United Forces & Families: Unlocking Military Spouse Talent for a Ready Force

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Lyndsey Akers:

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the Unlocking Military Spouse Talent for a Ready Force panel powered by AFA’s United Forces & Families Program. My name is Lyndsey Akers and I serve as the senior consultant for this very program. And I’m also a military spouse who has built her career around military life through traditional employment and now through entrepreneurship. For decades, the military spouse employment conversation has largely centered around the challenge. We know the barriers. PCSing disrupts careers. Childcare remains a significant constraint. Licensing, portability, remote work reductions, and other factors constrain spouses. Far too many of them continue to experience unemployment and underemployment. And those challenges are real and they remain today, but the opportunity before us today is to move the conversation forward from awareness to increased action. Because while many of the challenges persist, the environment is changing. Government is advancing new policies and programs.

Employers are reconsidering how they identify, recruit, and retain military connected talent. Community organizations are building new partnerships and solutions, and military spouses are finding increasingly diverse pathways to meaningful and sustainable careers. And recently, an executive order was signed to establish the president’s military spouse commission to advise the White House on quality of life issues. Military spouse employment is not simply a quality of life issue or a charitable initiative. It is a readiness issue and certainly a family focused challenge, but it’s also a workforce opportunity. When military spouses have greater access to meaningful and sustainable careers, we strengthen the economic stability of military families. We support the conditions that enable continued service and we connect employers with an experienced, adaptable, and often overlooked talent pool. So our focus today is on progress and possibility, what’s working, what is changing, where are we seeing the most meaningful momentum, and what role can we all play in what comes next?

We are so fortunate to have an exceptional panel of leaders with us this morning. Joining us this morning is Mr. Stephen Simmons, deputy assistant secretary of war for military community and family policy, who is shaping policies, programs, and initiatives for today’s military family. We also have Ms. Sue Hoppin, president of the National Military Spouse Network, who has spent years, if not decades, championing military spouse professionals and entrepreneurs, and she brings a deep understanding of the experiences, ambitions, and the evolving needs of this community. Additionally, we have Mrs. Elizabeth O’Brien, senior vice president at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, who brings an important employer and private sector perspective, including what it takes to translate military spouse talent into meaningful workforce opportunities. And guiding our conversation today is Nicole Murray, vice president of strategic partnerships at American Corporate Partners, whose work sits at the intersection of talent, opportunity, and the military connected ecosystem. Nicole, over to you.

Nicole Murray:

I’m slightly taller. Good morning, everybody.

Nicole Murray:

I’m still on Mountain Time, so we’re well in the morning. Why are we still talking about this? Military spouse employment has been a challenge for decades, but that’s not really the focus, but I want to get into that right off the bat. We’ve been talking about this. There are programs, there are more employer commitments and more awareness than ever before, yet some of the same challenges still remain. Before we talk about solutions, why has this problem been so difficult to move? I’m going to start with Sue.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

Because same stuff, different day, right? And us military spouse is still subject to a directed move. So there’s restarting every 18 months to three years. And I wish we could say that we had a lot of consistency, but what happens is with every change of leadership, somebody has a bright idea and then a great program goes away. We don’t dot the Is and cross the Ts and we don’t necessarily solidify the programs before we move on to the next one. So I think for military spouses, it’s frustrating because a lot of them, we see an uprise in entrepreneurship and yet as they’re moving from installation to installation, it’s inconsistent, right? They might be living in Japan, they might be at Kadena Air Base, and they’re able to have a business on base, but then they might go to OSON and then that installation commander has a different idea and they’re not able to have a business on base.

So what the spouse would love is more consistency. So if we could move some of these… I’m so sorry, Mr. Simmons, I’m going to give this to you-

Stephen B. Simmons:

Okay.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

… but if we can move some of this to the agency level instead of at the installation level, I think that would alleviate a lot of the stress for the commanders themselves because they have so much to deal with. They have so many issues to deal with, with troop movements and such that military spouse employment may never perk to their level of interest, not to the top three. And so it’d be really helpful if we had some guidance maybe at the agency level to provide more consistency for everyone so that the spouses knew what they could look forward to moving. And I know that we spent a lot of time trying to get military spouses into the government space and we were working on the DETO and I wrote down the acronym, the Domestic Employee Telework Overseas and it was working.

