BTM58 Transcription

Welcome to Episode 58 of Behind the Mission, a show that sparks conversation with PsychArmor trusted partners and educational experts.

My name is Duane France, and each week I'll be having conversations with podcast guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans and their families. Find the show on all the podcast players by going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast.

Thanks again for joining us on Behind The Mission. Our work and mission are supported by generous partnerships and sponsors, who also believe that education changes lives. This episode is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military cultural content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. You can find more PsychArmor at www.psycharmor.org. 

On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Lauren Postler, Vice President of Growth at PsychArmor. With more than 15 years of experience in strategic planning, change management, capacity building and collaborations for nonprofit organizations and fortune 500 businesses alike, Lauren brings a wealth of knowledge, a dynamic skill set, and a passion to her work with mission driven organizations. You can find out more about Lauren by checking out her bio in our show notes. Let's get into my conversation with her and come back afterwards to talk about some of the key points. 

DUANE: So you've been working as a consultant for nonprofits at the local and national level for a number of years prior to your work currently with PsychArmor you supported service members, Veterans, and their families, and you work with a wide range of organizations. I'm interested to hear more about your background and how you became so involved in nonprofit work, supporting military and Veterans.

LAUREN: Sure, thanks Duane.  It's been an interesting journey because I never thought that I would find a career working with Veterans and working in the military space, as often as I had worked in the non-profit space. Falling into fundraising in particular as an outgrowth of my work in social work.

I never thought I would do that either. So I think this is a series of me saying yes, when called to serve. And I come from a very long line of a family dedicated to service. In a spiritual capacity, my Godfather's a priest. He currently serves as the Vatican's Cultural Attache in Israel. Super neat. My godmother is a military spouse. Her husband's air force. My brother's a Marine. And, you name it. We've got it across all the branches, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Guard, Reserves, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps, of course, Semper Fi. But the journey to service I think was always implied that I would find a way to serve my God, my country or my community in one way or another.

That was just an expectation. For me, I knew that didn't look like joining the Marine Corps. So I early on had to figure out what service meant to me. And that was little acts of service, little acts of volunteering. My mother and father were both very active in our community. My mother led our girl scout troop and our Sunday school classes. My dad coached our soccer teams and all of those little acts of service led me to explore social work. When it came time to pick a major and consider what I wanted to do academically. And I remember so vividly reading the description of what social work was and social work is inherently the study of systems, how systems interact, and either, work to institutionalize injustice, or break down barriers. And that was my light bulb moment, Duane. That was when I said that I would have been a terrible psychologist and a terrible psychiatrist. You don't want me one-on-one on the couch. I'll be spinning off into all sorts of tangents, but the study of systems, I was good at that. I was good at seeing how pieces connected, how dots came together.

And I was really good at getting into what we call in social work in needs assessment with individuals. Learning from clients, learning from stakeholders, how we could improve systems or affect change. And so studying social work was my first foray into, okay, I'm going to commit my life to being of service. It seemed a pretty natural outgrowth. As I was studying systems to lean into public policy, it was an area I was always interested in. And so I spent time at the state legislature in Texas. And this was another light bulb moment when I was working to advocate for a bill I really cared about and could not get any appropriations. And I said, okay, that's it. If you cannot get the money, the resources necessary to affect change, your mission is going to die in the water. And so again, I said, yes, when called to serve. I said, okay, they don't need another social worker and other public policy analysts. What they need is money. I'm going to teach myself how to be the best fundraiser I can be. And so I did. I'm a scrappy go-getter who found my way working with nonprofits, but I made conscious decisions along the way, Duane, that every time I needed to learn something, I might go in and out, I might go for profit. Then back to non-profit.

 For example, I worked with an organization that raised money in the oil and gas industry here in Houston. And I really wanted to figure out how to better communicate with those corporate stakeholders to understand what the value proposition was to them. If I was encouraging them to make a philanthropic donation in a cause. So I went and worked in oil and gas, and I ended up working with private equity firms.

You know, if you're a good fundraiser, people come calling, you will never be out of work. But it was this, intentionally saying yes, without necessarily seeing the big picture. Knowing that I was being called to serve and that might shift. It might be for-profit, it might be non-profit. It might be working in tech, which is where I found myself about 10 years ago. Again, if you're a good fundraiser. 

But each step along the way, when I was called to serve, I found a way to connect that back to my purpose, which was being of service to others. I've been blessed to work with organizations, supporting the homeless population with animals, with children, and lots of amazing causes, but I never said yes to a professional job in the Veteran space. And I, I don't know that it was intentional at the time. Oh, I'm going to avoid it. That's where I was just volunteering. I volunteered often working with Impact Hero. There's some great organizations out of Houston, Combined Arms being one of them. 

