Episode Summary: On today's episode, we're featuring a conversation with Gold Star spouse Lisa Hallett and wear blue: run to remember, an organization that strives to honor the service and sacrifice of the American military through active remembrance. About Today’s Guest Lisa Hallett is the President and Co-Founder of wear blue: run to remember. On August 25, 2009, Lisa’s husband, CPT John Hallett, was killed when his Stryker was attacked with an improvised explosive device in southern Afghanist...
Feb 28, 2023•29 min
Episode Summary: On today's episode, we're featuring a conversation with Navy Veteran Alex Krongard, CEO of The COMMIT Foundation. The COMMIT Foundation seeks to provide high touch transition support so veterans in all communities can access services helping them identify their passions, build strong networks, and leverage their skills in civilian careers. About Today’s Guest Alex Krongard is currently the Chief Executive Officer of The COMMIT Foundation. The COMMIT Foundation empowers service m...
Feb 21, 2023•30 min
Episode Summary: On today's episode, we're featuring a conversation with Navy Veteran Jason Loughran, Assistant Commissioner of Community Affairs with the New York City Department of Veteran Services. About Today’s Guest Jason Loughran is a veteran of the US Navy and is currently serving as Assistant Commissioner of Community Affairs for DVS. Before joining DVS, Jason served as an Adjudication Specialist at the US Department of State where he collaborated with local and federal agencies on legal...
Feb 14, 2023•31 min
Episode Summary On this episode of Behind the Mission, we feature a conversation with former Congressman and 32nd Under Secretary of the Army, the Honorable Patrick J. Murphy and his work to support increasing the transportation and cybersecurity workforce with Task Force Movement and Task Force Cyber About Today’s Guest At age 19, Patrick joined the Army, launching a lifelong commitment to our nation’s military and veterans. Patrick has served as a soldier, America’s first Iraq War veteran elec...
Feb 07, 2023•23 min
About Today’s Guest Jason Shockey is the founder of mycyberpath.com and passionate about helping people get into the cybersecurity industry and level up throughout their careers. He is a Chief Information Security Officer in the financial services industry. Prior to his CISO roles, Jason served 20 years active duty in the US Marine Corps as a technology leader conducting cyberspace operations, incident response, and cyber risk management. Three of those years he served with the Cyber National Mi...
Jan 31, 2023•29 min
About Today’s Guests Dr. Heidi Kraft Heidi Squier Kraft received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the UC San Diego/SDSU Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology in 1996. She joined the Navy during her internship at Duke University Medical Center and went on to serve as both a flight and clinical psychologist. Her active duty assignments included the Naval Safety Center, the Naval Health Research Center and Naval Hospital Jacksonville, FL. While on flight status, she flew in nearly ever...
Jan 24, 2023•30 min
About Today’s Guest Gregg F. Martin, PhD, Major General, US Army (Retired), served on active duty for 36 years, until May 2015. He is a combat veteran, Bipolar Survivor, Airborne-Ranger-Engineer qualified soldier, and Army Strategist. He holds a Ph.D. and two masters degrees from MIT, masters degrees in national security strategy from both the Army and Naval war colleges, and a bachelors degree from West Point. He commanded an engineer company, battalion, the 130th Engineer Brigade in combat dur...
Jan 17, 2023•28 min
About Today’s Guest Andrew Morton currently serves as part of PsychArmor’s Strategic Communications team in the role of External Relations. Andrew is retired Army Infantry Officer with a combined 30 years of service and experience within the military community and veteran employment and transition space. Since his transition from active-duty Andrew has spent much of the last decade focused on veterans’ employment and transition initiatives across various strategic roles at the Society for Human ...
Jan 10, 2023•30 min
About Today’s Guest The Honorable James D. Rodriguez, MA is the U.S. Department of Labor’s Assistant Secretary for Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS). He is responsible for preparing America's veterans, service members and their spouses for meaningful careers. In this capacity and in Fiscal Year 2021, over 2,800 DOL Veterans’ Employment and Training Service staff, contractors, and grantees served more than 331,000 veterans and military spouses across all Agency programs. Mr. Rodrig...