We had military spouses who were working for the government, their service members had PCS works to go overseas, and then they were able to get DETOs that would allow them to continue their work overseas and then we curtailed those. And so we found a solution that worked. It was benefiting the government because we had a really great talent pipeline. It was benefiting military spouses and service members because it was consistency in employment and then we curtailed them. So I think we’re still talking about it because we don’t have consistency in managing our programs.

Nicole Murray:

Okay. And I turn it over to Mr. Simmons. Ooh, that was nice. We are having increasing conversations where we’re tying military spouse unemployment and underemployment to national readiness, retention, quality of life, rather than treated as just a spouse issue. How is the department thinking differently now about military spouse unemployment today?

Stephen B. Simmons:

Yeah. Well, first off, thanks for just letting me come and join you today and thank you everyone. I can tell it’s an important issue because we have a large and growing crowd. I think when we first started talking about this, it was groups of five or 10 and now we’re here. And so I think the first thing I’m going to say is we’re here because we’ve admired the problem for too long. We haven’t done enough about it. And to get an issue, the attention needs, usually first off, you have to elevate it. We did that with the office of spouse employment. We brought that up to a director level that reported directly to me that’s focused on these spouse employment issues like DETO, like so many others and I think the other piece that I’ll flag is a lot of times we always looked at spouse employment as an employment issue and not a systems issue.

And what I’ll call out is you can’t just look at a singular facet and say, “Well, we need another employment program.” Well, maybe you also need a childcare program. Maybe you need some sort of flexibility program or some kind of way to PCS proof that job. And you also need partnerships with corporations, you need partnerships with private industry, but you also need partnerships with the public sector. And oh, by the way, the government needs to be setting the example for the private sector. If we’re going to expect the private sector to be flexible for military spouse hiring, government should be as well. So this is what we’ve been busy doing really the last year and a half. This has been one of the primary focal points. And we talk about approaching this as a readiness issue. Surprise everything is a readiness issue when it comes down to it.

But what we see too often is at some point that military member makes a choice and says, “I’m no longer staying because my spouse has got a better job than I do. My spouse deserves stability as well, and I want to make sure my family’s stable.” And so we see this as A, it’s a retention matter. B, also when the spouse is employed, well, financial security happens. We see more stronger mental health, stronger connection to that community, and everything starts to work. So again, not just chasing after a symptom, but going upstream to attack that root cause and spouse employment is one of those persistent ones. And I think we all know some of those military spouses out there, they’re phenomenal at what they do. And I’m thrilled to hear it was mentioned at the front. I think I coined the term about a year ago now, this is not charity work.

This is a good business decision. We’ll talk more about that later on. But at the end of the day, military spouses are incredible employees. And I think everybody who’s worked with one probably knows that they are smarter, they’re usually better educated. They’ve also gone through some hardships that most employees never have gone through. So I think we’ve got to reframe this conversation not around, “Hey companies, please do your part.” To, “Hey companies, make a good decision that you’re not going to regret 20 years from now because you just hired one of the best employees your company had and is going to make you some money.” And I think we’re getting there. I think we’re at a watershed moment culture-wise. It’s never been a better time to be a military spouse than in 2026. You’ve got your own presidential commission now. You’ve got a office of spouse employment focused on this.

I think there’s some other stuff that’s coming up pretty soon. It’s going to also really support military spouses, not only in employment, but in every other aspect that challenges them. So really excited for the future, but also I think we’re laying the groundwork for some important stuff right now and right here. Thank you.

Nicole Murray:

I’m going to keep you on the spot. Talk to us a little bit about the SpouseWorks evolution.

Stephen B. Simmons:

Yeah, so that’s an interesting one. And SpouseWorks, what we had in the past was we had SECO. Does anybody know what SECO stands for? Yeah, aha. So flaw number one is if you’re going to create a government program that you want to be an effective, find an acronym that nobody understands and watch what happens. So I say this in jest, but I legitimately mean it. We had spouse employment career opportunities, the SECO program, and that was SpouseWorks. But if you don’t know what SECO is, if you don’t know what that stands for, you’re going to reach out and ask for an employment program. So we quickly saw that spouse employment, it was a critical need. It was something that we needed to address, but we also saw that to do that, we’re going to have to do two things. And first off, SpouseWorks, then SECO was buried in one of our directorships through no fault of their own, just organizational.

