In this week’s episode of Next Steps Forward, host Dr. Chris Meek sits down with retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Patricia “Patty” D. Horoho, a trailblazer who made history as the first woman, first nurse, and first non-physician to serve as the Army Surgeon General and Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command. With a career spanning over 38 years of service, General Horoho reflects on her remarkable journey from the Green Ramp disaster in 1994 to the Pentagon on 9/11, and her transformational leadership in Army medicine. After retiring from the Army, General Horoho’s leadership continues to shine as Chief Strategy, Innovation and Transformation Officer for Optum Health, where she has rapidly grown the organization to multi-billion-dollar success, particularly through her agile response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this conversation, they discuss her career milestones, leadership principles, resilience, and the groundbreaking changes she implemented in military healthcare. LTG Horoho also shares insights into her personal life, including balancing her demanding career with motherhood, and how she continues to serve others through the 2Serve Together Foundation, which honors military women. Tune in to hear her inspiring advice on leadership, resilience, and the importance of empowering the next generation of leaders—especially women.
About LTG Patricia "Patty" D. Horoho: Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Patricia “Patty” D. Horoho is the current Chief Strategy, Innovation and Transformation Officer for Optum Health. She was the 43rd Army Surgeon General and the Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command. She made history as the first woman, first nurse and first non-physician to hold these posts. In these roles, LTG Horoho led the world’s third-largest health care system with a multi-billion-dollar budget, a staff of 156,000 and a global logistics, research and care network that spanned five continents. After her retirement from the Army in December 2015, she joined UnitedHealth Group in 2017 to establish the Optum Serve brand, which is the end-to-end federal business of both Optum and UnitedHealth Group. In the last two years, Optum Serve has entered into new markets, grown the top line by three-hundred percent, and grown into a multi-billion dollar organization. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, her agility and ability to effectively leverage resources resulted in Optum Serve rapidly standing up new business models to support COVID-19 testing and vaccine distribution. In 2023, LTG Horoho also established the 2Serve Together Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to honoring our military women.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
There are few things that make people successful.
(00:08):
Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some
time to get there.
How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you?
Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek.
Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward.
(00:30):
Now here is Chris Meek.
Hello, I'm Chris Meek, and you've tuned to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward.
As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us.
Our focus is on personal empowerment, a commitment to wellbeing, and the motivation to achieve
more than you ever thought possible.
And we're so fortunate this week to have retired US Army Lieutenant General Patricia
(00:51):
Horojo as our guest.
These days, Patricia Horojo is the Chief Strategy Innovation and Transformation Officer at OptumHealth.
She was the 43rd Army Surgeon General, and she was the commander of the US Army Medical Command.
She made history as the first woman, first nurse, and non-physician to hold these posts.
In these roles, Patricia Horojo led the world's third largest healthcare system with a multibillion
(01:12):
dollar budget, a staff of 156,000, and a global logistics research and care network that spanned
five continents.
After retirement from the Army in December 2015, she joined UnitedHealth Group in 2017
and founded the OptumServe brand, which is the end-to-end federal business of both Optum
and UnitedHealth Group.
In the last two years, OptumServe has entered into new markets, grew the top line by 300%,
(01:36):
and grown into a multibillion dollar organization.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, her agility and ability to effectively leverage
resources resulted in OptumServe rapidly standing up new business models to support COVID-19
In 2023, Patty expanded her role to include leading OptumHealth Solutions, an integrated
direct care delivery platform.
(01:57):
OptumHealth Solutions works to simplify the industry rather than adding complexity by
re-engineering the healthcare delivery system for those who need care the most, while providing
holistic condition care management for oncology, kidney, rare diseases, and transplant.
Also in 2023, General Horojo established the To Serve Together Foundation, a nonprofit
dedicated to honoring our military women.
Currently, she's the Chief Strategy, Innovation, and Transformation Officer for OptumHealth.
(02:22):
General Patty Horojo, welcome to Next Steps Forward.
Thanks, Chris.
Great to be with you.
It's an honor to have you with us, and I always pride the show on being a show of firsts,
and this is the first time I've had a page and a half introduction.
So we've got a 52-minute show here today, 54 minutes.
I'm not sure that's going to be enough time.
We're probably going to skip the break, just so Matt, you know that, but let's get right
(02:45):
into it.
Let's stop wasting your time here.
General, you came from an Army family.
You were even born on an Army base, but plenty of people from military families never joined
the armed services.
What or who motivated you to choose not just a military career, but specifically one in
the Army?
Yeah, Chris.
So I, you know, we don't get to choose what family we're born into, and I feel very, very
(03:07):
blessed of the family that I did born into.
Born and raised at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, my dad fought World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
My parents were married 70 years, and we lived in a neighborhood, Cottonade, North Carolina,
that was, to be honest, filled with a lot of Special Forces officers, a lot of officers
(03:27):
and enlisted soldiers that had served in Vietnam.
And so I grew up seeing, really, the strength of our nation.
I saw families that came together, really supported each other during tough times, supported
each other during the joys that occurred, and watched my dad every Thursday go to the
(03:49):
Overhill Gang, where it was enlisted in officers, came together and kind of just shared their
war stories and bonded and supported.
And so nobody, though, however, ever talked to me about joining.
Not one person.
And it was my senior year at UNC Chapel Hill.
I was sitting in the back of the room in a nutrition class, and I thought, I just want
(04:10):
to do something different.
I want to serve my nation.
And I thought I was just going to do it for three years.
And so I called a recruiter and said, I'd like to join the Army Nurse Corps, and met
him on the corner of Franklin Street and did my interview.
So I think I shocked my family.
I think I shocked everybody when I called and said, hey, I'm going in the Army.
(04:32):
Unbelievable.
I did not know that story.
Your decision to join the Army also must have lined with your personal and career goals.
How important were education and training opportunities in your decision?
Yeah.
You know, my education is the foundation for us to do anything we want to do.
And that really was instilled by my grandfather.
(04:55):
My grandfather came over from the boat from Italy when he was a young child, worked in
the coal mines, and believed in the value of education.
And he had a fourth grade education, but he ended up putting many of my cousins through
nursing school.
He instilled the value of education, and he said, it's the one thing that no one can ever
(05:17):
take away from you.
So education was really important, and I knew at the time when I grew up, there weren't
a lot of choices for women, to be perfectly honest.
It was teaching, secretary, or nursing, or a flight attendant, and I can tell you that
story later, but I chose nursing, and it really came across as a profession that you can give
(05:44):
back to others.
And I thought, that's the heart of military service, and so if I can combine both my nursing
education and my military belief in the value of service, I just felt like that would be
something worthwhile to do as a young person.
So it's just ingrained in you to serve others.
That's just a core value, principle for you.
(06:05):
I had great role models growing up, and I truly believe there's a statement out there,
and I used it in every one of my chain of command speeches, and it was Andre Mello,
who said, a French officer, who said, to command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.
And I really believe the higher you go in anything you do, you need to be more humble,
(06:28):
and you need to always embrace a servant leader's heart.
And it's something that just inspires me every single day.
A servant leader's heart, that's, I love that, I love that.
What expectations did you have before you signed up, and how do they compare to the
reality?
Yeah, I probably was extremely naive, I'll just, I'll be honest.
(06:52):
I think my expectations, I don't think I realized how much of a team the military was
in the clinical profession.
And so I worked nine months before I went on active duty, and there really was a hierarchy
within nursing.
There was a hierarchy within your clinical profession, and at that time, if you were
(07:15):
sitting and a doctor came in, you had to stand, you had to give up your seat, and it was very
much what I would say, very traditional.
And so when I came into the military, I came in thinking that that's going to be very similar.
And what I found is, it is such a collaborative team.
(07:38):
And it's doctors, it's nurses, it's our combat medics, everybody working together with a
focus on the patient.
And I think it won.
I don't think I expected it to be that way right off the bat, and it was, and you felt
like you were a part of this strong community that invested in leadership from the day you
(08:00):
joined at every level.
And it's actually what kept me on active duty for 33 years.
Way off topic, what kind of dog do you have just walked in the room?
So we have two, I apologize for that.
We have two, one is a very large golden doodle, and his name is Patrick Patton, and we call
(08:22):
him Pat-Pat Goodboy.
Actually I call him Chief Executive Dog, because he's never missed a work meeting, and then
the small one is Murphy James, which means dog of the sea, and they both are with me
every day when I work at home.
I'm asking because I have two Shih Tzus, and one of them, luckily he's sleeping with me.
My viewers and listeners know Zeke very well, because he lets everybody know when the UPS
(08:43):
guy or the Amazon truck is here, and luckily he's sleeping right now.
So I appreciate it.
Dogs bring love, and so I just wanted to highlight the dogs there.
They do.
General, what advice would you give to a young person, especially a young woman considering
joining the armed forces, or maybe not even in the military at all, but they should?
Yeah, I'll tell you, I would advise young women, especially, I'd advise anybody to join
(09:06):
our military, whether it's Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard, or Space Force.
You will grow in ways you never imagined, and you will be exposed to leaders.
You will be exposed to new challenges.
You'll learn things about yourself that you never thought you could accomplish, and you
(09:27):
also grow both personally and professionally.
And for women especially, I think there's no greater time than to serve our nation.
Women are able now to serve in every field that we have across our armed forces, and
we're watching women right now continue to not just break a glass ceiling, but actually
pave a pathway for others to follow.
(09:49):
And to me, it's women lifting women up, and it's that team of teams concept.
So I think even if you choose to serve three years, or if you choose to serve a full 30
or 40 years, you will leave the service knowing that you've been part of something much greater
than yourself, and it will tie you to the American values, and it'll tie you to what
(10:11):
I think is inherent in our flag.