Jan 03, 2023•35 min
About Today’s Guest Crystal is a dynamic, agile storyteller, who is passionate about speaking up for those who have historically been disenfranchised, systemically excluded and institutionally oppressed. She leverages her service to her country to ensure that those that have served, and those still serving, have a voice and a safe space. She is a fellow in the George W. Bush Presidential Center Stand-To Veterans Leadership Program, the Veterans Program for Politics and Civic Engagement at Syracu...
Dec 20, 2022•33 min
This Episode Sponsored By: This episode is sponsored by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory with custom training options for organizations. About Today’s Guest Kelcey Liverpool, Founder & Executive Director of Kids Rank, likes to take ideas and bring solutions that help build communities. She has a passion for designing programs and initiatives that create change. Her background i...
Dec 13, 2022•28 min
About Today’s Guest Joy Ashcraft is the Director of Maryland’s Commitment to Veterans, a program under the Maryland Department of Health’s Behavioral Health Administration. Under her leadership, her team has revamped their data collection system, launched new program initiatives, reinvigorated their social media presence, and developed new education and training collaborations and initiatives. Joy is also the co-lead of the Maryland Governor's Challenge Team, a multi-agency collaboration whose g...
Dec 06, 2022•30 min
About Today’s Guest Mary Reding is a government affairs exec with diverse private sector, non-profit, and public sector experience. Government experience includes leading the Office of Executive Councils and managing the development, implementation, and setting performance standards for management initiatives across the center of government through the ten C-Suite Executive boards including the President’s Management Council, Chief Financial Officers Council, Chief Information Officers Council, ...
Nov 29, 2022•23 min
About Today’s Guest Abby Malchow is the Sr. Business Development Manager of Small Business Partnerships for Small Business Empowerment at Amazon helps drive the success of small businesses and underserved business populations (including minority-, women-, and veteran-owned businesses). Additionally, Abby serves on the Global Board of Directors at Amazon for Mental Health & Well-Being (MHW) as the Director of Corporate Strategy. Abby helped launch MHW in April 2020 as Amazon’s 13th Affinity G...
Nov 22, 2022•26 min
About Today’s Guest Dave began his military career as a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and of the US Army Ranger School. He then served two tours in Europe during which he was deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom as an armor platoon leader. Dave's last active duty Army position was as an Assistant Professor of Military Leadership at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was while he was at MIT that he found the value of social media, leading ...
Nov 15, 2022•26 min
About Today’s Guest Frank Larkin is a national advocate for veteran suicide prevention and military traumatic brain injury research. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer for the Feherty’s Troops First Foundation and the National Warrior Call Day campaign. Frank is also aligned with several other non-profit organizations working to positively impact the health and survivability of our veterans and first responders. He recently served as the vice president for corporate development a...
Nov 08, 2022•33 min
About Today’s Guests Katie R. Ross, MSW, is the Director of Veterans Services at Summit BHC and creator of their specialized services for the military community, known as Tactical Recovery. She worked in program management for the U.S. Navy for ten years before beginning in direct care as a clinical social worker at the Hampton VA Medical Center’s Suicide Prevention, Intimate Partner Violence, and Military Sexual Trauma units. She was also pivotal in establishing the country’s first residential ...
Nov 01, 2022•35 min
About Today’s Guest Jaime Chapman is one of the original Co-Founders and Chief Operating Officer of the Military Spouse Chamber of Commerce. Her professional background is as a Sr. Military Talent Program Manager for Amazon Web Services and as a human capital entrepreneur where she successfully placed over 1,600 jobseekers in careers, creating an economic impact totaling over $112 million. Jaime has achieved recognition for: · #1 Military Spouse Owned Business Overall Award by Military and Veter...
Oct 25, 2022•26 min
About Today’s Guest Mark Harper is CEO of We Are The Mighty (WATM), a digital publisher and entertainment lifestyle company creating authentic content that celebrates the military community. WATM’s website receives more than 16M monthly page views, and has over 1.5M followers across social media platforms. Additionally, WATM provides a range of agency services for major Hollywood studios, Fortune 500 companies, veteran-backed businesses and nonprofits reaching the military community. Harper join...
Oct 18, 2022•24 min
About Today’s Guest Kelly Finn Störmer is the Executive Director of Combined Arms Institute which elevates the military & veteran-serving ecosystem of support through professional development, collaboration and research. Combined Arms ensures that no veteran or military family member falls through the cracks by streamlining the connection for servicemembers, veterans and their families to services in the communities where they live. Combined Arms powers the Texas Veterans Network and is expa...