But in my mind, organizational leadership, you highlight and elevate things that matter and things that need leadership attention. And I saw this as one, it needed to report directly to me. So we turned it from a sub office to a directorship, brought it up. So now it’s right in front of us right there. So personally involved, I spent a few years in a small little company called Amazon and the thing about Amazon, as big as it is, it’s an incredibly flat organization. You had the CEO of the company hands on with teams that were 12 layers below him or her, but it wasn’t because micromanaging, it’s because the organization is designed to be flat. So I was like, “Well, let’s do it here.” And it worked. The next piece is we said, “Well, we’re bringing it up to directorship, but let’s rebrand this and make this something that’s actually relevant for the community we serve and our customers, customer-centric, imagine that.” And so we said, “What is it that we do?”

Well, it’s SpouseWorks, it’s getting spouses jobs. So let’s rebrand this to SpouseWorks. Similarly, we took the other programs who were associated with it, MyCAA. Does anybody know what that stands for? I see a few head nods, so that’s actually good, but that’s a scholarship for spouses. So we turned that into SpouseWorks Scholarship. We also took a fellowship program, we call it SpouseWorks Fellowship. So making it very simple and I know some of y’all are probably like, “Wow, this is like my three-year-old could do this.” Well, it took a whole lot of really smart government people to mess that one up. So we’re getting past that and I think trying to make it very simple and easy to use. The other piece, if you haven’t been there, go to the SpouseWorks website. You’ll notice it’s actually remarkably easy to use for a government website. It’s very easy to log in. It’s very easy to navigate.

And what we want to do is make it accessible for everyone. Still working on, I think the next step is going to be the job search tool. I think that’s still got some work to do and we’re going to get there. But what we want is to make it an easy stop for not just spouses, but employers to come and it’s showing the numbers that it is working. We’re up well over 50 to 80% usage year over year, and we’re only about halfway through the first year of the SpouseWorks rebrand. So thanks for letting me share.

Nicole Murray:

Yeah, no, pitch it, pitch it. Liz, you mentioned employers and I really love the framework where this is not a charitable thing. When something’s easy or a nice to do, it’s really easy not to do it when resources get tight. Talk to us about why companies should be looking at military spouses as a talent pool and what that looks like. Obviously, not everybody has as a military necessarily philanthropic efforts or is military connected. Why should companies who don’t necessarily have that military tie be looking at this talent pool?

Liz O’Brien:

Yeah, thank you so much. We sit at a very interesting place because we are housed at the US Chamber of Commerce. So we sit at the intersection of business and policy and really serve as the connective tissue for those businesses to all of our great employer partners, all of our government agencies, and we work really hard and intentionally to bridge that divide. And so equally important is what we know is that we have seen employers flock to us to hire military spouses. We’ve seen the great work that they’re doing through the Department of War where the numbers are increasing. And so what’s happening is that word of mouth and that we do very little marketing. Employers come to us because they talk to their friend who’s in a recruiting position at another company and they realize that when they hire a military spouse, it is lifting the entire lane of business up.

And we referenced it earlier that oftentimes military spouses have more education, they have more opportunity, they want to stay with a company once they’re hired, and we’re seeing more companies create solutions for permanent portability. And so all of those have a cascading effect across companies and organizations. And I think what’s interesting is we know companies are showing up because they are seeing that direct impact. When I first took over our spouse program years ago at Hiring Our Heroes, I think the first council meeting I ran, maybe we had 12 companies in the room, right? And the last one we had well over 150 companies showing up. And those are the folks that are partnering and paying, and I can tell you the work that we do. We have about 2,000 employer partners that are showing up and raising their hand to support military spouse employment. But what I want to be clear about is we don’t do anything alone.

We’re always looking to our left and our right. How do we bring in more employers? How do we better partner with government agencies? How do we create that bridge between the public and private divide? So again, anything that we talk about up here, at least from the Hiring Our Heroes perspective, we are never doing alone. And it is in collaboration with all of America because it is a whole of nation approach as we work to build some really great solutions. And also I want to be clear, we are always driving towards American prosperity in everything that we’re doing for American business.

