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Tanya Bradsher: Good morning, and welcome to the White House.
I'm Tanya Bradsher, the Associate Director for Veterans,
Wounded Warriors and Military Families.
Thank you so much for braving this late snow in the spring and
coming to today's event.
Also, I wanted to remind everyone that we are live
streamed on whitehouse.gov\live, and also, you can follow our
conversations on #whchance, or #womenvets.
Today, I'd also like to quickly recognize Colonel Rich Morales,
who is the Director of Joining Forces, here
to represent the office.
Rich?
Thank you.
Well, on Tuesday, President Obama presided over
the Medal of Honor ceremony for 24 veterans, whose amazing acts
of valor were finally recognized.
I have to say it was one of the most memorable moments I've ever
had here at the White House.
And the reason I bring up last week's ceremony is to highlight
that today is also National Medal of Honor Day.
In 1990, the United States Congress designated March 25th
of each year as the National Medal of honor, a day that
is dedicated to all Medal of Honor recipients.
It was on March 25th, 1863, when the first Medals of Honor were
presented, so it's definitely an honor to have you all here today
on such a historical day, so thank you very much.
Today, we have 10 champs who are selected from
approximately 400 nominations.
As I call out your name, I would appreciate if you would stand
and face towards the group.
Erica Borgen --
[applause]
-- Mary Forbes --
[applause]
-- Sonia Kendrick --
[applause]
-- Dana Niemela --
[applause]
-- Dr. Stacy Young-McHuggin --
[applause]
-- Martha Daniel --
[applause]
-- Ellen Hoolihan --
[applause]
-- the honorable Cora Wong Pietsch --
[applause]
-- Graciela Tiscaraño-Sato --
[applause]
-- I was practicing in the back.
[laughter]
With us today in the audience are also members of the Advisory
Council on Women Veterans.
This Advisory Committee assesses the needs of women veterans,
and with respect to VA programs such as compensation,
rehabilitation, outreach, health care, et cetera.
And we're so pleased they could be with us for today's event.
In January 2014, in coordination with the White House Council
on Women and Girls, VA kicked off a Federal Government-wide
inter-agency Women Veteran's Working Group.
The working group exchanges ideas and provides
for engagement-centric conversation about agencies,
women veteran program, services and initiatives.
This group will really be a resourceful source to mine good
ideas, leverage new approaches in ways of addressing
post-service issues that concern women veterans.
Initiatives like this working group demonstrate
the seriousness of our nation's commitment to women who defend
our way of life.
And now, I would like to turn the event over to one such
woman, and our first moderate.
The Honorable Gina Farrisee assumed the position
of Assistant Secretary, Office of Human Resources
and Administration at the Department of Veteran Affairs
in September of 2013.
Ms. Farrisee directs and oversees H&RA Team of over 750
employees, who support more than 3,000 VA employees, and 4,000
human resource professionals across the country.
Previously, Ms. Farrisee served as the commanding general
of the United States Army Human Resource Command,
Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Ms. Farrisee has been awarded numerous military decorations,
to include the Distinguished Service Medal, with two oak leaf
clusters, the Defense Superior Service Medal,
and the Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters.
The Honorable Gina Farrisee.
[applause]
Gina Farrisee: At this time, if we could also have the first panel
please come up.
Thank you.
What a great day to be a member of the VA team, serving our
nation's veterans, hooah --
Audience Members: Hooah.
Gina Farrisee: Good morning, and thank you for that kind introduction, Tanya.
On behalf of Secretary Eric Shinseki, I would like to say
congratulations to this year's Champions of Change.
Selected from hundreds of impressive nominations, you all
are making a difference.
I salute you for your incredible accomplishments
and contributions to our nation's business, public,
and community service sectors, and to the lives of veterans
and service members.
You all continue to be positive role models.
I also want to welcome family and friends to this event.
Thank you for making it here today.
Our first panel, Eric and Mary, Sonia, Dana, and Stacy,
all served veterans in some capacity.
Their military service is heavy on the Army side, hooah, with
a little bit of Navy mixed in.
I want to personally thank you for your service.
We will begin our panel discussion with each
Champion of Change, taking a few minutes to tell us a little
bit about themselves.
This will be followed by a round of questions that each panel
member will have the opportunity to respond to.
I would ask the panel members to adhere to the time limits that
have been discussed, so that everyone does have
an opportunity to speak.
So, without further ado, I will begin to ask the questions,
and we will start with Erica.
How did your military service influence your career path?
Erica Borgen: Wonderful.
I'll start with that attempt at two minutes to summarize
my life, perhaps.
Gina Farrisee: You can have three.
Erica Borgen: Okay, thank you.
I grew up in suburban Chicago in a completely
non-military family.
And one day, I ended up getting a recruiting call from
the tennis coach at West Point.
And so, as I like to say it now, I grew up on pink and ribbons
and dance and somehow ended up marching off to West Point, with
my mom crying, wondering what happened, and four years later,
graduated from West Point after a tremendous learning
and growing experience.
I graduated as the valedictorian of my class at West Point
and headed off on a road scholarship to Oxford, England,
where I pursued a couple of different one-year Master's
degrees, and had my real college experience, as I like to say.
And then from there, I went to Korea as an Army Medical Service
Corps Officer, where I had several assignments in the 18th
Medical Command, and deployed from there, as it turns out,
to Baghdad to serve as General Petraeus' speech writer,
as a member, really, of his small think-tank
internally in Iraq.
I was with General Petraeus for a few years until I ended
up being appointed by Governor Quinn after I left the uniform.
I took that uniform off and was appointed by Governor Quinn back
in Illinois as the director of the Illinois Department
of Veteran's Affairs.
There, we are privileged to do really tremendous work on behalf
of nearly 800,000 veterans in Illinois.
And one of the initiatives I'm most proud of is something
called Illinois Joining Forces, which is our attempt to add
a little bit of coherence to the sea of good will that
all the veterans here in the room would recognize to create
better cross-talk and collaboration among the many
organizations that are out there serving veterans.
And, as for your first question, shall I jump right
into that, General?
Gina Farrisee: No, we're going to allow every [inaudible],
we're just going to do our intros.
So, Mary?
Mary Forbes: Oh, thank you.
My name is Mary Forbes, and I grew up in rural Pennsylvania
in an agricultural situation.
And I really look at that as a great opportunity for learning
such great work ethics.
And I thank my parents for that rich environment.
And I, like Erica, got the great honor of being selected
for West Point and attending that for four years,
and the education, and the training that I received there
really is such a tremendous opportunity to really see
the whole world, and explore all of the options out there,
and get exposed to thoughts and ways of doing business that
you never would have dreamed of.
So, after that, obviously, active duty and then Fort Louis,
the 9th Infantry Division and had the opportunity to, at one
time, be in an all-male unit, which was, at that time, unheard
of as the military intelligence officer.
But that was, hopefully, you know, an opportunity to really
grow and learn with a group of military men and mentoring,
I think, was really important for those days for women,
because we really didn't have very many women around.
So we looked up to those few that were there, but also
to those men that helped us out.
Then I joined the Washington Army National Guard, and was
on active duty with them for 26 some years, and after that,
had the honor of being selected as Assistant Director of
the Washington Department of Veteran's Affairs,
serving veterans.
And my main goal there was to help end homelessness starting
back in 2010.
