WATM_Mighty 25

Jennifer Ballou Retired Army Master Sgt. Jennifer Ballou experienced military service from nearly every angle: as a soldier, combat veteran, military spouse, and Gold Star spouse. After losing her husband, Staff Sgt. Edwardo Loredo, while they were both deployed to Afghanistan, Ballou turned profound loss into advocacy, helping shape Army policies affecting surviving military families. Today, through her leadership with the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, she is helping ensure the service and sacrifice of an entire generation are permanently represented on the National Mall. Her work has made her a powerful voice for remembrance, resilience, and the families who continue carrying the cost of war long after a deployment ends.

Richard Brookshire Army veteran Richard Brookshire built his post-service work around a question too often overlooked: whether all veterans have equal access to the benefits they earned. As co-founder and CEO of the Black Veterans Project, he has helped elevate research, storytelling and policy advocacy focused on racial inequities affecting Black veterans, including disparities rooted in generations of military policy and benefits administration. A former infantry combat medic who served in Afghanistan, Brookshire brings lived experience to a broader push for accountability and reform. His work has helped force difficult but necessary conversations about who gets recognized, supported, and remembered after military service.

Sharene Brown After two decades of military moves alongside her husband, retired Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., Sharene Brown turned firsthand experience with the pressures of military life into a national effort to improve quality of life for families. She launched Five & Thrive in 2021 to focus attention on five persistent challenges: childcare, education, healthcare, housing, and spouse employment. The initiative has connected families with resources while giving senior military leaders a clearer picture of the issues that directly affect readiness and retention. Brown's influence comes from making family quality of life part of the mission conversation, not a side issue.

For more than a decade, We Are The Mighty has championed the military-veteran community by remembering our history, sharing our culture, and promoting our veterans with the ultimate goal of uplifting the people and causes that matter most. The shared experience of military service is much bigger than the oath we take to wear our country’s uniform, or the person we’ve chosen to love and live this life alongside. It’s difficult to describe in words, but it’s something We Are The Mighty tries to do every day. Try as we might, one website can’t do it alone. In today’s media and political landscape, the influencer wields the power to change hearts and minds. Influence in the military-veteran community can look like changing federal law, building a nonprofit from a kitchen table, creating a place for military families to belong, investing in veteran founders, telling the stories of those who serve, or refusing to let a community be forgotten. Every year, We Are The Mighty is honored not only to show the good being done but to actively recognize and celebrate those who meet the need. This year's Mighty 25 represents that breadth of impact. These 25 advocates, entrepreneurs, storytellers, philanthropists, policymakers, and social influencers are defining what it means to serve our community now and are shaping what support for that community can become. Meet your 2026 Mighty 25.

Influence With Impact

Amber Capone Amber Capone transformed one family's difficult transition out of the Navy SEAL community into a national effort to expand treatment options for veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. As co-founder and CEO of Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions, or VETS, she has become a leading advocate for research, policy change, and carefully governed access to psychedelic-assisted therapies. Her work has helped move a once-fringe conversation into serious discussions among researchers, lawmakers, clinicians and veteran families. Capone's advocacy is rooted in a simple idea: veterans facing complex invisible wounds deserve more pathways to healing when conventional options have not been enough.

Verenice Castillo What began as Verenice Castillo's determination to make sure other military spouses did not experience the isolation she once felt has grown into a global network of mentorship and leadership. Since founding the Military Spouse Advocacy Network in 2014, Castillo has built programs that educate, empower, and connect spouses across every branch of service, including 24/7 peer mentorship and leadership development. Her work has expanded beyond helping spouses navigate military life to developing the next generation of military spouse leaders. In a community where frequent moves can repeatedly force families to start over, Castillo has built something designed to move with them: connection.

Jason David Retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Jason "JD" David spent more than two decades telling the military's story while living an extraordinary life of service himself. A combat correspondent, broadcaster, and public affairs leader, David was wounded by enemy fire in Iraq and received the Purple Heart, later using his recovery and experience to encourage other service members to seek care and share their own stories. He went on to serve as the senior enlisted leader for the Defense Media Activity, helping guide the joint force responsible for major military media and information platforms. David's impact lies in the intersection of service, storytelling and mentorship, particularly his insistence that vulnerability and resilience can exist side by side.

Holly Dailey Holly Dailey has spent more than three decades turning the realities of Army family life into advocacy, mentorship, and practical support. As the spouse of the 15th Sergeant Major of the Army, she used a highly visible platform to elevate concerns affecting soldiers and families while continuing the hands-on volunteer work that had defined her service at installations around the world. Today, as AUSA's director of Family Readiness, she remains a consistent voice on quality of life, readiness, and the role families play in sustaining the force. Dailey's influence comes from years of showing up at every level, from local family readiness groups to national conversations about Army families.

