Maritza Sáenz Ryan is a United States Army Officer and the head of the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy. Ryan is the first woman and first Hispanic West Point graduate to serve as an academic department head. Sáenz Ryan is also responsible for raising awareness to the inequity and impracticality of the Combat Exclusion Policy which restricts women’s roles and opportunities in the military regardless of talent or ability. Maritza Sáenz Ryan was born in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and a Spanish mother. She received her primary and secondary education in New York City. In the late 1970’s she was accepted into the United States Military Academy, also known as West Point located in New York. There she would met Robert Ryan, whom she would later marry and have two children with. She graduated in 1982 and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Field Artillery. Sáenz Ryan was a member of only the third class to include women cadets into its program. Sáenz Ryan first assignment was with the 1st Armored Division Artillery in Nuremberg, West Germany. When she returned to the United States, she participated in the United States Army’s Funded Legal Education Program, a program in which she was able to attend law school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. After earning her law degree, she was selected for the Order of Coif, an honor society for United States law school graduates, and in 1988 she was admitted to the New York State Bar Association. She was then reassigned to the Judge Advocate General’s Corps as a trail counsel at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Sáenz Ryan was promoted to the rank of Captain and later deployed overseas during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm where she was assigned as the brigade legal counsel for a Field Artillery brigade. When her deployment was over and returned to the United States, she earned her master’s degree in Law from the Judge Advocate General’s School in Charleston, Virginia. While attending the Command and General Staff College, doctors had found and removed a cancerous tumor from her leg. She recovered and continued with her active duty with the Army. In 2001, Sáenz Ryan applied for a position as an Academy professor at West Point. She was appointed Deputy Head, Department of Law, at the West Point. After accepting the presidential nomination and being confirmed by Congress, Sáenz Ryan was named head of the Department of Law at the United States Military Academy in 2006. Sáenz Ryan has the distinction of being the most senior-ranking Hispanic Judge Advocate and has been instrumental in raising awareness for the inequality and impractically of the Combat Exclusion Policy, which restricts women’s roles and opportunities in the military regardless of talent or ability. In 2008, the West Point Center for the Rule of Law was established under her leadership.

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