PHOENIX — Gov. Doug Ducey today named retired Col. Wanda Wright to be the first woman to head the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services.
In that position Wright will be responsible for the operation of two nursing homes, two cemeteries and about three dozen counselors who help the state’s 600,000 veterans navigate a system of federal benefits. Her appointment is subject to Senate confirmation.
Wright said she is not expecting there to be any kickback from the fact that she is not only a woman, but also a woman of color.
She said she was always interested in the military as her father, a veteran of the Vietnam war, wanted her to go to West Point. But Wright said she decided to attend the Air Force Academy because they had a much better program in the sciences.
Wright said she never was hassled there. She acknowledged, though, she was not breaking new ground.
“By the time that I got there, there had been four classes of women,” she said.
“While I was there, I don’t recall ever experiencing any additional issues because I was a girl,” Wright recalled.
She said there were no problems while she was in active duty with the Air Force or afterward, when she joined the National Guard, first on a part-time basis while working at Hughes Missile Systems Group and later when she went to work full time for the Air National Guard at the 162nd Fighter Wing at Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
She became executive officer for that command in 2000 and director of staff for the Arizona Air National Guard in 2005.
After retiring as a full colonel, she now is vice principal at the Montessori Academy in Paradise Valley.
Wright said she is still learning about the Department of Veterans’ Services. But she has some ideas of what she’d like to do.
“I see the agency as a place to collaborate with all the veterans, from World War II all the way to our current veterans, “and even maybe an emphasis on women.”
And Wright said she is not taking the job with any preconceived idea of what will be her priorities.
“Because I’m new, I’m running in fresh and ready to listen and hopefully to hear what they need from me,” she said.
The agency has been through a series of directors.
Wright will replace Ted Vogt, who Ducey tapped to be his director of operations.
