SPEAKER:
Major General (retired) Laura L. Yeager
Prior to retiring in June 2022 after 36 years of service, Major General Laura L. Yeager served in command of both the California Army National Guard and the 40th Infantry Division for three years.
Major General Yeager’s active military service began in May of 1986 after graduating from UC Irvine and receiving her commission as a Distinguished Military Graduate from the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at the California State University, Long Beach. From that point forward, she served in a variety of positions of increasing responsibility as a Medical Service Corps officer and later as an Aviation Officer. While attending Initial Entry Rotary Wing training at Fort Rucker, now Fort Novosel, Alabama, she not only fulfilled her goal of becoming an aeromedical evacuation pilot, she met and married her husband Curtis, also an aeromedical evacuation pilot.
Service in the Army led her and her family to live in many different places, six relocations within their first fifteen years of marriage, which was exciting and interesting, but they were happy to settle down in California in 2005 when she assumed a full-time position in the California National Guard. Service in
the National Guard brought stability, the ability to continue flying helicopters, and offered fulfilling experiences such as supporting the state during emergency flood and wildland fire operations. From 2010 to 2011, she deployed to Iraq as the Deputy Commander of the 40th Combat Aviation Brigade and assumed command of the Brigade shortly after their return.
In 2017, she was selected to command Joint Task Force North and spent the next nearly two years at Fort Bliss working with partners from among active-duty forces, Reserve and National Guard components, and the nation's law enforcement agencies to combat drug trafficking and transnational organized crime along the nation’s Southern borders.
She is grateful to the Army for the support which enable her obtain two additional degrees, a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and a Master’s degree in Strategic Studies; for assignments which were challenging, interesting and included travel around the world; and most of all, for the opportunity
to serve with an incredibly talented, diverse and dedicated workforce.
She will continue to serve in a part-time status for the Department of the Army as a mentor and pursue additional volunteer activities while reserving ample time for reading, cooking/eating, exercise, travel and spending time with her and Curtis’ grown sons and grandchildren.
