Joni Marquez grew up on a ranch in Bradley, California. She knew at a young age that she wanted to serve in the military. The pictures of her great grandfather in the Army fascinated her, and ignited a passion within her to want to serve her country. As fate would have it, shortly after attending one year at Cuesta Community College in San Luis Obispo, CA she ended up joining the military.

She joined the U.S. Air Force in September of 1998, and became a member of Security Forces (SF). After serving a few years as a fire team member, as well as an anti- terrorism team (Phoenix Ravens) member, September 11th occurred. On that tragic morning, as she sat in a briefing room and watched people jump out of the burning and crumbling twin towers, she realized that terrorism…the very thing that she was fighting, had just hit American soil. From that day forward, something inside of her shifted. She decided that she wanted to play a bigger role against the war on terror, and so she applied for an USAF scholarship in order to pursue her goal to become a USAF officer.

After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 2008 and commissioning back into the Air Force, she received the position as a Fire Control Officer (FCO) on an AC-130H gunship. She later moved on to become part of the 16th Special Operations Squadron at Cannon AFB in Clovis, NM, and deployed for two combat tours in Afghanistan. During her first tour as an FCO, she was overhead the tragic shoot down of Extortion 17 (August 6th, 2011), that killed 31 American heroes (17 members of Seal Team 6). The outcome from that tragic night changed the trajectory of her career and in February of 2016, she was medically retired from the Air Force as a Captain, due to the trauma from witnessing the shootdown of EN 17.

Joni personally battles PTSD and depression. The shoot down of Extortion 17 was a mission that forever changed her life, to the point of her changing career paths, whereby she ended up graduating from USC in the Spring of 2020 with a Master’s degree in Social Work (with a military concentration). She hopes to achieve her license in clinical therapy (LCSW) and continue to help her brothers and sisters in arms fight in the unseen battle against PTSD. She hopes to decrease the numbers of veteran suicides by creating a better resiliency program that offers more evidence based interventions/practices in order to help change the warrior’s narrative.