Sam Eckholm Air Force Academy graduate and former public affairs officer Sam Eckholm has become one of the most recognizable military storytellers of his generation. After helping transform the F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team's digital presence, he carried that experience into SE Media and a body of cinematic defense content that gives millions of viewers unusually close access to military aircraft, missions, and people. His work has helped bridge the widening gap between the armed forces and a public with increasingly little direct connection to military service. By making complex missions understandable, visual, and compelling, Eckholm is helping shape how a new generation sees service and national defense.

Kenneth Fisher Under Kenneth Fisher's leadership, Fisher House Foundation has expanded one of the military community's most tangible forms of support: a free place for families to stay while a loved one receives medical care. The network has grown to nearly 100 comfort homes near military and VA medical centers, easing both the financial burden and emotional isolation that can come with serious illness or injury. Fisher has also extended the foundation's reach into scholarships, adaptive sports, and other programs that support military and veteran families through recovery. His work reflects a powerful premise that has guided Fisher House for decades: a family's presence can be part of the healing process.

David Higgins At the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, David Higgins Jr. has helped translate one of the military community's most urgent challenges into stories, information, and advocacy that people can understand and act on. As a communications professional, he supports the coalition's national work connecting service providers, policymakers and the public around the goal of ending veteran homelessness. That role matters at a time when historic progress has been made, but tens of thousands of veterans still lack stable housing. Higgins' work helps keep those veterans visible while amplifying the programs, policies and community organizations working to move them into permanent homes.

Ryan Patrick Hunt Retired Army officer Ryan Patrick Hunt has built a second career around helping veterans turn military experience into economic opportunity. Through Tenth Mountain Recruiting, he connects veteran and civilian talent with employers, while the Veteran Social Summit brings together veterans, military spouses, entrepreneurs, and advocates for education and collaboration. Hunt has also used his platform to mentor veteran founders and encourage service members to see entrepreneurship and modern workforce skills as viable paths after the uniform. His work is centered on a problem many veterans recognize immediately: having tremendous capability but needing the right network and language to translate it into the civilian world.

Kerry Irvin Kerry Irvin has spent years advocating for military families, but her leadership at Operation Healing Forces places her at the center of support for one of the military's most heavily burdened communities: Special Operations Forces and their families. As CEO, she has helped expand programs focused on therapeutic retreats, immediate needs, transition support, resilience, and long-term family stability for wounded, ill, and injured special operators, veterans, and caregivers. A military daughter, spouse and mother, Irvin pairs personal understanding of service life with extensive nonprofit leadership and resilience training. Her work reinforces that caring for the nation's most elite warfighters also means investing in the families who absorb the strain of repeated deployments, injury, and transition.

Meaghan Keeler As the founding chief operating officer and first employee of the Global SOF Foundation, Meaghan Keeler has helped build an international network designed to strengthen the world's Special Operations community. Since 2014, she has shaped the organization's operations, financial stewardship, and program delivery while helping convene military leaders, industry, policymakers, and international partners around complex security challenges. Her influence is often exercised behind the scenes, creating the infrastructure that allows collaboration across countries and organizations to happen at scale. In a community built on relationships and trust, Keeler has helped turn those relationships into a durable global platform.

Michelle Lang Michelle Lang knows firsthand how quickly veterans living in rural America can become disconnected from the systems meant to support them. Alongside her husband, Chris, she helped build Operation Honor: Rural Salute around a simple but often overlooked strategy: take resources directly to the communities where veterans live rather than expecting veterans to travel hours to find them. The organization connects rural veterans and families with healthcare, mental health support, housing, employment, business resources, and local relationships. Lang's work closes a geographic gap in veteran support by ensuring distance from a major installation or VA center does not also mean distance from help.

Lydiah Owiti-Otienoh Lydiah Owiti-Otienoh has turned her own experience as a Kenyan-born military spouse into advocacy for a population that can be nearly invisible inside the broader military family conversation: foreign-born spouses. After navigating credential recognition, employment barriers, cultural adjustment, and repeated transitions, she began building resources and community specifically for spouses facing those same challenges. Through the Foreign Born Military Spouse Network and her broader program and policy work, she has helped military families navigate American systems without asking spouses to leave their professional identities behind. Her advocacy has expanded the definition of military spouse support by making room for the immigration, cultural, and credentialing realities that thousands of families carry with them.

Jen Pilcher Jennifer Pilcher has spent much of her career making military life easier to navigate by connecting families with information, opportunities, and each other. She founded MilitaryOneClick as a one-stop resource for the military community, then created MilSpouseFest to bring those connections off the screen and into communities around the country. She later led Patriot Boot Camp, supporting veterans, service members, and military spouses pursuing entrepreneurship. Pilcher's influence can be seen in an ecosystem of military-family media, events and entrepreneurship programs built around a belief that people thrive when the right resources are easier to find.

