Brig. Gen. Brenda Cartier is a retired Air Force special operator and the former director of operations for headquarters, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), and director of operations and communications for headquarters, Air Education and Training Command (AETC).

As the AFSOC director of operations, she was responsible for 20,000 aviators and 280 aircraft providing special operations combat airpower globally. As the AETC director of operations and communications, she was responsible for the world’s largest training organization, providing training for over 300,000 Air Force, joint, and international personnel at 65 Air Force and Department of Defense locations and provided strategic vision, policy, guidance, and advocacy to build, operate, secure, defend, and extend the Air Force portion of the Department of Defense global network.

She has commanded at multiple levels and held various positions on major command and combatant command staffs, as well as the Joint Staff. She is a command navigator with more than 4,000 flying hours, including five deployments and two command tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, she was a national security affairs fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California.