And that's the opportunity to support and defend our democracy, and there's nothing
better.
A few years ago, I had the honor of working with General George Casey Jr. and Dr. Joel
Cooper Smith at Georgetown on a workshop focused on the 50th anniversary of the All-Volunteer
Force.
So that was a couple of years ago now.
(10:31):
It was sort of in the middle of COVID, I believe.
You know, so we're all volunteer, not like Israel or something like that where it was
mandatory service.
We're seeing the numbers decline pretty significantly in terms of enlistments.
Knowing the state of the world right now, what can or should we do to encourage young
people to, to your point, have that servant leader heart go out there to serve, you know,
(10:52):
have a greater calling than yourself?
You know, I think one, this past year under Major General Johnny Davis, who's just one
of the most dynamic leaders I've served with, he actually exceeded the recruiting mission,
which is pretty impressive when you realize how challenging it's been, you know, across
(11:13):
all the services.
What I would say is where we are today, and I believe in hope, and I think right now there
is so much hope across our nation, the hope to unite, the hope for voices to be heard,
the hope for a better world.
And I think when men and women make the decision to serve, one, you're taking a lens and looking
(11:41):
outside of yourself, which always changes things, right?
And it makes us more open to culture, to diversity, to experience.
And I think when we bring the melding pot kind of mindset through that diversity of
service and individuals, it just strengthens our nation and it strengthens us as individuals.
And so I believe when you serve, you get back way more than you'll ever give.
(12:08):
And it changed the trajectory of my life and of our family's life with that decision to
serve.
Every career seems to have watershed moments, but you had two that were manifestly bigger
than the vast majority of other careers.
The first was the Green Ramp disaster on March 23rd, 1994 at Pope Air Force Base.
(12:29):
And you were the head nurse in Womack Army Hospitals Emergency Room.
What happened that day?
Yeah.
You know, I have to take you back a couple of years if I could before that day occurs
because I always believe we go through challenges.
I've learned this over my life because I've had more blessings and more challenges.
And I always think when I go through challenges, I always pray to God and say, help me to learn
(12:54):
what I'm supposed to learn during this dark time so that I can spiral upward.
And so I was at the University of Pittsburgh.
I was getting my master's paid for by the military.
And I started doing my first thesis on critical incident stress debriefing and couldn't get
enough patients for the study.
So then I went to my second master's thesis and it was going to be in Burns.
(13:17):
And they ended up firing a lot of the Burns surgeons.
And I wasn't able to do that one.
And both of those, I had done the research in 60 type pages.
It shows my age because it was all typewriters.
And then the third one was on hardiness.
And so finally, I got approval to do a comparison of two types of Burns dressings and finally
finished my thesis.
(13:38):
The reason why I bring that up, because it ties directly into what happened on that day.
So going to Fort Bragg, I was honored to be the head nurse of the emergency room.
And a couple of months before, we had brought together a MassCal scenario where we trained
with Cape Verde Valley.
We trained with Pope EMS, Pope Air Force Base EMS, and then our medical services.
(14:06):
And we created a scenario where we would prepare for in the April time frame, where there would
be two planes crashing, multi-trauma victims.
And we had prepared MassCal packages.
We had prepared the MassCal cards and comms and everything.
Well, in March at 14, 15, I remember Phil Layton running into the emergency room and
(14:30):
he said, Captain Horojo, he said, we have a MassCal incident at Pope.
And he said, two planes collided.
And I said, oh, this is our exercise.
And he said, no, ma'am, this is real.
And literally in 15 minutes, we started receiving patients that were injured.
What had happened is two planes collided.
There was 500 paratroopers on the ground, 50,000 gallons of jet fuel ignited, and a
(14:59):
fireball went across the service members that were on the ground.
And because of individuals thinking so quickly on the ground, they did the scoop and run
method.
They just picked them up, sidecars within motorcycles bringing them in, deuce and a
half, big trucks where literally soldiers were stacked on top of each other with their
(15:20):
uniforms burned off.
I have never seen anything like that.
And we had 134 burned victims that arrived in our emergency room in less than an hour.
You and the rest of the medical personnel at WOMAC must have been overwhelmed with so
many casualties there, especially so many who were critically injured.
(15:41):
What were the most critical challenges you faced?
Yeah, so it was a 22-bed emergency room.
And what we did is we took the front, the outside of the emergency room, and we had
so many people that responded.
It was in the middle of the day.
It was a sunny day, blue sky.
(16:02):
People responded from everywhere.
We had people take sheets, and they created an emergency room external where we could
put many of the severely wounded, those that needed to be on ventilators, went into our
emergency room.
The 44th Med Brigade brought ventilators over.
We had 22 on ventilators at one time, which is unheard of.
(16:26):
And I think some of the challenges were the severity of the wounds.
We were doing escharotomies external outside of the emergency room to relieve the compression
that starts with severely charred.
We were intubating internal because of all the inhalation.
And it was opening up and our pharmacy and having buckets of morphine to relieve people
(16:54):
out of pain.
But the overall challenge that I remember saying to my team is America, this is America's
sons and daughters, and we will not lose one person by not knowing who they are.
And they were coming in with no names.
So we had accountability of Jane Doe, John Doe, and we made sure that we gave compassionate
(17:16):
care.
And the story that I've got to tell you because I promised myself the moment that I heard
this, I have never missed an opportunity when we talked about Green Ramp to share the
story of Sergeant Price.
Because as we were taking care of the soldiers that were injured outside, we were talking
to each while we were working on them.
(17:38):
And I remember talking to Specialist Winfield just to get her attention for pain.
And I said, tell me what happened.
And she said, ma'am, she said, I was on the tarmac.
And she said that the next thing I knew is this soldier, Sergeant Price, who she didn't
know before, who was an African-American soldier, picked her up, threw her in the air.
(18:01):
She landed on the ground.
He jumped on top of her, and he whispered in her ear, and he said, run, run now.
And she said, ma'am, I just ran.
And when I turned to look behind me, she said, I realized he took the fireball.
And he gave his life for her.
She was a Caucasian soldier.
(18:22):
He was an African-American soldier.
They didn't know each other.
But what they did know, that they were soldiers, and they had a common bond to protect each
other.
And to me, that's the heart of the American soldier, that we're willing to give our life
for the person who's on the right or the left of us.
And so I always try to honor him.
(18:43):
Having stories like that and seeing it firsthand the way you did, how did you and your colleagues
manage the emotional and the psychological stress of treating such a large number of
severely injured patients?
It goes back to why I started with this story at the University of Pittsburgh, because if
I had not gone through that challenge, I would not have realized the importance of critical
(19:04):
incidents, stress debriefing.
And then when I had the in-depth knowledge with Burns, the first thing I did was I went
to the emergency room and I asked Dr. Burns, those two came together.
Because the very first person that I put to start with accountability as people were coming
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off of the deuce and a half and coming into our emergency room was my very best LPN.
And I asked her to make sure that she didn't lose accountability.
So she was tracking everybody.
We did a couple of days later and she said it made her feel devalued because we had people
(19:46):
coming off and she could not use her expert skills to save them.
And what I was able to say to her is what you did for us was we didn't lose track of
one individual.
And when people called, they were able to find where their loved one was.
And so it was a tremendous amount of healing.
So afterwards, we brought physicians, clinicians, social workers, chaplains, and we allowed
(20:13):
people to share their emotions and to work through that for healing.
I mentioned a few moments ago, two watershed moments.
The second occurred seven and a half years after the Green Ramp disaster on September
11th, 2001.
We share that in common because I was at ground zero and you were at the Pentagon when the
attacks happened.
You were the Army's assistant deputy for personnel and health management.
(20:36):
You evacuated your building and then you rushed to where the terrorists had flown a jet into
the west side of the Pentagon.
As the FBI was monitoring against more attacks, you were treating 75 of the wounded under
combat conditions.
Were the injuries of the 9-11 casualties very similar to the injuries suffered by those
on the Green Ramp?
You know, both of those days, and I know you share this, are imprinted on my heart.
(20:59):
Um, those are the things that you quietly carry inside of you.
And you saw the very best of what Americans can do, and you saw the very worst of what
people can do.
Very similar in inhalation injuries of burns, of severe burns.
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The enormity within both were a lot of loss of lives, of young lives, of heroism under
the most severe conditions.
You know, I always said on both of those, I felt like God was with us in that they happened
on very sunny days.
(21:42):
The Pentagon was attacked when there was a chaplains conference and there were, I forgot
how many chaplains were there, but I felt like we had a chaplain for almost everybody
that was there.
It was incredible spiritual strength that was there.
We had people respond.
Specialist Cahill was a young medic who was in the reserves, who was home on his leave,
(22:09):
his vacation.
And for some reason, he took his aid bag when he traveled home with him.
And when he saw the fireball, he took his aid bag and he ran over two miles.
That was the very first medical supplies that we had on that side of the Pentagon.
The heroism was incredible.
General Webster was a one-star at the time, infantry officer who was going in and out
(22:32):
of the Pentagon.
And he came up to me, I didn't even see his rank, and he said, can I help you?
And I said, I need your belt and I need it right now because I need a tourniquet.
He gave it to me, went back into the building.
People just helped.
And it was an amazing response.
It was also one of the most heartbreaking response because later in the day, we realized
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that we were no longer in a saving mission.
We were actually in the recovery mission.
We were just recovering bodies.
And we had to transition both mentally with that and then have people go in and try to
recover the lost lives that were in that Pentagon.
