Last updated on June 3, 2022
A woman took command of the U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday and became the first female armed forces chief in the nation’s history.
Adm. Linda L. Fagan took over at a ceremony in Washington that was attended by President Joseph R. Biden and a slew of senior military and civilian officials.
“With her trailblazing career, Admiral Fagan shows young people entering service that we mean it when we say, ‘There are no doors closed to women,'” Biden said.
Fagan has commanded the Coast Guard’s Pacific Area, which is responsible for operations on six continents and across about 74 million square miles of ocean. She has also led the service’s First District, which focuses on New England. Since 2021 she has served as vice commandant of the service. Fagan graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1985 as a member of the sixth class to admit women.
The 59-year-old flag officer replaces Adm. Karl L. Schultz, who retired after a 39-year career in uniform. Schultz led the Coast Guard through a tumultuous four-year period in which he oversaw a historically large shipbuilding effort, including an effort to construct two new polar icebreaker vessels.
“Today we witness a tradition longstanding in the USCG as a new admiral assumes leadership of our nation’s oldest continuous seagoing service,” Biden said. “It’s both a connection to the earliest days of our nation, plus a new milestone in our history. We’ve used those phrases lightly, but this is a big deal.”
The Coast Guard, unlike its sister services, is not administered by the U.S. Department of Defense. Instead, it is housed in the Department of Homeland Security. The commandant of the Coast Guard does not sit on the nation’s Joint Chiefs of Staff except in wartime.
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