Jenny Carr joined Courage Beyond soon after its inception in 2007. In her first role with the organization she personally interviewed hundreds of veterans, service members, family members and experts ranging from the Korean War to the present day conflicts. Currently, she oversees Courage Beyond’s online psychoeducational and support groups, in-person support groups, adaptive retreats and counseling services. Jenny has worked and published with Dr. Edward Taub and Dr. Gitendra Uswatte at their Constraint-Induced Therapy (CIT) Clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to develop real-world measures of physical rehabilitation techniques for both adults and children. She holds a BA in philosophy from Birmingham-Southern College and a BS in psychology from UAB. Jenny lives in Nashville, TN with her husband Kevin and her large, lovable dog Bert.
Show Notes at http://veteranpodcast.com/014
Emily Rich is Director of National Development for Operation Gratitude, a non-profit organization that annually sends 150,000+ care packages to new recruits, veterans, first responders, wounded warriors, care givers and to individually named U.S. Service Members deployed overseas. Since its inception in 2003, Operation Gratitude has shipped more than 1.2 million care packages. Emily is responsible for Operation Gratitude’s nationwide campaigns, including corporate partnerships, cause marketing, large scale employee volunteerism, sports marketing and annual support.
Emily has devoted her professional life to non-profit organizations. In addition to Operation Gratitude, she has served in leadership positions with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Foundation Fighting Blindness and Fund for the Public Interest Research Group.
In the first six years of her career in nonprofit development, Emily has raised over $6 million for nonprofit organizations.
Emily graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication. She is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Valley Industry and Commerce Association (VICA) and the National Association of Professional Women.
Music:
Wartime by Javier & The Innocent Sons
Website: http://www.javiermatosmusic.com/
Purchase CD: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/javiertheinnocentsons
Show Notes: http://VeteranPodcast.com/013
Eryn comes from a military family. Her father served 28 years in the Army and retired as a Colonel, her brother is a graduate of West Point, and her husband is a Captain in the Army. Growing up, Eryn learned every day what it meant to serve one’s country, and after graduating from Florida State University, headed to Jacksonville as a Teach For America high school English teacher. Given Jacksonville’s proximity to two naval bases and the strong NJROTC culture, Eryn got the chance to bring the military into her classroom every day and expose her students to the opportunities the military could provide them. Today, Eryn is the director of Teach For America’s Military Veterans Initiative, helping to ensure that military veterans and spouses are aware of teaching as a second career, and that students across the country benefit from their talent and commitment. Prior to this role, Eryn began TFA’s Military Spouse Affinity Group to provide support for military spouses on staff who might feel particularly isolated, and gives them an outlet to communicate regularly about the issues facing military spouses – having spouses deployed, transferring to another bases, and leaving community and friends. In 2015 she was named Fort Benning’s Military Spouse of the Year by Military Spouse Magazine.
Show Notes: http://VeteranPodcast.com/012
Jonathan Wei, the founder and director of The Telling Project, is a playwright, writer and producer. Jonathan’s dramatic work has been staged at the Guthrie Theater, Library of Congress, Maryland Center for the Performing Arts, Lisner Auditorium in Washington, DC and Portland Center Stage in Portland, OR among others. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Village Voice, Iowa Review, and the North American Review and Glimmer Train, and his work featured by the New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Inside Higher Ed, the Associated Press, and NPR. He has received support from the Bob Woodruff Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Smithsonian Institute, the Library of Congress, Metabolic Studios, Minnesota Humanities Center, Humanities Iowa, Oregon Humanities Center and others. Jonathan lives with his family in Austin, TX.
The Purpose
The Telling Project is a performing arts non-profit that employs theater to deepen our understanding of the military and veterans’ experience. Greater understanding fosters receptivity, easing veterans’ transitions back to civil society, and allowing communities to benefit from the skills and experience they bring with them. Through this understanding, a community deepens its connection to its veterans, itself, and its place in the nation and the world.
The Work
The most direct path to understanding veterans’ experience is person-to-person contact. With the dramatic decline in the numbers serving in the military – less than one percent of the population over the last eleven years of war – this contact will not happen through day-to-day life. It must be created and supported. Through performance, The Telling Project puts veterans and military family members in front of their communities to share their stories. We give veterans and military family members the opportunity to speak, and their communities the opportunity to listen.
Show Notes: http://VeteranPodcast.com/011