I would think each of those two days were very formative experiences that must have
(23:18):
fundamentally changed you.
Were you a different person from the day of the Green Ramp disaster forward?
And how did the 9-11 experience leave its own mark on you?
Yeah, I think everything we go through shapes us and how we respond to it.
And it increases our empathy.
It increases our knowledge, our expertise.
(23:40):
And it helps us, that saying, train as you fight, fight as you train, because you start
seeing the importance of readiness in everything that you do.
So after the Green Ramp, I then had the honor to deploy to Haiti when it was going to be
a forced invasion with a small team.
And with that, realized the importance of logistics planning.
(24:05):
And there was so much from that experience that carried over to the response at the Pentagon.
And what I would say with all of those is it made me realize that our enemies look at
us and they see our divisiveness.
And what they underestimate is the power of how strong we are when we come together as
(24:30):
Americans.
And that when they thought they crippled us by hitting the powerhouse of our nation, which
is the Pentagon, what they really did is they united every single American with the resolve
that we would support and defend our democracy and democracy worldwide.
So I'm a completely different leader from going through those experiences.
(24:52):
I have gratitude every single day of my life.
I understand the sacrifices that it is by many and millions of people who choose to
serve our nation.
And I don't take any of our freedoms for granted.
And did those two days reshape how you approached future assignments?
(25:13):
Oh, you know, a funny thing about future assignments.
I had someone call me once and said, I track your career.
And I said, you do?
I said, why would you do that?
And he said, I track it because you seem to everywhere you go, there's a disaster and
I don't want to be assigned with you.
So, you know, I, I believe that.
(25:37):
That you learn from every place you go and every experience gives you tools in your tool
kit that allows you to hopefully lead more effectively to have a broader lens of experience
and expertise.
And and so I have been one that I've embraced the journey where leaders have said, I think
(26:02):
you should go into this job.
It wasn't always the job I wanted to go into, but I trusted, you know, their mentorship
and it ended up being every single job I've ever been in.
I've absolutely loved them.
And I'll give a good example.
When I was a young officer, I wanted to be a 91 Delta instructor, special forces, you
(26:22):
know, medic instructor.
And my assignment manager said, Colonel Kennedy wants you to go into recruiting command.
And I said, well, I don't want to go into recruiting command.
And I said, I really want to be a 91 Delta instructor.
And she said she would really like you to go into recruiting command.
And I was very naive at the time.
And I said, well, can you do me a favor?
(26:43):
Can you just write down what I would like to do?
And she takes her pencil and she just made a dot.
And she looked at me and I said, I'm going into recruiting.
She said, yes, you are.
And I am so glad that I did.
There's so many stories with that.
But I ended up going as a recruiter for Pittsburgh and Harrisburg recruiting battalion, met my
(27:10):
husband there who was actually teaching at University of Pittsburgh.
He was an ROTC officer, instructor.
And I learned what it took to entice someone to see the value of joining our military.
And I worked with infantry officer, line officers.
And I felt like I grew more as a soldier in that assignment, which really changed, to
(27:34):
be perfectly honest, my embracing that I was a soldier first, I was an officer and I was
a nurse.
And that's how I approached every one of my assignments afterwards.
So as your career advanced, you were in charge of the United States Army Medical Command,
the Western Regional Medical Command, the Madigan Army Medical Center, the Walter Reed
(27:55):
Healthcare System, and the DeWitt Healthcare Network.
Is one command pretty much the same as the next?
And was one of them your favorite?
Or do you love all your children equally?
I have two kids, so I always love my children equally, right?
But every one of those assignments, oh my goodness, talk about their own set of unique
(28:16):
challenges.
And the diversity of the people you get to lead, the opportunities in front of you, the
strategic challenges make every single one of them, to be honest, a very unique experience.
But there was always a common thread.
When you lead, and I'll go back to serving, it truly is about leaning forward and serving
(28:41):
to the best of your ability and ensuring that you take the calculated risks that you should
take.
And what I would always tell people is the reason you have the rank in the middle of
your chest is for you to take calculated risks, set conditions for success, and do the strategic
roadmap for that command while also creating the leadership bench for the future.
(29:05):
That's the honor and the privilege that we have.
And you have to be OK with the Army saying, thank you very much.
This is your last assignment.
So you've got to take the risk.
Every single one of those were challenging.
Probably the one that maybe imprinted on my heart the most was the Walter Reed assignment.
(29:28):
It was one I thought I was only going to be there for a year as the chief nurse of the
Regional Medical Command.
And I already had my orders because I was selected to command launch to Regional Medical
Command.
So I thought, OK, this is going to be the opportunity to focus on improving the patient
care environment because I thought we could do that within a year.
(29:49):
General Waitman at the time told me, I'm going to get two years' work out of you in one year,
so I need you to really lean in on that.
And I think he probably got four or five years out of me in one year.
But when that happened in Walter Reed, where we lost the confidence and the faith of those
that we served in the nation because of the challenges of being at war for so many years
(30:16):
with the infrastructure challenges, it was never about the quality of care, but it was
really about how do you support people and their family that are going to be there for
three to four years going through 36 or more surgeries, right?
And how do you make sure you have that full complement of rehabilitation?
(30:38):
I watched a team that was under 42 investigations is what we led through.
42 investigations, a presidential commission, four unannounced joint commissions, all within
a year, and media and Congress all coming in constantly while we were receiving injured
(30:59):
patients three to four times a week.
I watched that team be transparent, change the way we care for warriors, being very open.
And we literally went from the worst customer service to the best customer service out of
Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines in a year and made changes that last today on how we
(31:21):
care for our warriors.
It was the most humbling experience to lead and serve with that team.
Amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
You were, as we mentioned earlier, the first woman and nurse to serve as the Army Surgeon
General and Commander of the United States Army Medical Command.
Had you imagined that was possible when you began your career?
No.
So I'll go back to when you talked about careers.
(31:46):
I had wanted to be a flight attendant, but at that time, they actually had a height restriction
and I was too short.
And I always say, thank goodness for my height because my career would have been totally
different.
And so when I came in, it was just a few years prior that if you became pregnant, you had
(32:07):
to leave active duty.
That had changed.
When I came in, nurses could not command.
Only physicians could command hospitals.
So it was never anything that I had planned or thought I would do.
And things changed over the years.
And literally, General Ursone, who was a Medical Service Corps officer, had ran into me one
(32:28):
time at General Volpe's promotion and said, hey, Patty, are you going to compete for command?
Because it just opened in 1990.
I believe that was the year.
And I said, no.
I said, I wasn't thinking about it.
I don't think I'd be that competitive.
He said, you need to compete.
That little bit of encouragement changed the trajectory.
And so I competed.
I got selected to command.
(32:50):
And then it opened up the opportunity to future commands.
And when I got selected, I had actually just flown to Australia, had just gotten on the
ground the night before.
And I got a call from General Casey.
And he said, Patty, what are you doing?
And I said, well, sir, I said, I'm in Australia starting a conference.
(33:15):
And he said, congratulations.
You just got nominated for the Sergeant General.
And he said, you need to get on a plane and come on home.
So it was the quickest trip I've ever taken for the longest ride.
But it was the honor of a lifetime.
It was the most humbling opportunity.
And a year into the job, one of my very good friends that I met was General Grice, who
(33:40):
was the U.S.
I mean, the U.S.
He was the Israeli Sergeant General.
And we were having dinner.
And he said, hey, do you want to know what happened when your name got announced?
And I said, I would love to.
And he said, it was the shot that was heard around the world.
He said, countries called each other and said, can you believe the United States of America
picked a woman?
(34:00):
I thought they were going to say a nurse.
And they said, picked a woman.
They could not believe it.
And so it really changed my lens about how the world looks at what we do in the U.S.
And we are role models for so many, for men, for women, for other countries.
And I think we gave other countries hope.
(34:24):
At least I got told that all the time, that we gave them hope for them to be able to do
the same thing.
And thank you for sharing that story about Australia, because now I know why you smiled
when I mentioned General Casey's name early in the show.
Yes, I did.
That's exactly.
Great man.
He's been on the show before.
And we go back and forth.
So he's originally from Massachusetts.
(34:44):
I live in Connecticut.
I'm from New York.
We went back and forth on Red Sox, Yankees a lot.
And so he was a very good sport about that.
Well, I'm a Red Sox fan.
I know.
You're still a nice person.
That's OK.
No, I'm kidding, General.
So you insisted on going to Afghanistan when you became the Army Surgeon General.
What did you want to learn there?
(35:05):
And what did you do with that information?
Yeah.
I knew I was going into a position where I not only led the medical command, but I was
responsible for the overall health of the force, for the entire Army, and our clinical
capabilities that were embedded in the T-O-N-E units, the line units.
(35:28):
And I knew if I was going to serve well, I needed to understand ground truth of what
was occurring on the battlefield.
And we had been at war at that time for 10, 11 years.
And so I went in and asked General Schoolmaker and General Corelli and said, I'd like to
deploy.
And they said it's the very first time it would be an individual that's been selected
(35:54):
as a Surgeon General or a Surgeon General who's deployed in combat.
And they supported my request.
I went over and worked for General Scaparrotti and General Petraeus at that time, traveled
4,000 miles, over 200 forward operating bases and command outposts.
And what I saw was so many things.
(36:18):
But one of the biggest takeaways was at COP Lightning.
And at that time, it was a team that was in RC North, the most dangerous areas.
They were fired on with RPGs every single day.
Mail took about two months to get there.
We were trying to get virtual behavioral health out to them.
(36:39):
And one of the things that I looked was saw this stack of prescriptions.
