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Show Summary
On this episode, military spouse and CEO of the Freedom Learning Group, Elizabeth O'Brien, joins the show to talk about the benefits of remote and flexible work for military spouses and veterans.
About Today’s Guest
Elizabeth O’Brien was appointed CEO of the Freedom Learning Group in April 2020.
In the last six years, O’Brien has served in significant leadership roles as a Senior Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes program, and as Chairwoman for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Advisory Committee on Veterans Business Affairs, the first military spouse to be appointed to that role.
As Senior Director at HOH, O’Brien evolved the military spouse program’s event-centric focus to become a national comprehensive resource at the forefront of military spouse workforce development for over one million military spouses. In addition to overseeing the program’s research and strategic operations, she led the growth of the Military Spouse Employment Advisory Council (MSEAC), a coalition she grew in five years comprised of more than 35 companies with a combined market value of over three trillion dollars to include Amazon, Booz Allen Hamilton, Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce. The MSEAC focused on creating innovative workforce development strategies through upskilling and reskilling a chronically unemployed and underemployed workforce. O’Brien has worked closely with current and past administrations to advance the narrative around military spouse workforce development solutions; most recently co-chairing the release of “A Collective Effort: Workforce Development Solutions for the 21st Century Military Spouse” with Mrs. Karen Pence, Second Lady of the United States.
Prior to joining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, O’Brien spent over a decade coaching college women’s basketball at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Hofstra University, and The University of Hawaii.
PsychArmor Resource of the Week
The PsychArmor resource for this week is resource of the week is the course that Elizabeth presents, The Job Search for Military Spouses. In this course, Liz shares a process for creating an effective job search strategy with the goal of finding meaningful employment in today’s market. At the end of this course, you should be able to: describe the types of preparations to make before starting the job search, determine which aspect of a job is most important to you, identify places to start your search, and list specific military spouse resources that can help you in your job search. You can find the course at https://learn.psycharmor.org/courses/The-Job-Search-for-Military-Spouses
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Theme Music
Our theme music Don’t Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.
This Episode Sponsored By:
This episode is sponsored by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory with custom training options for organizations.
Producer and Host Duane France is a retired Army Noncommissioned Officer, combat veteran, and clinical mental health counselor for service members, veterans, and their families. You can find more about the work that he is doing at www.veteranmentalhealth.com