Staff

Carissa S. Picard

President

In 1998, Carissa Picard graduated magna cum laude from Trinity College (a women’s college) in Washington, D.C., with a B.A. in Political Science. While at Trinity, Carissa interned at the White House and on Capital Hill. After earning her B.A., she obtained her law degree from Georgetown University.

During her third year of law school, Carissa had her first son. After law school, Carissa practiced regulatory law in Washington, DC; however, the hours of a corporate lawyer were not compatible with her toddler son’s needs. Carissa left Washington, DC, and moved to southern Alabama to teach American Government at a local college. While teaching, Carissa met and married her husband (who was in flight school for the Army). She taught at the college until her husband finished flight school and they were sent to Germany for his first duty station.

Carissa’s second son was born in Germany with a birth defect that required two medivacs to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a subsequent compassionate reassignment to Fort Belvoir, VA. As a result of her son’s special needs, Carissa’s role as a stay at home mother became official. The next few years were spent tending to her family. Her husband recently returned from a year in Central America and has orders for Iraq in the Spring. He has since been reassigned and is serving a 15 month tour in Iraq.

Although Carissa has been a military spouse for five years, her first experiences with the military were as a sibling, when her older sister joined as an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers. In fact, in 2002, just prior to marrying her husband, Carissa herself had been offered a commission in the Army JAG Corps. Carissa and her husband considered being a dual military family but her pregnancy with her second son and her husband’s assignment to Germany made them decide against this.

Carissa created Military Spouses for Change ("MSC") in May of 2007 when she realized that military spouses were a powerful but untapped resource for positive change (there are more than 700,000 active duty spouses alone). The past five years revealed that our governmental institutions were neither prepared nor capable of properly responding to the increasingly complex needs of our military and veteran families. While our service members cannot be advocates, our military spouses can. Consequently, MSC tries to show military spouses how acts of social and/or political awareness can improve their lives, protect their loved ones, and strengthen their country.

To further this goal, MSC has created a blog specifically for military spouses: Military Spouse Press. Milspouse Press encourages personal and political expression as well as creates an honest and open dialogue about the military experience and current events/issues that impact our community. You do not have to be a military spouse to participate although the primary bloggers are.

Finally, Carissa is a political correspondent and op-ed contributor for Military.com.

» Email Carissa
» Read Carissa's blog.

 

Pamela Stokes Eggleston

Executive Vice President

Pamela Stokes Eggleston has become an ardent advocate for wounded soldiers and veterans, along with her husband who is currently a wounded warrior at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She has been a member of Military Spouses for Change since December of 2007 because she sees the need to connect with all military spouses, active and reservist, along with families and significant others who are sometimes ignored because they are not married. Pamela knows how this feels; she married her husband upon his return from Iraq, and experienced this lack of connection. Pamela joined Military Spouses for Change to transform this way of thinking and to advocate for the soldiers returning from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pamela’s experience includes extensive work in the criminal justice, social science, and public policy fields. She has served as a consultant, researcher, program administrator, and grant reviewer and has served in an advisory capacity on Congress-supported publications revolving around substance abuse, mental health, and criminal justice issues. Additionally, Pamela has developed continuous quality improvement (CQI) protocols for organizations that include strategic planning, action planning, and cost benefit analyses.

Presently, Pamela is President of the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) Alumni Association, July 2008 - June 2009. She also served as the Vice President of the Outreach and Chapter Development Committee of the UMUC Alumni Association for two years. She has both an MS and MBA in management from UMUC.

Pamela has been a proud military spouse for almost two years, although she and her husband have been a team for much longer.

» Email Pam

Inga M. Guenther

National Secretary

Inga is the proud wife and mother to three service members. In May 2003, her oldest son joined the Army. She marks this as the beginning of her life in the military. Since then her youngest son has joined the Marines and her husband has also joined the Army.

She is married to a Cavalry Scout scheduled to deploy to Iraq early in 2008. Her oldest son is in the Army artillery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and her youngest son is a Marine MP in Okinawa, Japan. She also has a son and two step-sons who reside in Indiana, her home state, and three beautiful grandchildren.

Inga joined Military Spouses for Change in August of 2007. If you ask her why she joined Military Spouses for Change, she would reply: "To become involved in change…..change for the better of our service members and veterans". Our organization's name reflects how she feels and that is what drew her to become a member. Her contributions to Military Spouses for Change include, but are not limited to, maintaining our membership database and updating our website with news and information.

Inga has an extensive background in banking, management, and sales. Her personal interests include informing other military families about legislation involving the military and veterans, as well as engaging in PTSD research. She also belongs to Army and Marine mom support groups.

» Email Inga

 

Tiffany Landis

Internet Membership Outreach Director

Tiffany Landis has been a proud military spouse and stay-at-home mother for seven years. She has three beautiful young children and her husband is currently serving his second tour in Iraq. She is one of the founding member of Military Spouses for Change.

Tiffany maintains the MSC Myspace page and message board.

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We are trying to raise money to support MSC and the services we provide.
Any help you could give would benefit the entire community.

 
   

 

We are a non-profit organization with 501(c)3 status, all donations are tax deductible.