During its first 61 years, the Airborne and Special Operations Test Directorate (originally known as Airborne Test Board) saw major changes in its organization and mission but few changes in its leadership. The first 37 test division chiefs were all men. However, that male tradition ended in September 2010 when Lt. Col. Lisa Anderson became the ABNSOTD’s first female test division chief.

“I’ve had numerous acquisition assignments, but this is my first in the testing field,” said Anderson, who calls Brandywine, Md. her hometown. “I look forward to the challenge of a test assignment as well as an airborne assignment.”

Anderson received her Reserve commission in the Adjutant General Corps after completing the Reserve Officer Training Program and earning a bachelor’s in business administration from Western Maryland College in 1991.

She was then allowed to complete a master’s in business administration from Mount Saint Mary’s University before reporting to her first assignment in 1993 as an assistant S1 for a military intelligence brigade at Fort Gordon, Ga. She has since earned a second master’s degree, this one in information technology management from George Washington University.

“I had never considered the military as a career,” she admitted, explaining that only a few members of her Family had served in any branch of the military. Her interest in the military changed, however, when she and a college roommate decided to take part in a rappelling course offered by the school’s ROTC program.  “It was fun.”

Anderson said that “fun” rappelling course led her to sign up for the ROTC program. Two years later, she received an ROTC scholarship and agreed to sign a contract to accept an Army commission after she completed the program. She said she agreed on condition that she would be allowed to attend Airborne School during her summer training. She laughs now when reflecting that it was 21 years later that she reported to her first airborne assignment – the ABNSOTD.

With a responsibility for reporting on the “testing of Soldier-essential Army combat systems that can be transported in, airdropped from or transported outside of rotary-wing or fixed-wing aircraft,” Anderson now oversees testing conducted by the Personnel and Special Operations Test Branch and the Aerial Delivery Test Branch.

Anderson’s previous assignments include a company command at Fort Jackson, S.C., senior trainer for a support battalion of the Tennessee National Guard in Knoxville, Tenn., acquisitions officer and assistant program manager at the Pentagon and brigade executive officer at Fort Bragg. She will deploy later this month to Afghanistan for six months as part of the Army Test and Evaluation Command’s Forward Operational Assessment Team.

Although she is the first female chief of the test division, Anderson is not the only female Soldier in a key leadership role at ABNSOTD. Captain Tanesha Love and Chief Warrant Officer Wendy Jenner also perform important duties for the directorate.

Love, a 2005 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a Calvert, Texas native, serves as the directorate’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company commander. She is also a test parachutist who served a year as the directorate’s operations officer before taking command of Headquarters and Headquarters Company.

This airborne signal officer has previously served as a platoon leader and company executive officer for the 82nd Signal Battalion. She has also served a one-year combat tour in Afghanistan.

Jenner, a parachute rigger from Camp Hill, Penn. with prior service experience as an Air Force crew chief, serves as the ABNSOTD’s senior airdrop systems technician. She is responsible for overseeing all operational tests of parachute equipment systems, including the development, testing, validation and documentation of heavy equipment resupply testing and rigging.

In 2003, Jenner became the first female airdrop systems technician assigned to the Special Operations Command. A jumpmaster with a Bronze Star and five Meritorious Service Medals, she was promoted to Chief Warrant Officer 5 on Nov. 1, 2010, and is the first female to achieve that rank in the parachute rigger field.

Anderson, Love, Jenner and other female Soldiers and Army civilians serving with the ABNSOTD say they do not see themselves as special because of their gender but as members of a team with a proud history.

The ABNSOTD began as a service board activated in December 1944 at Camp Mackall, N.C. This service board can be traced back to the Testing and Developing Section of the Airborne Command, organized in 1942, and the original Parachute Test Platoon, which was activated in 1940.