And I said, hey, help me understand what half of them's Adderall and half of them's Ambien.
And they said, well, when we go out, we want people on heart and alert.
And so we're giving them Adderall.
And then when they come back, we give them Ambien.
And I thought, oh, my word, we have not weaned people off of poor sleep hygiene.
(37:05):
And then you think of the impact that that has on your mental, your physical,
the increased incident of PTSD.
And it really showed me where we needed to focus on sleep, active nutrition
and optimizing human performance.
The other piece that I'd say is when I flew up to RC North,
Brigadier General Mulholland was the commander.
(37:27):
And he met me and he said, hey, he said, pretty blue collar of you.
And I said, what?
And he said, I saw that you flew in with the troops.
He said, you know, you could have had your own air transport.
I said, I know.
And he said, because you made that decision.
He said, whatever you want, I'm going to support you.
What do you want?
(37:47):
And I said, I would like to talk with your Black Ops and your Black Black Ops folks.
And I said, and I will never share it.
And I never have.
And so at one in the morning, he allowed me to meet with them.
And we had several hour conversations.
And what it did for me is I got to really understand the impact of war,
(38:09):
what sacrifices, the impact of the families, what we needed to do for behavioral health support,
what we needed to do for women's health support with the women that I met on the battlefield
and completely changed our strategic campaign that we had for Army Medicine.
I need to have you for like three more shows because this is just fascinating.
(38:30):
I mean, no, I'm honored, General.
And now I'm going to throw a big one at you here.
This could be the toughest question given the length and groundbreaking
accomplishments of your career.
What are your proudest achievements during your Army service?
I think my, I'm going to give you two.
My first proudest is that I was able to serve 33 years and leave the service
(38:58):
with my marriage being very, very strong and having two wonderful children.
So I'm grateful for that every single day.
My second greatest accomplishment, I think, would probably be moving Army Medicine
from a disease model of care to a system for health.
(39:19):
And that was a huge fundamental culture change, process change.
And it allowed us to really implement this human performance of focusing on sleep,
activity, nutrition, the mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional aspects.
And I always said, someone said, how do you know you're going to be successful?
(39:42):
And I said, the moment that it's in the DNA of our Army,
and they don't see it as a medical program.
And I can tell you today in 2024, it is throughout the Army.
It is the health to fitness of our Army, and it's not a medical program.
And that's probably what I am so proud of, because we're changing lives
(40:04):
and we're helping families live the best last 10 years of the lives that they can.
And that's no easy feat because you're changing hundreds of years of a mindset.
Oh, I can't even begin to tell you the resistance that I had from so many within medical,
outside of medical, with people telling me culture change takes more than 20 years,
(40:26):
you'll never get it done in four.
And our response was just watch us.
And we did.
I got to serve with some of the most brilliant minds,
the most dedicated people, and they made it happen.
I love that.
General, you've received more citations, medals,
recognitions, and awards than I can count, including five honorary doctorates
(40:49):
and France's National Order of the Legion of Honor Chevalier.
I mean, you've been knighted by the French.
But one honor that I imagine is special to you
was being voted in as a Family Circle Top 10 Most Influential Mom.
Being a mom is a tough enough job any day of the week,
but especially so in the military, how'd you balance your family and your career?
Yeah, not easy.
(41:10):
One, I married a wonderful man and incredibly supportive of me.
I think the thing that I would say, we never use the word balance,
and it took me a while to figure this out.
It's a series of trade-offs.
And what we would do is, and we didn't get it right a lot of times,
(41:30):
but we would talk through and decide what we're willing to trade off.
And then we wouldn't look back and question it,
because you could wear yourself out
questioning whether you're making the right decision.
And so the question that I would always ask myself
when trying to decide between being present family-wise
or being present work-wise is, who's going to remember I wasn't there?
(41:52):
And sometimes it was my family, and then I made that decision.
And sometimes it was work, and I made that decision.
It just really helped.
And so I share that with people all the time,
because there are always more demands on your time to be present, right?
And somehow you've got to figure that out.
And so I would put my family's big moments on the calendar.
(42:16):
And if it was sitting and being present when my son or daughter
were going to read a poem for one minute, I would race there.
I'd sit there at the exact time they're going to read.
They'd read it, and then I'd kiss them, and then I was back at work.
And so it was figuring out how do we make sure that one of us
was always present in our children's lives?
And how do we support each other's careers?
(42:39):
And we always felt like no job was more important than our family staying together.
And we've been very, very blessed.
So I never knew that lieutenant generals must retire after 30 years of service
unless appointed for promotion or reappointed to serve longer.
And there's also a mandatory retirement age, though you retired long before you reached 64.
(43:00):
Had you just reached the point where you'd seen it all and done it all
and were ready for new ventures?
No, it's a great question.
And I don't usually ever share this, but when I was getting ready to retire,
I had been asked by several leaders if I would consider staying on
(43:21):
and extending past my four years.
And I really thought about it, and I prayed about it.
And I went back, and it's the first time in my entire career
that I said no to a mission request ever.
And the reason why I did is I believed in the investment we had in the leadership bench.
(43:42):
And I knew that if I stayed two more years, on one hand, it would have been great
because it would have given more longevity to supporting
some of the strategic objectives, right, and getting them in place.
But what it would have done is it would have passed over leaders
for consideration for a promotion because they would have aged out or timed out.
(44:02):
And I felt like that was very unfair to the leaders that we had all invested in.
And so I told them that it's just the right time for me to retire.
And looking back, I have no regrets.
It was absolutely the right decision.
And I loved my time in uniform, and I've absolutely loved my time in corporate America.
(44:26):
It's been an honor to be able to continue to serve and to grow
and to still impact people's lives through the work we get to do within my current position.
So being the leader that you are, you did the proverbial take one for the team.
Well, I don't know if it's that altruistic.
I just think it's we believe in the military that you always invest in training
(44:53):
your replacement and that none of us are indispensable.
And so I think it was more of these are the values that we have as a soldier
and it's the right time to transition.
You seem to make a seamless transition from the military to corporate America, to your point.
It's not easy to do a lot more often than not for those transitioning out of the military.
(45:17):
What challenges did you face and how do you overcome them?
You know, it's not easy.
And I think the aha moment that I've had just really recently is we do a lot of work of
helping people transition and thinking of your resume and all those types of things.
And that is not at all where I think we should be investing.
We should invest in the emotional transition because when you serve, it is all emotion.
(45:44):
It's a mission of love.
It's part of who you are.
And then you transition and you leave that community and that's a big emotion
and we don't prepare people for that.
And you're also transitioning into an environment where a lot of people don't understand
the skill sets of our military and how at the most junior level,
(46:06):
the leadership responsibility and experience that they have is amazing.
And it really translates very well into corporate America,
except there's not a strong awareness of that.
And so I think, you know, one of the biggest challenges that I had were twofold.
The first one is I realized we communicated differently
(46:28):
and we were talking past each other and I had to learn to change my communication
and to understand the same words meant very different things in very different environments.
So that was one thing.
And I think that the second one is it does hit you about the six,
seven month mark after you leave or when you're in a new job
(46:50):
that it can feel like a job, vice a profession, vice, right?
And you have to work through that and you have to find
how do you spark that passion that kept you in the military?
Because really corporate America is very mission focused.
And what has kept me almost eight years at Optum is we have the same culture.
(47:15):
It's very mission focused and our values are the same.
And so you just have to find the company that aligns with your own values.
And General Odierno, who was the chief of staff of the army,
has passed away now, was one of the best leaders I've ever served for.
He said, Patty, he said, be very selective on where you say yes.
(47:37):
And he said, because your reputation becomes their reputation and theirs becomes yours.
And he said, you can undo your 33 years of service by going with the wrong.
And so I share that with people all the time.
That's a great point because imagine one slip up, one hiccup,
everything that you've done for three decades is gone.
(48:00):
Exactly.
Really, really appreciate you sharing that insight.
Now, if you aren't busy enough, you serve on a number of nonprofit boards.
One that holds a special place in your heart is the Two Serve Together Foundation,
which you founded.
What was the inspiration for the Two Serve Together Foundation
and how can people learn more about it?
Chris, thank you for even asking that.
(48:21):
So when I'm wearing the Women of Valor brooch,
which I try to wear either the small pin or the brooch every day,
it really goes back to my father.
My dad, serving World War II, Korea and Vietnam,
special forces officer, exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam
and had Parkinson that started at age 61.
(48:41):
He was a hunter, fisher, woodcarver, artist, civil engineer, and he lost all of that.
In the last 13 years, he was in a wheelchair.
But he always wore the baseball cap that had the three wars.
And when we'd go out, he'd be slumped over.
And someone would say, thank you for your service.
(49:02):
And I watched him and he'd sit straight up and I could see that soldier in him.
And I saw the healing of that thank you with my parents who are married 70 years.
And I thought, there's so much power in healing.
And women are not going to wear routinely a baseball cap all the time.
And people aren't going to know that they serve.
(49:24):
So literally for 20 years, it was on my heart.
And finally, in 2020, I just said, this is the year I'm going to do it.
And I got with Anne Hand and we created the Woman of Valor brooch.
It's the forget-me-not.
It's purple for Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.
And the space is for Space Force, the space around it.
The leaves are victory, valor, and veteran.
(49:46):
And the pearl is for purity of mission and femininity.
And what I want is, I want people when they see it to say, did you serve?
And then people can say, thank you for your service.
Because you have to see someone, connect with someone, hear their story,
and allow that healing to occur.
So I created to2servetogether, and it's to2servetogether.org.
(50:09):
It's a 501c3.
And our hope is that we get these out to as many women as possible.