Next stop, I fell into working with Bunker Lab because I worked again with tech and entrepreneurs. But I always thought of those as passion projects.

It was important to my family. It was dear to my heart and it wasn't until I ran into Dr. Tina Atherall at the Bush Veteran Leadership Program that I thought, you know what, maybe I could make a career out of this. I'm good at other areas. Maybe this is the call. 

DUANE: That's really interesting. This idea of keeping those two things separate. The right hand, not knowing what the left hand is doing. You did this thing, over here as far as fundraising for a wide range of organizations as a career, and you did this other thing, supporting service members and Veterans as a volunteer, and engaging in those volunteer efforts. Did you see that there was a need for those organizations to have some measure of fundraising or were they really two separate in your mind?

LAUREN: No, good point on your part, Duane. I certainly saw that it was needed and I'm going to say this. There didn't seem to be a place for my voice at the.

DUANE: As a non Veteran?

LAUREN: As a non-Veteran. And I will be frank as a woman at the time. And now, this is 20 years ago. This is in the nineties, late nineties, early two thousands, and then after graduate school. I wasn't a Veteran. I hadn't served. And I also wasn't a military spouse, so I couldn't speak from my experience as a spouse having PCS. So the role of a military family member seems to be swept under the rug here. 

DUANE: You're talking sister, brother, cousin, mother, like this nuclear family. I think that's a really great point.

LAUREN: And I've heard it from a lot of military connected family members that there's a place for the spouse. There's a place for the child. There's a place for the caregiver, but this concept of a military connected family, you know, our, our experience kind of gets poo-pooed. 

So as I'm volunteering with these great organizations, yeah, I'm a damn good fundraiser. I raised millions of dollars a year. And I brought up some ideas and I remember very vividly serving as the chair of a major gala that raised over a million dollars. And the CEO of that organization who was a Veteran kept calling everyone a soldier. And now he was in the Army. Bless him. I understand. 

But having a voice at the table has not always been easy and I feel really grateful for forward thinking organizations like PsychArmor, like the George W. Bush Presidential Center, who have recognized the role of military connected family members in this ecosystem. Some of the truths that we share as part of our 15 things Veterans Want You To Know is A) they're not all soldiers, but B) we serve as a family. We serve as a unit. So knowing that I had a place and my voice was valued, wasn't an important part of that turning point that, oh, maybe I could do this for real.

DUANE: No it's really interesting people missing out on that. Literally millions of dollars. But really that external voice, because there is this idea of in, in us, against them in this. If you don't want to engage with me, I don't wanna engage with you. There's that sort of dismissiness I think that they can be a challenge.

And as you said, it has been less of a challenge as the military affiliated community has really seen this. As you mentioned, a couple of different times, you and I are both alumni of the Bush Institute Veteran Leadership Program. Listeners have probably heard me talk about it before. We’ve had a number of fellow alumni on the show, but it might be good to have a conversation about that particular program and how you've seen it benefit your work. If you can give us an overview of the program, I can obviously fill in on some of my experience.

LAUREN: I think one of the things that attracted me to this opportunity, particularly above other opportunities is George W. Bush Presidential Center has a presidential leadership scholars track, and they have other programs available. What I loved about the Veteran Leadership Program, the VLP, was that you had to come with a specific project that you were working on. They wanted you to take a project from discovery and ideation through getting what you needed to either get it off the ground or expand or grow in your service to the military connected community. And for me, that was A) very familiar, it was like going through an incubator. And, I've served as a city leader for Bunker Labs, which supports Veteran and military connected entrepreneurs.

I teach entrepreneurship at the University of Houston. I'm a mentor at their Wolve Center. So working with entrepreneurs and being an entrepreneur myself, I said, okay, we're going to take an idea. We're going to take on a project. We're going to take a program and we're going to grow it. That was incredibly attractive because of the way the VLP program is structured you have the opportunity to do a deep dive into cross-functional areas that might support your efforts. So we did a deep dive into data analytics and using data to tell a story. We did a wonderful program and helping people find their voice and share their stories as an advocate for the military connected community.

We heard from people working on the employment side and the health care side in suicide prevention. And in military spouses, we really looked at a true cross section of the ecosystem and we got to connect with one another and there were people from all walks of life there. There were Veterans, we had some active duty reservists. We had military spouses, military family members like me, and then civilians who wanted to learn more and who were serving our community. And I think that to me was one of the most invaluable pieces of the puzzle that we were creating another echo chamber, Duane. So I found it incredibly valuable. I'm sure you'd say this. 