So the greatest thing that I'm really proud of is being able
to put together regional summits and really bringing that
information to our local communities and our states
so they can position themselves to go after grants and other
types of dollars to really put a wraparound system around our
veterans and their families.
So, thank you.
Gina Farrisee: Thank you --
Mary Forbes: Oh, I have to say that I have five children,
and I have two of them with me.
Gina Farrisee: Oh, wonderful.
Sonia?
Sonia Kendrick: Well, that's the most important job of all.
It's so hard to follow these ladies.
My name is Sonia Kendrick, and I'm a veteran
of the War in Afghanistan.
I'm from Iowa.
I wear many hats.
I am a veteran farmer.
I belong to the Veteran Farmer Coalition, and I'm also
the founder of Feed Iowa First.
And I'm an agronomist, which is an agricultural scientist,
as well as getting my Master's in sustainable food systems.
I found a great disconnect when I came back to my community
to find in the heartland of America, we have over 400,000
people that go to bed hungry.
And so, I felt that in my community I could
make a difference.
And so I started growing vegetables for food pantries.
And what I found was that through my service to my
community, I found that I had a new purpose and a new way
to serve my country.
And I feel that with my work with
the Farmer Veteran Coalition, that we can help other veterans
to find a new purpose in their life by serving our country
in the agricultural field.
Gina Farrisee: Okay, Dana?
Dana Niemela: Good morning, my name is Dana Niemela.
I actually was commissioned from the George Washington University
right down the street here in 1997 in the United States Navy.
So I'm pretty proud to be back in this neighborhood.
I served as a supply officer in the Navy from 1997 to 2005,
where I served under the commander of the Sixth Fleet
in the Mediterranean, and back here in Washington
at the Pentagon for General Richard Myers when he was
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
When I got out in 2005, my sole mission was to find myself
and where I fit into the big bad world out there.
And I moved to Colorado, where I had grown up, and worked
in the private sector for about five years.
And I had a good job.
I had a fun job.
It was a cool job.
But after a while, it didn't have any meaning to me anymore.
I didn't feel like I was serving a purpose in my community.
And at the same time, I was hearing stories of my friends
coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, people I knew
and people I didn't know, who were becoming homeless
and ending up in jail, for things that seemed like they
were so preventable.
So I decided to quit my job with no real plan except
to do something better.
And, in 2012 -- 2011, I became the program coordinator
for the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program
for the city and county of Denver.
I run a U.S. Department of Labor program that helps homeless veterans
reintegrate into the work force.
But what is so unique about our program and what
the Department of Labor has allowed us to do is to not just
meet the goals of employment, which obviously are important,
but to build the support of network of services around
the homeless veterans, that which they need.
It's not just about getting a job, but it's creating
a community, and that safety net through them.
So through my work at the Homeless Veterans Reintegration
Program, we built that network and got people connected
to the resources that they needed.
In 2012, I was appointed by Governor Hickenlooper
to the Colorado Board of Veteran's Affairs, where I serve
as the Committee Chair for Veterans in Higher Education.
I was also a post-9/11 G.I.
Bill recipient, and used that to get my Master's degree
in social work.
I serve now as the Executive Secretary
on the Colorado Board of Veteran's Affairs.
I'm the Homeless Coordinator for VFW Post One, a post I'm very
proud of that has done an exceptional job to outreach
to women veterans, and current generation of veterans.
And I'm the Outreach Coordinator for the Denver Chapter
of Team Red, White, and Blue, and a volunteer for Team Rubicon
as well, really bridging the gap across generations
of veteran services.
Gina Farrisee: Okay, Stacy?
Stacy Young-McHuggin: Wow, so I'm Stacy Young-McHuggin.
I think I've changed my remarks about four times already, after
this entire group.
So I'm sure it might be a little discombobulated.
So, I grew up in upstate New York, and I came in the Army
as an Army Nurse Corps Officer right out
of my Bachelor's program.
I wanted to be the best nurse that I could be, and I felt like
the military would offer me an opportunity for, to treat a lot
of different patients across a lot of different settings.
And I absolutely got that opportunity.
I served in the Army for 29 years, just retired in 2008.
As I -- I had primarily clinical jobs to start with, and I was
very compelled by figuring out what the best evidence was
for caring for patients with various diseases, and compelled
by knowing the research and conducting my own research
to help identify those best forms of treatment.
So, as part of my military service, I never deployed.
You feel a little bit like an imposter.
How could you possibly be in 29 years and never deploy?
But when I was young, I wasn't selected to go to war, and when
I was old, I was too old and never could figure out how many
pairs of reading glasses one should take into combat.
[laughter]
I've never seen that on any pack list for senior 06s who have
poor eyesight to do that.
But anyway, I felt like I tried to do my best for staying home
and supporting our troops.
I was the head of an institutional review board
at that time, and we were able to set up a process to review
research in theater.
So we were conducting research far forward, to once again
figure out what the best ways are to care for our active duty
men and women who are putting themselves in harm's way
and many times getting injured.
We want to provide the best care possible for them.
So I retired in 2008, and had the incredible good fortune
to join the faculty at the University of Texas Health
Science Center in San Antonio.
There, I work with a terrific group of people under
the name of Strong Star.
That's a research consortium focused on the study,
the understanding, prevention, and treatment
of post-traumatic stress disorder.
We were funded by the Department of Defense in 2008,
have conducted 24 studies, recruited over 1,000 active duty
service members into clinical trials in central Texas
and up at Fort Hood.
Just last September, we were funded to continue that work,
so we're hoping to figure that out and give every one of our
veterans, returning with post-traumatic stress disorder
an opportunity to be treated successfully, to return to,
you know, fully functional, integrated life, that they serve
their country with for us.
So, I'm incredible humbled to be here, and happy
to meet everybody.
Gina Farrisee: I don't think there's a question in anyone's
mind about why these ladies have been selected
as our Champions of Change.
So a round of applause --
[applause]
So now we're going to start with our first
question, and we'll start with Erica: how did your military
service influence your career path?
Erica Borgen: So, that's actually kind of a hard question to answer when
my entire career, from 17 onward, has been either
military or veterans.
I think probably any of us who have served in uniform would say
that there's something incredibly shaping about
a military experience, and probably, especially the case
when you start that at age 17.
For me, I mean, at that age you're really growing
into yourself anyway.
And so whether it was at West Point or whether it was taking
command in Korea, one of the things I found my military
experience consistently did for me was throw me into
environments that were tremendously uncomfortable,
and for which I felt not sure that I would thrive.
And there's a sink-or-swim mentality in the military world
that you really learn to thrive in the middle of, and you figure
out you can dig deep, deeper than you thought,
and end up swimming.
And maybe it wasn't your natural strength in the beginning.
There were a lot of times I felt like I was faking
it in the beginning, especially company command, standing
in front of the soldiers and acting way more confident than
I felt like I was.
But I grew into it.
And there was something about that growing into
it and developing the skill set of being confident
and developing that confidence, that has really equipped
me for my job now, because I went, directly as I said,
from the military world to the veteran world.
I think there's also something about being a woman veteran that
equips you for that experience of being the only whatever
it is in the room.
In my case, it's the only person under the age of 40, maybe
in the governor's cabinet, or the only woman in the room.
You get used to that feeling in that same
sink-or-swim environment.
And it equips you to think I've been here and I've done that.
And I've also had the privilege of seeing really large efforts
that were large staffs, huge missions.
And you see how that works in the military environment.
