Good Night Captain Mama: Buenas Noches Capitán Mamá

Ms. Tiscareño-Sato was honored by The White House as a Woman Military Veteran Leader Champion of Change in March 2014. Details are here: http://www.gracefullyglobal.com/index.php?page=white-house-champion-of-change. Her Congressman gave a moving tribute to her life and work here: http://bit.ly/1j98AWX.

 Graciela Tiscareño-Sato is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, School of Environmental Design, where she earned a degree in Environmental Design/Architecture while completing the Aerospace Studies program as an AFROTC (Air Force Reserve Officer Training Program) scholarship cadet. She was commissioned as a Distinguish Graduate and second lieutenant atop the Campanile on the Berkeley campus. 

After Berkeley, she joined the active duty Air Force and completed Undergraduate Navigator Training at Mather Air Force Base (AFB) in Sacramento. She graduated in the top 15% of her class of 25 students as the only woman in the class. She then trained in the KC-135R refueling tanker at Castle AFB in California before reporting into the 43rd Air Refueling Squadron at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, Washington. 

Her first deployment was to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. On that trip, she was a member of one of the first few aircrews to patrol and enforce the Southern NO FLY Zone in Southern Iraq after the conclusion of Operation Desert Storm. Flying two or three combat sorties a day over and near the city of Baghdad to prevent Saddam Hussein’s air forces from targeting Iraqi civilians earned her crew the prestigious Air Medal. 

During her military career, Graciela lived on or visited four continents and flew for thousands of hours. As an instructor, she taught GPS systems, navigation systems and more in the classroom and in the cockpit. Her favorite rendezvous for refueling was with the SR-71 Blackbird as it came out of its high-altitude missions over the Earth at supersonic speeds. She was one of very few women that served on the NATO Battlestaff in Vicenza, Italy during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Later she led a multi-service group of communications technicians at the U.S. Embassy in Quito, Ecuador in counter-narcotics operations. 

Her last mission abroad was planning and leading a two-week CAPSTONE mission to Asia Pacific theater to introduce newly – minted generals to their new posts in Malaysia, Korea, Singapore, Hawaii, Okinawa, Japan and more. She spent almost ten years on active duty as a navigator and instructor, eventually also becoming a wing contingency planning officer. During her active duty service, she earned a Master degree in International Management from Whitworth University in Washington. She speaks English and Spanish fluently. 

Graciela is the Founder of niche publishing, marketing and communications firm, Gracefully Global Group, LLC [http://www.gracefullyglobal.com/]. She is the author of the award-winning book Latinnovating: Green American Jobs and the Latinos Creating Them, which highlights Hispanic entrepreneurs innovating in the green economy. In between military service and entrepreneurship, she spent nine years in global marketing roles at Siemens, where she applied her military career lessons in a global, multicultural, corporate environment. Her thought leadership pieces have published in the U.S. and Europe including American Careers, Huffington Post, Fox News, Hispanic MBA, Communications News and many other publications.

Graciela is a sought-after speaker on entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership, personal branding and the "STEM of Aviation." She speaks to a wide variety of audiences ranging from young children to corporate professionals and university students. As a key team member of the Silicon Valley Latino Leadership Summit held annually at Stanford University, Graciela actively mentors students needing education and career roadmaps. LATINAStyle Magazine named her “Entrepreneur of the Year” in Washington D.C. in 2010.  After winning three awards at the International Latino Book Awards in New York for Latinnovating, she’s excited to finally publish her first children’s book, the first in a planned bilingual aviation travel adventure series. 

Graciela recently began to offer book-birthing services to aspiring authors of either non-fiction books for young adults or children's literature. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. 

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Linda Lens first found her passion for art as a small child with her grandmother, Donna. She made art her passion since her first thunderstorm. Finding her talent, she has never stopped drawing. From crayons to oil paint, Linda has played with it all.

The daughter of Air Force veteran Alberto Lens, Linda and her sister enjoyed visiting the library with their mother to check out too many children's books. The beautiful illustrations and colors always fascinated Linda. From early on, one of her dreams was to become a children's book illustrator. Her love for capturing human expression followed her throughout college. She earned a degree in Studio Art, specializing in portraiture, from California State University in Hayward.

One of Linda's favorite quotes is from the author Tom Robbins, who says “The purpose of art is to provide what life does not.”

She lives with her children and Cleo the black cat and two dogs, Shadow and Merlyn, somewhere near the ocean.