Nicole Murray:

Let’s get to the military spouse side of this equation for a minute. You’ve worked with thousands of military spouses over the years. Why do employers still underestimate this workforce? And what are you hearing from spouses today that’s different from the past?

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

So what we’re hearing is that young spouses, enlisted and officer spouses are doing pretty well. They’re able to find their opportunities and they’re making difficult choices. They’re choosing to geo batch for the right opportunity, but they’re doing far better than their service members. They’re in positions that me coming up, my husband’s been retired for a little while, we never had these options. So they are finding their own options, but the problem is that they’re not self-identifying as military spouses. We may not be capturing them in the good news stories. And we also find that they’re subject to outdated stereotypes that employers might think, “I’m not going to take a chance on a military spouse because they’re going to PCS, they’re going to move.” Well, the reality is millennials are moving more frequently than military spouses and if you hire a military spouse, they’re not looking to move while they’re at the installation. They’re looking to stay there and do a great job and probably find another military spouse to take their place. So I think it’s just outdated stereotypes.

Nicole Murray:

Liz, I’m going to go back to you because from this, talking about companies and that self-identification is really hard for companies. It’s hard to track retention and advancement if you don’t have military spouses raising their hand and saying, “Hey, I’m a military spouse.” What are the good companies? Don’t name names necessarily, but what are the good companies-

Liz O’Brien:

I’ll name names that are doing a great job.

Nicole Murray:

It’s not that kind of panel. What are the good companies doing that can sort of serve as a best practice?

Liz O’Brien:

Yeah. And I think it’s important to note, right? It is oftentimes very difficult for companies to navigate the piece of self-identification on a form for military spouses because you’re asking someone to identify based on marital status, right? And typically that’s not a question, but what we have seen, and I want to highlight this, we have seen financial institutions, which are some of the most highly regulated companies in America, find a pathway to navigate that. Now, did it happen in a year or two years? No, it took six years and a lot of legal work, but the precedent is there. But not everything is about just being able to check a box to identify a military spouse. Hey, we are approaching this holiday. If you’re a military spouse and have a pin to signify you’re a military spouse, shoot me an email on this team.

So this is a way that you can collect information. How do you build community so that military spouses want to tangentially self-identify? Hey, include them in employee resource groups. And again, military spouses fit a wide bucket of resource groups as well. And so there’s ways to create culture that allow military spouses to self-identify besides checking a box on an application. And I think what I’ve seen the best companies do is fight for that. We watched one company fight for probably five years to be able to host military spouse fellows, right? But when we get great internal champions that are persistent in it and it takes work, and I think that’s what a lot of military spouses and service members don’t know is the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes in companies to advance the changes that we need to create these positive cultures, to be able to create retention, to create permanent portability to folks and champions.

So if you are somebody that’s going to work in corporate America, take that on for yourself, extend your hand back and know that you may be in this for one, two or three years to create change, but ultimately it’s going to contribute to a military spouse going to work.

Nicole Murray:

Yeah, absolutely. We’re picking up the people behind us so that they don’t hit the same pressure points. And I think as companies, we start to see some of those benefits and we’ve seen spouses sort of advocate for themselves through ERGs and things like that where even if I hear about something as a military spouse that my company is doing, I’m going to raise my hand and say, “No, I want that too. I want that too.” Let’s talk a little bit, and most challenging part of my job is keeping everybody on time, y’all, but Sue, I want to talk about the remote work reality. We saw coming out of the pandemic, we though, “Okay, there’s more remote work available.” And we though, “This is going to be a game changer for military spouses.” But we’re seeing now that return to office. What has that shift meant for military spouses over the past five years?

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

It’s been tough. Honestly, it’s tough. Remote work is a lifeline for a lot of military spouses. It allows them to work even if they have childcare issues. But if they have to go back to the office, all of a sudden they need to have access to affordable childcare and that’s become an issue because a lot of times most of the time they’re not near family or friends where they have that support system where they can rely on them and you can find ready childcare, right? And so I know a lot of people who started remote work and they were able to move pretty quickly in their careers, but then now they’re going back to office and they have three children under the age of five. So there’s not even a kindergarten option. And so it’s been tough for them. And I know for the spouses who are moving overseas without a DETO that’s been really tough because they’ve been put on leave without pay.