You almost wish it worked a little more like that
in the real world as well, whether that's in government
or business, where you know exactly which element of your
staff to use, how to delegate out, how to back plan, because
you've seen it in some ways.
You've done it, you've led, and you've done that.
And so, even though I've never led a 1,300-person agency
before, when I all of a sudden was the director at the Illinois
Department of Veteran's Affairs, I was really used to being
uncomfortable, and I wanted to be uncomfortable.
There's something growing about that stretching experience
that's really equipped me.
Gina Farrisee: Great, thank you.
Mary?
Mary Forbes: Yes, thank you.
Well, what I think of was the last couple of years
of my active duty stint with the Washington Army National Guard.
I had the pleasure of being in charge of all of those things
that we did before deployments and during deployments
and after deployments.
And that really got me in sync with what our veterans and their
families were going through because as a guard member
or a reserve member, you're constantly going from
a deployment status back to real life and back and forth.
And so that really got me close with our Washington Department
of Veteran's Affairs, and I remember pretty clearly,
it was probably 2004, and we didn't have any laws that
supported guard and reserve, or we really didn't have
any systems in place to help with this.
And then, the director of our agency, the state agency,
and I was on active duty at the time.
And he came to us and said, "We really need to set something
up for our veterans."
And I said, "Oh, great, let's do a briefing."
And he said no, Mary, this needs to be customer service.
We don't want to brief our veterans.
We want to actually do a significant event that ensures
they're connected to their entitlements and benefits,
and it was like this ah-ha moment for me, where, you know,
we were so used to briefings that were output-oriented.
All we measured was how many people we briefed and shifting
that whole concept to outcome-based, so that we know
that they actually completed their claim, or that they
actually applied for their veteran's health,
and actually did it.
So that began a process in 2004 where we worked with the State
Department of Veteran's Affairs, and that really set me up
for this opportunity, when I came to retirement,
and the director asked me to come on to help find ways
to end homelessness for veterans.
And I think those skill sets that Erica talked about
and the functionalities that are in such an organization as any
one of our services, every single functional area
is represented from research and medical to logistics and,
you know, being able to cook and serve and fuel and ammunition.
And often, you don't think of the military services as a huge
corporation, with incredible structure, that you learn, then,
how to lead folks and how to use that staff to get the fullest
out of everyone, and to really be a team.
So, thank you.
Gina Farrisee: Thanks very much.
Sonia?
Sonia Kendrick: Thank you, Mary.
When I was a young person, I was in the military for 10 years.
And when I was a young person, I really didn't like the military.
[laughter]
To be honest with you, I didn't like the discipline,
and I didn't like people telling me what to do.
So when I got out, and I experienced civilian life, I was
very frustrated with the civilians too --
[laughter]
But what, the most important thing I learned from
the military is that my opinion counts, and I have a voice.
And I also learned from the military that when people work
together, when they put on uniforms that don't identify
them with a class, that don't identify them with
a demographic, that when they become people, that the military
is a wonderful example on how humans, when all of those
barriers are broken down, we can get things done.
So, I also learned how to not take no for an answer.
But -- and to persevere.
I can do amazing things.
The military showed me that I can do amazing things.
And so, when I get up in the morning, I know that
anything is possible.
Gina Farrisee: Thanks.
Dana?
Dana Niemela: I think that one of the key elements I learned in supply
school, which was, you don't have to know the answer,
but you need to know where to find it.
And that took the pressure off me of having to be the expert
of absolutely everything, and coupled that with the advice
of Chief [inaudible] Officer Bob Struckman, who said to me, don't
ever think that you know more than the people who
work for you.
And I was probably about 23 at the time, and I had no idea what
he was telling me or how it would serve me, or how I would
be passing that information along.
If there was one thing you ever learned when you were
in the Navy, what was it?
I'm like, well Chief [inaudible] Officer Bob Struckman told me
once, don't ever think that you know more than the people who
work for you.
And I think taking note, combining those two things
really helped me learn how to build a team of experts around
me, and that my position was really to galvanize that team,
and to help set the vision and move the needle forward.
And I think that that translated not only into what I'm doing now
and building the network of services that we have helping
veterans in Denver and in the state of Colorado, but also
it helped me on the civilian side, in the private sector.
I knew how to get things done in the business that I was in,
and take on the expertise of everybody around me to meet
the needs of the customers, because, even, whether
it's in the private sector, whether it's in government,
a nonprofit organization, you have customer's needs.
You need to listen to your customer, hear what they need.
When I was in the military, it just so happened my customer was
the number one general in all of the entire
United States military.
We certainly need to know what his expectations were so I could
deliver on that, but I couldn't do it alone.
And I think that was the biggest takeaway from my military
service, that it serves me not only in the private sector,
but also in government, is that we can't do it alone.
We build a network of experts around us and draw
on everybody's individual strengths, whether
it's as a person or as an organization to really meet
the objective and deliver the product to your customer.
Gina Farrisee: Okay, Stacy?
Stacy Young-McHuggin: So I'm kind of feeling like we're all saying the same thing,
maybe in slightly different ways.
So, the way I would say it, you know, I'll take from Erica
the importance of trying to stretch yourself and being
in uncomfortable positions.
I always like to say that the Army always gave me
what I wanted.
They never gave it to me when I thought I wanted it --
[laughter]
But I eventually got it, and it worked out better.
It worked out way better for different reasons.
I was in a better place, or the environment was ready, or I was
ready to learn new things.
It always worked out well.
And so I appreciate that ability to adapt and change.
And then, I think what Mary and Sonia, Dana all said was
the importance of leadership and the importance
of appreciating your team.
And it took me a long time to figure out I didn't want
my team, all people that looked like me, because we would all
drive ourselves crazy doing that.
But after you reach about the age of five, I think your
personality is kind of set, and the trick for leaders
is to figure out everybody's strengths and bring those
together as a team to capitalize on everybody's strengths.
And if somebody's not working well for you in your team,
you haven't figured out what their strengths are.
And if you do that, and I think you and your entire team
and your project will only do better.
So, that's the way I would say the same things, or echo
the same things these women have said, I think.
Gina Farrisee: Ladies, thank you.
Thanks for taking me down memory lane, too, [inaudible]
as company commander.
Okay, Stacy, I'm going to start with you for the second one:
what actions can employers, service organizations,
educations institutions, take to make more
women veterans successful?
Stacy Young-McHuggin: Okay, when your name starts with Young, you're used to going
last, all right.
So we're going to go alphabetically backwards now.
Well, so this is a really difficult question, because
I do believe that if you make the entire group better, then
you make women better, you make minorities better, you
make veterans better.
You make everybody better.
If you can give opportunities to the team to excel and be where
they need to be.
If I was looking forward, I would like to see large
organizations in this incredibly cost-constrained environment,
pick their top priorities, and focus on those.
And I see my colleagues in -- who are still on active duty,
and who are retired and still serving the military in lots
of different ways, suffer because we are continuing to put
more and more and more on them with fewer and fewer resources.
So I think if, as leaders, we could figure out what
the primary missions are, and then let our teams move forward
to accomplish our primary missions, that we would help
women veterans and all groups excel and succeed.
Gina Farrisee: Okay.
Dana Niemela: I think that's a really loaded questions that has a lot
of complicated answers, but I'm a social worker,
so of course I would say that.
