All LLC Distinguished Speaker Lecture with Tony & Jonna Mendez

The Living Learning Communities have secured 10 tickets to the 4th and final ATEC Distinguished Lecture of Spring 2015 featuring retired CIA officers Tony and Jonna Mendez. All LLC residents are welcome to attend this speaking engagement. Tickets are first come, first served. There are only 10 tickets available for this event. There will be 20 spots on the waitlist for tickets. In the event that an individual forfeits his or her ticket, you will be notified if you are next on the waitlist, and you will have 24 hours to either accept or deny the ticket. Tickets are exclusively for residents or PAs who are currently living in any LLC; 1 ticket per individual.

To redeem your event ticket, residents will need to meet LLC Coordinator Capri Mandella ATEC Conference Room 1.201 between 6:30-7:15pm on Tuesday, April 28th, prior to the event. Please present your Eventbrite ticket in order to redeem your official event ticket. Any tickets not redeemed by 7:15pm will go to waitlisted individuals. For questions or concerns, please contact Living Learning at (972) 883-7422 or livinglearning@utdallas.edu.

For those guests who need special assistance, please contact Deborah Day at 972-883-6504 or email lectures@utdallas.edu. UT Dallas is an equal opportunity/affirmative action university.

More about Tony and Jonna Mendez...

Tony Mendez is a retired CIA officer, author and award-winning painter.

In 1965, Mendez was recruited by the CIA’s Technical Services Division. Born in Eureka, Nev., which bills itself as the “Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America,” he led two lives. To his friends, he was a quiet bureaucrat working for the U.S. military, but for 25 years, Mendez worked undercover, often overseas, participating in some of the most important operations of the Cold War. To the CIA, he was their disguise master. From Wild West adventures in East Asia to Cold War intrigue in Moscow, he was there.

Over the course of his career, Mendez moved into the CIA’s executive rank. Mendez and his subordinates were responsible for changing the identities and appearance of thousands of clandestine operatives, allowing them to move securely around the world.

In 1980, Mendez was awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor for engineering and conducting the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Iran during the hostage crisis. This rescue operation involved creating an ostensible Hollywood film production company, complete with personnel, scripts, publicity and real estate in Los Angeles. The story served as the basis for his most recent book, Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled off the Most Audacious Rescue in History, as well as the Warner Brothers feature film Argo, winner of the 2013 Academy Award for Best Picture.

When Mendez retired in 1990, he had earned the CIA’s Intelligence Medal of Merit and two Certificates of Distinction. Seven years later, on the 50th anniversary of the agency, he was awarded the Trailblazer Medallion, which recognized him as an “officer who by his actions, example or initiative … helped shape the history of the CIA.”

Mendez published his first book, The Master of Disguise, in 1999.

Jonna Mendez is a retired CIA intelligence officer with 27 years of service, living under cover and serving tours of duty in Europe, South Asia and the Far East.

She joined the CIA’s Technical Services Division in early 1970 and was overseas within a few years, serving as a technical operations officer with a specialty in clandestine photography. Her duties included training the CIA’s most highly placed foreign assets to use spy cameras and process the intelligence they gathered. She rose to the position of chief of disguise and earned the CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Medal before she retired in 1993.

The couple continues to consult for the U.S. Intelligence Community and has participated in more than 22 television documentaries. In 2002, the two collaborated on Spy Dust, a book about their work in Moscow during the last decade of the Cold War.

Both are founding board members of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. She also serves as vice president of the La Gesse Foundation, presenting American pianists in Europe and at Carnegie Hall, and is on the board of the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts in Hagerstown, Md.

They live and work on a 40-acre farm in rural Maryland. He continues to paint, and her photography can be viewed at pleasantvalleystudios.com.

Presented by: the Ann and Jack Graves Charitable Foundation