And so that’s a significant impact to their families, because we’re talking like six figure salaries, right? And all of a sudden that salary’s gone overnight. And so all around it’s been tough, whether it’s at the government work or whether it’s private sector, we hear from spouses that the impact is very real for their families financially.

Liz O’Brien:

And if I can just jump in here-

Nicole Murray:

Go ahead.

Liz O’Brien:

… I think I would add, as I’ve been looking across and very much immersed in this space, certainly the unintended consequence of COVID is that we saw more remote work opportunities, but what we didn’t see in parallel to that was the military spouse unemployment rate plummet, right? It still stayed pretty steady. And so for me, that’s a signal that it’s not just return to office. We had tremendous opportunities in remote work, but still didn’t see the statistics drop in the way that we thought we would. And so what are the underlying issues? I’ve been really impressed with the work that the Department of War did with their grant to Armed Services YMCA to create childcare opportunities. And so how do we take these models of innovation and continue to replicate and how do we potentially leverage armed services YMCA and girls and boys clubs to create some of those solutions overseas for when military spouses move?

Because at the end of the day, the majority of our population is employed in diverse industries. It’s not just government, it’s not just private sector. We have entrepreneurs. And so how do we continue to create these solutions that we know work so that they can continue to work? But something that’s just stayed with me is I did not see that unemployment number drop in the way we had hoped.

Stephen B. Simmons:

Yeah. And thanks Liz and Sue, thanks for bringing that up. I really think we have to be careful to not take an all or nothing approach when it comes to spouse employment and remote work right there. I think if we message the private industry that, “You better do remote work or else”, they will walk away from spouse employment like that. I think what we want to see is employers that are offering flexibility and portability and support to military spouses. And that may mean some industries can maybe choose to remote work sometimes, maybe one day out of the week or just be flexible with a schedule, but that flexibility and offering that understanding is I think where we’re seeing more success. The best practices, the best in class spouse employers, they actually don’t offer a sole remote work option. What they do offer is flexibility and understanding that, hey, this military spouse is going to PCS.

Yes, this military spouse is going to face childcare challenges. Yes, this military spouse may have an unplanned leave of absence that we have to account for because of X, Y, or Z. Or husband got a random school assignment and they’re now solo parenting for the next three weeks. So I think to the remote work piece, yeah, it’s one of many, many things, but when we talk about spouse employment, we are talking about American prosperity and that means this has to be good for the spouse. It also has to be good for the employer or we will continue to see the unemployment numbers in the 20% range.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

Yeah, so-

Nicole Murray:

Let me just jump in. We’re talking about this. It’s part of this broader ecosystem. So Mr. Simmons, what other quality of life issues do we have to look at in concert with military spouse employment, remote work and what’s coming through? What else is part of that system that we need to address?

Stephen B. Simmons:

Yeah. So what I’ll say is I think the intrinsic relationship between military spouse employment and childcare. If we see childcare fall through the cracks or fail for a variety of reasons, and that could be everything from the air conditioners out at the CDC to just no suitable provider, the first casualty is military spouse employment, period. And so what you haven’t seen as publicly as spouse works is in the background, we’re doing a lot of work right now to improve flexibility and options for childcare. And we’re making a lot of headway there. Not enough. It’s still a slog. And what we find is every time we open a new childcare facility, it’s at capacity and we need more, which tells me there’s hidden demand out there. But what I’d flag is we’re doing a lot of work, not just on the public side, the base child development centers, which are phenomenal, but it takes a long time to build those and build that capacity up.

But working with the private sector and the Armed Service YMCA, we’re excited. We’re actually going to be opening the third, essentially what is a private CDC. It’s funded through our fee assistance programs in critical locations. We’re also expanding fee assistance. You’re going to probably see a little bit more on our fee assistance work here in the meantime, but what this has resulted in is year over year, last year or this year, our childcare wait lists are down 25%, which is phenomenal. And as a result, you see that wait list drop, you also see the spouse employment drop. So I think we’ve got to be more in tune with that. I think there’s still some speed and flexibility because I’m very aware of, I think what happens in the spouse employment ecosystem is PCS, wait till the kids are settled, then you go look for a job.