If you're doing your job to outreach to veterans based
on the wonderful attributes all of these ladies have talked
about, and if you're doing everything to outreach to women
to include them in your organization, you're going
to target women veterans, because we encompass
a whole lot of different aspects.
The bottom line is what needs to be encouraged is women
in your government.
Women need to hold positions of leadership,
and we're educated for it.
We're outpacing men in getting advanced degrees.
We have the qualifications to do the job, so the rest
of it is more of a societal adaption, if you will.
I wouldn't be sitting here today if it were not for male mentors
in established organizations who recognized the value that
I brought to their organization, whether it was through the VFW,
reaching out and making a concerted effort -- yes,
the VFW, making a concerted effort to outreach
to the younger generation of veterans,
and women in particular.
In government, I was hired by a Vietnam veteran, who saw that
I had the energy and enthusiasm to move the needle forward,
to take the next step in what had to happen.
But that doesn't mean that I didn't hear along the way, "sit
down, young lady, you don't know what you're talking about."
It doesn't mean that I haven't heard somebody say, complain
about the feminization of their organization, and in the same
breath, look to me to say, you've done more for this
organization with your passion and enthusiasm and getting
us engaged in community service than everybody ever has.
So that's not my problem, that's their problem.
That's a growth issue on the organization
in the individual level.
And what I can say to that is we need more women who are willing
to have the courage to stick it out.
This kind of change doesn't happen overnight.
It takes tenacity, and we need more women who are willing
to stand in the face of that "sit down, young lady,
you don't know what you're talking about," and no, yes,
I do, and in time you'll figure it out too.
[laughter and applause]
Sonia Kendrick: Again --
[laughter]
We're going to get there.
I think a lot of employers are -- and many civilians are --
what's the word?
They're a little intimidated by us.
And what they need to know about us is that we are a valuable
natural resource, because we don't need to be babysat.
We show up to work on time.
We work hard, we solve problems, we're leaders, we don't take
no for answer.
You know, we find a way to make it work.
And so, we -- we need to be leaders.
That's what the military taught us to be.
They taught us how to be a leader.
And so, when you put us into positions in companies,
you should consider us for leadership positions because
we won't disappoint.
And the other thing that we need that the military ground into
us was that we need a mission.
So, if you give us a purpose or a mission, we will complete that
purpose and that mission, because that's how we operate.
I don't know if I can speak, that's how I operate.
But yeah, when we have a life that has a mission
and a purpose, then we excel in those things.
Mary Forbes: Thanks.
Well, I'll answer this two ways, one personally.
When veterans are on active duty and as they come off, they're
really disassociated or not connecting to higher managers
an things happening in the real world.
And so, just making that friend and helping -- if you know
a veteran, whether they're male or woman, just helping them
connect with what we wear.
I mean, one of my biggest challenges was figuring out how
to wear clothes and necklaces.
I mean, don't you remember all those safety things
we went through?
Do not wear necklaces or rings or you might be, you know,
hurt somehow.
So, it was like getting over these hurdles that, yes, I could
learn how to dress right, and I would have some great friends
help me that were out there and knew how to do those things.
But I guess the big way I look at things is as a system, that,
the way we have the process now, as folks are coming off active
duty, we have what we call the Vow Act, which makes our
transition process mandatory, and starts a year act.
And so, with that process, and I know we've had a lot
of discussions about that one, General Farrisee was still
in active duty and she knows it's a passion of mine, because
I really feel that it's important that the service men
or women start early, thinking about what they are going to do,
and that there's ways and means for our companies out there that
want to hire them to reach in and begin to help them
understand what a hiring manager is looking for, and understand
what the civilian market means, because you don't know how
to interpret jobs.
I mean, I've been out for four years, and I still
can't really that?
So, there has to be a two-way street and our military services
now have a system that they've been working on putting
together, so that I feel that the biggest thing is that
outside companies meeting and greeting our active duty
components and figuring how to get upstream to engage
our veterans early, and that is includes our guard and reserves,
so that they can really filter into your companies
and organizations and not only help them earn a great wage
living, but as everyone's been saying, really do amazing things
in your organizations.
So, thank you.
Erica Borgen: Stacy, I empathize going last, because you almost want
to respond to something everybody has said
along the way.
If I had to say maybe one additional thing, it would
be to engage, whether you're a citizen, an employer, a teacher
in a classroom, whatever it is.
You mentioned that folks feel intimidated, and I think that's
actually the case, that, out of respect, I've often discovered
folks stop the conversation right after thanks for your
service, that, you don't want to say the wrong thing, you don't
want to hit a tripwire.
You have no idea how to engage that conversation, because you
don't maybe know very many veterans in your life,
and so that's where the conversation ends, and I think
it ends up being really very isolating for a lot of veterans,
even though it's well-intentioned on the part
of whoever stopped the conversation there.
And so, my encouragement, I think, to anybody
in encountering a veteran you know well or not well is to just
ask the natural follow-on question, something along
the lines of, well, what was that like?
And let the veteran themselves determine how far they want
to take the conversation.
Every veteran has a different experience.
Not every veteran is somebody who's had
a traumatic experience.
And I think that, again, well-intentioned in the media
coverage of veterans, you often see one view painted, and that's
of the struggling veteran.
And there are a lot of struggling veterans, there
are a lot of veterans coping with their combat experiences,
with post-traumatic stress, with homelessness.
But what we don't hear is the story of the veterans
on the other side of that or even the service that those
veterans, as they're struggling, are putting in toward
helping other folks.
And I think if we focused on that narrative, we engaged
our veterans, and we saw our service to them, our employment
of them, our teaching of them in classrooms, not as something
as I owe them, but instead of something I owe to my company
or to my classroom, because there's tremendous value
and experience that this person brings here.
That's something we can do for an individual veteran,
but really, for all veterans, to not let ourselves
be overly defined.
You've heard a tremendous adversity of experiences,
I think, here today, and strengths as well.
And so, if I had one last thing to say, it would
be take a swing.
If there's not a particular fit for a company or for your
classroom or whatever it is, give it the benefit
of the doubt, because most of us have been thrown out there
having not done it before, and we've swum.
Gina Farrisee: Excellent.
Okay, Erica, I'm going back over to you.
What one word would you use to describe the value or principle
that guides your life?
Erica Borgen: Service.
Do I get to expand or is it just one word?
Gina Farrisee: You have 12 seconds to expand it.
Erica Borgen: 12 seconds: whatever I do from the time I was young until now,
I want to make an impact.
I want my life to be meaningful, and I think that happens through
service, through having your everyday job be something that
you feel you're being impactful through.
Mary Forbes: Mine's very similar.
I selected selfless service because I feel that I've always
wanted to help someone, whether it's my family, my children,
veterans, or families.
I always want to find the solution to the puzzle because
I always feel there's enough resources and good things going
on, but how do you connect that?
So, thank you.
Sonia Kendrick: I picked service too.
[laughter]
I believe that a life served, a lifetime worth of serving people
is a life that's worth living.
And having almost lost my life multiple times, I know that
the best thing in my life is to serve others.
Dana Niemela: I'm not going to say service.
[laughter]
My --
Gina Farrisee: But you did think about it?
Dana Niemela: Yeah, I thought about it.
My answer is integrity.
And the reason --
[laughter]
-- I believe in the words of Don Miguel Ruiz, "Be impeccable with
your word", do what you say you're going to do, whether it's
in government, whether it's in the private sector, if it's with
your own family and your friends, do what you say you're
going to do and surround yourself with those who believe
in that value as well.
