 She was one of the first women at the National Security Agency to be promoted to a "super-grade," the equivalent of the modern Senior Executive Service; the first woman to be chief of a major operations group; and she was the first Deputy Director of NSA.She retired in 1982, but continued to serve on panels for the Intelligence Community, including President Clinton’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (appointed 1993).In 2003, Caracristi was given an honorary degree by the National Intelligence University, where an academic award in her name is given to a high-performing graduate student each year.