Innovators Chat: Anne Marie Dougherty (original) (raw)

Welcome to Innovators Chat featuring Anne Marie Dougherty, CEO of the Bob Woodruff Foundation

Anne Marie Dougherty is today's featured innovator. As Chief Executive Officer of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, Anne Marie oversees and funds the nation's largest nongovernmental network of veteran service providers, which, according to Forbes, helps veterans not only navigate the 40,000+ organizations that provide services to them, but also helps veterans heal from the physical and psychological wounds of war. With A-list celebrities and philanthropic institutions at our side – Bruce Springsteen, the NFL, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, MacKenzie Scott, Jon Stewart, Lee Ann Womack, Mickey Guyton – and our country’s highest-ranked military and national security leaders, we have invested more than $100 million in best-in-class veterans programming across the country. Our product is peace of mind – for veterans, for veteran-serving organizations, and for philanthropists looking to invest efficiently and effectively in veteran services.

As a military spouse, Anne Marie’s connection to the Bob Woodruff Foundation’s mission is personal. She has lived experience as a Marine spouse during war time combat deployments and through multiple duty station moves. When she tells veterans, their families, and their caregivers that the Bob Woodruff Foundation has “Got Your 6,” she means it. She regularly speaks to media outlets ranging from ESPN, to NPR, TIME, CBS, and Fox to raise awareness for veteran needs.

Anne Marie is active with her two young boys in their local community, including through their sports teams and schools. She serves on the Board of Directors of the UN Women for Peace Association, as an Advisory Board Member for Game Changers Institute, and as a NationSwell Council Member. Anne Marie holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Communications from Drexel University.

You've spent so much of your career supporting veterans. What led to this passionate interest to support veterans’ initiatives?

Anne Marie Dougherty: I think part of it is the serendipity of life. In my professional capacity, what I'm doing is meaningful and it's fulfilling to me on a personal level, but my effort and energy translates into helping a community I care deeply about.

Both my grandfathers served, plus my father, my stepfather, and my husband. We got married while he was in the Marine Corps, and his whole family served, so both sides, his grandfather, his sister, our brother-in-law are still on active duty, and my nephew just joined the Marine Corps.

As part of my culture growing up and in my young adulthood, and when I think back on it now, it was serendipitous to have crossed paths with the Woodruffs when we did, back when my husband was serving on active duty in the Marine Corps.

You've been a part of the Bob Woodruff Foundation for almost 16 years, now leading as CEO. What inspired you to join the organization? What about the Bob Woodruff Foundation is unique, and where you do feel you are differentiating yourself from other charitable organizations?

Anne Marie Dougherty: One of the things that is unique is the origin story. Bob and Lee Woodruff’s experience and the reason they started the foundation was because Bob was hurt, and his life was saved by military medics.

The family was going through a significant recovery for Bob, but it was obvious they had more resources than the other people in the military hospital. They recognized that marines and sailors and soldiers had the same or worse injuries as Bob; the inequity was so apparent to their family that they decided if Bob lived, they were going to try and help people.

This was back before people were talking as openly as they are now about PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and the trials of mental and physical health. There was still a lot of stigma and a lot we didn't know then.

We were still early in the wars and the family wanted to do something good, the authenticity of that origin story and the true commitment from the family, like this organization, is an act of gratitude; they just want to help people. I fell into that when they gave me the opportunity to build the Bob Woodruff Foundation.

I don't think anyone knew what it would grow to be, but we've all stayed committed to the core values of trying to help as many veterans and military families as we can as responsibly as we can.

The Bob Woodruff Foundation works with a lot of big brands and organizations, including the VOWS financial consortium. Could you speak about what it is like working with brands and where you see the value in partnering with them?

Anne Marie Dougherty: We are working with some major brands now, which I'm proud of. We try to be the answer to a brand or an individual that wants to help veterans but doesn’t specifically know how. We have the knowledge; we have the capacity to take an investment and make sure we're efficiently helping veterans where they need. If you think about our model in financial services terms, we look at ourselves as an asset manager. It's our job to deliver the highest return on a brand’s investment. And we measure our ROI through our program outcomes.