And that's when things really, really get done.
Stacy Young-McHuggin: Guess what mine is.
[laughter]
So, I picked integrity, too.
Doing the right thing to the best of your abilities,
to the best of your knowledge.
To the best of your energies.
Every given day, every given moment.
All the time.
Thanks.
Gina Farrisee: What an amazing group of ladies.
I want to give this veteran team a very warm welcome.
[applause]
Thank you.
[applause]
And now I will welcome our second team to the podium.
Elisa Basnight [phonetic sp] will now take over -- I'm sorry.
I am taking over somebody's job.
Always in charge.
Excuse me.
[laughter]
Tanya Bradsher: That's okay, ma'am.
We're used to it.
[laughter]
I retired in September, so if you saw me being the bobblehead
in the corner, as a lot of us were also doing
the exact same thing.
While we're setting up the second panel, why don't you
go ahead and come on up and then I'll introduce our panelists
or our moderator for today.
If you're a veteran, please stand.
We'll give you a break.
Thank you so much for your service.
[applause]
Thank you.
So, as we're setting up, I'd like to introduce the moderator
for our second panel: Ms. Elisa Basnight, whose career
demonstrates a lifelong passion of serving others.
Ms. Basnight was appointed Director of the Department
of Veteran Affairs' Center for Women Veterans in October 2013
and is the primary adviser to the Secretary of Veteran Affairs
on programs and issues related to women veterans.
Prior to her appointment, Ms. Basnight served
as a corporate commercial counsel in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, focusing on general corporate commercial
contracts, small businesses and women, veteran, and
minority-owned businesses and technology.
Ms. Basnight is the founder of Girls Action Network,
Incorporated, a non-profit serving girls and young women.
Especially those from under-served communities, with
a particular focus on STEM fields.
Ms. Basnight graduated from the U.S.
Military Academy West Point and served overseas
and in the United States as a military intelligence officer,
including a joint chief staff appointment.
Ms. Basnight.
[applause]
Elisa Basnight: Thank you, Tanya, for that very kind introduction.
And good morning.
What a morning, right?
Female Speaker: Yes.
Elisa Basnight: I mean, having listened to this first panel and I just can't
help but being motivated.
It is just truly a treat to be here with all
of you this morning.
And if you didn't think it could get any better, well, you're
in for a treat because it is about to.
And I am here to be able to introduce and facilitate
a discussion with our Champions right here, who are leading
in business, entrepreneurship, the law.
But before I say anything else, as the Director of the Center
for Women Veterans, which serves our nation's 2.2 million women
veterans, I just have to say: one, a truly heartfelt thank you
to all of our 10 Champions and congratulations.
I truly salute you.
And for those accompanied by family, I know we have someone
who has five children and you have two here.
For all of the families, thank you.
We appreciate you for your continued support
of your Champions.
And thirdly, I know we had all of the veterans stand,
but I could just see by a raise of hands all
of the women veterans?
Thank you.
[applause]
Thank you all.
Thank you all for your service.
Chills.
Because in homage to this year's Women's History Month national
theme, which is celebrating women of character, courage,
and commitment, we at VA salute our 2014 Champions
and the legacy of all of the women military leaders who
embody these values, who make our country great through their
brave actions past and present.
The officers, the enlisted of the Army, Navy, Marines,
Air Force, and Coast Guard.
And these role models who also serve as our grandmothers,
our mothers, our daughters, our wives, our sisters.
When these women surrender their uniform, they keep
the intangible with them.
You've heard it already this morning and you're about to hear
some more wonderful experiences.
The unbeatable skills that they use in corporate boardrooms
or cross into the public sector and still others transform
themselves into enterprising entrepreneurs.
The bottom line is that women were a force
for good in uniform.
And as veterans, women are a force and will be a force
for breakthrough economic growth for our nation.
And our job is to make sure that they have the services
and support they need.
So, the purpose for this panel is to have our Champions share
a range of diverse perspectives, career, educational,
and personal experiences through a moderated discussion.
And my goal for this panel is that all of us will
be incredibly enriched.
We already have with the first portion.
And thinking about ideas and sharing information and how
we are employing our women veterans, collaborating with
women veteran-owned businesses, and engaging our women veterans
in our community and public service activities.
Now, to share their thoughts with you, I'd like to introduce
you to five extraordinary women veterans who are doing
extraordinary things in their respective sectors.
So, we have: Martha Daniel who's the President and CEO
of Information and Management Resources, Inc.; Ellen Houlihan,
Vice Chair the Board of Directors West Point Association
of Graduates; Coral Wong Pietsch, Judge of the State
Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and I must say this
is Honorable Coral Pietsch; Deborah Scott Thomas, founder
and President and Chief Executive Officer of Data
Solutions and Technology; Graciela Tiscaraño-Sato, CEO and
founder of Gracefully Global, LLC.
So, without further ado, similar to the process that we followed
for panel one, I'd like each of the Champions to take a couple
of minutes to introduce -- and you do have three minutes,
as we said -- to introduce and share some highlights about
your professional experiences.
And Graciela, I will start with you.
Graciela Tiscaraño-Sato: Thank you so much.
So, I am one of five children born to Mexican immigrants.
And I want to shout out to my mother and father, Arturo
and Tina Tiscaraño who are watching right now from El Paso.
I was -- I grew up in northern Colorado in a town where
the largest employer was a meat packing plant.
So, I wanted to leave.
I pretty was --
[laughter]
I knew that I wanted to go to college, but as the oldest
of five kids, there wasn't money to do that.
And I was -- but that was pretty clearly communicated,
as it is to a lot of today's children of immigrants.
But I had friends who had college educated parents
and I was going to find a way.
So, all the problem-solving that the military gives you, thank
God I had a foundation of that.
And so I had a counselor who mentored me, which is why
I'm so big on mentoring now.
Her husband had been an Air Force officer and gone to school
with the Air Force ROTC scholarship.
So, she said "Come to my house for dinner.
I think I have a solution."
So, it was my counselor's husband who told me about
the Air Force ROTC scholarship that allowed me
to go to Berkley.
And at Berkley I majored in environmental
design and architecture.
And I also did my aerospace studies there
as a scholarship cadet.
Loved the leadership opportunities.
And my first airplane ride in my life, because we didn't travel
in airplanes as a young kid, was in a T37 Tweet at Williams Air
Force Base in Arizona with a female pilot named Captain Dolly
De Lise [phonetic sp], who I still remember.
It was a profoundly important moment because she said "Yeah,
you can go fly."
I thought I was going to go do some engineering
after getting my degree.
So, I put my name in for the board halfway through
and I was indeed selected to go fly.
And so I went to undergraduate navigator school after
graduating from Berkley.
So, my life -- I have a presentation called the Unlikely
Military Aviator, because it pretty much sums up how I look
back and go "That really happened?"
[laughter] That's amazing.
And so that experience really has led to why I have chosen,
now, after a global marketing experience, to start a
multicultural publishing company that publishes bilingual books
and multicultural books and green economy entrepreneurship
case studies of Latinos and Latinas who are highly educated
but you don't see in the media.
And so we've also published the first bilingual children's book
series about women in the military.
"Buenas Noches, Capitán Mama."
"Good Night, Captain Mama"'s our first book.
This has never been done before.
And so I want my culture and I want women like me who
are Latinas who have served, and I know a lot of us,
to be represented in the literatures so that more of our
little girls can think about flying.
