Rebekah Edmondson

As an enlisted member in the United States Army, Rebekah Edmondson spent nearly three out of 10 years of service deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. In 2011, she was selected for the Joint Special Operations Command’s Cultural Support Team, a program that paved the way for the integration of women serving in combat. Between 2012 to 2016, she worked alongside the 75th Ranger Regiment, conducting direct-action night raids, and trained Afghan women to serve in a special operations partner-military unit known as the Female Tactical Platoon.
 
Rebekah began her service as Program Manager for the Afghan Rescue and Resettlement Program in October 2021, shortly after the US-led evacuation of at-risk Afghans, which included 43 women of the Female Tactical Platoon. With the tremendous support of some key leaders, she and her former colleagues helped the women flee Afghanistan and come to the United States, but many challenges were yet to come. 
 
Thanks to generous donors and with the help of an all-volunteer force known as the ‘Sisters of Service,’ Rebekah began working to address the individual needs of the 43 women. She never imagined finding work as rewarding as her service in Afghanistan and was pleased to discover a new mission championing military heroes through the PenFed Foundation.