Mike Rowe Mike Rowe has used his public platform to challenge the idea that success requires a traditional four-year college path, a message with particular relevance for transitioning service members and veterans. Through the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, he has directed millions of dollars in Work Ethic Scholarships toward training for in-demand skilled trades, including opportunities well suited to military-acquired technical skills. The foundation has also partnered with veteran organizations to connect former service members with apprenticeships and trade education. Rowe's influence in the military community comes from elevating a path veterans already understand well: mastering a skill, doing difficult work, and building a career around competence.

Suzy Malloy As executive director of Blue Star Families' Tampa Chapter, Suzy Malloy has made community connection a form of military family readiness. A longtime Navy and Special Operations spouse, she has used both lived experience and local partnerships to connect service members, veterans, and families with food support, career resources, social networks, and practical help throughout the Tampa Bay region. Her chapter has created countless opportunities for military-connected families to build relationships with the civilian community around them, including programs like Coffee Connects. Malloy's work demonstrates how much stronger military families can be when a duty station feels less like a temporary stop and more like a community that knows them.

Mike Sherbakov Marine Corps veteran Mike Sherbakov is helping reshape the veteran entrepreneurship conversation by moving beyond mentorship alone and putting investment capital behind veteran-led companies. As co-founder and general partner of The Veteran Fund, he backs high-growth startups led by military veterans while building networks of investors, founders and advisors around them. He also created veteran and military family programming within the Founder Institute, helping hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs develop and launch companies. Sherbakov's work helps position veterans not simply as job seekers after service, but as builders capable of creating the technologies, companies, and jobs that shape the future.

Lori Simmons For years, Lori Simmons has helped ensure military spouses are not only supported but publicly recognized for the leadership they provide every day. Through Armed Forces Insurance and the Military Spouse of the Year program, she has helped elevate hundreds of spouse advocates from installations around the world, giving them a national platform for initiatives that strengthen military families. A former military spouse herself, Simmons has also led philanthropic and financial-education efforts designed specifically for the military community. Her influence is multiplied through the people she helps spotlight, connect, and empower to take their own advocacy further.

Rodney Smith, Jr. Rodney Smith Jr. turned an ordinary act of kindness, stopping to help an older man mow his lawn, into a nationwide movement built around service. Through Raising Men & Women Lawn Care Service, he has encouraged young people to provide free lawn care for veterans, older adults, people with disabilities, and single parents in their communities. Smith has personally traveled across the country mowing lawns for veterans in all 50 states while using the work to teach children about compassion, responsibility, and civic service. His impact is powerful precisely because it is simple: showing gratitude to veterans not with words alone, but by showing up and doing the work.

Lyla Kohistany Dr. Lyla Kohistany's life has placed her on both sides of America's relationship with Afghanistan: first as an Afghan refugee, later as a U.S. Navy officer and national security professional who returned to the country in service to the United States. After the fall of Kabul in 2021, she co-founded Honor the Promise to help former Afghan Special Operations veterans and their families rebuild their lives in America. The organization connects families with legal support, workforce development, wellness resources, community networks, and the American veterans who once fought beside them. Kohistany's work asks the military community to view evacuation not as the end of a promise, but the beginning of a responsibility to help trusted partners truly belong in the country they helped defend.

Rosie and Leroy Torres Rosie and retired Army Capt. Le Roy Torres turned a devastating personal experience with toxic exposure into one of the most consequential veteran advocacy campaigns of the post-9/11 era. After Le Roy returned from Iraq seriously ill following exposure to the massive burn pit at Joint Base Balad, the couple co-founded Burn Pits 360 and created an independent registry to document the illnesses veterans and families were reporting. Their years of testimony, organizing, and legislative advocacy helped drive national recognition of toxic exposure, from the federal burn pit registry to the 2022 PACT Act. Their work changed the burden of proof for countless veterans by helping transform stories that were once dismissed into data, policy, and access to care.

Melissa Washington Navy veteran Melissa Washington has spent more than a decade building spaces where women veterans can be seen, connected, and supported on their own terms. What began as local meetups grew into the Women Veterans Alliance, a national and increasingly global network focused on community, careers, entrepreneurship and access to resources for women who served. She later created Women Veterans Giving and Women Veterans Magazine, extending that mission into small-business support and storytelling. Washington's work has challenged an old visibility problem in the veteran community by making one point unmistakable: women served too, and their experiences belong at the center of the veteran conversation.

Robert Zackery III Retired Air Force Command Chief Master Sgt. Robert L. "Zack" Zackery III brings more than 26 years of Special Warfare experience into his work developing the next generation of leaders. A former Tactical Air Control Party special operator with multiple combat deployments, including the opening phases of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Zackery operated alongside Rangers, Special Forces, and other elite units at the tactical and strategic levels. Today, through leadership consulting, teaching, and advisory work, he translates lessons earned under extraordinary pressure into tools for military, government, and civilian organizations. His continued service reflects a broader commitment to developing people long after his own time in uniform ended.

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