Former CIA Spy: How to Eliminate Self-Doubt, Build Confidence, and Protect Yourself in Today’s World

**Mel Robbins** (0:00)
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to The Mel Robbins Podcast.
Today, the former chief of disguise for the CIA, a woman who spent three decades working undercover, is here in our Boston studios with a moving, inspiring, and heart-pounding reflection of her remarkable life. Her name is Jonna Mendez, and she's about to put you at the scene of the most dangerous and scary moments working for the CIA, as she extracts timeless wisdom from this extraordinary career. You're going to hear how she helped intelligence officers assume new identities and disappear in plain sight. Operations under surveillance in China and Russia. Extracting agents undercover in one particular story about trying to get a family of three across a foreign border that will leave you on the edge of your seat. As the former Chief of Disguise, Jonna Mendez reveals how she created spy disguises convincing enough to fool even the President of the United States. She'll tell you about the secret gadgets intelligence officers have used around the world and the tell-tale signs that someone is lying to you based on their body language alone.
What makes this episode so powerful are her deeply personal reflections on the passing of time. The friends she's lost and a profound warning on the state of the world today.
But through it all, she offers unwavering hope, reassurance and practical wisdom to help you find courage, make a difference and overcome life's hardest moments.
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Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to The Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. It's always an honor to spend this time together. And if you're new or someone shared this episode with you, I'm really glad that you hit play. Because today in our Boston studios, we have former CIA Chief of Disguise, Jonna Mendez, and she is going to share the heart-pounding stories and hard-earned wisdom behind her extraordinary life and career. Jonna spent three decades as a CIA intelligence officer, ultimately rising to serve as the Chief of Disguise. In that role, she pioneered advanced disguise techniques that protected undercover officers, concealed identities, and made high-risk espionage operations possible. After retiring from the CIA, she became the author of six best-selling books, including the New York Times bestseller Argo, which she wrote with her late husband, Tony Mendez. Argo inspired the award-winning film of the same name starring Ben Affleck, which won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. She is also the founding member of the Board of Advisors at the International Spy Museum, and today at 81, Jonna is sharing extraordinary stories from her years in the CIA, along with the hard-earned lessons she learned about courage, identity, trust, and what truly matters in life. Please help me welcome former CIA Chief of Disguise, Jonna Mendez, to The Mel Robbins Podcast.

**Jonna Mendez** (4:43)
Thank you so much.

**Mel Robbins** (4:44)
I am so excited to talk to you. The office has been a buzz waiting for you to arrive, and you have the coolest life and the most interesting job of anybody I think I have ever met, the Chief of Disguise at the CIA.
If somebody who's listening right now takes everything to heart, that you're about to share with us from your extraordinary life, what might they change about how they see themselves or the world at large?

**Jonna Mendez** (5:21)
It's hard to sum it up, but I came out of Wichita, Kansas.
My expectation of what my life was going to look like, was very much like all my friends. We were going to get married, we were going to have kids. Our husbands were probably going to work at Boeing because Boeing was a big part of Wichita, Kansas back then. We thought it was cast in stone a little bit. I always knew I would get a job, but I always thought that my work was going to be something to do with books, either teaching or librarian. Then, bam, everything blew up. My friend went to Europe, I went to Europe with her, and I basically never went home.