In celebration of Women’s History Month, this episode features a conversation with three remarkable veterans and leaders who are at the forefront of advocacy for women servicemembers and veterans.

(*This program was recorded live on Zoom during a VBC Monday night veteran’s storytelling program.)

Retired USAF Colonel Lorry Fenner, Director of Government Relations for the Service Women’s Action Network will talk about her 26-year career in the Air Force, the history of women in military and highlight key legislation supporting women service members and veterans before Congress.

Retired USA Colonel Dr. Ellen Haring and retired USN pilot Joy Bronson, veterans turned filmmakers, will present a sneak peek of their upcoming documentary The Fight to Fight which tells the story of trailblazing young women integrating the Army’s elite ground combat units and the women veterans who are their guardian angels. Their struggles and triumphs offer a unique lens to view women, work, and gender equity in America.

Thank you to Tobacco Free Adagio Health and UPMC for Life for sponsoring this event!

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In this episode, we visit with two very special guests: retired Army Colonel Kate Guttormsen and Army Colonel Anastasia Breslow-Kynaston. The highest ranking women in the original Team Lioness group (Ramadi 2003-4), both were captains at the time making them the perfect guests for a look back at the Lioness experience. We discuss what it was like to adapt and train-in-theater for the unexpected Lioness missions, the lessons they learned along the way, how they helped train future Lioness soldiers, and managing their careers as spouses in dual-military couples.

Along with Lioness vet Shannon Morgan, they recall their surprise when two filmmakers from New York approached them to make a documentary, why they decided to participate in Lioness (2008) and what it has meant to know their stories contributed to critical legislation (Women Veterans Healthcare Act, 2010) that improved VA services for women veterans and spurred the DoD’s 2013 dropping of the Combat Exclusion Policy for Women.

A graduate of West Point, Kate retired in 2020 after 24 years of service. She works as a Public Relations Specialist at Authentically American, a Veteran owned, American made, premium apparel brand that supports American heroes. (www.authenticallyamerican.us/) She is also a substitute teacher in her local school district and volunteers in her community.

Colonel Anastasia Breslow-Kynaston is the FORSCOM G6 Communications Operations Division Chief at Fort Liberty, North Carolina where her husband, Lt. Colonel Merlin Kynaston, commands the 50th Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced, 35th Signal Brigade, XVIII Airborne Corps.

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With 28 years of service behind her, Army Colonel Ellen Haring, a West Point graduate, realized she’d hit the brass ceiling. As a woman, she’d been excluded from combat arms specialties, a career requirement to reach the military’s senior ranks. Then, in 2011, she read about The Molly Pitcher project. Led by Professor Anne Coughlin at University of Virginia Law School and her four dedicated students, the goal was to develop a lawsuit capable of bringing down the Department of Defense’s combat exclusion policy for women. Colonel Haring immediately got in contact with Professor Coughlin and the timing couldn’t have been better. Col. Haring, along with Sgt. Major Jane Baldwin, became the original plaintiffs in this first iteration of legal action that would, by 2013, compel Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to rescind the combat exclusion policy for women. 

Join Daria as she speaks with two powerhouse women: Ret. US Army Colonel Dr. Ellen Haring and Anne Coughlin, the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. Learn about the unlikely origins of this legal action, the dogged determination required to get this lawsuit off the ground and find out who the heck was Molly Pitcher. (hint: Revolutionary War)

#veteran #veterans #veteransbreakfastclub #virtualevents #virtual #zoomevents #liveevents #webinar #history #interview #militaryhistory #military #army #navy #marinecorps #marines #airforce #coastguard #vbc #nonprofit #501c3 #happyhour #911 #september11 #sept11 #generation911 #lioness #specialopslioness #paramount+ #iraq #OEF #OIF #WaronTerror #afghanistan #war #cia #Female #FET #Cultural #CST #Exclusion #Policy 

Our guest today is retired USMC Sgt. Major Raquel Painter whose extraordinary nearly 27 year career landed her at some of the most pivotal moments in Marine Corps history. She has the rare distinction of serving as both an FET (Brigade Headquarters Female Engagement Team Leader) during her 2009 deployment to Afghanistan and as a Lioness during her 2007 deployment to Iraq. But working with local communities in difficult situations was nothing new to Raquel. As a young Marine, she assisted in the humanitarian efforts following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Nine years later, she was among the Marines sent to Sri Lanka to support recovery efforts after the devastating 2004 tsunami. 

When she retired in 2016 – as one of only 23 female Marines to earn the rank of Sgt. Major – she pursued her interest in community work with Hope For The Warriors and now serves as President of United Way of Onslow County, North Carolina. 

In 2021, Raquel, who is half Sioux and half Winnebago, inaugurated an annual pow wow to honor indigenous Americans who have served. The impact of her work is even more amazing when you realize that since WWII a greater percentage of Native Americans have served in the Armed Forces than any other ethnic group and that North Carolina has the highest population of Native Americans east of the Mississippi.

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When former 1st. Lt. Colleen Farrell joined the USMC in 2008, becoming a trailblazer was the furthest thing from her mind. But by the time she left active duty four years later, she'd become part of two historic turning points for women in the military.