DUANE: No, I did. I did find it extremely valuable. And like you I, in thinking back on it, I had actually considered a similar but different program. I was actually looking at Stanford Ignite as in their program, and someone who was a mentor to me, like all of us, I think have been mentors to fellow scholars said well you should look at this other program, because they thought it fit what I was doing. But you also mentioned the Presidential Leadership Scholar Program. And one of the things that I really appreciated, and you mentioned about the VLP is that while you brought everybody from the walks of life, it was all aimed towards supporting service members and Veterans. 

One of our friends and mentors, Todd Connor, he described to me, it's like the Presidential Leadership Scholar Program, where you have one person who's trying to put people on the moon and someone that's trying to do subsistence farming in Botswana. And you're not really, and you want to support them, both doing both, but there's really not a convergence with these things.

Whereas the VLP very much was you were working in finance and I was working in mental health and others work in higher education, but there was a convergence of serving the military and Veterans community. 

LAUREN: And I love that you mentioned Todd Connor, who I consider one of my mentors as well. And I'll say it again, each step along the way where I've said yes  And learn to lean in. At bunker labs was certainly one of those opportunities. Todd Connor, being across over there and advocating for me to take a role in it.

But I will say no other place could I have run into Tina Atherall who said to me, “You're teaching fundraising at Rice University. I don't think enough social workers understand how our work and social work intersects with fundraising. Can you come help lecture or teach a class that I'm working with?”

And it was those little sparks that happened in the VLP that ignited change and not just for me, but for many of us. I decided to leave my job in venture cap, while I was in the VLP and that's a pretty dramatic decision. I was working on a project called Military Connected Capital, and the premise was, I felt passionate about launching a nonprofit financial institution to offer more access to resources for Veteran and military connected entrepreneurs.

Working in fundraising, I know that's the number one barrier. The Bush Program said, “We see this as a need as well. We want to put you in the room with people who are doing the work at the ground level. We want you to talk to these entrepreneurs. We want you to learn from them. And that made my little social worker's heart happy, that we're putting our clients first and we're being solution-focused. So as I'm going through this and I'm hearing from everyone, I just, I said, I need to push pause. I was working with a different venture capital firm, which was a wonderful experience, but discovering all of the different ways that people had found in this community to serve, be it nonprofit for-profit, government agencies, all of the things in between. I started to see myself in a career working with Veterans and it took Tina Adderall saying, “Listen, let me tell you about PsychArmor. Where else are you going to find a convergence of social work, tech,fundraising? And I'm going to give you free range to make that area of growth what you see it to be. I want you to be entrepreneurial. I want you to try new things because we need all the help we can get. This is a big problem, and we need everyone wrapping their arms around it. And we need the best brains in the room with the best hearts.” Yes. 

DUANE:  And I think that's one of the things I've always described the VLP as structured serendipity, right? They put you in the place with other people. When I went through and this was back in 2018, I knew the other behavioral health providers, there were probably three or four of us that were in the 30 something group.

I knew of them. But I didn't know of the people in higher education, they all knew themselves. And the people who are working in employment or the public sector, they knew each other. So everybody, as you said, everybody knew each other in their groups and in their silos.

But they didn't know that, it connected. And there's this thing. I think that Veterans service members and Veterans, and even military spouses can get in their lane, so to speak and not think about what other opportunities there may be. If I do not step into somebody else's lane, isn't get in their business, but actually join them on their journey and find out what opportunities may be there.

LAUREN: Absolutely. And I love the way that you frame, Duane. Structured serendipity, I can't think of a better word for it. But also the opportunity to co-create solutions to join them in their journey. I think that speaks to what we try to do here at PsychArmor, but also, our hearts is as social workers, right. 

DUANE: I think that's absolutely true. It coming from the mental health side of things. I found myself in a social worker role for a period. I realized that's not what I went to school for, and there's a reason why I didn't want to go to school for that. But now you find yourself back in social support.

As you mentioned, your serving as the Vice President of Growth for PsychArmor, it'd be great to give listeners a look at what the goals are from your perspective that PsychArmor is going to be looking at and what you're looking forward to.

LAUREN: Oh,  I'm so excited, Duane. I'll say this, one of the challenges when you come into an organization that has tremendous potential as PsychArmor does, and that has really demonstrated its ability to deliver. And PsychArmor has, it has a tremendous reputation. It's very well respected and recognized within the military community.

