Vivian Greentree, 36, was a Navy lieutenant for four years until 2005, when she joined the reserves for two. Through the G.I. bill, she completed her Ph.D. and co-founded Blue Star Families, an organization that connects military families to civilian leaders. She is married to an active duty lieutenant commander and lives with her family in Washington, D.C. She shared her story with web producer Ruth Tam over the phone.

“When I left the Navy, I had a different transition because my husband was still on active duty. During that transition from active duty to military spouse, we were moving and I had a small child. It was hard… When I got out, I was getting my master’s degree. I thought if I could show that I was moving forward constantly –still committed to volunteerism, education and my peer industry– that by time I settled down somewhere, there wouldn’t be a big gap in my resume. I’d have a track record.

At least my spouse had a job. We had medical insurance, healthcare and income. For other veterans, without a spouse with a full time job and source of income, the transition would be much harder and more uncertain for them. We moved from Texas to Norfolk, Va., and I continued to go to school.

The support I had didn’t meet my needs so I ended up co-founding Blue Star Families. When I finished my Ph.D. (which the military paid for), I was able to pull all that passion, knowledge, training and expertise to create creating meaningful data and resources to advocate for military families. I’ve since moved from that to heading military and veterans affairs at a Fortune 500 company. The impact I can have is amazing.

When I look back, I feel incredibly lucky. At the time, nothing was making sense. My career path was all over the place. I can look back and know everything I went through got me to where I am now. Everyone thinks leaving the military and coming home is from A to B, but it’s A to Z and all the letters in between can be a lot of different steps on the way. It may not look like the step you envisioned, but you have to take them to get to where you’re supposed to be.

There’s no typical veteran; every vet has their own story. They come in at all levels, skill sets, backgrounds, sizes. But I do see a common theme with military talent: They can see past the tactical much more quickly to the big pictures. They know that no matter how small, their actions are feeding into a larger purpose.

After leaving service, you don’t always want to do what you were doing in the military. I didn’t want to be a logistics or operations officer, manager or food service officer like I was in the Navy. But I knew I could still use those skills and apply them in other capacities. We know that a million service members are going to transition out over the next year and there’s a huge effort to push resource allocation and raise community capacity. There’s nowhere in the country that is a better national and local presence of veterans than the nation’s capital.

A lot of military spouses and veterans don’t want to self identify. They think of it as a negative or feel a stigma. There’s nothing that breaks my heart more. I feel so good to be in the position I’m in because if I can take a stand in my small place in the world, we can encourage vets to apply to my company or our partnering companies. We want to let vets know of all the resources. Businesses can do well by hiring veterans. They are a premiere talent pool.

Military folks look just like everybody else. There’s a military child in every school district in the country. They’re not ‘other’ or ‘separate.’ They’re the same as every other citizen, they just chose to serve their country in a different way, and their families serve with them. My husband’s been deployed five times. My kids have grown up in what we call the ‘new normal.’ And that’s okay.”

This interview was condensed and edited for clarity. All photographs courtesy of Dr. Vivian Greentree. For more on military issues in the D.C. area, reserve your free tickets to a live taping of The Kojo Nnamdi Show with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on Tuesday, July 21, 2015, at 7 p.m. at the Synetic Theater. 

Every weekday, from 12-2 p.m. we do deep dives into diverse topics on our show. But here, on our blog, we want to do more to highlight the human experiences we talk about on air. On our blog, you can read short, personal essays that expand our on-air discussions. Submit your ideas here and happy reading!