MAJ Jaster addresses TJAGLCS students on International Women’s Day, 8 March 19. Click to enlarge.
On 8 March 2019, in honor of International Women’s Day, LTC Mary Card-Mina invited the acclaimed MAJ Lisa A. Jaster—one of the JAGWAR’s very own Advisory Board members—to address by video teleconference a diverse group of students at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School. Over the course of an hour, MAJ Jaster shared an inspiring and deeply personal account of her Ranger School triumph, and the significance of being only the third female (and first female Reservist) to graduate the Army’s toughest and most physically demanding course. In response to questions from LTC Card-Mina and some of the 30 attendees, MAJ Jaster offered guidance, encouragement, and unique perspectives on both life and her Army career.
In tackling the toughest challenges confronting Soldiers, MAJ Jaster advised students to devise concrete and attainable objectives, rather than look to more esoteric objectives for motivation.
“I knew how much significance rested on my success,” she said of being among the first women to negotiate Ranger School. “But what drove me was something much more tangible: I had shaved my head for this! I kept thinking, ‘if I don’t come back with a Tab, how will I raise my eyes in public?’ I derived a lot of strength from that.”
MAJ Jaster also shared counsel she’d received herself. “Everyone is going to think about quitting something at some point. So you have to consciously decide what your quitting criteria is advance. You have to commit to saying ‘there’s just no way I’m gonna quit unless these things happen’.”
She then listed the “quitting criteria” she’d defined for herself before attempting Ranger School: “If one of my children were to get terminally ill, or if I sustained a compound fracture in my leg. And when I reflected on what else would make me willing to go home with a shaved head and no Tab, I just couldn’t think of anything. That was it. I never wavered from that. I didn’t quit when I tore a ligament in my shoulder. I didn’t quite when I found out my dad had terminal cancer. I just didn’t quit. I had already decided what my quitting criteria were; any other reason just wasn’t worth it.”
Tragically, MAJ Jaster’s father—a 1968 Ranger School graduate himself—succumbed to his illness shortly after her graduation from Ranger School in October 2015. But not before he’d borne witness to his daughter’s history-making accomplishment, one that has unquestionably changed the hearts and minds of Soldiers throughout the Army.
“All it took was beating one dude on one ruck march one time,” she said, recounting a conversation with the Special Forces Ranger candidate she’d befriended. “I realized that my presence [at Ranger School] was beneficial to them. Not in any grandiose sense. But more like, ‘my buddies to my left and right need me. They depend on me.’ That mere fact started changing their opinions of women in the military, generally. Eventually, when they’d look at me, they were no longer seeing a woman who didn’t belong there. They were seeing a woman pushing through all the crappiness alongside them, realizing I could do it. By the end, they weren’t even seeing a woman; I was just a Soldier.”
Still, MAJ Jaster—a former cheerleading captain and ballerina—was adamant that “sticking out” wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Noting that “they wouldn’t have noticed my successes if they hadn’t noticed my failures,” MAJ Jaster described several unique characteristics of her fellow squad members that made each of them stick out equally, just in different ways. “Whether you want to be a stay at home dad or an Army General, you have to be all-in,” she said. “That sense of purpose was the only way we were exactly alike. That’s what made us a team of unique individuals.”
MAJ Jaster is known more simply as “mom” to two members of what she calls “Team Jaster”.
Long known as humanity’s preeminent leadership course, MAJ Jaster stated that Ranger School had made her a better leader. Reporting that her experience had required her to take direction from junior enlisted Soldiers, MAJ Jaster explained that “leadership is influence. It’s not based on rank, it isn’t leading from the front all the time. It’s based on trust, and the ability to influence individuals. If you can influence individuals, you can lead a team.”
Notably, towards the end of her lecture, MAJ Jaster was asked about the “transferability of Ranger training”:
“Do you think Ranger School, and your Ranger Tab, make you a better Army Engineer?”
“I don’t know that it makes me a better engineer,” she answered. “But it makes me a more credible Soldier. When I walk into a room with top-ranking generals or line Soldiers, they listen to me. I have more credibility, because we have that shared experience. In the Army, physical fitness is a base requirement; my Tab proves that I’ve attained a higher level of fitness, which allows me to join in conversations I might not get to otherwise.”
Finally, in answering what was next for her, MAJ Jaster said the that the worst thing she could do right now was be silent.
“I have a platform, and I should use it,” she said. “I’d hate to think that the hardest, scariest thing I’ll ever do is behind me.”
No matter what lies in store for her, her achievement has inspired Soldiers Army-wide to reimagine what lies in store for them.
Photo approved for publication by LTC Mary Card-Mina.
Words approved for attribution/publication by MAJ Lisa Jaster.
For more on MAJ Jaster’s graduation from the U.S. Army Ranger School: