#VeteranOfTheDay Air Force Veteran Ashley Dent

Today’s #VeteranOfTheDay is Air Force Veteran Ashley Dent, who served as an aviation resource manager from 2010 to 2019.

Ashley Dent served in the Air Force from 2010 to 2019. She spent much of her time as an aviation resource manager, coordinating flight missions. Dent served at Air Force bases across the U.S. and the world during her decade of service.

Her first assignment was at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, with the 33rd Rescue Squadron. She followed this with overseas assignments from 2010 to 2011 in Korea, Afghanistan and Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Stateside, she worked at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2012 to 2014; Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska in 2015; and MacDill Air Force Base in Florida from 2014 to 2018, where she was the team leader for the base’s honor guard team. She ended her service at Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base in New York, serving there from 2018 to 2019.

Dent deployed twice to support operations in the Middle East. From January to June 2011, Dent deployed to Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom. From September 2016 to March 2017, Dent deployed to Turkey to support Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.’s anti-terrorism campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

While in the Air Force, Dent was also a sexual assault victim advocate and Green Dot instructor, training service members to reduce interpersonal, sexual and domestic violence as well as suicide. Dent left the Air Force in 2019 with the rank of staff sergeant. She received an Air Force Achievement Medal for her service.

After her Air Force service, Dent has kept busy pursuing education and advocating for women and Veterans. Soon after leaving the Air Force, she earned an esthetician license from the Aveda Institute. In 2020, she received a bachelor of fine arts in advertising, public relations and technology from the New York Institute of Technology, where she was also recognized for her contributions to the minority community on campus with the 2020 Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award. She is now pursuing a master’s degree in media management at The New School in New York City. She hopes to establish a nonprofit organization for women and women Veterans impacted by violence and combat-related illnesses.

Thank you for your service!

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Contributors

Writer: Nolan Lounsbery

Editors: Annabelle Colton and Julia Pack

Fact checker: Timothy Georgetti

Graphic artist: Kiki Kelley