Marie Shadden hails from Oakland, California. Off to an early start, she received SF Bay Area recognition as newspaper editor at her high school in Danville. Marie graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in Criminology and earned a Master of Public Administration, Criminal Justice degree from Golden Gate University, SF. One of the first women officers in the USAF security forces field, she became a unit commander and Chief of Security Police at Luke AFB in Maricopa County and later an associate professor of Aerospace Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. A LtCol, she left the military in 1992 and began a second career employed by consulting firms as a subject matter expert in victim assistance, training development, and physical security, for federal agencies, state police, and the water industry. She is enrolled in the Who’s Who of American Women and recently received the Air Force Security Forces Hall of Fame medallion.

Marie returned to Arizona in 2017 and lives in Chandler where she is active with the AFSFA as Board Secretary, her church, and the American Legion Post 39 (Gilbert) and Media Alliance. She is a member of the Alliance of Literary Writers and Yammering Scribes (ALWAYS,) Arizona Authors Association (AAA,) Southwest Writers Association (SWWA,) and, the ASU Veteran’s Writer Circle at the Virginia Piper Center on the Tempe campus.