I'm excited about growing that reputation beyond. Beyond the VA and the DOD and other VSOs and I'm throwing out acronyms here. Cause that's what we do. But the Veteran Affairs Office, Department of Defense and VSOs Veteran Service Organizations. We're really stretching this because we believe that military cultural competency impacts all of us. And the shifting conversation around military cultural competency as an aspect of DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, which is being discussed at all levels. In the provision of healthcare services and mental health needs. But very certainly with employers, we're facing a tremendous labor shortage, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades. And we're in this challenging position now, where how do we meet it and how do we meet it in such a way that we're recruiting, retaining, and then making sure that those members thrive at our organizations. So I'm excited about taking some of those conversations at VLP and making them actionable. So working with Leah Christiansen and Veteran Affairs, I'm so excited to deepen our caregiver portfolio with her. I'm so excited and Beth recently transitioned roles, but working with Beth Conlin and Amazon, and I just had a great meeting with Charles Stevens with the Global Military Affairs Division there. They recently brought Global Military Affairs under the DEI umbrella as an organization because they recognized that's where it needs to touch every lane.

So we're going to be doing some cool things with Amazon, which is super exciting. Have had great conversations with Oracle and, Johnson and Johnson, these behemoths in the space where we know if we can work with them, that bringing military cultural competency to all of the other organizations they work with will be, I shouldn't say that much easier because it's always an uphill battle to some extent, but it helps pave the way for important conversations. So looking at military cultural competency as a spectrum of services we provide, which includes education, engaging events. I'm so excited about engaging events. We have to get out from behind a computer screen y'all so education engagement, and then really deepening evaluation. And the opportunity to work, with Dr. Carie Rodgers, Dr. Heidi Kraft and Dr. Tina Atherall as well, who are thought leaders in this space. How are we making cultural competency actionable? How are we shifting and measuring behaviors? And we want to be the go-to resource for those organizations. And I don't want to spill the beans, but we're looking to be the leader of a coalition in building a military cultural competency index that coalition of partners has to be public, private and academic. So working with my other VLP friend, Elisa Bora at UT. Carie's connections with David Albright, we've worked with IVMF, bringing in academic partners like our great friends at Comcast who early on, saw the value in military cultural competency. When they saw our work in building out a school for employers. So academic, public, and private. I think that we are in a unique position to bring together all of the necessary stakeholders, along with the subject matter experts, the thought leaders that we've already brought together as part of this podcast, as part of our educational workshops, we are uniquely positioned to serve as that leader of a coalition to develop this index. And that means that we're no longer educating around the concept of cultural competency. We're actually going to be helping organizations measure their progress as they move people across that spectrum. And we measure behaviors, which is so challenging.

We know I have to say, the excitement is there. The enthusiasm is there. And Duane, we're at the point where we're ready to hire more people. So it's an exciting, critical point of growth for the organization. And having someone to spearhead that I think is indicative that we're ready to do big things. 

DUANE: No I absolutely agree. And obviously I absolutely agree with everything that you've mentioned. This focus on DEI, many people consider that to be race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, even age or things like that.aAnd definitely a lot of the conversations that we've had over the last number of years is the military is as much of a culture as anything else.

You just mentioned you speak the acronyms fluently, obviously. Your brother's a Marine. I know, you know, a little bit of expletive thrown in there as well. And so these are the kinds of things that people don't necessarily consider when it comes to the military and Veteran population. These are all of the considerations that one would need to give to someone's lived experience in their culture.

It also applies to that. And again, all of these large organizations, and we've had these conversations with Oracle and about how being more observed and more comfortable with saying, yeah, I served in the military for a short time, for a long time, for a little bit, for a lot of it.

But being more comfortable is absolutely what we're trying to get things to do because as we know, service members, Veterans, and their family members can change the world. 

 So I really appreciate you coming on the show today. If people wanted to find out more about some of the work that PsychArmor is going to be doing, moving on down the line, how can they do that?

LAUREN: The best way is to visit our website, which was newly revamped at the beginning of the year, including our new learning management systems and lots of growth. So much growth that is at www.psycharmor.org. We are on social media. Although I would say if you want to connect with me and some of the thought leaders connect with us on LinkedIn, we're having some great conversations there.

I'd love to tie anyone who's interested into the Bush VLP program in our alumni. Duane, the fact that you and I are alum, I hope speaks to the high caliber of the program. 

DUANE:And I was in the first crew, so I just think I got lucky before they set the standards really high. I'm the guy that showed up before they put the rope.

LAUREN: But I think it's always fun to continue the conversation. So for everyone who tunes into our podcast, you engage us with us online, social media and LinkedIn. Let me know what you think and where do you think we should grow next? 

