Life Between Titles: Career Transitions and Reinvention
25 Years at CIA and NGA. Then 13 Surgeries and a Cat Named Keith.
Liz Sherman was at her desk at CIA when the second plane hit. Her husband was inside the White House Situation Room. She couldn't get a line through. She spent 25 years in American intelligence — imagery analyst at CIA, program mission manager at ODNI, and a career at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency that included a 2009 deployment to Balad Air Base in Iraq and a final posting as National GEOINT Officer for Africa. This is the conversation about what that career cost her, and what she built when it ended. The morning of 9/11 from inside the building. The lupus she worked through and told almost nobody about. The counterterrorism conference she had to walk out of because her son had tied her daughter to a tree. The cancer diagnosis during COVID, thirteen surgeries, and the rescue cat who sat with her through all of it — and became a 501(c)3 that sends care packages to cancer patients. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Situation Room 5:33 After 9/11, it was all here 7:26 What it cost 11:08 Keith 17:36 Never alone ABOUT LIZ SHERMAN 25 years at CIA and NGA. Texas A&M class of '91 and a former reporter for The Battalion. Now Associate Professor of the Practice at the Bush School of Government & Public Service and in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M, where she built the university's geospatial intelligence certificate. Keith the Cat Foundation → https://keiththecat.org ABOUT THE SHOW Life Between Titles is where the people who ran America's hardest institutions talk honestly about what happened when the institution let them go, and what they built next. Hosted by Savan Kong — inaugural Customer Experience Officer (CXO) for the U.S. Department of Defense, former General Manager at Rebellion Defense, and Defense Digital Service alum. He has been on both sides of this. Newsletter → https://lifebetweentitles.com #CIA #Intelligence #FederalCareers