And think about serving.
And so I've taken my military experiences and reflected
on them and gone back now as a publisher.
And I'm putting books in schools.
Our team is very creative and we put the books in schools because
we want those images to be present in our kids minds
because they were not visible in my education.
And so that's what I've done.
I've just gone directly to "Wow, that was a miraculous experience
that I've had in the military," and 10 years of flying
and traveling the world and four continents.
And being an officer and being a navigator
and being an instructor.
And so that's what I do.
I'm not putting it out there through literature so that
more can follow.
Thank you.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you.
Thank you.
Deborah?
Deborah Scott Thomas: Good morning.
I am Deborah Scott Thomas and as I listen to Graciela, I can't
do anything but smile because I am the fifth of seven children.
[laughter]
Deborah Scott Thomas: However, I'm from Montgomery, Alabama.
And in coming up, I can say I'm the daughter
of Jim and Mary Dunkin [phonetic sp].
At the age of eight, Jim Dunkin became a heavenly angel in 1962,
leaving seven children behind.
Two-and-a-half to 15-and-a-half years old.
I say that we were from the farm to arrive here in Washington,
D.C. at this particular time.
But in graduating from high school, I attended Alabama State
where I entered the ROTC program because I wanted
to travel the world.
Traveling the world, what it was.
Upon graduation, as I said, we were farmers.
I became a hospital administrator, given three
people to supervise, a million dollar budget.
From the field to the office.
So, when it talks about leadership, that's what
the military did for me.
When it comes to being able to go places and do things
and serve in transitioning to the Reserve, I continued
on in Aeromedical Evacuation.
Aeromedical Evacuation meant everything because we were able
to travel Conis [phonetic sp] and bring patients back
and connect families.
Really getting the service members back into commission.
It means so much because coming from the fields of Montgomery,
Alabama in the 70s during the Civil Rights, is showing women
where they can be.
Showing the family how they can proceed.
Getting an education.
My mother instilled two principles: put God first
and all things shall be given to you; get a good education
and you can go anywhere in the world.
And also getting that leadership skill from the military,
I started Data Solutions and Technology.
Data Solutions and Technology is a management consulting
organization that is very passionate about serving its
clients and providing various solutions
in many different areas.
It's continuing on fulfilling the nation's missions
around the world.
So, I am just so thankful and grateful to have had
the opportunity and to be a veteran today means so very,
very much.
And also to be an American.
Because there is nothing like our great country.
Thank you.
[applause]
Elisa Basnight: Martha, please.
Martha Daniel: I'm Martha Daniel and I'm from Memphis, Tennessee.
And I was an enlisted *** in the Navy.
[applause, laughter, and cheering]
And I was a typical enlisted.
I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.
I just wanted to go see the world.
[laughter]
And so the Navy offered that opportunity,
I thought, but the see the world ended up being Winter Harbor,
Maine.
[laughter]
Not quite the direction I thought I was going.
I thought I was going on a ship to Ansa [phonetic sp], Scotland.
But I also knew that I wanted to be a president.
I wanted to be something bigger.
I wasn't sure what all of that was going to be, but I knew that
the Navy offered me that.
I thought so, and so I said I'd join.
It was good.
Okay, let me get out Memphis and head on to my dreams.
And so as a result of that, I competed, I was in cryptology,
wasn't sure what that was going to be either, but I did know
that it was something good and it was in technology and it was
something that I thought I would enjoy.
And so I did that.
And then as a result of that, I came out of the Navy
and I received my GI bill.
I went in the military right when they were letting women
back into the billet right after the Vietnam War.
And so, I came out.
I, you know, went out, got my graduate degree, got my
Bachelor's and my graduate degree,
and entered into technology.
And so as a result of that, I worked for several companies,
the IBMs of the world, moved up real rapidly, and then a few
years later, round after about 15 years of that, kinda said
"Okay, what do I do next?"
Became an entrepreneur.
So, I'm the President/CEO.
Got there.
Got me that little president title.
[laughter]
And so, I'm President/CEO of IMRI, which is a company that
does a lot of defense contracting.
I'm a service disabled veteran, and I'm proud of that.
And I'm very proud of some of the things that have happened
in our nation as a result to support of the veterans.
But, my company does, today, we do defense contracting.
Where's cybersecurity, technology, engineering services
and et cetera.
But as I begin to move through that -- and it's been 22 years
in the business world and I'm very excited about what
we do today, but I begin -- I became President of the Elite
Service Disabled Veteran Organization, which
has 70 chapters.
And this chapter, I was kind of reluctant in joining
a particular chapter.
I knew I supported -- I always supported, but
not to be a president of that.
But they needed one in Orange County and so all of a sudden,
I went to a meeting, they made me that.
[laughter]
And so, I said "Okay."
Well, I have a gentlemen that has two Purple Hearts
and encouraged me that: "Martha, you can really make a difference
in this county."
And so what we do is we have several different programs
that we support.
The military that are coming out service, that are entering
into the job market, and so that's a real passion.
And we're doing quite a few things to help business owners
like myself expand and learn more about business.
And also to help our veterans that need to be certified.
Oh boy, has that been something.
[laughter]
But anyway, getting them certified so that they
can do business with the federal government.
And so I'm excited about today, and I'm excited about this award
because it means a lot to me for what we have
to do for other veterans.
I'm excited about it.
Thank you so much.
Elisa Basnight: Coral?
Honorable Coral Wong Pietsch: Thank you very much.
For most of the people here in the audience, you know what
the term "the old man" means.
Means the commander.
Now we have a lot of old ladies --
[laughter]
-- in the military service.
But I think I'm the old lady here and I mean that
in a different sense.
I've heard people -- commission from West Point, ROTC.
Well, I'm the true volunteer.
I entered the service as a direct commission.
There was no ROTC open to women and of course service academies
did not open their doors to women yet, either.
I joined the Army on a direct commission because of one
person, and that is my husband.
My husband and I were in law school together.
I met him there.
We were married and he already had a commitment to the Army.
He was allowed to take off from active duty
to go into law school.
And so while he was in law school, the Army career people
came to see how he was doing and he says, "I just got married,"
and they said, "Oh, congratulations," and then he
happened to say, "Oh, my wife is in law school, too."
And they said, "Well, where is she?"
and he said, "She's in Tort's class," and he knocked
on the door.
The Judge Advocate General knocked on the door
of the Tort's class and said, "The Army wants you."
[laughter]
So, I took a direct commission to the Army
as a Judge Advocate General.
My husband and I spent our first tour of duty in Korea and then
we were sent to Hawaii.
I then finished my six years of service and I stayed
in the Reserves.
In the Reserves, I was able to travel around to just about
everywhere in the Pacific on exercises and deployments.
After I left the Army, I was a Deputy Attorney General
for the State of Hawaii.
Then I served as a Senior Attorney for the United States
Army Pacific Command at Fort Shafter.
And while I was there as a civilian, the surge was taking
place in Iraq and they were looking for civilians to augment
the forces in Iraq and I volunteered.
And I was one of the first "traunch," as they say.
The first phase of civilians to go into Iraq.
Not without benefit of the uniform.
And I served as the Deputy Rule of Law Coordinator
for the Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team.
While I was in the reserves, I worked my way up into the rank
and I more or less it's a second job, so you really have
to be able to balance things out.
But I'm glad I stayed in.
