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- Flying high. In January 1993, Jeannie Leavitt graduated from Air Force pilot training. Just over a year earlier, Congress had changed the law to allow women to serve in combat in the military—but in practice, the Department of Defense hadn't caught up.
When she graduated from training, Leavitt had to rank the types of aircraft she was interested in flying; she wanted to fly a fighter aircraft, which was considered a combat assignment. Leavitt knew that one day—whether it was weeks, months, or years away—the Department of Defense would have to begin complying with Congress's mandate to allow women to serve in combat. She just didn't know when.
Stuck in the middle of the transition, she chose to take the risk and rank the fighter aircraft as her top pick against the advice of mentors and friends in the Air Force. She was denied and assigned to another type of plane. "But I had no regrets because I'd asked for what I wanted," she recalls.
Three months later, the DOD changed its policy. "The Air Force remembered that second lieutenant who stood up and asked for an airplane she couldn't have," Leavitt says. She became the U.S. Air Force's first female fighter pilot.
Today, she's Maj. Gen. Jeannie Leavitt, also known by her call sign "Tally." And last week, the Air Force marked the 30th anniversary of women serving in combat roles in its service. In a Zoom interview to honor the anniversary, sitting in front of a fighter plane at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, Leavitt reflected on the risk she took that resulted in earning that title. She was joined by Capt. Nicole "Jinx" Wedge, a 29-year-old fighter pilot who shared how Leavitt's career paved the way for her own. "I don't want to call it easy—it's been a lot of work. But I definitely didn't have to break those barriers like she did," Wedge says. "It wasn't even a second thought when it came my turn to ask."
Leavitt reached a number of other "firsts" throughout her career. For instance, she was the first female fighter pilot to attend weapons school, the program made famous by the movie Top Gun. In recent years, she's been exploring another kind of new territory as a leader in the U.S. Space Force. The 2019 launch of the Space Force was the first time the U.S. military stood up a new service since the introduction of the Air Force in 1947.
Over her career, Leavitt has seen the benefit of making combat roles available to servicemembers of all identities. "We had cut the pool in half by saying we'll only take one of the two genders to fly fighters," she says. "By opening up to the full pool of talent, you get a stronger force."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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