Photo By Joseph Bullinger | Charleston, SC (January 28, 2026) Ashlee Landreth, left, Expeditionary Warfare...... read more read more
Engineering was likely Ashlee Hoenshel Landreth’s future all along. In her Pittsburgh childhood, it was simply assumed. “In my family, it was doctor, lawyer or engineer,” she says.
Her grandfather, Merle Marsh, worked at Westinghouse, followed by her parents. Though not in a technical field there, her grandfather saw firsthand the value engineers brought to an organization and instilled in young Ashlee a quiet conviction that math and science could lead to a fulfilling life.
He probably knew a gift of grit wouldn’t hurt, either—traits that serve her well many years later now at Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic, where she leads over 600 military engineers, program managers, scientists and technical support staff as head of the command’s Expeditionary Warfare Department in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ashlee got her start in western Pennsylvania, excelling in math as a child. She liked numbers, just like her parents did, who both worked in finance fields at Westinghouse. Ashlee was a natural who took after her Mom, an auditor and tax whiz whom Ashlee always admired for her ability to balance professional career and motherhood.
Thrilled about her good grades, Ashlee’s grandfather beamed with pride. The two had a special connection. But Ashlee would be forced to leave him in the middle of grade school, when Westinghouse began consolidating and her parents were transferred out of the Steel City to work at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina.
Leaving behind the crisp, bustling autumns of Pennsylvania apple-picking and holiday shopping for the warm, languid, slow-motion pace of South Carolina was a tough adjustment. “It’s funny, because I’ve fallen completely in love with the South,” she says. “But, at the time, I didn’t want the change. I loved Pennsylvania. I loved spending time with my grandparents. Out of my family, I probably took the move the hardest.”
Along with her older brother and sister, Ashlee attended Aiken public schools. At the Savannah River Site, her parents worked in finance fields alongside nuclear engineers. At the dinner table, nuclear energy was the topic of conversation. “Why can’t we ever just talk about college football like other families,” she often griped.
When she was only 11, Ashlee’s father passed unexpectedly. The tragedy led her to spend entire summer breaks in Pennsylvania with friends, cousins and extended family. Most importantly, the loss drew Ashlee and her grandfather even closer. At an age that she was vulnerable to wander or veer off course, Ashlee looked to her grandfather to make sense of things. She says he provided a welcomed feeling of home away from home. “It was every summer break, Christmas break, spring break—every chance I could get, I went up there.”
Ashlee calls those times in Pittsburgh special, especially sitting at her grandfather’s side listening to stories from his time as an aviator in the Air Force. She said he eventually received a medical discharge after breaking his neck serving in Germany. Yet his aptitude for rarely complaining about the misfortune and the long recovery afterwards left her astonished and with an even deeper appreciation for one of her favorite role models.
Ashlee’s mother eventually remarried, and her new stepdad swooped in to spoil her and win her heart. Ron was a technical manager who also worked at Savannah River Site. Ashlee says he was a good stepfather who sought to be there for her. He travelled all over to watch her play sports, helped her study, woke her up for school and never said no to a shopping adventure. She says it gave her comfort to know he loved her like her own father.
Happy Valley
After earning her degree in electrical engineering from the University of South Carolina, Ashlee received an academic scholarship to pursue her master’s in the same field at Penn State.
When she arrived on what classmates called the “little campus in happy valley,” Ashlee said it was cold—colder than she remembered Pennsylvania. Aside from the punishing climate, culturally, she felt adrift, too. Beach days were a thing of the past. Her new pastime was college football in jeans and a sweatshirt.
Not knowing a soul at Penn State was the clincher. She had to drive over three hours to her grandparents’ house, sometimes through blinding snowstorms, for a warm hug and a home cooked meal. They usually filled her gas tank, too.
Despite the changing environment, Ashlee says she loved Penn State. It was an excellent engineering school teeming with academic rigor. Just as important, she would spend almost every weekend with her grandparents, cherishing those special and tender moments of her grandfather’s twilight years.
At Penn State, she became a teaching assistant, presenting electronics to hundreds of engineering undergrads. Ashlee’s clear-cut, impartial and quickly relatable approach earned her rave reviews on teacher feedback forms.
For her specialization, she selected antenna theory. Her thesis focused on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) antennas. Her work was sponsored by a professor who had a funding contract with a retail megastore to research RFID technology and the feasibility of using it to tag and track products for inventory control.
Airplane Girl
In her final year of grad school, Ashlee accepted an engineering position with an aerospace company in Orlando, Florida. But before graduating, Penn State put her on a plane for Hawaii in June 2007 to present her research findings at a conference—with a short layover at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
In Arizona, her connecting flight was cancelled. Ashlee says she was waiting in line at the terminal for airline accommodations when she noticed a woman in front of her obviously upset over the cancellation. The soon-to-be grad student smiled, relaxed, not stressed at all over the inconvenience—the opposite of Odette Foore, a NIWC Atlantic employee who was heading to a Marine Corps technology experimentation event in Hawaii and needed to be there “yesterday.”