I was able to be promoted to brigadier general.
I was the first women general in the U.S.
Army Judge Advocate Generals' Corp.
I'm also very proud to have been the first woman general of Asian
ancestry to have been promoted of general in the military.
In October -- or I should say in June of 2012, President Obama
nominated me and appointed me to the U.S.
Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you.
Thank you.
[applause]
Elisa Basnight: Ellen?
Ellen Houlihan: Good morning.
My name is Ellen Houlihan.
I'm an Army Veteran.
Commissioned in the field artillery and served during
the Cold War.
Professionally, I serve as an Army Account Executive
for the Ratheon Company, located in the great state of Texas.
[laughter]
Today I'm here as a Champion of Change for the West
Point Association of Graduates, for which I'm the Vice Chair
of the Board of Directors.
I'm the first woman West Point graduate to be nominated
and elected to a leadership position
on the board of directors.
Specifically, the Association of Graduates was formed just after
the Civil War and the organization had seen little
change in that over 100 years.
So, I led the team that changed the bylaws and the governance
model to provide a transparent organization for the over 50,000
members world-wide.
And also provided for the efficient and effective
operation of the organization.
I look forward to our continued conversation.
Thanks very much.
Elisa Basnight: Great.
Can we give a round of applause for all
of these champions?
[applause]
Thank you, ladies.
So, thank you ladies.
What I'd like to do now is to ask each one of you to respond
to the question in a couple of minutes, which is how did your
military service influence your life?
And Graciela, I will start with you.
Graciela Tiscaraño-Sato: As I listen to the first five women, I thought you all
gave extraordinary answers to that.
And I heard somebody say the word "tenacity," which that's
going to be my word for later, by the way.
[laughter]
But -- so I wanted to just share a story
to answer the question.
And here's the story.
We had just redeployed from Saudi Arabia and we'd been home
maybe three days when my commander and Director
of Operations called me into the commander's office and tasked
me with something.
But all I remember was the following sentence: "We want you
to do in three and a half weeks what other squadrons
do in three months."
And what that was is go to Red Flag.
How many are familiar with Red Flag exercises
in Nellis Air Force Base?
Yeah, so it's war fighting games.
You take planes and there's, you know, the good guys and the bad
guys and all that.
So, we were the tankers that were going to go support.
And they wanted us to take four tankers to go support in July.
So, they tasked me with go to the base.
Find out what we need to do.
There's usually a conference, and then you have
three months to prepare.
But we're going in three and a half weeks because
we've been deployed.
So, I said, "Okay."
And what that gave me was the confidence to know that these
guys thought that I could go figure all that stuff out
and kind of bulldoze my way through whatever obstacles
of time existed because it's supposed to be three months.
And so that was amazing to me, to be tasked with that
and go put that together.
And so what happened was I figured all that out, I got
processed, I met the right people, I learned who I could
influence, I learned who could push the right buttons to make
all this happen quickly.
And I came back and I said, "We're taking
an additional jet."
And they said "Well, no, we've been planning on five."
And I said, "No, we're taking six.
It's July.
What if we get there and, you know, something happens
and you know."
So, as it worked out, I had to convince a lot of people to take
that extra airplane because I just had this
feeling that -- women's intuition.
And, sure enough, when we landed there, one of our jets had hot
brakes and was out of commission.
And so had we taken the planned amount, we would have not been
able to support the sorties that were planned.
So, what that taught me and what I use now is I was tasked with
something -- somebody said "uncomfortable."
It was pretty uncomfortable.
Never had done that before.
But I figured it out.
And that was the pattern of I can be uncomfortable, I can
figure it out, and I have to be tenacious, and find the right
friends to make it happen.
But that's what it taught me.
You know, entrepreneurship is very uncomfortable.
When you're starting and figuring it out.
But I always go back to those experiences of having that trust
and now I just trust myself to figure it out.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you.
And Deborah, please share.
Deborah Scott Thomas: The question was in reference to what did I learn from
the military that have gotten me through life?
Elisa Basnight: Right.
That's influenced your life, yes.
Deborah Scott Thomas: Okay.
Well, I'll use the word of life.
You think of life and living and preparing
for the DASH [phonetic sp].
The "L," it taught me to lead.
To lead people to do the things that need to be done.
The "I" is for "Inspire."
Through leading, inspiring them to accomplish the mission that
is at hand at all times.
"F" is for "Focus."
To stay focused on what is to be accomplished.
Understanding the mission, undertaking it, and doing
it and serving it.
You know, in the Air Force, integrity first.
Service before self.
Excellence in all you do.
And of course, that "E": to excel.
To excel no matter what.
As I said, in coming from the South, from the 50s, the 60s,
going into 70s and really getting put into the positions,
and being able to travel the world and to make a difference.
It's one of "E" in excelling from an educational process,
it's a matter of giving back to our youth, especially today.
We really need to engage from the perspective of veterans
of here we are and our communities.
Let's move forward, truly, as a nation.
Thank you.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Martha.
Martha Daniel: The military taught me a couple of things.
First, don't let nobody turn you around.
That was one.
And then the second was not to be afraid and intimidated.
It reminded me of a little bit when I started learning
how to play golf.
One of the -- my golf pro told me and said "Martha, don't be
intimidated by the men out here.
They're looking for their ball just like you'll
be looking for yours."
[laughter]
Okay.
So, that's kind of what the military taught me.
Is that in the male-dominant military world is only worry
about your ball.
They're looking for theirs, too.
So I learned not to be intimidated in cryptology.
I mean, there was only four women in this whole --
on the whole base that did what we did.
And so I learned that and so as I moved into my professional
career, which is also technology and engineering, and when I got
my degree in those two fields and moved out to California,
where our business operated in Alisa Viejo, when I got there
and as I moved through my career, I learned
the same thing.
You know, it really -- you just go at it and you show and you
do your job and you do what you're supposed to do,
and you don't be intimidated.
So, if you know what you know, then you know what
you don't know.
And you don't have to worry about what you know.
[laughter]
So, you just go out there and do your thing.
And so that's what the military taught me and it's to be proud,
stand up, be boastful, and just say, "Hey, I don't have to worry
about -- I know I know what I know."
[laughter]
Elisa Basnight: Coral.
Thank you, Martha.
Honorable Coral Wong Pietsch: Okay.
I think the military taught me three life skills:
one is tolerance.
You're exposed to different people, different cultures,
different locations, different ideas, and if you don't have
tolerance, it's just, it's not going to be a good situation.
The second thing is they taught me the life skill is just
to roll with the punches.
Because if you don't roll with the punches, it's going
to be very difficult for you to get along and to get through.
And the last thing they taught me is obey.
[laughter]
If you don't obey, there are consequences.
But I mean that in the sense that there's always going
to be somebody who is -- you're not going to always
be the last word.
There's always going to be somebody you're accountable to,
and there'll be times when you're in charge and there will
be times when you're not in charge.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you, Coral.
And Ellen?
Ellen Houlihan: Many of the lessons that you've heard today,
both on our panel and the first panel, are certainly lessons
that I have carried forward in my professional
and volunteer life.
The one that I would like to bring forward
is time management.
Many years ago when I sat in one of our many briefings
as a plebe, a freshman at West Point, Lieutenant Colonel John
Solomon, West Point Class of 1962, stood up in front
of us and said to the plebe class:
"Use your scraps of time."
