Maria Donnelly

Share your military spouse story:
I met my husband when I was in college and excited to build a career. When my husband received orders, I left that job and relocated overseas. I eventually landed a position through a strong reference and connection from my previous job and a dose of luck. I was one of the only spouses in my husband’s unit who was fully employed. My friends and peers did not lack credentials but faced a system which did not work in practice. Friends with advanced degrees and national-level experience were repeatedly passed over or watched positions disappear rather than be filled. As we continued to PCS, I kept my career alive taking pay cuts and lateral moves. Each move required rebuilding networks and proving myself again. My friends and community made all of that, and raising three young children, and reassembling childcare and support networks from scratch, and navigating deployments, possible. I am so lucky and grateful.

Describe any leadership positions or provide an overview of your leadership contributions within the military community.
I previously served on MOAA’s Currently Serving Spouse Advisory Council and currently serve as a commissioner on the North Carolina Governor’s Veterans Affairs Commission, advising the Secretary of Military and Veterans Affairs and representing communities around Fort Liberty. I am also an admin of the Federal Employee Mil Spouse Network, a community of more than 6,000 members. Alongside the other admins, I developed policy proposals to help military families and brought them to Congressional offices. These include proposed reforms to spouse preference and the READINESS Act. After years volunteering in this space, I founded the Military Family Foundation to continue this work more formally, to help military families understand how policy is written and how to engage decision makers to improve quality of life for our community.

What programs or projects are you currently involved in that support the needs of military families?
I meet with and coordinate advocacy initiatives with other organizations across the space with a goal of amplifying the voices of experts in their field and am in touch with dozens of organizations to maintain the Military Family Foundation Ecosystem Map. https://www.militaryfamilyfoundation.com/organizations Through the Foundation, I break down active legislation, NDAA provisions, and executive branch actions affecting military families. These resources are designed to answer the questions families ask most often: what changed, who it affects, and what options exist. When issues cut across agencies or lack a clear owner, I work with partner organizations and congressional offices to document the problem and identify low- or no-cost fixes before pursuing new legislation. I am also an admin of the Federal Employee Mil Spouse Network, serve on the North Carolina Governor’s Veterans Affairs Commission, and previously served on MOAA’s Currently Serving Spouse Advisory Council.

What moments best reflect your impact on building inclusive community among military spouses?
With my fellow admins of the Federal Employee Mil Spouse Network group on Facebook, I organized military spouses affected by the federal Return to Office mandate and connected more than 300 military spouses to their congressional representatives to share their experiences directly. More than a dozen representatives signed letters to the administration urging consideration for military families leading to OPM issuing an exception from RTO policies for our community. The group is a daily reminder of the incredible people in our world and I am inspired by their willingness to share their knowledge with each other in the hopes of easing the path for others. I am also lucky to have built a community at Ft Bragg. In this life, we meet people and immediately make them our emergency contact. We have to rely on each other. As FRGs become less popular, we still need help with school pick-ups and meal trains but to have a village, we also need to be villagers and help others where ever we can.

Identify your main advocacy effort and describe your personal connection to the cause.
My advocacy work focuses on kitchen-table issues for military families, including spouse employment, childcare, and income stability. Spouse employment is where I have spent the most time because it is my "villain origin story" and it intersects directly with federal policy, hiring practices, and repeated moves, but it is never the only issue families are dealing with at once. I rebuilt my career after each PCS while managing moves across countries and states and long periods of uncertainty. That, paired with my professional experience, led me to work directly with policy and legislative systems. That work produced specific proposals, including reforms to spouse hiring authorities and support for the READINESS Act to retain military spouse employees across moves - programs which would have helped me as a junior spouse. The goal is to reduce how much families have to absorb on their own just to keep military life workable.

Summarize your advocacy outreach strategies, including any events, media involvement, or other communication efforts.
I routinely engage with Congressional staff and believe that if we are able to explain what we actually see on the ground, Congressional staff want to help - one year, in a fully volunteer capacity, my friends Emmalee, Maggie, and I had over 200 calls with congressional offices and sent over 1,000 emails back and forth. I engage with reporters to share about the daily issues facing our community with multiple appearances on CNN, and have been cited and interviewed by outlets including the Washington Post, Stars and Stripes, Military.com, and Defense One. While I would prefer to remain behind the scenes working on policy, I understand the value of putting a face on an issue and was honored to be on the cover of Military Officer Magazine for an article on the READINESS Act and the challenges spouses continue to face in employment.

What do you hope to accomplish with the AFI Military Spouse of the Year^® title?
If given the AFI Military Spouse of the Year® title, I would use the platform and access to connect families to existing resources and spotlight the gaps to senior leaders. Many programs exist to support military families, but families often do not know they exist or cannot access them when they actually need help. I want to use the visibility of this role to show where those gaps are. I would use this role to help accurate information travel faster than outdated guidance or misinformation, to connect families to resources that already exist, and to surface where fixes are administrative or low-cost. The goal is not to invent new programs, but to make the systems we already have work as promised for the families living inside them.