It becomes a symbol nationally known, just like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer.
And then we're creating a care connection.
We just had our first two Women of Valor retreats.
We partnered with Travis Mills Foundation, Boulder Crest, and Gary Sinise Foundation.
(50:33):
And we developed a post-traumatic growth program.
It was a week long.
And it was unbelievably powerful to see the sisterhood, the bonding, and the healing that
occurred.
And so my hope is that we can get this to really go national, and that our whole nation
(50:55):
will be grateful for the service of women.
And that website, again, is to2servetogether.org.
Perfect.
General, we've got a minute or two left.
Share with us what gives you hope, and why we should all have more hope in today's stress-filled
and challenging world.
Yeah.
So I think hope is a gift that you give yourself and you give to others.
(51:19):
And I really do.
I get hope every day when I look at the flag.
And I'll tell you why.
I look at it, and I see the threads that really are woven into it are the stories of millions
and millions of people over hundreds of years.
And I think they're quiet, stoic stories.
(51:42):
And I think there's threads of strength.
I think they're threads that connect us.
I think they bond us.
I think they unite us.
And I think it's the fabric of America.
And so when we have hope, nothing is impossible.
And I always believe that at the heart of what we do is if we can instill hope in others,
(52:05):
we can overcome so much.
And so I'm hopeful every day.
There's a cup that I use during COVID.
I got it, and I use it.
And it just says, I choose joy.
And I really believe that it's an action.
We have the action to choose joy.
We have the action to choose hope.
We have the action to be bold, to be humble, and to give mercy and to give grace to others.
(52:30):
And to me, that is a ripple effect that can occur across not just our country,
but around the world.
So it's been such a pleasure.
Thank you.
General Patty Horho, thank you so much for being with us today.
It was an absolute honor having you.
I've loved it, Chris.
Thank you for what you do.
Thank you for your servant leader heart, because you've made a difference each and every day.
(52:54):
It's a pleasure.
I'm Chris Meek.
Right on time.
We'll see you next Tuesday, same time, same place.
Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.
Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward.
Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time
(53:17):
and 1 p.m. Eastern time on the Voice America Empowerment Channel.
This week, make things happen in your life.
See you next time.
There are few things that make people successful.
(00:08):
Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some
time to get there.
How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you?
Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek.
Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward.
(00:30):
Now here is Chris Meek.
Hello, I'm Chris Meek, and you've tuned to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward.
As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us.
Our focus is on personal empowerment, a commitment to wellbeing, and the motivation to achieve
more than you ever thought possible.
And we're so fortunate this week to have retired US Army Lieutenant General Patricia
(00:51):
Horojo as our guest.
These days, Patricia Horojo is the Chief Strategy Innovation and Transformation Officer at OptumHealth.
She was the 43rd Army Surgeon General, and she was the commander of the US Army Medical Command.
She made history as the first woman, first nurse, and non-physician to hold these posts.
In these roles, Patricia Horojo led the world's third largest healthcare system with a multibillion
(01:12):
dollar budget, a staff of 156,000, and a global logistics research and care network that spanned
five continents.
After retirement from the Army in December 2015, she joined UnitedHealth Group in 2017
and founded the OptumServe brand, which is the end-to-end federal business of both Optum
and UnitedHealth Group.
In the last two years, OptumServe has entered into new markets, grew the top line by 300%,
(01:36):
and grown into a multibillion dollar organization.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, her agility and ability to effectively leverage
resources resulted in OptumServe rapidly standing up new business models to support COVID-19
In 2023, Patty expanded her role to include leading OptumHealth Solutions, an integrated
direct care delivery platform.
(01:57):
OptumHealth Solutions works to simplify the industry rather than adding complexity by
re-engineering the healthcare delivery system for those who need care the most, while providing
holistic condition care management for oncology, kidney, rare diseases, and transplant.
Also in 2023, General Horojo established the To Serve Together Foundation, a nonprofit
dedicated to honoring our military women.
Currently, she's the Chief Strategy, Innovation, and Transformation Officer for OptumHealth.
(02:22):
General Patty Horojo, welcome to Next Steps Forward.
Thanks, Chris.
Great to be with you.
It's an honor to have you with us, and I always pride the show on being a show of firsts,
and this is the first time I've had a page and a half introduction.
So we've got a 52-minute show here today, 54 minutes.
I'm not sure that's going to be enough time.
We're probably going to skip the break, just so Matt, you know that, but let's get right
(02:45):
into it.
Let's stop wasting your time here.
General, you came from an Army family.
You were even born on an Army base, but plenty of people from military families never joined
the armed services.
What or who motivated you to choose not just a military career, but specifically one in
the Army?
Yeah, Chris.
So I, you know, we don't get to choose what family we're born into, and I feel very, very
(03:07):
blessed of the family that I did born into.
Born and raised at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, my dad fought World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
My parents were married 70 years, and we lived in a neighborhood, Cottonade, North Carolina,
that was, to be honest, filled with a lot of Special Forces officers, a lot of officers
(03:27):
and enlisted soldiers that had served in Vietnam.
And so I grew up seeing, really, the strength of our nation.
I saw families that came together, really supported each other during tough times, supported
each other during the joys that occurred, and watched my dad every Thursday go to the
(03:49):
Overhill Gang, where it was enlisted in officers, came together and kind of just shared their
war stories and bonded and supported.
And so nobody, though, however, ever talked to me about joining.
Not one person.
And it was my senior year at UNC Chapel Hill.
I was sitting in the back of the room in a nutrition class, and I thought, I just want
(04:10):
to do something different.
I want to serve my nation.
And I thought I was just going to do it for three years.
And so I called a recruiter and said, I'd like to join the Army Nurse Corps, and met
him on the corner of Franklin Street and did my interview.
So I think I shocked my family.
I think I shocked everybody when I called and said, hey, I'm going in the Army.
(04:32):
Unbelievable.
I did not know that story.
Your decision to join the Army also must have lined with your personal and career goals.
How important were education and training opportunities in your decision?
Yeah.
You know, my education is the foundation for us to do anything we want to do.
And that really was instilled by my grandfather.
(04:55):
My grandfather came over from the boat from Italy when he was a young child, worked in
the coal mines, and believed in the value of education.
And he had a fourth grade education, but he ended up putting many of my cousins through
nursing school.
He instilled the value of education, and he said, it's the one thing that no one can ever
(05:17):
take away from you.
So education was really important, and I knew at the time when I grew up, there weren't
a lot of choices for women, to be perfectly honest.
It was teaching, secretary, or nursing, or a flight attendant, and I can tell you that
story later, but I chose nursing, and it really came across as a profession that you can give
(05:44):
back to others.
And I thought, that's the heart of military service, and so if I can combine both my nursing
education and my military belief in the value of service, I just felt like that would be
something worthwhile to do as a young person.
So it's just ingrained in you to serve others.
That's just a core value, principle for you.
(06:05):
I had great role models growing up, and I truly believe there's a statement out there,
and I used it in every one of my chain of command speeches, and it was Andre Mello,
who said, a French officer, who said, to command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.
And I really believe the higher you go in anything you do, you need to be more humble,
(06:28):
and you need to always embrace a servant leader's heart.
And it's something that just inspires me every single day.
A servant leader's heart, that's, I love that, I love that.
What expectations did you have before you signed up, and how do they compare to the
reality?
Yeah, I probably was extremely naive, I'll just, I'll be honest.
(06:52):
I think my expectations, I don't think I realized how much of a team the military was
in the clinical profession.
And so I worked nine months before I went on active duty, and there really was a hierarchy
within nursing.
There was a hierarchy within your clinical profession, and at that time, if you were
(07:15):
sitting and a doctor came in, you had to stand, you had to give up your seat, and it was very
much what I would say, very traditional.
And so when I came into the military, I came in thinking that that's going to be very similar.
And what I found is, it is such a collaborative team.
(07:38):
And it's doctors, it's nurses, it's our combat medics, everybody working together with a
focus on the patient.
And I think it won.
I don't think I expected it to be that way right off the bat, and it was, and you felt
like you were a part of this strong community that invested in leadership from the day you
(08:00):
joined at every level.
And it's actually what kept me on active duty for 33 years.
Way off topic, what kind of dog do you have just walked in the room?
So we have two, I apologize for that.
We have two, one is a very large golden doodle, and his name is Patrick Patton, and we call
(08:22):
him Pat-Pat Goodboy.
Actually I call him Chief Executive Dog, because he's never missed a work meeting, and then
the small one is Murphy James, which means dog of the sea, and they both are with me
every day when I work at home.
I'm asking because I have two Shih Tzus, and one of them, luckily he's sleeping with me.
My viewers and listeners know Zeke very well, because he lets everybody know when the UPS
(08:43):
guy or the Amazon truck is here, and luckily he's sleeping right now.
So I appreciate it.
Dogs bring love, and so I just wanted to highlight the dogs there.
They do.
General, what advice would you give to a young person, especially a young woman considering
joining the armed forces, or maybe not even in the military at all, but they should?
Yeah, I'll tell you, I would advise young women, especially, I'd advise anybody to join
(09:06):
our military, whether it's Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard, or Space Force.
You will grow in ways you never imagined, and you will be exposed to leaders.
You will be exposed to new challenges.
You'll learn things about yourself that you never thought you could accomplish, and you
(09:27):
also grow both personally and professionally.
And for women especially, I think there's no greater time than to serve our nation.
Women are able now to serve in every field that we have across our armed forces, and
we're watching women right now continue to not just break a glass ceiling, but actually
pave a pathway for others to follow.
