Texan is first woman to head Naval Academy
First, Vice Adm. Yvette Davids, a San Antonio native, was the first Latina to command a U.S. Navy warship. Now she’s the first woman to head the U.S. Naval Academy.
She replaced Rear Adm. Fred Kacher, the academy’s acting superintendent, in a change-of-command ceremony on Thursday at the Naval Academy’s Memorial Hall.
“I’m so taken by this moment,” Davids said to raucous applause.
Davids previously served as acting commander of the Pacific Fleet’s Naval Surface Force; she took command of the USS Curts warship in 2008 and led the Carrier Strike Group 11 beginning in 2019.
Members of Davids’ Naval Academy graduating class attended the ceremony in Annapolis, Md., as did the Navy’s top officer, Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti, and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen. Both Franchetti and Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro also thanked Davids’ husband, Keith, who is a rear admiral.
Davids is not the first woman to head a U.S. service academy. That designation went to Lt. Gen. Michelle Johnson, who became superintendent of the Air Force Academy in 2013 and held the job for several years.
Davids is the 65th superintendent of the academy, created in 1845, 20 years after then-president John Quincy Adams asked Congress to establish it “for the formation of scientific and accomplished officers.” The Naval School, as it was originally called, was established Oct. 10, 1845, without congressional funding at Fort Severn, a 10-acre Army post in Annapolis. It had a firstyear class of 50 midshipmen and seven professors, and a curriculum that included mathematics, navigation, gunnery, chemistry, English, natural philosophy and French.
The Naval School became the U.S. Naval Academy in 1850, and Congress authorized it to award bachelor of science degrees in 1933.
Davids graduated from the academy in 1989, earning a bachelor’s degree in oceanography. She also holds master’s degrees in national security and strategic studies and national resource strategy.
She spent her career in the surface fleet, commanding the Curts, deploying to the western Pacific and Arabian Gulf in support of the Afghan and Iraq wars, and later commanded USS Bunker Hill, serving as air defense commander for the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group.
Davids, who grew up in a military family and is the mother of twins, saluted her fellow female classmates in the academy class of 1989.
“You are an amazing source of strength and power,” she said, noting the presence of women in the audience who graduated in West Point’s class of ’89. “Today we celebrate our similar paths and achievements.” When Davids graduated from the academy, she was one of 94 women in a class of 1,064. Her journey began with her father, retired Army Col. Bill Gonzalez, serving as a doctor in the military for 27 years.
“He met my incredible mother, Magda, while serving with the 8th Special Forces in Panama. She was a translator for the Army back then when their romance began and was an incredibly supportive Army spouse,” Davids said. “My siblings and I, we shared an adventurous upbringing in the Army and were instilled with the values of service, duty and honor very early on.
“As you can imagine, this has made for a lifetime of very spirited Army-navy games,” she joked.