On today’s episode, we feature a conversation with military spouse and family member Ellen Gustafson, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of We the Veterans and Military Families, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that empowers the veteran and military family community to strengthen democracy. We’re going to talk about their work supporting education around information integrity and civic involvement in the military affiliated population.  

Ellen Gustafson is a proud Navy Spouse and Navy and Coast Guard Granddaughter. She is a Co-Founder and Executive Director of We the Veterans, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that empowers the veteran and military family community to strengthen democracy. She is also the Co-Founder of the Military Family Building Coalition, the first non-profit supporting active duty military in building their families. She previously co-founded FEED, Food Tank and co-directed the Summit Institute. 

 

Ellen is the author of "We the Eaters: If We Change Dinner, We Can Change the World," has been a Fortune Most Powerful Women Entrepreneur and given four TEDxTalks. She lives with her husband and three young children in Virginia Beach, VA.

 

Ellen is a member of the Board of We the Veterans Society for American Democracy and is the Executive Director and Board member of We the Veterans Foundation. As Executive Director, Ellen is the chief executive officer of We the Veterans, overseeing all general management and operations.

 

This week’s PsychArmor resource of the week is Episode 48 of the Behind the Mission Podcast, a conversation with Bill Braniff. In that episode, we have an initial conversation about how We the Veterans is addressing the growing trend of misinformation and disinformation targeting service members and veterans in an attempt to radicalize them and use them to engage in violent extremism and domestic terrorism.

 

You can hear the episode here:  https://psycharmor.org/podcast/bill-braniff

This episode is sponsored by PsychArmor. PsychArmor is the premier education and learning ecosystems specializing in military culture content PsychArmor offers an. Online e-learning laboratory that is free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations.

 

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.