Her Story
About Agatha
I'm an Army veteran who served from 1999 to 2012, and since I transitioned out of the military, all my experience and advocacy work has been specifically towards veterans. I currently work at the central office of the CUNY Office of Veterans Affairs, which is considered the spearhead or headquarters. What we do is implementation of policies and procedures with higher education, collaborating with the Veterans Administration that finalizes the education portion of veterans receiving their benefits. We work across 26 campuses with 18 Veteran Center coordinators, managers, and directors. I make sure that we do the 8 keys of veteran success and principles of excellence. I'm not a professor - I do more of the policy and guidelines work. My passion has really been focused on women veterans, because when women transition out, especially those who have experienced military sexual trauma, they no longer want to identify as a veteran. When someone hears that a woman served in the military, they see them as what we call paper pushers, which is administrative work, but there are women who serve in roles like myself where you do have to do convoys and things like that. Women fall into different eras, so the era that I went in from 1999 to 2012 is a little different to the new modern era of women having a little bit more opportunity. There's a harsh identifier depending on the era that you served - you were seen as either what they call a tomboy or too loose. That's why a lot of women don't identify. My role has been to be the voice of women with other community partners saying, I'm a woman, I served, and I wasn't any of those things that you're calling me. I'm also a disabled veteran with 25 disabilities - they're invisible, what we call invisible wounds. I have a heart pacemaker and traumatic brain injury. When people look at me from the outside, they see a functional veteran, but I've had to buy sweatshirts that say I'm a disabled veteran because I don't function like someone who is not disabled. Through my work, I've been able to be a public speaker on women disabled veterans, saying you can own your disability and not be looked down on.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Agatha
01What do you attribute your success to?
I can say determination has been my guide. I can't say that I've been successful, because I'm part of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, and that is another male-dominant arena. I can say that I have been running the race as to win a prize, and what is the prize? To have a voice heard. So I can say that I haven't been successful - I've been ambitious enough to pursue some type of visibility. We're still breaking the walls to have women veterans be visible. It's not easy. Not everyone tells you yes. Not every community says I'm going to invest in this. So I can say that there's been more doors opening. The full success is when you're gonna hear more stories like this from women veterans. So my pure grit, ambition, and determination is what's letting me power through all of these challenges.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The mentorship aspect has been what guided me in my role as advocacy and liaison. When we saw how the pilot program worked, having a peer on campus instead of going to someone who may not be a veteran - when you have a peer present, like a student veteran serving as a peer to locate resources, I saw that it was like a safe place for student veterans to come and say I'm gonna go to my campus because there's someone there to relate. That mentorship aspect is what motivated me to say, okay, let me stick it out with higher education, because the population needs someone as a mentor. My previous supervisor, who was also a woman veteran, strived for mentorship. This kind of gave me a voice. It gave me a voice. I also got guidance from hearing a woman veteran in a higher level position, like a sergeant major, who was willing to say, listen, I'm not okay today. That is where I got my guidance - from women having to branch out to women with higher positions that are willing to say I'm not okay today.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The barriers and the mountains are there, but your persistence is what's going to cut the thorns and the thistles. As long as they're willing to put in the work, you're gonna see something, and then it will come into fruition. Like a seed planted in the soil, you have to water it, right? You have to labor for it, and then you will see the flower grow.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The challenges are that you don't want to identify as a woman veteran because of the stigma, or they're going to say, oh, she didn't do anything. And then, what if you're a disabled woman veteran? What if now you're a student and you're disabled, now you have to ask for these accommodations, and you don't want people to know that what you did so pridefully, you know, now that you need to seek help because you may not be able to read a book for a very long period of time. You need accommodations, or the clanging of a pen, or if you're in a classroom and everyone's talking at the same time, your PTSD will be triggered. Or you have tinnitus and you have the ringing and the sound while the professor's talking and you miss out on some work because you need to exit out for a minute to find release. This is what we're advocating for. This is what my voice here is designed to say - it's okay to identify as a student veteran who's a woman. It's okay to say you're disabled even as a veteran who served. I just noticed that women don't sit at the table with everyone else. It's more male-dominant, and there's a reason behind it. There's 10 here, and maybe there's one woman veteran, but that's one enough than having none in general.
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