And so I think if there’s a three-month gap between PCS and childcare, then we’ve already created a three-month lapse employment. So we’re really trying to speed that up right now and I think we’re coming up with some options. The other thing I’m going to highlight is there’s a lot of private sector folks that are really getting after this now and doing a phenomenal job. And I’m looking at one of them over there in the audience, but they’re working on a lot of what I’d call casual childcare support where it’s an hourly, maybe here’s two hours so spouse, you can go do that job interview, just drop your kids off and then come back. And I think we’re starting to see the private sector recognize this, but the other piece is talk about best practice for employers. We’re seeing employers also start to realize like, “Hey, if we want to hire that spouse, military or non-military, we do have to also come with childcare options.”

And again, I’ll highlight my own private sector experience. The private sector companies that did a good job and accounted for parents, especially mothers, because let’s be honest, they usually are the primary caregivers for the families. Those mothers, the ones that took care of them, they had a much, much better employee and they took care of them. Those mothers came back and made them a lot of money.

Nicole Murray:

Yeah. We’re talking about that PCS timeline. We talk a lot about when we PCS that loss of a village, right? That personal village that we have and move from base to base. But Sue, it’s not just personal village, it’s a professional village. That’s a loss of professional network. Talk about how significant is that loss of social capital for not just employment, but career advancement?

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

Sure. But can I go back to the question?

Nicole Murray:

Sure.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

So I’m not comfortable talking about military spouse employment not being impacted by remote work because I think the problem we have here is that we’re dealing with one data set, which is one data point, which is spouse unemployment. I get it. Spouse unemployment keeps going up. We’re unemployed. I get it. But who’s unemployed? Who’s underemployed? Who’s choosing to be unemployed because their spouse is underway or we’re the Air Force? Whose spouse is they’re doing a 365? So I don’t think we have enough granularity in the data to know the impact of remote work or not having remote work available to us. I don’t think we have enough granularity to know why spouses are underemployed or why they’re choosing not to work, because some spouses do choose not to work. They might be caregiving for their elderly parents or their children. And so I think what this speaks to is not that remote work did not impact spouse unemployment numbers. It speaks to the lack of granularity and the data to support spouse employment.

Nicole Murray:

Okay.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

And so that’s just my two cents. What were you talking about? Mentoring?

Nicole Murray:

Yes.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

Mentoring is really important.

Nicole Murray:

Let’s go back to it. Yeah.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

No, I think mentoring is really important. Military spouses have always worked their programs and their networks to find the best church, the best school, the best childcare, but they never did it for their careers. I think there was this stigma that said, “No, if I network for my career, that’s a bad mark. I’m getting in through contacts or whatever.” And we’re like, “That’s what everybody else does.” But I think they’re getting sophisticated. We’re all getting sophisticated enough to network to our next career. LinkedIn makes it easier. But What I want to see is when they move from mentorship to sponsorship, that’s when it gets exciting. That’s when you get the board positions, that’s when you get the C-suite positions. When you have someone like Nicole Murray networking for you in a room that you can’t be in and you have a sponsor, I think that’s what we need to teach military spouses.

And we also need to teach military spouses to be mentors themselves because I think so many times we all just have this imposter syndrome. We think, “We’re really lucky to be here.” You not lucky to be there. You’re there because somebody needed your perspective. And so you could lift up another young spouse. And so I think that it’s so funny because we’re so eccentric that we’re like, “Oh my gosh, we’re in this room. We should just be grateful we’re in this room.” No, reach back and pull some spouses with you into the room. So I’d love to see military spouses seek mentors, but seek sponsors and also mentor and sponsor themselves.

Nicole Murray:

Yeah. And I don’t think I would be standing at this podium if I didn’t have Sue Hoppin on my personal board of directors over the years. I won’t say how many decades we’ve known each other, but that’s another thing. But let’s talk a little bit about, so we’re talking a lot about military spouses when their service member is active, and that’s what a lot of the resources out there are for. But what about the military spouse? I hear this a lot from people, “Hey, I’m going to wait until my service member is getting out and then it’s going to be my turn.” What’s the problem with that guys?