(09:49):
And to me, it's women lifting women up, and it's that team of teams concept.
So I think even if you choose to serve three years, or if you choose to serve a full 30
or 40 years, you will leave the service knowing that you've been part of something much greater
than yourself, and it will tie you to the American values, and it'll tie you to what
(10:11):
I think is inherent in our flag.
And that's the opportunity to support and defend our democracy, and there's nothing
better.
A few years ago, I had the honor of working with General George Casey Jr. and Dr. Joel
Cooper Smith at Georgetown on a workshop focused on the 50th anniversary of the All-Volunteer
Force.
So that was a couple of years ago now.
(10:31):
It was sort of in the middle of COVID, I believe.
You know, so we're all volunteer, not like Israel or something like that where it was
mandatory service.
We're seeing the numbers decline pretty significantly in terms of enlistments.
Knowing the state of the world right now, what can or should we do to encourage young
people to, to your point, have that servant leader heart go out there to serve, you know,
(10:52):
have a greater calling than yourself?
You know, I think one, this past year under Major General Johnny Davis, who's just one
of the most dynamic leaders I've served with, he actually exceeded the recruiting mission,
which is pretty impressive when you realize how challenging it's been, you know, across
(11:13):
all the services.
What I would say is where we are today, and I believe in hope, and I think right now there
is so much hope across our nation, the hope to unite, the hope for voices to be heard,
the hope for a better world.
And I think when men and women make the decision to serve, one, you're taking a lens and looking
(11:41):
outside of yourself, which always changes things, right?
And it makes us more open to culture, to diversity, to experience.
And I think when we bring the melding pot kind of mindset through that diversity of
service and individuals, it just strengthens our nation and it strengthens us as individuals.
And so I believe when you serve, you get back way more than you'll ever give.
(12:08):
And it changed the trajectory of my life and of our family's life with that decision to
serve.
Every career seems to have watershed moments, but you had two that were manifestly bigger
than the vast majority of other careers.
The first was the Green Ramp disaster on March 23rd, 1994 at Pope Air Force Base.
(12:29):
And you were the head nurse in Womack Army Hospitals Emergency Room.
What happened that day?
Yeah.
You know, I have to take you back a couple of years if I could before that day occurs
because I always believe we go through challenges.
I've learned this over my life because I've had more blessings and more challenges.
And I always think when I go through challenges, I always pray to God and say, help me to learn
(12:54):
what I'm supposed to learn during this dark time so that I can spiral upward.
And so I was at the University of Pittsburgh.
I was getting my master's paid for by the military.
And I started doing my first thesis on critical incident stress debriefing and couldn't get
enough patients for the study.
So then I went to my second master's thesis and it was going to be in Burns.
(13:17):
And they ended up firing a lot of the Burns surgeons.
And I wasn't able to do that one.
And both of those, I had done the research in 60 type pages.
It shows my age because it was all typewriters.
And then the third one was on hardiness.
And so finally, I got approval to do a comparison of two types of Burns dressings and finally
finished my thesis.
(13:38):
The reason why I bring that up, because it ties directly into what happened on that day.
So going to Fort Bragg, I was honored to be the head nurse of the emergency room.
And a couple of months before, we had brought together a MassCal scenario where we trained
with Cape Verde Valley.
We trained with Pope EMS, Pope Air Force Base EMS, and then our medical services.
(14:06):
And we created a scenario where we would prepare for in the April time frame, where there would
be two planes crashing, multi-trauma victims.
And we had prepared MassCal packages.
We had prepared the MassCal cards and comms and everything.
Well, in March at 14, 15, I remember Phil Layton running into the emergency room and
(14:30):
he said, Captain Horojo, he said, we have a MassCal incident at Pope.
And he said, two planes collided.
And I said, oh, this is our exercise.
And he said, no, ma'am, this is real.
And literally in 15 minutes, we started receiving patients that were injured.
What had happened is two planes collided.
There was 500 paratroopers on the ground, 50,000 gallons of jet fuel ignited, and a
(14:59):
fireball went across the service members that were on the ground.
And because of individuals thinking so quickly on the ground, they did the scoop and run
method.
They just picked them up, sidecars within motorcycles bringing them in, deuce and a
half, big trucks where literally soldiers were stacked on top of each other with their
(15:20):
uniforms burned off.
I have never seen anything like that.
And we had 134 burned victims that arrived in our emergency room in less than an hour.
You and the rest of the medical personnel at WOMAC must have been overwhelmed with so
many casualties there, especially so many who were critically injured.
(15:41):
What were the most critical challenges you faced?
Yeah, so it was a 22-bed emergency room.
And what we did is we took the front, the outside of the emergency room, and we had
so many people that responded.
It was in the middle of the day.
It was a sunny day, blue sky.
(16:02):
People responded from everywhere.
We had people take sheets, and they created an emergency room external where we could
put many of the severely wounded, those that needed to be on ventilators, went into our
emergency room.
The 44th Med Brigade brought ventilators over.
We had 22 on ventilators at one time, which is unheard of.
(16:26):
And I think some of the challenges were the severity of the wounds.
We were doing escharotomies external outside of the emergency room to relieve the compression
that starts with severely charred.
We were intubating internal because of all the inhalation.
And it was opening up and our pharmacy and having buckets of morphine to relieve people
(16:54):
out of pain.
But the overall challenge that I remember saying to my team is America, this is America's
sons and daughters, and we will not lose one person by not knowing who they are.
And they were coming in with no names.
So we had accountability of Jane Doe, John Doe, and we made sure that we gave compassionate
(17:16):
care.
And the story that I've got to tell you because I promised myself the moment that I heard
this, I have never missed an opportunity when we talked about Green Ramp to share the
story of Sergeant Price.
Because as we were taking care of the soldiers that were injured outside, we were talking
to each while we were working on them.
(17:38):
And I remember talking to Specialist Winfield just to get her attention for pain.
And I said, tell me what happened.
And she said, ma'am, she said, I was on the tarmac.
And she said that the next thing I knew is this soldier, Sergeant Price, who she didn't
know before, who was an African-American soldier, picked her up, threw her in the air.
(18:01):
She landed on the ground.
He jumped on top of her, and he whispered in her ear, and he said, run, run now.
And she said, ma'am, I just ran.
And when I turned to look behind me, she said, I realized he took the fireball.
And he gave his life for her.
She was a Caucasian soldier.
(18:22):
He was an African-American soldier.
They didn't know each other.
But what they did know, that they were soldiers, and they had a common bond to protect each
other.
And to me, that's the heart of the American soldier, that we're willing to give our life
for the person who's on the right or the left of us.
And so I always try to honor him.
(18:43):
Having stories like that and seeing it firsthand the way you did, how did you and your colleagues
manage the emotional and the psychological stress of treating such a large number of
severely injured patients?
It goes back to why I started with this story at the University of Pittsburgh, because if
I had not gone through that challenge, I would not have realized the importance of critical
(19:04):
incidents, stress debriefing.
And then when I had the in-depth knowledge with Burns, the first thing I did was I went
to the emergency room and I asked Dr. Burns, those two came together.
Because the very first person that I put to start with accountability as people were coming
(19:25):
off of the deuce and a half and coming into our emergency room was my very best LPN.
And I asked her to make sure that she didn't lose accountability.
So she was tracking everybody.
We did a couple of days later and she said it made her feel devalued because we had people
(19:46):
coming off and she could not use her expert skills to save them.
And what I was able to say to her is what you did for us was we didn't lose track of
one individual.
And when people called, they were able to find where their loved one was.
And so it was a tremendous amount of healing.
So afterwards, we brought physicians, clinicians, social workers, chaplains, and we allowed
(20:13):
people to share their emotions and to work through that for healing.
I mentioned a few moments ago, two watershed moments.
The second occurred seven and a half years after the Green Ramp disaster on September
11th, 2001.
We share that in common because I was at ground zero and you were at the Pentagon when the
attacks happened.
You were the Army's assistant deputy for personnel and health management.
(20:36):
You evacuated your building and then you rushed to where the terrorists had flown a jet into
the west side of the Pentagon.
As the FBI was monitoring against more attacks, you were treating 75 of the wounded under
combat conditions.
Were the injuries of the 9-11 casualties very similar to the injuries suffered by those
on the Green Ramp?
You know, both of those days, and I know you share this, are imprinted on my heart.
(20:59):
Um, those are the things that you quietly carry inside of you.
And you saw the very best of what Americans can do, and you saw the very worst of what
people can do.
Very similar in inhalation injuries of burns, of severe burns.
(21:21):
The enormity within both were a lot of loss of lives, of young lives, of heroism under
the most severe conditions.
You know, I always said on both of those, I felt like God was with us in that they happened
on very sunny days.
(21:42):
The Pentagon was attacked when there was a chaplains conference and there were, I forgot
how many chaplains were there, but I felt like we had a chaplain for almost everybody
that was there.
It was incredible spiritual strength that was there.
We had people respond.
Specialist Cahill was a young medic who was in the reserves, who was home on his leave,
(22:09):
his vacation.
And for some reason, he took his aid bag when he traveled home with him.
And when he saw the fireball, he took his aid bag and he ran over two miles.
That was the very first medical supplies that we had on that side of the Pentagon.
The heroism was incredible.
General Webster was a one-star at the time, infantry officer who was going in and out
(22:32):
of the Pentagon.
And he came up to me, I didn't even see his rank, and he said, can I help you?
And I said, I need your belt and I need it right now because I need a tourniquet.
He gave it to me, went back into the building.
People just helped.
And it was an amazing response.
It was also one of the most heartbreaking response because later in the day, we realized
(22:56):
that we were no longer in a saving mission.
