Final summer time, Capt. Kimberly Jones quietly took on a brand new job aboard a brand new ship. Though each she and her commander knew the posting was historic, she stated no one felt the necessity to ratchet up the fanfare.
The job is the reactor officer aboard the plane service USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. That place — which is liable for working the ship’s twin nuclear reactors and overseeing a whole lot of sailors — is one of the vital essential and influential aboard the ship because it gives propulsion, electrical energy, and the flexibility to launch planes for one of many Navy‘s greatest and most seen platforms. Plus, the dangers of messing it up are monumental.
Jones is the primary African American lady to be entrusted with the job. She’s additionally solely the sixth African American ever to carry the place.
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Jones, who spoke with Navy.com over the cellphone Tuesday, stated that whereas she was going to school for engineering at Tuskegee College in Alabama, she wasn’t fascinated about the Navy as an choice.
“I obtained a flier within the mail for the Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate program,” she recalled. “It simply sounded completely different, [and] it got here at a time the place I used to be very open to choices.”
She was commissioned in 2001 and commenced her profession in Japan aboard the amphibious transport ship USS Juneau. That have was formative as a result of she was one in every of solely two ladies aboard. The opposite feminine officer was on her second shipboard tour, and so Jones stated she “watched her like a hawk.”
“I discovered every little thing that I might study, and it simply actually sort of walked in her footsteps,” she recalled.
In a 2021 Navy video, Jones additionally famous that, at the moment, “when it got here to non-public questions that one may need, it was laborious to seek out these tales and discover these of us which have walked in your sneakers in a really related vogue.”
The expertise additionally led her to grapple with whether or not “being extra female wasn’t as skilled or … within the intent of a real [surface warfare officer.]”
Whereas ladies have made large strides and accomplishments within the service over the past a number of many years, they at the moment make up solely 23% of the floor Navy. Even easy issues like uniform design have been targeted on males, with the Navy taking till 2022 to make uniforms that will higher match ladies’s our bodies.
Jones, nonetheless, stated that she did not discover her gender to be an obstacle or one thing she needed to downplay. “I simply wanted to be me, and I wanted to be my finest,” she stated.
Jones says lots of the challenges she confronted in her profession — getting certified as “officer of the deck” and getting floor warfare-qualified — are the identical that any floor warfare officer has confronted.
However rapidly she took on duty.
“You might be most likely 23 years previous and also you’re driving a ship at evening, and the boss is asleep and trusts you … and, you already know, that is wild.”
Since these early days, Jones has had a formidable profession as a floor warfare officer. She went on to command the dock touchdown ship USS Tortuga, changing into solely the sixth African American lady to take action and, in keeping with her Navy biography, she lately grew to become solely the fourth African American lady to be chosen for a serious ship command publish.
Jones is hesitant to speak about these accomplishments. She attributes a lot of her success to “the nice leaders and friends that I labored with” and readily factors out that she’s simply the primary to “run throughout that end line” however that she’s “labored alongside of us similar to myself, through the years” who might have simply as simply been in her place.
Jones’ husband, Capt. Ray Glenn, himself a nuclear officer aboard the USS Nimitz, is fast to notice that his spouse is “fairly humble” however factors out that “there have been setbacks in her life that some individuals would not have gotten by way of.”
Glenn, himself the fifth African American reactor officer within the Navy, attributes his spouse’s success and rise to the historic position she now holds to her dedication.
“As passionate as I’m, I believe she’s bought extra ardour as a result of she’s the one on the dinner desk that is going to speak about work,” he defined, earlier than including that “she’s the one who talks about her sailors.”
To Jones, who now oversees a staff of round 400, “the flexibility to steer them is my most coveted cost.”
“Nearly all of them left their houses after highschool and so they embark on a journey of unknowns, and I take that very significantly,” she provides.
Jones’ appointment got here throughout a banner 12 months for girls breaking limitations within the Navy.
In July, Lt. Amanda Lee grew to become the first feminine jet pilot to affix the historic demonstration squadron “The Blue Angels.”
Then, in August, the identical month as Jones’ appointment, Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt grew to become the primary feminine commanding officer to finish a deployment of a U.S. plane service when the USS Abraham Lincoln returned to Naval Air Station North Island after a seven-month deployment within the Pacific.
On the finish of that month, the Navy introduced that it had named the primary lady to function a high enlisted sailor on a submarine.
In December 2022, the Marine Corps additionally promoted its first African American lady to the rank of main basic.
“They’re standing toe to toe with males, and every day they’re standing toe to toe in locations the place, in case you needed to look 20 one thing years in the past, you did not suppose you’d see an African American lady,” Glenn boasted of his spouse and different groundbreaking sailors he is recognized and met.
For these trying to comply with in Jones’ footsteps, her recommendation is fairly simple: “Be taught your job and continue to learn” and “take each task as a possibility for your self and for these you serve.”
“You do not have to vary your core self,” Jones stated, earlier than including that, so long as you do your finest, you’ll be able to “begin to transfer by way of any of the limitations, whether or not they’re actual, whether or not they’re synthetic or one thing that’s put in your path.”
Editor’s word: This story has been up to date to appropriate the ship on which Glenn serves.
— Konstantin Toropin could be reached at konstantin.toropin@army.com. Observe him on Twitter @ktoropin.
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