Julia Pierson

Julia Pierson (born c. 1959, Orlando, Florida, U.S.) is an American law-enforcement professional who became the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. Secret Service before serving as the 23rd—and first female—director of that agency in 2013–14.

As a teenager in Orlando, Florida, Pierson worked at the Disney World theme park—as a parking-lot attendant, a watercraft attendant, and even a costumed character. She joined the local branch of the Law Enforcement Exploring program, a coed educational initiative affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, and eventually came into contact with several Secret Service agents, who piqued her interest in pursuing a career with the agency. Pierson continued her involvement with law enforcement at the University of Central Florida (in Orlando), from which she received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice in 1981. She joined the Orlando police force in 1980, while still a student, and remained with the force for three years. During that time she gained respect not only as one of the first women to be assigned a beat but also for her exceptional capacity to resolve volatile confrontations nonviolently.

In 1983 Pierson left the Orlando police force for a post with the Secret Service at the agency’s Miami office, and over the next two and a half decades, she rapidly ascended the ranks within the organization. In 1985 she was reassigned to the Orlando office, where she remained until 1988. That year she transferred to the Presidential Protective Division, in Washington, D.C., and was subsequently assigned to the security detail of Pres. George H.W. Bush. Pierson left that division to serve as drug enforcement coordinator in 1992 but returned in 1995 to manage the agency’s protective operations worldwide. The following year she took an upper-level administrative post in the Office of Protective Operations but was soon transferred back to Florida as the assistant special agent in charge of the Tampa field office. In that capacity she oversaw both the protective and the investigative activities of the western part of the state and set up a task force to track and research cybercrimes. Pierson again returned to the Office of Protective Operations in 2000, this time as the special agent in charge. After a stint in 2001–05 as the deputy assistant director in the Office of Administration, where she managed five divisions of the Secret Service and some 350 employees, she went back to the Office of Protective Operations to supervise the presidential and vice presidential protective details, the Special Services Division, and the budget for about 1,200 staff members. In 2006–08 she served as the assistant director of the agency’s Office of Human Resources and Training, and in 2008 she became the chief of staff under then director Mark Sullivan.

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In 2012 the Secret Service was rocked by scandal when several agents arranging security for a visit by Pres. Barack Obama to Cartagena, Colombia, not only took prostitutes to their hotel rooms but got into a dispute over the charges. The incident underscored the male-oriented culture of the agency and ultimately led to the resignation of Sullivan. In 2013 Obama installed Pierson as the new director of the agency, a move widely interpreted as an effort to both temper the machismo of the agency and rectify its tainted reputation following the Cartagena affair. In addition to her duties as director, Pierson agreed to chair the organization that originally drew her to the Secret Service, the National Law Enforcement Exploring program. Following a series of security lapses, however, she resigned as head of the Secret Service in October 2014.