
