Odette, Ashlee later learned, was also one of NIWC Atlantic’s top recruiters. “You do not want to live in Orlando,” she told Ashlee, after small talk. “Send me your resume tomorrow and I will forward it to our leadership. I want it in my inbox by Monday.”
By the time Ashlee made it to Hawaii, she was focused on her speaking engagement, and Odette never did receive that resume. Several days later, however, Odette says she received a surprise on her way home at the terminal. “And here comes little Ashlee Hoenshel, walking up to the same plane that I was getting on. I yelled, ‘Where’s my resume!!??’”
Ashlee felt like fate prevailed and quickly sent it. Odette says she routed it to the right technical managers. They soon called Odette back with their decision to proceed. “We are getting ready to interview ‘airplane girl’ now.”
From that day on, Ashlee would routinely thank Odette for believing in her, saying she wouldn’t even be at NIWC Atlantic if it wasn’t for her. “Oh, you’re right! I won’t even be humble about that one,” Odette says.
A Return to the South
After graduating from Penn State with a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Ashlee was excited to return to the South, especially since the Navy lab hiring her was located in the Holy City. “Charleston was and is a dream city to live in, as close to a fairytale that I’ve ever seen,” she says.
Within a year, she met someone locally at a church fellowship night. He was a submariner, based at the nearby Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. Ashlee’s fun-loving personality drew him in. A shared passion for distance running kept them chatting. But it was something deeper that really sealed the couple’s fate. “In the first few weeks of us dating,” says James Landreth, whom she married in 2010, “I understood that Ashlee had a clear vision for her life, an organized set of guiding principles and a plan to make a difference in the world. I wanted to be a part of that world.”
As the girlfriend of a nuke and an employee with the Department of the Navy, Ashlee knew her bonds of patriotism and a sense of duty-to-country would grow only stronger each day. The values instilled by her late grandfather compounded matters, often compelling her to wish she had joined the military herself.
More than 15 years and four beautiful children later, she still wonders from time to time. “I love the way my life turned out. But I would have loved to have been in the military and for that to have been a part of my life.”
Even so, sacrifice has been unquestionably a part of her life. As a military spouse, Ashlee has raised children through five submarine deployments, years of shiftwork, two U.S. Navy Reserve mobilizations and many travel assignments. This is the part of Ashlee’s story that her husband, now a reservist commander who leads the submarine integration division at NIWC Atlantic, gladly shares. “She’s an incredible Mom to our four children,” James says. “Our neighbors and friends are always amazed. They don’t understand how she does it all.”
Ever since onboarding in 2007, Ashlee has worked within the command’s Expeditionary Warfare Department, which is responsible for designing, developing and delivering information warfare capabilities to some of the Joint Force’s most elite expeditionary warfighters, predominantly the Marines. She spent the first decade of her time supporting U.S. Special Operations Command.
Even while navigating the complex, often baffling world of military acquisitions and engineering, Ashlee managed to earn an MBA from the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, which propelled her career to higher levels of technical management.
When she’s not engrossed in her demanding job, Ashlee is out running local races, enjoying Charleston events, or just ensuring her kids arrive to their activities on time. She is a strong proponent of youth sports and an active volunteer at her children’s schools, especially when imparting the values of critical thinking and how science, technology, engineering and math can lead to working in innovative fields that make a tangible and positive impact in the world.
Ashlee says she sometimes misses the North, the scenic and familiar pace of driving up and down snow-dusted hills, hearing the distant clangs of Pennsylvania industry made by generations that toiled in mines, steel mills and factories. But something drove Ashlee toward the life she now lives, one dedicated to the very things her grandfather held most dear: service, duty and the unwavering pursuit of progress.
“I love my family and my job, and the people I work with that feel like family,” Ashlee says. “I am so grateful for the people who have believed in me and encouraged me to keep progressing, especially my Mom, who always told me when things got tough, ‘Just take it one day at a time, Ash.’”
Ashlee says children who love science and math as much as she does should challenge themselves to learn more and be intentional about keeping pace with the technology of this younger generation. “We live in an amazing world with endless possibilities for those who are comfortable with technology,” she says. “Having a technical career that is challenging, fulfilling and meaningful to the world is very possible—NIWC Atlantic is proof of that!”
| Date Taken: | 05.28.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 05.28.2026 14:37 |
| Story ID: | 566340 |
| Location: | SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 23 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, An Engineer’s Inheritance: How Fate, Family Forged One Person’s Path to NIWC Atlantic, by Steve Ghiringhelli, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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