Liz O’Brien:

Well, I think what we’ve seen certainly is that there is a shift in how programs show up. So we have the luxury at Hiring Our Heroes because we’re not under the Department of War umbrella to expand what a military spouse is for us. And so at Hiring Our Heroes, we will serve anybody that identifies as having their career impacted by a service member’s commitment to this country. And so that can be a fiance, it can be a divorced spouse, you name it, Reserve National Guard, Gold Star, we want to bring them in. But what we know through our programming is that we are creating space for people to come and engage even if they are not actively looking for a job today, because the opportunity to build the mentorship, the network, to continue to stay current on opportunities that are out there to upskill or reskill before you’re ready to go to work have a direct impact on the future. And I know Mr. Simmons has done great work on how long people can leverage programs after. So I’d kick it to you to expand on that.

Stephen B. Simmons:

Yeah. Well, I think when we talk veteran spouses, and I get a few of these notes every so often like, “Hey, I’m a veteran spouse. What are you doing for me?” And I think there’s this artificial dividing line between currently serving and veteran. And that’s something that we’re trying to blur that barrier as much as possible. It does exist there and we’ve got some really good friends in the VA that are working with them. But what I’ve proposed, and the data is showing this now, some initial stuff that we’re seeing is what’s good for active duty ends up being good for veterans because those same programs that companies adopt for veterans, they’re also adopting for active duty and vice versa. They adopted for active duty. Well, now they’re much more in tune with the veterans and there’s unique challenges for veteran spouses. I think it’s worth also saying there’s a significant family dynamic and change and some of the issues that they face are almost exactly the opposite of the active duty.

Maybe now it’s like, “Wow, I have to actually decide where I want to live for the next 10 years. Never had that choice before, but now what do you mean I have to, you know? This is my spouse and my service member who’s actually living here simultaneously.” So what we’re really trying to do is expand our support as long as possible. Typically, it’s about a year. I think there’s some argument to make it further or get to that two year mark there of you can still access the same resources even a year after you’ve transitioned. But what I’m really trying to do is get it to where don’t start thinking about a job a year after you’ve retired or a year after you’ve separated. Start thinking about that job a year, two years, three years. Start thinking about that job the moment your spouse steps on those yellow footprints to use a Marine Corps term.

This is what we want to see, but where we’re really having a lot of success, and I’m going to come back to the data is I’m tired of year long, two year long, 10 year long studies that we spend a bunch of money, we wait for them to come back and then they tell us, “Hey, surprise, you have a problem.” Well, no duh. I’ve got the data.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

Nice.

Stephen B. Simmons:

Yeah. Sorry. But yeah, I’m sitting on the real-time usage data right now. Everybody who touches spouse works, we see their profile, we see how long they’ve been in the workforce, how long they’ve been out of the workforce. We’ve got a lot of spouses that are usually returning to the workforce after they’ve taken a break, either because they chose to have kids, they PCS to someplace that did not have a DETO. Belgium is fixed by the way. It’s awesome. But they come back and then it’s, “Well, how do I reintegrate?” And that’s where we’re really trying to get all these programs factored in to focus on those unique needs at each point. But what we’re trying to do is close that gap of not waiting for some study to confirm what we all instinctively know that there’s a challenge and actually shape the programs that we offer there.

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

I think that’s great to hear because there is data out there from one of those long studies that says that if there’s a second income coming into the home, that the veteran has more runway with which to transition. It’s a more successful transition because I know so many. I used to work at a military nonprofit and there were so many service members who would take off the uniform, put on a suit and go right back to the same job. And then they would quit within 18 months because they would decide, “You know what I want to do? I want to be a zookeeper in Dallas. That’s what I want to do. I’ve had to wear the uniform. I’ve had to show up on the flight line every single day and I just want to work with animals. I’m done with people.”