We were actually in the recovery mission.
We were just recovering bodies.
And we had to transition both mentally with that and then have people go in and try to
recover the lost lives that were in that Pentagon.
I would think each of those two days were very formative experiences that must have
(23:18):
fundamentally changed you.
Were you a different person from the day of the Green Ramp disaster forward?
And how did the 9-11 experience leave its own mark on you?
Yeah, I think everything we go through shapes us and how we respond to it.
And it increases our empathy.
It increases our knowledge, our expertise.
(23:40):
And it helps us, that saying, train as you fight, fight as you train, because you start
seeing the importance of readiness in everything that you do.
So after the Green Ramp, I then had the honor to deploy to Haiti when it was going to be
a forced invasion with a small team.
And with that, realized the importance of logistics planning.
(24:05):
And there was so much from that experience that carried over to the response at the Pentagon.
And what I would say with all of those is it made me realize that our enemies look at
us and they see our divisiveness.
And what they underestimate is the power of how strong we are when we come together as
(24:30):
Americans.
And that when they thought they crippled us by hitting the powerhouse of our nation, which
is the Pentagon, what they really did is they united every single American with the resolve
that we would support and defend our democracy and democracy worldwide.
So I'm a completely different leader from going through those experiences.
(24:52):
I have gratitude every single day of my life.
I understand the sacrifices that it is by many and millions of people who choose to
serve our nation.
And I don't take any of our freedoms for granted.
And did those two days reshape how you approached future assignments?
(25:13):
Oh, you know, a funny thing about future assignments.
I had someone call me once and said, I track your career.
And I said, you do?
I said, why would you do that?
And he said, I track it because you seem to everywhere you go, there's a disaster and
I don't want to be assigned with you.
So, you know, I, I believe that.
(25:37):
That you learn from every place you go and every experience gives you tools in your tool
kit that allows you to hopefully lead more effectively to have a broader lens of experience
and expertise.
And and so I have been one that I've embraced the journey where leaders have said, I think
(26:02):
you should go into this job.
It wasn't always the job I wanted to go into, but I trusted, you know, their mentorship
and it ended up being every single job I've ever been in.
I've absolutely loved them.
And I'll give a good example.
When I was a young officer, I wanted to be a 91 Delta instructor, special forces, you
(26:22):
know, medic instructor.
And my assignment manager said, Colonel Kennedy wants you to go into recruiting command.
And I said, well, I don't want to go into recruiting command.
And I said, I really want to be a 91 Delta instructor.
And she said she would really like you to go into recruiting command.
And I was very naive at the time.
And I said, well, can you do me a favor?
(26:43):
Can you just write down what I would like to do?
And she takes her pencil and she just made a dot.
And she looked at me and I said, I'm going into recruiting.
She said, yes, you are.
And I am so glad that I did.
There's so many stories with that.
But I ended up going as a recruiter for Pittsburgh and Harrisburg recruiting battalion, met my
(27:10):
husband there who was actually teaching at University of Pittsburgh.
He was an ROTC officer, instructor.
And I learned what it took to entice someone to see the value of joining our military.
And I worked with infantry officer, line officers.
And I felt like I grew more as a soldier in that assignment, which really changed, to
(27:34):
be perfectly honest, my embracing that I was a soldier first, I was an officer and I was
a nurse.
And that's how I approached every one of my assignments afterwards.
So as your career advanced, you were in charge of the United States Army Medical Command,
the Western Regional Medical Command, the Madigan Army Medical Center, the Walter Reed
(27:55):
Healthcare System, and the DeWitt Healthcare Network.
Is one command pretty much the same as the next?
And was one of them your favorite?
Or do you love all your children equally?
I have two kids, so I always love my children equally, right?
But every one of those assignments, oh my goodness, talk about their own set of unique
(28:16):
challenges.
And the diversity of the people you get to lead, the opportunities in front of you, the
strategic challenges make every single one of them, to be honest, a very unique experience.
But there was always a common thread.
When you lead, and I'll go back to serving, it truly is about leaning forward and serving
(28:41):
to the best of your ability and ensuring that you take the calculated risks that you should
take.
And what I would always tell people is the reason you have the rank in the middle of
your chest is for you to take calculated risks, set conditions for success, and do the strategic
roadmap for that command while also creating the leadership bench for the future.
(29:05):
That's the honor and the privilege that we have.
And you have to be OK with the Army saying, thank you very much.
This is your last assignment.
So you've got to take the risk.
Every single one of those were challenging.
Probably the one that maybe imprinted on my heart the most was the Walter Reed assignment.
(29:28):
It was one I thought I was only going to be there for a year as the chief nurse of the
Regional Medical Command.
And I already had my orders because I was selected to command launch to Regional Medical
Command.
So I thought, OK, this is going to be the opportunity to focus on improving the patient
care environment because I thought we could do that within a year.
(29:49):
General Waitman at the time told me, I'm going to get two years' work out of you in one year,
so I need you to really lean in on that.
And I think he probably got four or five years out of me in one year.
But when that happened in Walter Reed, where we lost the confidence and the faith of those
that we served in the nation because of the challenges of being at war for so many years
(30:16):
with the infrastructure challenges, it was never about the quality of care, but it was
really about how do you support people and their family that are going to be there for
three to four years going through 36 or more surgeries, right?
And how do you make sure you have that full complement of rehabilitation?
(30:38):
I watched a team that was under 42 investigations is what we led through.
42 investigations, a presidential commission, four unannounced joint commissions, all within
a year, and media and Congress all coming in constantly while we were receiving injured
(30:59):
patients three to four times a week.
I watched that team be transparent, change the way we care for warriors, being very open.
And we literally went from the worst customer service to the best customer service out of
Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines in a year and made changes that last today on how we
(31:21):
care for our warriors.
It was the most humbling experience to lead and serve with that team.
Amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
You were, as we mentioned earlier, the first woman and nurse to serve as the Army Surgeon
General and Commander of the United States Army Medical Command.
Had you imagined that was possible when you began your career?
No.
So I'll go back to when you talked about careers.
(31:46):
I had wanted to be a flight attendant, but at that time, they actually had a height restriction
and I was too short.
And I always say, thank goodness for my height because my career would have been totally
different.
And so when I came in, it was just a few years prior that if you became pregnant, you had
(32:07):
to leave active duty.
That had changed.
When I came in, nurses could not command.
Only physicians could command hospitals.
So it was never anything that I had planned or thought I would do.
And things changed over the years.
And literally, General Ursone, who was a Medical Service Corps officer, had ran into me one
(32:28):
time at General Volpe's promotion and said, hey, Patty, are you going to compete for command?
Because it just opened in 1990.
I believe that was the year.
And I said, no.
I said, I wasn't thinking about it.
I don't think I'd be that competitive.
He said, you need to compete.
That little bit of encouragement changed the trajectory.
And so I competed.
I got selected to command.
(32:50):
And then it opened up the opportunity to future commands.
And when I got selected, I had actually just flown to Australia, had just gotten on the
ground the night before.
And I got a call from General Casey.
And he said, Patty, what are you doing?
And I said, well, sir, I said, I'm in Australia starting a conference.
(33:15):
And he said, congratulations.
You just got nominated for the Sergeant General.
And he said, you need to get on a plane and come on home.
So it was the quickest trip I've ever taken for the longest ride.
But it was the honor of a lifetime.
It was the most humbling opportunity.
And a year into the job, one of my very good friends that I met was General Grice, who
(33:40):
was the U.S.
I mean, the U.S.
He was the Israeli Sergeant General.
And we were having dinner.
And he said, hey, do you want to know what happened when your name got announced?
And I said, I would love to.
And he said, it was the shot that was heard around the world.
He said, countries called each other and said, can you believe the United States of America
picked a woman?
(34:00):
I thought they were going to say a nurse.
And they said, picked a woman.
They could not believe it.
And so it really changed my lens about how the world looks at what we do in the U.S.
And we are role models for so many, for men, for women, for other countries.
And I think we gave other countries hope.
(34:24):
At least I got told that all the time, that we gave them hope for them to be able to do
the same thing.
And thank you for sharing that story about Australia, because now I know why you smiled
when I mentioned General Casey's name early in the show.
Yes, I did.
That's exactly.
Great man.
He's been on the show before.
And we go back and forth.
So he's originally from Massachusetts.
(34:44):
I live in Connecticut.
I'm from New York.
We went back and forth on Red Sox, Yankees a lot.
And so he was a very good sport about that.
Well, I'm a Red Sox fan.
I know.
You're still a nice person.
That's OK.
No, I'm kidding, General.
So you insisted on going to Afghanistan when you became the Army Surgeon General.
What did you want to learn there?
(35:05):
And what did you do with that information?
Yeah.
I knew I was going into a position where I not only led the medical command, but I was
responsible for the overall health of the force, for the entire Army, and our clinical
capabilities that were embedded in the T-O-N-E units, the line units.
(35:28):
And I knew if I was going to serve well, I needed to understand ground truth of what
was occurring on the battlefield.
And we had been at war at that time for 10, 11 years.
And so I went in and asked General Schoolmaker and General Corelli and said, I'd like to
deploy.
And they said it's the very first time it would be an individual that's been selected
(35:54):
as a Surgeon General or a Surgeon General who's deployed in combat.
And they supported my request.
I went over and worked for General Scaparrotti and General Petraeus at that time, traveled
4,000 miles, over 200 forward operating bases and command outposts.
And what I saw was so many things.
(36:18):
But one of the biggest takeaways was at COP Lightning.
And at that time, it was a team that was in RC North, the most dangerous areas.