Oct 11, 2022•26 min
About Today’s Guest Richard Casper is a United States Marine Veteran, Purple Heart recipient, Artist, and Entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and Executive Director of CreatiVets, a non-profit that provides art, music, and writing programs for wounded veterans with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries. Richard was named a CNN Hero in 2022 and named TIME magazine's Next Generation Leaders in 2017. He is the feature of TIME’s documentary Evidence of Things Unseen, and recognized by Pr...
Oct 04, 2022•36 min
About Today’s Guest Erin Fletcher, Psy.D. serves as the Warrior Care Network Director for Wounded Warrior Project (WWP). In this role, Erin ensures synergy across all WWP mental health programs. Erin collaborates with the four Academic Medical Centers that compromise WWP’s Warrior Care Network to foster Network alignment regarding program implementation and delivery. Warriors taking part in WCN receive a year’s worth of mental health care during a 2-3 week intensive outpatient program, using evi...
Sep 27, 2022•26 min
Show Summary On this episode, we feature a conversation with Army veteran and military spouse Meg O'Grady, Senior Vice President for Military and Government Programs for the National University System. About Today’s Guest Meg O’Grady has more than 25 years of experience creating outreach, transition, education, entrepreneur, and employment programs that engage the military community, transitioning service members, employers and federal agencies. She is the Senior Vice President for Military and ...
Sep 20, 2022•26 min
About Today’s Guest Colonel (R) Sean Ryan is the Director of Communications for the Army Emergency Relief, the Army’s only nonprofit organization serving active duty Soldiers, retirees and their families. Sean retired from service after nearly 30 years of active duty military experience and was the official military spokesman for the Combined Joint Task Force-Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) in Baghdad, Iraq, including four other combat tours in the Middle East. He worked extensively in the public af...
Sep 13, 2022•31 min
About Today’s Guest Rebecca Nowatchik is a facilitator, community organizer and proud Air Force spouse who believes that military families have a critical role to play to preserve and deepen our democracy at this moment in our country’s history. Rebecca cut her advocacy teeth 20 years ago organizing for labor rights and LGBTQ families and has extensive background managing successful campaigns focusing on worker safety and community health. Her work has been featured by publications such as Grist...
Sep 06, 2022•24 min
About Today’s Guest As the Executive Director of the Armed Services Arts Partnership (ASAP), Brian Jenkins draws on global experiences in community-building and social entrepreneurship. Under Brian’s leadership since 2019, ASAP has increased the annual number of veterans served by 75%, grown the organization's revenue by 54%, expanded ASAP Chapters from two cities to four, and launched a virtual program to provide access to ASAP classes to veterans and service members anywhere in the world. Bria...
Aug 30, 2022•27 min
About Today’s Guest Aimee Johnson is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and has more than 20 years of experience, from direct clinical practice with youth, families and adults in crisis and working with military service members, Veterans and their families. Aimee has worked both in the private sector and for the federal government, most recently at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs where she led a portfolio of work to include short-term strategies to reach high risk populations. She serves ...
Aug 23, 2022•30 min
About Today’s Guest Jeremy Butler is the CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the premier veterans advocacy and support organization that connects, unites, and empowers post-9/11 veterans through education, advocacy, and community. An experienced national security, military affairs, and non-profit management advisor, Jeremy joined IAVA with 15+ years of experience providing substantive and strategic counsel to leaders in high-profile government and private sector offices, incl...
Aug 16, 2022•31 min
About Today’s Guest Umar Latif, MD is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology with board certification in General Psychiatry, Geriatric Psychiatry, and Addiction Medicine. He was selected as a George W. Bush Institute Scholar as part of the 2021 Stand-To Veteran Leadership program in service of improving veteran outcomes. Dr. Latif currently serves as the National Medical Director of Help for Heroes, a multisite special...
Aug 09, 2022•31 min
About Today’s Guest Elisa V. Borah, MSW, PhD is a research associate professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, and Director of the Institute for Military and Veteran Family Wellness, a joint initiative of the Dell Medical School Department of Health Social Work and the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. Dr. Borah conducts research to identify, implement, and evaluate treatments, programming and community supports for military members, veterans, spouses and their families. Current resea...
Aug 02, 2022•31 min
