The general was born in a displaced persons camp in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, to Estonian World War II refugees.Asbury Methodist Village Tiiu Kera and Norm Wolfe Retrieved 27 April 2017. The family eventually settled in the Rochester, New York in 1949. She is a graduate of Valparaiso and Indiana universities. In 1973, Kera was commissioned as a distinguished graduate of Officer Training School. After assignments at several Air Force bases in the United States and South Korea, she served as a staff officer at Headquarters U.S. Air Force and Tactical Air Command. She then served as chief of the Military Personnel Branch at Langley Air Force Base, as director of personnel management at Headquarters Space Division, and as a strategic planner at the Joint Staff. After a fellowship year at the Harvard Center for International Affairs, she returned to Headquarters U.S. Air Force where she was responsible for security issues in the former Warsaw Pact and for developing military-to-military relations with those countries.