We just brought on a new sponsor, Bread Financial. It was the title sponsor of Stand Up for Heroes and is a new relationship. Ralph Andretta, CEO of Bread Financial, decided to team up with the Bob Woodruff Foundation because we're the quickest organization he has worked with that puts donations to action.

We really pride ourselves on our agility, and I think that agility brings value to brands because we can adapt with changing times.

Our basis of action is coming from deep research and knowledge and subject matter expertise in the category, so brands can trust that if a pivot needs to be made, we'll be doing it quickly but with a lot of experience and smarts behind those changes.

Stand Up for Heroes is in its 16th year; how do you continue to build brand equity and growth of this experience through the organization?

Anne Marie Dougherty: It is not something we are complacent about. Stand Up for Heroes is a pillar event for us. It has become an annual reunion for people and companies who care about veterans and come together knowing they're going to be a part of an event that's not only entertaining, but also makes you feel something.

Being behind the scenes of a strategy to make people feel something in a short amount of time while also being entertained and working with some of the biggest entertainers in the world and raising money is like a Rubik's Cube.

In terms of how you bring the event to life, there is an A-team pulling at the oars. We raised almost $5 million with the event this year, and it is a point of pride that the event has been going 16 years strong, particularly because we stayed fully operational during the pandemic. We produced our first virtual Stand Up for Heroes during this time. When the world reopened in 2021, instead of going back to the 2019 playbook, we changed the way we do the storytelling and the stories we were highlighting. However, we still incorporated military families and veteran voices woven in alongside having Bruce Springsteen and some of the biggest comedians on the planet. It has been very exciting. In addition, the New York Comedy Festival is a big part of the brand equity of Stand Up for Heroes.

Could you tell me about a risk the Bob Woodruff Foundation has taken and the outcome of that decision?

Anne Marie Dougherty: We launched a program we called Viva. It stands for Veterans in Vitro Initiative. Two things come to mind that sort of meet with Viva. One is that we have real relationships with real veterans and military families. We know them from when Bob was in the hospital. We know them from serving with my husband. We know them from the stories of the veterans in the military, families who are on our team, and the relationships we have all over the country with organizations that support veterans. That's important because over the years, it's allowed us to keep our ear to the ground, know what's on the horizon and know what issues people are really dealing with. I think that's important, especially when you're not a direct service provider. We are not. We try to understand what the consumer — the veterans and military families in this case — really need.

The other piece that comes up for me that is special about BWF is that we're not afraid of hard things. I should also mention we are a nonpolitical, nonpartisan organization.

We learned there was a growing population of veterans and military families who were unable to have children due to injuries. We dug into that issue, although many still feel it’s taboo to talk especially if you think of the warrior ethos.

We learned intimacy after injury was difficult for a lot of families, resulting in their inability to have children. The further we got into hearing the stories from families, we realized the benefits from the Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense are different.

We learned the VA supports fertility assistance for veterans in male-female marriages who've experienced a service-related wound to their creative organs.

But there was a whole universe of people who perhaps had a hidden injury or who were not in a male-female marriage or needed a sperm donor or egg donor or surrogate or all these things those families didn't have coverage for. We started a fund to provide coverage and provide fertility services. We partnered with US Fertility, the largest private network of fertility clinics in the country, led by Dr. Gilbert Mottla at Shady Grove Fertility, and they agreed to take 25% off the cost of fertility services. That network helped us build relationships with two big pharmaceutical companies that provide fertility drugs. Ultimately, they were providing the drugs for free. The doctors were only charging 75% of the cost, and the Woodruff Foundation was paying up to $5,000 for IUI. The coverage is different for each family situation, and because of that, in under four years, we have 42 Viva babies.

