Major General Linda L. Singh

Military officer Major General Linda L. Singh was born on May 9, 1964 in Onley, Maryland to Eleanor Ireland and Herbert Lee Willis. She received her B.S. degree in business administration in 1994 from Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland; her M.B.A. degree in business administration in 2004 from Touro University International in Chandler, Arizona; her M.S. degree in strategic studies in 2008 from the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and her Ph.D. degree in industrial and organizational psychology in 2019 from Capella University in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Singh enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard in 1981 as a radar repairer, where she served as an enlisted soldier for eleven years. She received her officer’s commission in 1994 at the Maryland Military Academy Officer Candidate School in Reisterstown, Maryland where she worked as a maintenance control officer, Maintenance Company, 729th Forward Support Battalion in Hagerstown, Maryland. In 1995, Singh was hired as a managing director at Accenture in Hyattsville, Maryland, where she managed the firm’s operations for its health and public service units. She held successive senior rank positions in the Maryland National Guard before being promoted to battalion commander for the 581st Readiness Battalion in Glen Arm, Maryland in 2002. In 2005, Singh became the business operations lead at Accenture; and, in 2006, Singh was deployed to Kosovo with the 29th Infantry Division as an assistant chief of staff for logistics. As a newly commissioned colonel, Singh was sent to Afghanistan in 2011 to lead operations and coordination between the 29th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army and the Afghan security forces. She returned from her combat tour in 2012 as the director of joint staff at Camp Fretterd Military Reservation in Reisterstown, Maryland. The following year, she was promoted to brigadier general and commander of the Maryland Army National Guard. Singh founded her consultancy business, Kaleidoscope Affect LLC, in 2014. In 2015, she was then named by Governor Larry Hogan as the twenty-ninth adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard, becoming the first woman and the first African American to hold this position in the state of Maryland Singh left Accenture in 2016 and retired from the Maryland Army National Guard at the rank of major general in 2019.

Singh has been awarded the U.S. Army Legion of Merit; the Bronze Star Medal; the Army Commendation Medal; the Army Achievement Medal; the Meritorious Service Medal; and the Maryland Distinguished Service Cross. She was inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame in 2015 and the Army Women’s Foundation Hall of Fame in 2021. She received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 2015 and was named to the Network Journal’s list of 25 Influential Black Women in Business in 2014. In 2022, the Maryland National Guard’s Freedom Readiness Center in Sykesville, Maryland was re-named the Major General Linda L. Singh Readiness Center in her honor.

Major General Linda L. Singh was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on January 27, 2023.