So to be able to have that flexibility, to be able to figure out what color is my parachute, what do I want to do? What do I want to do? After you figure out where do you want to live, it’s great. Having a spouse bring in that real salary, I’m looking at Lyndsey here because that’s exactly your situation. She is a breadwinner right now because her husband was able to have this wonderful transition because she did have that bridge salary. And that is a dream of having a military spouse, having a very viable career, doing what they love, making the money, that service member has all kinds of runway to decide what they want to do when they retire.

Nicole Murray:

Yeah. It’s not about the first job. It’s about the right job. I told you we’re going to be tight on time. We’re going to do rapid fire, get excited. We are going to talk about, we’ve been spending decades building awareness of the problem and I want to end with action. So I want you to think about one thing you want each of these groups to do differently beginning tomorrow. So I’m going to start with Mr. Simmons. What should the government do next?

Stephen B. Simmons:

We’ve got the programs in place. We need to connect to that spouse that’s suffering in silence. That’s the bottom line. I think we’ve got everything that it is working. It give us a chance to fix it and it does work when the programs get used. I think the problem right now is we’ve got to still connect to those spouses that don’t know about the programs, make sure they find out. Senior spouses out there, go talk to your junior spouses. That’s my challenge to you, but we’ve got to connect to that military spouse that does not know about our programs.

Nicole Murray:

Liz, what should companies do next?

Liz O’Brien:

Well, first and foremost, I want to say that military spouses and their service members should be active participants. Nobody’s coming to save you. The programs exist. How do we teach people to go leverage the programs that exist? And to your point, 150 people are marrying into the military every weekend, so they almost immediately have to PCS and become unemployed. My call to action certainly for employers across the country around the globe is to continue to do the hard work behind the scenes because ultimately it’s going to impact American business in a really positive way, but it is hard work. It is gritty work. It is often work that you don’t get applause for recognition, and so it has to very much so be purpose-driven work. If you are one of those employers going to work each and every day, shoulder the burden and take the action.

Nicole Murray:

Sue and Liz would have sort of prepped you for this. What’s on the military spouse? What should the military spouse community do next?

Sue Luangkhot Hoppin:

They should advocate for themselves, like learn how to self-advocate to their employers, but also to Congress. There’s a lot of legislation that needs to be passed to make our situations better, so they should learn how to advocate. They should fill out those millions of surveys they get every year. I know it’s tedious, but you got to fill them out because that is your feedback. They are literally asking you for feedback, give the feedback, and that you should show up to round tables. Like if they have an opportunity to speak to a member of Congress, if they have an opportunity to speak to Mr. Simmons, show up. You guys are here, so you’re not the problem. We’re preaching to the choir here, but if you could spread the news, if they want to make change or they want to affect change, it’s not sexy. They just need to do the surveys. They need to give the feedback and they need to advocate.

Nicole Murray:

Well, thank you everybody. I’m going to turn it back over to Lyndsey.

Lyndsey Akers:

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give them a round of applause. My husband retired August 1st and he already has a beard. You knew he already has a beard. It was a very quick transition for him in that regard. But before we close, I absolutely want to thank our panelists for lending your voices today and for the work that you have done over the years, the decades, and the passion that you bring to this very real challenge and for those of you in the room or the military spouses who are or will be watching online, please learn about these resources. Please get plugged in and share those with your communities who may not be in this room. Hey service members, now is your chance to text your spouse. Text them about spouse works. Talk to them about these resources over dinner. It is so meaningful and we are always very grateful for that reminder or that update.

And if you’re an employer, hire military spouses. This is not charity or an act of goodwill. It is absolutely a sound business decision and before we go, I have three housekeeping items before we dismiss. Immediately following this panel, you can head to the Maryland Ballroom where Mr. Simmons’ team will be doing a demo and open house forum to deep dive into spouse works. Again, Maryland Ballroom just out here to the right. Additionally, a group of us will be going to the AFA Pavilion where we will be having a live United Forces & Families podcast with Mrs. Debbie Schiess and Cathy Bentivegna and we’re certainly welcome and encourage you all to join, listen to that and meet these wonderful women. Then tomorrow, Tuesday, please join us for our United Forces and Families Breakout Panel featuring our Voices of the Family Force Panel and a keynote on military marriage from Bree Carroll. That will be National Harbor 11, which is upstairs just out here to the right. Y’all have a wonderful day and thank you for being here.