Monica Herrera is the Women, Peace & Security (WPS) Curriculum Developer at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command where she leads efforts to mainstream gender perspectives into training and education and supports command-wide WPS implementation. She is a certified Gender Advisor (GENAD) and subject matter expert on Gender in Military Operations. She is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, where she serves as an information operations officer and political affairs strategist.

She previously served 12 years on active duty, most recently as a Foreign Area Officer and Australia Country Director at Pacific Air Forces. At this assignment, she also served for three years as the WPS Program Director for the command. As part of this collateral duty, she established and led the Headquarters program, to include developing strategic goals, directing implementation, and monitoring and evaluating the command’s WPS activities for annual Congressional reports.

Monica was also a Mansfield Fellow in Japan from 2015-2016 where she worked at placements within the Government of Japan, including at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Education, and the National Institute for Defense Studies. During this time, she contributed to Japan’s first National Action Plan on WPS and authored policy research focused on bilateral defense cooperation on WPS. She also participated in a two-month internship with former Minister of Defense and current Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.

Monica started her career as a Behavioral Scientist. She has held assignments teaching in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Air Force Academy and conducting research on human performance optimization at the Air Force Research Laboratory. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Mansfield Foundation. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from Rutgers University and a B.S. in Behavioral Science with Japanese minor from the United States Air Force Academy.