July 22 (UPI) -- Jody Daniels has been promoted to lieutenant general and will take command of the U.S. Army Reserve, the first woman in history to occupy the post.
Daniels' promotion was approved this week by the Senate. She succeeds Lt. Gen. Charles Luckey, who'd led the reserves since 2016.
Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, said about 20 percent of reserve soldiers are women, the most of any military component.
"This is a reflection of women continuing to rise through the ranks and attain the highest level of the pyramid," he told USA Today.
Daniels has served as commanding general for the Army's 88th Readiness Division since 2018. There, she oversaw services and base operations support for more than 50,000 soldiers and 2,500 civilians. Before that, she was chief of staff to U.S. Forces Command and has served in the Army and its reserves for more than 35 years.
Daniels is the latest woman to rise to the highest ranks of military reserves. Navy Vice Adm. Robin Braun was chief of the Navy Reserve from 2012 to 2016 and Gen. Maryanne Miller was chief of the Air Force Reserve from 2016 to 2018.
Daniels' husband, John McCarthy, is a retired Army intelligence colonel. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with a degree in applied mathematics and earned master's and doctoral degrees in computer science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