DUANE: Absolutely. I'll make sure all of those links are in the show notes and make sure that people get connected. Thank you for coming on the show today. 

LAUREN:Thanks so much, Duane.  

Once again, we would like to thank this week's sponsor, PsychArmor. PsychArmor is the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. And you can find more about PsychArmor at www.psycharmor.org. 

As always, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Lauren as much as I did. One of the things that I'd like to point out that came up for me during our conversation was how she felt excluded from conversations about service members, Veterans, and their families because of her lack of direct military experience as well as her gender. 

This is obviously frustrating for her and I regret that she had to experience it, but it's also not an isolated incident. This is an unfortunate tendency by some in the military and Veteran community to limit the number and type of voices at the table, either due to conscious bias in favor of lived experience something like if you haven't served, you can't have an opinion. 

Or unconscious bias towards someone based on some other factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, or sexual preference. How many times the people who want to help Veterans or Veterans reaching out for support, get the, this place isn't for you vibe. 

There are outstanding organizations that do have specific criteria for membership such as the Paralyzed Veterans of America or the Military Order of the Purple Heart. And that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a tendency to include some people in conversations or military and Veteran support and exclude others. 

We see it in general and in particular with Veterans themselves. Someone doesn't have a right to express their opinions related to combat Veterans, unless they're a combat Veteran themselves, or if they're a particular type of combat Veteran. This is one of the biggest things that I've seen with Cold War Veterans. Those who serve between the mid seventies in the early nineties. 

There was no declared conflict, but unless you were stationed in Germany, staring across the folded gap it's Soviet and East German troops with little more than a single magazine of ammunition or stationed on the DMZ in Korea, then you might not understand what it's like to be so close to war you can be without actually being at war. 

All I'm saying is if you're an organization that is supporting service members, Veterans, and their families take a look around and check to make sure that the folks at the table represent a broad range of experiences. As we mentioned in my conversation with Jerome Tennille, a couple of episodes ago, having a diverse team only makes a team better. And that diversity includes diversity of lived experience like Lauren's experience as a sibling of a service member, as well as diversity of inherent experience. 

The other point that I'd like to make is something that I've touched on before. And I may have even discussed it in one of these wrap-up segments. And if I have forgive me, but this is something that I know has impacted my post-military career and something that we don't pay attention to enough in supporting service members and Veterans and post-military life. I'm talking about intentionally developing opportunities for serendipity. Lauren and I both talked about George W. Bush Institute Stand to Veteran Leadership Program, which is a leadership development program for those who are looking to support service members, Veterans, and their families in a number of different areas. 

One of the aspects of the program, as we mentioned, is the way that the program is designed to bring people with diverse backgrounds and experiences together to work on a common problem. We often underestimate the value of serendipity. I think serendipity is a word that we kind of think that we know what it means, but it could be hard to define. But it means something beneficial that happens by chance. It's finding something that you weren't looking for that has a positive outcome. Like the combination of Lauren's passion and PsychArmor’s mission. 

One of the things that confuse people about serendipity is how can you make something happen by chance? If it's random, then you don't know when or how it's going to happen. So how can you control it? Like many things this has actually been studied. And it turns out that there are three different things required for serendipity to occur: a random event or encounter, engaging in an act of noticing and having a prepared mind. 

The first one is something that we can't control ourselves. Although we can put ourselves in a position that means that we're more likely to experience random encounters. If you stand on a street corner with a sign that says let's chat. You'll likely have a lot more random encounters than you would if you stood in your driveway holding the same sign. But the other two factors: paying attention to the world around you for opportunities and random events and having a mind that is open to new possibilities is something that we do have control over. 

The thing about random events is what they lack of predictability they make up for in volume. Random stuff is happening all the time around us. If we have our head down, eyes shut and ears close, then we're going to miss them. If Lauren was locked into her mindset of pursuing her project and not interested in other opportunities, then she wouldn't have joined PsychArmor as part of the development team. 

All I'm saying is if we want a seat at the table, any table for anyone we have to pay attention to opportunities and not allow obstacles to keep us from continuing to try. That's how Lauren does business. And I think that's going to be a very good thing, not just for PsychArmor, but ultimately for you, the listeners who are the real beneficiaries of the great work that's being done here. 

Today's PsychArmor resource of the week is a course on building a collaborative table, who to invite and how to engage. This course is designed for those organizations looking to ensure that they have a diverse group of voices and experience in their planning and decision-making process. Collaboration between individuals and organizations at the community level is an important aspect for supporting the military affiliated population. And no single individual or organization can do it alone. You can access this course through a link in the show notes.