Women in Business Conference
USCG captain tells tales of women leaders amid natural disasters, world affairs, virtual preschool
OCEAN CITY — U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Kate Higgins-Bloom credits the “power of the pack” with giving women “courage to do what you don’t think you can do.”
Higgins-Bloom, deputy commander of U.S. Coast Guard Sector Delaware Bay, was the keynote speaker March 8 at the Women in Business Conference at the Flanders Hotel hosted by the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce.
Higgins-Bloom has an impressive resume that includes more than 22 years in the service. She currently leads about 1,000 active-duty, reserve and civilian personnel across 17 field units.
Sector Delaware Bay is responsible for all Coast Guard missions, ranging from search and rescue to securing a marine transportation system that contributes more than $88 billion annually to the U.S. economy across much of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and all of Delaware out to 200 miles offshore.
Higgins-Bloom has had a varied career, dealing with people from frontline responders to national-level policy advisers. As a White House fellow in the Executive Office of the President, she built a national public/private partnerships to overcome veterans employment and mental health challenges.
She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and their two young children.
Higgins-Bloom said there were two reasons why she thought it was important to speak at the event.
“The Cape May community is such an amazing Coast Guard partner and anything I can do to help foster that relationship with our partners, I’m here for it,” Higgins-Bloom said. “Second, as women accomplishers, we really have a responsibility to work with others to make sure the opportunities that were available to me are available to everybody.”
She said she had a chance to participate in a women’s entrepreneurship event while working at the White House and really enjoyed it.
“I have to tell you, being in the military for 22 years, you don’t see a lot of hugging and crying at the events I go to normally, but it was so inspirational to see it and the energy. I have a soft spot for these entrepreneurs and the passion and risk-taking that they face,” Higgins-Bloom said.
Addressing the gathering, she said she was really excited to be there.
“Cape May is just such an important part of the Coast Guard community; it’s one of our homes,” she said. “Cape May Boot is where the Coast Guard enlisted force is ‘born,’ so anything I can do to be part of that community is just an honor, and to be with this group of amazing women is even better.”
The only woman
Higgins-Bloom said that while preparing to speak on the topic of power of the pack, she thought of the somewhat rare times when she collaborated with other women — “For many parts of my career, I was the only woman.”
She shared three anecdotes that spanned her career, starting with Ensign Kate Higgins’ first day aboard her first ship, Coast Guard Cutter Bear in Portsmouth, Va.
“They had never had women on board, so when I showed up, the watch stander wouldn’t let me on the ship. He was convinced I was wrong and he was right. He was like, ‘No, ma’am, I am saving you from yourself. You belong on the other ship over there.’ And, so, I was a little late for my check-in but that was all right,” she said. “I was really eager to make a good impression. I was the first woman — I felt like I represented all women to this crew of about 100 people.”
She explained that her duty that day involved what was called the battle wagon, a container rigged to look like the inside of a ship. It was flooded with sea water and her team was charged with getting inside and plugging any leaks.
“Of course, my reaction was, ‘It sounds really cold.’ But I have to do it, I can’t show up and not do it. So, I grabbed the coveralls that had been issued to me, and they were enormous. I am not a tall person — I am wearing very tall shoes right now — but I figured if this is what I’ve got, I’m going to put it on.”
So, she put on the coveralls and “looked ridiculous, but figured it was better to be in it than not.”
As she was leaving her stateroom, “our grumpy old supply officer comes out. He has been in the Coast Guard for about 100 years and generally dislikes ensigns as a species. But even then he knew, because I was part of his pack as an officer, somebody running the ship, that I looked ridiculous. And despite the fact that he didn’t know me and generally didn’t like me, he stopped me and said, ‘I can’t let you go out there looking like that.’”
Higgins-Bloom said the supply officer “pulled from the deep, dark bowels some World War II surplus set of coveralls that were my size and I was able to go out there and do my job and be professional and ultimately go on to have an awesome tour.”
Her point was that “sometimes the people in your pack are the people you least expect. You don’t all have to like each other but you do have to have the same mission and the same goals and respect.”
Eventually, she said, she worked her way into the supply officer’s heart and he made some exceptions.
Higgins-Bloom had advanced far past her ensign days when, in 2006, she joined Adm. Thad Allen in Louisiana, where they were tasked with facilitating the recovery of the Gulf Coast following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
“I had just finished about four years at sea as a counter-narcotics officer on two different ships, mostly in the Caribbean, South and Central America. The stuff I knew about emergency management would take less than 5 second to transmit,” she said.
They set up land-based headquarters in an abandoned department store in Baton Rouge. She said their office was in men’s shirts and they put the public affairs officers in lingerie — “we thought that was really funny.”
“It was so exciting to be part of something that was so overwhelming. Really nobody had a playbook for what to do. But there were women around me — one from FEMA, one from Homeland Security — and we were all just sort of in it together,” she said, noting her duties involved “everything from setting up shelters to figuring out how to get dead chickens out of the road — whatever needed to be done that day is what I was going to do.”
Among the challenges was they didn’t have anywhere for the military and civilian responders to live. She said one of her jobs was “sweet-talking our way into the LSU alumni hotel.”
“There I wound up sharing a room with those women I found in airport terminals and command centers. They became my pack there and we’re still friends today,” she said. “The power of the pack gives you courage to do what you don’t think you can do.”
Her final tale was much more recent. During the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she was promoted to captain, she also was the mother of a 6- and 3-year-old.
“I think most everybody here knows what that was like — the concept of virtual preschool, that alone almost made me give up,” she said. “At the same time, I had finally gotten to this dream job.”
She was working for a three-star admiral on things such as competition with China, the Arctic and talent-management issues.
“I was working on big ideas at the same time that the social contract that we had pretty much fell apart. Our entire lives are based on this concept that I can send my kids to school, that there would be sports activities after school,” she said.
Higgins-Bloom said there were some women in her office whom she “didn’t necessarily get along with,” possibly due to her “very energetic approach to things.”
“During that pandemic, we really came together to support each other,” she said, noting she wound up bringing her 3-year-old into the office every day so she could get her job done.
“If you ask him, he worked at Coast Guard headquarters. When I got promoted, he came to my ceremony and he knew as many people as I did,” Higgins-Bloom said.
It quickly became obvious that despite their best efforts, men were not carrying the same load as women regarding child care.
“That was when I realized that, as much as I wanted to focus just on being operational and doing my job, that it was time for me now as somebody who had a little bit of a voice, a little more influence than some of the other women in our office, was to become their advocate,” she said, noting it was the next phase of the power of the pack for her.
“We have a responsibility, once you’re in a position where you can make change, even if you would rather just do your job, we really do need to take care of each other and reach down and lift and advocate for them so they can pursue their dreams,” she said. “As uncomfortable as it was, I went on the war path and got the day care reopened. It was not fun but it got done and made everybody’s life so much better.”
She urged those in attendance to become a leader of the pack.
“Don’t miss the transition but seize it and use it as an opportunity to help others,” Higgins-Bloom said.
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