And I didn't know exactly, similar to Erika, exactly what
he meant it at that time; however, there are margins
of the day and scraps of time every day where you can write
a letter, send an email, express thanks to someone who has helped
or mentored you, or to start work on the next project.
And one of the great skills that the military taught me
was time management.
Elisa Basnight: Great.
Thank you.
And Ellen, I know you just spoke a moment ago, but we're going
to turn the cycle around here because I'd like the panel
to address this next question which is: what action could
employers take, service organizations as well
as educational institutions, take to make more
women veterans successful?
Ellen Houlihan: To make more women -- I just kind of had this conversation
with my boss recently.
And I said to him in the nicest way that I could is, "Please
stay out of my way."
[laughter]
Elisa Basnight: Yep, that's one.
[laughter]
Ellen Houlihan: And I believe Sonya mentioned it.
We understand mission, we understand vision, we understand
getting a job done.
And we have all been trained to be resourceful and use a great
deal of initiative to accomplish a mission.
And certainly we understand parameters.
And guidance.
We also are all about leadership.
And I think having business organizations or volunteer
organizations look to women veterans for leadership, because
doggone it, that's one thing that we sure know how to do.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you, Ellen.
Thank you.
Coral?
Honorable Coral Wong Pietsch: I think these organizations could probably think about
bringing more women into their ranks so that these women
could be mentors to other women.
A lot of times, I think we women don't mentor each other like men
mentor each other.
So, we really need to look at that point where we bring
in more women to help the others.
And I really mean in a mentoring way.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you, Coral.
Martha?
Martha Daniel: I'm going to speak at it from two different points.
From one is that transitioning.
Women coming out of the military.
First of all, we need to provide a means -- there's shock when
they come out.
We need to provide a means for childcare, for sure.
It's just -- I mean, they're used to having childcare in side
of their, you know, at the bases.
But then when they come out, the cost of that
of childcare is exorbitant.
The second one we need to do is really look at helping
transition properly.
I know there's programs out there, but they're not working.
When I get a veteran's resume that transition -- translating
that resume across to what the commercial world wants today
is day and night.
It's very hard for an HR director to read a military
resume and translate that to a civilian job.
And so what we have to do is begin to help translate and help
the industry hire the vets.
They want to, but it's very difficult to help that veteran
translate that job into a civilian job as they come out.
And that's what I see that organizations can
help do better.
That's what we can do as organizations that's trying
to help our vets.
And we're doing that in the Service Disabled Veteran
organization that I champion.
That's exactly the program that we have.
It's a concierge program that take resumes and translate them
into a civilian-type resume that would help that veteran
get a job.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you, Martha.
And Deborah?
Deborah Scott Thomas: Wow.
In thinking of the military, we form family units.
It's a big-small, small-big world.
And of course, we learn to take care of our own because that's
how we're established.
In transitioning out, well as the other three ladies have said
and the panel prior to us have stated, it's a thing of really
preparing the person now.
You're going to be disjointed from that family and you're
entering into a whole new world.
So, it would be so good if as Martha just was saying from
a transitional perspective, of really translating that military
aspect to a civilian aspect.
So it will be receptive in the workplace.
The bottom line to it is that military members are a natural
leaders, learners, because that's how we're built.
That's what it's all about.
But coming out and entering into the civilian forces, one really
needs to go through a new educational process because
civilian life is different from the military life.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you, Deborah.
Graciela?
Graciela Tiscarano-Sato: Oh this is such a huge question, isn't it?
I'm a member of the American GI Forum, which it's National
Coalition of Latino Veterans.
It was formed after World War II.
And they're all about social justice and accessing benefits.
That's an important thing I wanted to say.
That it's the right focus.
The transitioning, the transiting question.
You know, when I got out, I had completed my Master's degree
and I had been networking in my community with a lot of business
women as part of the Expanding Your Horizons Math and Science
Program that mentors [unintelligible] into
non-traditional careers.
So, I had this awesome network already in the community
of business women.
And when I was transitioning, I would go to the program
and I said, "Oh, they want me to look at some statistics
on a website."
I'm like, "How's that helpful?"
And so it was the women that were mentoring me that said
"Well, you actually need to sit down and do an informational
interview with such-and-such."
That's what was helpful.
And so what I know now as I do the personal branding workshops
for veterans at universities is I take the idea of the resume,
but I help the veteran be loud and proud about their experience
and speak in a compelling, memorable way
to introduce themselves.
Because you really you need to know how to do that.
And personal branding and marketing is not a skill
most vets have.
That was -- thankfully, that was my Master's degree.
So, I feel like I had all the right skills from networking
already in the community years before I even needed
any of that.
To getting the marketing experience so that I would know
how to take not everything I'd ever done, but the few skills
that mattered to this potential employer to get that interview.
Because, to me, vets are told to put together a resume and they
put everything on there.
And it's not about everything.
It's about what are you applying for?
And that is a marketing skill.
What message do I have for this particular audience?
And so I think that the programs are failing short in really
equipping veterans for the real business world and we need
people who are in the business world reaching in way before
they're leaving to coach them out.
If we wait until they're out, that's where all the depression,
the loss of self-worth sets in.
And all the consequences of that.
And so that's really how I see it, is we cannot wait
until you're out.
Until you're already a veteran.
You got to go way before that.
And I don't know how we do that because do we want corporations
recruiting from our active duty ranks actively?
I don't know.
But that's what the veterans need.
So, that's my answer.
Elisa Basnight: Great.
Thank you, Graciela.
So, we have one more question.
And it's this last one that we'd ask you to think about, which
is: what one word would you use to describe a value or principle
that guides you?
And Graciela, I'm going to start with you.
Graciela Tiscarano-Sato: As I said earlier, it has to be tenacity, because
the commonality that I hear with all of us.
And we just started a National Women Veterans Speakers Bureau
to bring women like us together and we're focusing on women
who have published.
It's the stories of how absolutely tenacious we are that
we just -- you can't stop us.
You can't defeat somebody who won't give up.
That tenacity, that is the guiding principle that
I live by.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you.
Deborah?
Deborah Scott Thomas: I would say attitude.
With the attitude of: "I can do it.
Yes you can."
Thank you.
Elisa Basnight: Thank you.
Martha Daniel: I would say guts.
[laughter]
And I define guts as not greedy.
Having unity, working, you didn't get there alone.
No one is an island.
"T" for "trusworthiness."
Say what you mean; mean what you say.
And the last one I -- because I'm an ordained minister
at the United African Methodist Episcopal Church
is have spiritual.
Spirituality.
There is a God and there is someone that will always
be there when others will not be there for you.
Deborah Scott Thomas: Amen.
Elisa Basnight: Coral?
Honorable Coral Wong Pietsch: Thank you.
I'd like to say humor.
[laughter]
Because if you can't go to bed at night with a smile on your
face, then what was the day about?
[laughter]
Elisa Basnight: I love it.
And Ellen?
Ellen Houlihan: All great watchwords.
The word that I would use is love.
There's a quotation that's credited to Mother Teresa
and it goes something like this: We can accomplish no great
things, but we can accomplish small things with great love.
And I believe that all of us, whether it's through mentoring,
whether it's reaching out to others in your community.
You can do that with great love and it's as simple as saying,
"Hello.
How are you?
Thank you for your service.
Please tell me about it."
Elisa Basnight: Great.
Thank you all.
[applause]
Can we give the Champions a round of applause?
[applause]
I love the guts.