Jonna Hiestand Mendez

Jonna Mendez is a retired CIA intelligence officer with 27 years of service. She joined the CIA’s Office of Technical Service (OTS) in early 1970, providing the agency with the technical wherewithal to facilitate its operations around the globe. A specialist in clandestine photography, her duties included training the CIA’s most highly placed foreign assets in the use of spy cameras, and processing the intelligence they gathered. Upon her retirement in 1993, she had risen to the position of Chief of Disguise and earned the CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Medal. Jonna has since continued her career as a fine art photographer, a consultant/lecturer, and an author. Today she works in her photo studio at the family gallery in Maryland. She and her late husband, Antonio J. Mendez, collaborated on the book Spy Dust about their work against the Soviets in Moscow during the Cold War. She also worked closely with her husband in the writing of ARGO. Jonna is a founding board member at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C and also serves as Vice President of the La Gesse Foundation, under the auspices of the Princess Cecilia de Medici, presenting American pianists in Europe and at Carnegie Hall in partnership with Catholic University. She is on the board of the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland, and is a board member of Breast Cancer Awareness, Cumberland Valley.