President’s Letter

When we talk about the changing nature of work, we can’t discount the work that military spouses are doing on many different fronts to ensure that our community can keep pace with our civilian peers. Military spouses are invested and we’re driving the change. Advocacy within our community has increased significantly.

Just within our own NMSN community, we have addressed issues such as expanding DETOs (Domestic Employee Teleworking Overseas agreements), transition resources for military spouses, entrepreneurship, achieving employment readiness, removing gender/access barriers and advocacy (just to name a few….). We just completed our annual Day of Advocacy and, as always, I am awed by the dedication of the military spouses who joined us to advocate on behalf of our entire community. This handful of volunteers takes on the responsibility of taking our stories directly to legislators and sharing exactly why change is needed before sharing common sense solutions that would move the needle on military spouse employment. It was both fun and inspiring to spend time with them, hearing them share their stories and answering questions from interested members and staffers. Watching advocacy in action never gets old.

But advocacy alone won’t solve our problems. Cracking the code on the military spouse unemployment rate won’t be easy because we know there is no “onesize-fits-all” solution. It will require collaborative analysis of meaningful data, strategic programmatic planning and design thinking innovation. It will call on us to challenge and evolve, not only policies and perspectives but the lexicon we use within the military culture.

While we all bring different viewpoints and experiences to the conversation, it’s important to keep an open mind. Our contributors this month caution us against speaking on military spouse employment issues as if our community is a monolith. We need to allow for different ages, lived experiences and priorities to guide the conversations that impact their lives. For some that might mean an increased focus on improving access to affordable child care, while for others it might be striving to find the elusive work/life balance.

NMSN has evolved over the years, but one thing has been constant, talented military spouses. We know the importance of bringing our military spouse thought leaders together to inform the conversations that lead to top-level change. The future of work is changing right in front of us, and military spouses are proactively embracing this change. We are hopeful that the policies and systems that support them will keep pace.