Advocating for Mental Health and Military Spouses

Obstacles are nothing new to Dr. Ingrid Herrera-Yee. She has tackled them as a first-generation immigrant from Guatemala, then as a military spouse forging a career in mental health across multiple long-term deployments, and as an advocate for military families. Throughout her journey to Booz Allen, outside of the firm, and back again, she has been making the path smoother for those in similar situations. 

We honor National Hispanic Heritage Month with Ingrid’s inspiring story.

With a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, Ingrid has been a clinical and research fellow at Harvard University and an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University. She has worked as a therapist, counselor, policy manager, pharmaceutical researcher, and more. And she has worked for organizations ranging from the National Alliance on Mental Illness to the Department of Defense (DOD).

Yet even with this impressive resume, Ingrid often found herself “perennially underpaid and underemployed.” How was that possible? A big reason behind that was her status as a military spouse.

“We were moving every one-and-a-half to two years,” she explains. “So, there I was with a Ph.D. and license I couldn’t use in every state. My resume was ‘zig-zaggy’ with lots of gaps, and back then, there weren’t groups like Hiring Our Heroes who could help.”

Ingrid made the best of the situation. “I took every position I could that was related to mental health and military—that’s my passion and my community,” she says.

“It made me an amazing generalist,” she observes. With every job, she added more skills and range to her clinical and research background: grant writing, communications, data analytics and visualization, program evaluation, curricula design, the list goes on.

In 2012, Ingrid added nonprofit founder and president to her growing resume. Military Spouse Behavioral Health Clinicians (MSBHC) helps military spouses working and studying in the mental health field navigate licensing challenges, make connections, and find support.

In 2016, after her family moved to the Washington, DC, area, Ingrid joined Booz Allen as a clinical psychologist and subject matter expert in military mental health.

“Usually, when an employer sees a resume like mine from a military spouse with a lot of short-term jobs and gaps, you never get a callback,” she says. “At Booz Allen, there was no judgment about my atypical CV.”

In fact, Ingrid found the exact opposite: During both the interview process and on the job, Booz Allen clearly appreciated the depth and variety of her professional experience. 

“I could finally enjoy my career and be recognized for what I have to offer, with my skills and talent fully utilized and so many opportunities to grow and train,” she says.

Roughly 30% of all Booz Allen employees are veterans or military affiliated. To understand and support their unique needs, Ingrid believes that firsthand understanding is vital.

Household finances can be particularly challenging. “People think ‘oh, your spouse is employed.’ But not everything is covered, especially if your spouse is enlisted,” she says. “For example, there’s a lot of food insecurity in the military community right now.”

Money is one of many concerns for a military spouse. “We’re still deploying, still experiencing solo parenting and separation, which is a huge challenge. Even if you don’t have kids, you’re alone. Then there are the dynamics of the family when they come back,” she says.

Booz Allen’s Military Spouse network helps employees at the firm deal with these issues and more. Ingrid served as a geographic lead for the group for the Washington, DC, region and praises their support. 

“They make sure you get PCS (permanent change of station) information. They make sure you can keep your job,” says Ingrid. “They’re really incredible.” 

Ingrid also found a workplace that supported her professional passions.

Before joining Booz Allen, she had been a longtime advocate for military families to be appropriately and fully represented when talking about suicide. “If we’re not counted like service members, we’re not counted for resources,” she explains. At Booz Allen, one of her first projects was helping to develop the government’s first report on suicide and military families.

“It felt like fate to be given that opportunity,” she says. 

Other meaningful engagements followed, including work for the Real Warriors campaign, encouraging members of the military community to seek help for their psychological health. 

In 2021, however, Ingrid’s next opportunity came from outside of Booz Allen. She had a chance to tackle clinician burnout and wellbeing, including the impact of COVID-19 on suicide risk, with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 

“It was an opportunity to work with the Surgeon General and support frontline health workers. It was an opportunity I could not pass up,” she says.

Her leadership at Booz Allen supported the move. “They understood it was a mission bigger than me,” she says. And when the project was over, and Ingrid reached back out, “I didn’t expect anything, but their response was immediate: ‘You need to come back.’”

Today, Ingrid is a project manager supporting landmark initiatives for the DOD in integrated primary prevention. Like many threads in her career, this role builds upon her previous work at the intersection of defense and mental health—evaluating programs and campaigns and conducting data visualizations and surveillance—and carries it forward. 

Ingrid calls her recent DOD assignment “a full-circle moment”—and it’s one of many.

In her work for Real Warriors, for example, she assisted with the Spanish translations for the campaign—an experience that harkened back to her past. “As a first-generation immigrant from Guatemala, I was the family translator as a child,” she says.

Ingrid also sees these full-circle moments play out in Booz Allen’s Latin American Network, which she praises for its mentorship model and outreach through activities like a recent event at Booz Allen’s Helix Center for Innovation in Washington, DC. 

“Seeing for yourself someone who looks like you who’s successful is so empowering. It shows you that anything is possible,” says Ingrid. “Role models got me to where I am now. It’s the reason why I made it as far as my Ph.D. Now, I’m able to be a mentor to those who need it.”