We were hearing stories about young, enlisted families putting IVF on their credit - and that isn’t right. We created the program from nothing, and we built the relationships and forged the way, really trying to stay clear that our motivation is not political in any way. It's just to fill the gap.

What a fantastic initiative; giving everyone equal access to building a family. I love that the Bob Woodruff Foundation took a risk and you are filling a gap.

I noticed you have an insight engine that you are building to surface innovations and best practices from local partner organizations serving veterans. Can you talk a little more about what that is?

Anne Marie Dougherty: We now call that network Got Your 6. Its relationships with 300 organizations and the Insight engine is how we engage with those organizations on an annual basis. They either receive funding from us or they participate in our programming and knowledge building, or both. And for the first time in 2019 and again in 2021, we sent a national survey to all those partners.

The results of those surveys are the basis for the Insight engine. It helps us analyze trends and changing needs in the veteran community. We then supplement the survey with routine calls and check-ins with our community partners and grantees. We have both quantitative and qualitative feedback, and that is how we refine our programmatic priorities.

We also base our assistance on how needs are evolving. In 2020, we learned from the survey that food insecurity was the No. 1 concern in the veteran population. We were able to go back quickly to that idea of agility and adjust our programming to match the need.

In 2021, we refined the survey, which allowed us to understand not only what the highest needs are, but also the ability of the community to address those needs. We looked areas where there was a major need with no community support to address that need, and that’s where we doubled down our financial support.

I love how you're gleaning and you're able to pivot quickly to doing something that's going to have the biggest ROI on behalf of veterans.

How is the Bob Woodruff Foundation supporting employment in alternative careers? Is that something you look at from a support mechanism, whether that be a second career, marketing, communications, finance, etc.? How are you helping with employment?

Anne Marie Dougherty: We are. And the reason we are is because the transition from being in the military to being in the civilian workforce is the single most stressful occurrence that veterans report in their journey through the military. And that's more so than wartime deployments. It’s just a huge career change, regardless of whether you're getting out of the military because of medical reasons or because you're making a career change after serving for 30 years. The more we can do to make that transition seamless for the individual veteran, the less likely they will need financial support, housing support or mental health support. If we have meaningful and fulfilling employment and a decent wage, then we are more likely to be successful in the other aspects of our lives. What we have done is try to make sure that veterans have access to job opportunities in the simplest ways by directing them to places where there's lots of jobs and helping control the narrative; for example, just because you were a truck driver in the military, doesn't mean you're looking for a truck driver position.

Jobs in marketing and advertising are great alternative careers when joining the civilian workforce, especially when you think about the creativity, entrepreneurship, problem-solving, and life experience that veterans bring to the table.

My other plug is for military spouses. I was a military spouse for six years and was employed with the Bob Woodruff Foundation for most of that time — three duty stations, combat deployment. This was at a heightened time during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and I'm certain that having fulfilling and meaningful employment really helped my family stay stable.

I think back on that time and of other military spouses. It's a rough go, that lifestyle. To the extent possible, I just want to broaden the audience of people who understand that military spouses bring a lot to the employment table — even though their resumes may be non-traditional.

I just want to underline that we announced at Stand Up for Heroes that we will be making a $1,000,000 investment in providing mental healthcare support to the children of military families. When you think about the moving parts, they are unseen. When you join the military, the whole family serves, it’s just the truth of it. And we’re coming off the longest wars in our history.

The lifestyle is hard. There's stress of deploying, coming home, getting ready — all these things — and it's important that we make sure military kids have access to mental health support. This will be an issue that we are driving home and really trying to tackle in 2023 and beyond.

Thank you to Anne Marie for her amazing leadership and passion for supporting veterans. You can learn more today and support the Bob Woodruff Foundation at: https://bobwoodrufffoundation.org

To start #givingtuesday I donated to the Bob Woodruff Foundation in honor of my father and father-in-law who both proudly served in the #usnavy.

VMLY&R is proud to have an employee-led giving program, the VMLY&R Foundation, that supports veteran organizations in addition to a variety of causes our employees personally champion.