Starting out all she wanted was to serve her country, an ideal that resonated with her Quaker upbringing. In 2009, she left her MOS as an Air Support Control Officer to join the newly-created Marine Corps Female Engagement Teams, a program that sent female Marines out with infantry units to engage with Afghan women, assess their needs and collect life-saving intelligence in a way male Marines could not. “It was,” Farrell said, “a once in a lifetime chance to work at the tip of the spear.” She deployed in 2010 to Helmand Province as an FET Platoon Commander. During that time she and her teams worked to build girls' schools, conduct hygiene training, set up vocational training centers for women, collect intelligence and at times saw combat. They did all this despite having to return to their main base every 45 days. A logistical charade created to appease DoD's combat exclusion policy for women. Worse, when she and her FETs returned home in 2011, they were disbanded in three days, unlike the male infantry Marines who were given weeks to get the post-deployment help they needed.

Having experienced the military's gender inequities first hand and believing they hurt overall readiness, Colleen made the courageous decision in 2012 to become a plaintiff in the ACLU's lawsuit against the DoD's female combat exclusion policy. In 2013, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta rescinded the policy, paving the way for true gender equity in the services to occur. Ten years after the first Lioness missions in Iraq in 2003, FET Leader and 1st. Lt. Colleen Farrell stepped up, along with three other servicewomen plaintiffs, to help make the military a more equitable workplace for every citizen who wants to serve.

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For retired Army Warrant Officer Raquel Patrick, an impressive four deployments, one to Somalia and three to Iraq, wasn’t enough. The moment she heard about the Cultural Support Team program she knew it was for her. Motivated by a life-long desire to serve, she was confident she could make a difference. Even her children supported her decision to apply. Not only was Raquel selected, but after grueling physical training and cultural studies at Fort Liberty, she was made a CST Leader.

Her deployment began in the dead of night when she and her partner fast roped from a helicopter into a safe house in a desolate area of southern Afghanistan filled with Taliban. Hear why she and her CST partner rarely left the safehouse without wearing full makeup and colorful headscarves, how they developed trust with local communities of women, and how Raquel effectively worked with her Special Operation team members to blend different communication techniques that enabled them to accomplish the mission.

Raquel’s riveting story exemplifies not only her courage under fire, but a deep-seated passion to try to make the world a better place.

Today, we are honored to have retired US Army Captain Christina Trembley join us and talk about the eight months she spent as a Cultural Support Team member attached to Special Forces’ elite Operational Detachment Alphas in Northern Afghanistan in 2011. Responding to the needs of the local women and children in various villages, Chris spearheaded a partnership with the Afghan Ministry of Education to train women teachers, supported a battered women’s shelter and, along with her CST partner, ended up providing Special Forces with invaluable intel that literally saved lives and informed larger tactical operations. Listening to Chris’s fascinating experiences reveals how adding all-female CSTs to Special Operations in Afghanistan opened up 70% of the population and increased everyone’s understanding of the population they were operating in.

#veteran #veterans #veteransbreakfastclub #virtualevents #virtual #zoomevents #liveevents #webinar #history #interview #militaryhistory #military #army #navy #marinecorps #marines #airforce #coastguard #vbc #nonprofit #501c3 #happyhour #911 #september11 #sept11 #generation911 #lioness #specialopslioness #paramount+ #iraq #OEF #OIF #WaronTerror #afghanistan #war #cia #Female #FET #Cultural #CST #Exclusion #Policy 

At this point in the series, Shannon and Daria have the perfect guest to help put in perspective the "hot potato" position women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan found themselves in. Helping us understand the political resistance back home –including Congress’s inability to openly acknowledge what women in the Army and Marines were being asked to do – is retired Navy Captain Lory Manning, a policy expert on laws governing women’s participation in the US military. Learn what happened when one congressman attempted to slip language into a bill that would have further restricted women’s roles.

Lioness

Presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club - www.veteransbreakfastclub.org

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With stories and insights from USMC Colonel Maria ‘MJ’ Pallotta and retired USMC Colonel Maria Marte, this episode reveals how the same conditions that led to the creation of the Army’s Team Lioness in 2003 affected the USMC in Afghanistan in 2004. Colonel Marte describes how she and her female Marine ‘searchers’ attached to combat units on missions that took them outside the wire for three to four weeks at a time. Like the Army’s Lioness soldiers, their mission was to defuse tensions with women and children and gather intel. Their duties as ‘searchers’ occurred before the Marine Corps formalized their Lioness program in 2005. Colonel Pallotta explains how these ‘boots on the ground’ decisions, while technically a violation of the Combat Exclusion Policy, depended on whether a commander went with the spirit or the letter of the law.

Turning to Paramount's Special Ops Lioness, everyone agrees that, after the most recent episode, ‘The Choice of Failure,’ the show is a Hollywood fantasy that has nothing to do with reality. But, unfortunately, by calling it Lioness, the show muddies the actual history of women who served nobly under that appellation and its iterations. 

CORRECTION: Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed in 2011. 

Shannon and Daria talk to retired US Army Colonel David Brinkley who, as Commander of the 1st Engineer Battalion in Ramadi in 2003, created the Team Lioness program. He recalls how the Lioness soldiers’ ability to connect with Iraqi women helped avert conflict and what happened when General Mattis confronted him about sending female soldiers outside the wire in defiance of the Combat Exclusion Policy.

Reviewing Episode 3 of Paramount+'s SPECIAL OPS: LIONESS (Bruise Like A Fist), the hosts discuss how instances of Cruz’s (Laysla De Oliveira) ability to think quick on her feet echoed Shannon’s experiences during Lioness missions, the beach scene in which Aaliyah (Stephanie Buddenbrock) laments to Cruz that she isn’t allowed to make her own choices, and, with Shaun’s recap of the off-the-record prisoner snatch, how subplots are expanding the narrative intrigue.

Lioness

Presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club - www.veteransbreakfastclub.org