Debbie Bradbard

Debbie Bradbard serves as the Director of the Boeing Center for Veteran Transition and Military Families at Virginia Tech. She began this role two and a half years ago, building the center from an initial idea supported by a philanthropic gift from Boeing into a fully operational entity. A licensed clinical psychologist, Bradbard started her career in traditional clinical work and supporting victims of crime, focusing on PTSD and trauma. As a military spouse, she paused her career during overseas moves to Japan and Germany but later reentered the workforce in the Washington, D.C. area. She first joined Booz Allen Hamilton to support military mental health initiatives, then moved to the nonprofit sector at Blue Star Families, where she led the research and policy team focused on military families. She subsequently held a similar research and policy role at the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University while operating her own consulting business on corporate social responsibility strategies for military and veteran employees. Bradbard joined the Institute full time before assuming her current position in 2018. Her professional achievements include developing a guidebook with the SHRM Foundation that reached over 20,000 human resource managers.