They were fired on with RPGs every single day.
Mail took about two months to get there.
We were trying to get virtual behavioral health out to them.
(36:39):
And one of the things that I looked was saw this stack of prescriptions.
And I said, hey, help me understand what half of them's Adderall and half of them's Ambien.
And they said, well, when we go out, we want people on heart and alert.
And so we're giving them Adderall.
And then when they come back, we give them Ambien.
And I thought, oh, my word, we have not weaned people off of poor sleep hygiene.
(37:05):
And then you think of the impact that that has on your mental, your physical,
the increased incident of PTSD.
And it really showed me where we needed to focus on sleep, active nutrition
and optimizing human performance.
The other piece that I'd say is when I flew up to RC North,
Brigadier General Mulholland was the commander.
(37:27):
And he met me and he said, hey, he said, pretty blue collar of you.
And I said, what?
And he said, I saw that you flew in with the troops.
He said, you know, you could have had your own air transport.
I said, I know.
And he said, because you made that decision.
He said, whatever you want, I'm going to support you.
What do you want?
(37:47):
And I said, I would like to talk with your Black Ops and your Black Black Ops folks.
And I said, and I will never share it.
And I never have.
And so at one in the morning, he allowed me to meet with them.
And we had several hour conversations.
And what it did for me is I got to really understand the impact of war,
(38:09):
what sacrifices, the impact of the families, what we needed to do for behavioral health support,
what we needed to do for women's health support with the women that I met on the battlefield
and completely changed our strategic campaign that we had for Army Medicine.
I need to have you for like three more shows because this is just fascinating.
(38:30):
I mean, no, I'm honored, General.
And now I'm going to throw a big one at you here.
This could be the toughest question given the length and groundbreaking
accomplishments of your career.
What are your proudest achievements during your Army service?
I think my, I'm going to give you two.
My first proudest is that I was able to serve 33 years and leave the service
(38:58):
with my marriage being very, very strong and having two wonderful children.
So I'm grateful for that every single day.
My second greatest accomplishment, I think, would probably be moving Army Medicine
from a disease model of care to a system for health.
(39:19):
And that was a huge fundamental culture change, process change.
And it allowed us to really implement this human performance of focusing on sleep,
activity, nutrition, the mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional aspects.
And I always said, someone said, how do you know you're going to be successful?
(39:42):
And I said, the moment that it's in the DNA of our Army,
and they don't see it as a medical program.
And I can tell you today in 2024, it is throughout the Army.
It is the health to fitness of our Army, and it's not a medical program.
And that's probably what I am so proud of, because we're changing lives
(40:04):
and we're helping families live the best last 10 years of the lives that they can.
And that's no easy feat because you're changing hundreds of years of a mindset.
Oh, I can't even begin to tell you the resistance that I had from so many within medical,
outside of medical, with people telling me culture change takes more than 20 years,
(40:26):
you'll never get it done in four.
And our response was just watch us.
And we did.
I got to serve with some of the most brilliant minds,
the most dedicated people, and they made it happen.
I love that.
General, you've received more citations, medals,
recognitions, and awards than I can count, including five honorary doctorates
(40:49):
and France's National Order of the Legion of Honor Chevalier.
I mean, you've been knighted by the French.
But one honor that I imagine is special to you
was being voted in as a Family Circle Top 10 Most Influential Mom.
Being a mom is a tough enough job any day of the week,
but especially so in the military, how'd you balance your family and your career?
Yeah, not easy.
(41:10):
One, I married a wonderful man and incredibly supportive of me.
I think the thing that I would say, we never use the word balance,
and it took me a while to figure this out.
It's a series of trade-offs.
And what we would do is, and we didn't get it right a lot of times,
(41:30):
but we would talk through and decide what we're willing to trade off.
And then we wouldn't look back and question it,
because you could wear yourself out
questioning whether you're making the right decision.
And so the question that I would always ask myself
when trying to decide between being present family-wise
or being present work-wise is, who's going to remember I wasn't there?
(41:52):
And sometimes it was my family, and then I made that decision.
And sometimes it was work, and I made that decision.
It just really helped.
And so I share that with people all the time,
because there are always more demands on your time to be present, right?
And somehow you've got to figure that out.
And so I would put my family's big moments on the calendar.
(42:16):
And if it was sitting and being present when my son or daughter
were going to read a poem for one minute, I would race there.
I'd sit there at the exact time they're going to read.
They'd read it, and then I'd kiss them, and then I was back at work.
And so it was figuring out how do we make sure that one of us
was always present in our children's lives?
And how do we support each other's careers?
(42:39):
And we always felt like no job was more important than our family staying together.
And we've been very, very blessed.
So I never knew that lieutenant generals must retire after 30 years of service
unless appointed for promotion or reappointed to serve longer.
And there's also a mandatory retirement age, though you retired long before you reached 64.
(43:00):
Had you just reached the point where you'd seen it all and done it all
and were ready for new ventures?
No, it's a great question.
And I don't usually ever share this, but when I was getting ready to retire,
I had been asked by several leaders if I would consider staying on
(43:21):
and extending past my four years.
And I really thought about it, and I prayed about it.
And I went back, and it's the first time in my entire career
that I said no to a mission request ever.
And the reason why I did is I believed in the investment we had in the leadership bench.
(43:42):
And I knew that if I stayed two more years, on one hand, it would have been great
because it would have given more longevity to supporting
some of the strategic objectives, right, and getting them in place.
But what it would have done is it would have passed over leaders
for consideration for a promotion because they would have aged out or timed out.
(44:02):
And I felt like that was very unfair to the leaders that we had all invested in.
And so I told them that it's just the right time for me to retire.
And looking back, I have no regrets.
It was absolutely the right decision.
And I loved my time in uniform, and I've absolutely loved my time in corporate America.
(44:26):
It's been an honor to be able to continue to serve and to grow
and to still impact people's lives through the work we get to do within my current position.
So being the leader that you are, you did the proverbial take one for the team.
Well, I don't know if it's that altruistic.
I just think it's we believe in the military that you always invest in training
(44:53):
your replacement and that none of us are indispensable.
And so I think it was more of these are the values that we have as a soldier
and it's the right time to transition.
You seem to make a seamless transition from the military to corporate America, to your point.
It's not easy to do a lot more often than not for those transitioning out of the military.
(45:17):
What challenges did you face and how do you overcome them?
You know, it's not easy.
And I think the aha moment that I've had just really recently is we do a lot of work of
helping people transition and thinking of your resume and all those types of things.
And that is not at all where I think we should be investing.
We should invest in the emotional transition because when you serve, it is all emotion.
(45:44):
It's a mission of love.
It's part of who you are.
And then you transition and you leave that community and that's a big emotion
and we don't prepare people for that.
And you're also transitioning into an environment where a lot of people don't understand
the skill sets of our military and how at the most junior level,
(46:06):
the leadership responsibility and experience that they have is amazing.
And it really translates very well into corporate America,
except there's not a strong awareness of that.
And so I think, you know, one of the biggest challenges that I had were twofold.
The first one is I realized we communicated differently
(46:28):
and we were talking past each other and I had to learn to change my communication
and to understand the same words meant very different things in very different environments.
So that was one thing.
And I think that the second one is it does hit you about the six,
seven month mark after you leave or when you're in a new job
(46:50):
that it can feel like a job, vice a profession, vice, right?
And you have to work through that and you have to find
how do you spark that passion that kept you in the military?
Because really corporate America is very mission focused.
And what has kept me almost eight years at Optum is we have the same culture.
(47:15):
It's very mission focused and our values are the same.
And so you just have to find the company that aligns with your own values.
And General Odierno, who was the chief of staff of the army,
has passed away now, was one of the best leaders I've ever served for.
He said, Patty, he said, be very selective on where you say yes.
(47:37):
And he said, because your reputation becomes their reputation and theirs becomes yours.
And he said, you can undo your 33 years of service by going with the wrong.
And so I share that with people all the time.
That's a great point because imagine one slip up, one hiccup,
everything that you've done for three decades is gone.
(48:00):
Exactly.
Really, really appreciate you sharing that insight.
Now, if you aren't busy enough, you serve on a number of nonprofit boards.
One that holds a special place in your heart is the Two Serve Together Foundation,
which you founded.
What was the inspiration for the Two Serve Together Foundation
and how can people learn more about it?
Chris, thank you for even asking that.
(48:21):
So when I'm wearing the Women of Valor brooch,
which I try to wear either the small pin or the brooch every day,
it really goes back to my father.
My dad, serving World War II, Korea and Vietnam,
special forces officer, exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam
and had Parkinson that started at age 61.
(48:41):
He was a hunter, fisher, woodcarver, artist, civil engineer, and he lost all of that.
In the last 13 years, he was in a wheelchair.
But he always wore the baseball cap that had the three wars.
And when we'd go out, he'd be slumped over.
And someone would say, thank you for your service.
(49:02):
And I watched him and he'd sit straight up and I could see that soldier in him.
And I saw the healing of that thank you with my parents who are married 70 years.
And I thought, there's so much power in healing.
And women are not going to wear routinely a baseball cap all the time.
And people aren't going to know that they serve.
(49:24):
So literally for 20 years, it was on my heart.
And finally, in 2020, I just said, this is the year I'm going to do it.
And I got with Anne Hand and we created the Woman of Valor brooch.
It's the forget-me-not.
It's purple for Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.
And the space is for Space Force, the space around it.
The leaves are victory, valor, and veteran.
(49:46):
And the pearl is for purity of mission and femininity.
And what I want is, I want people when they see it to say, did you serve?
And then people can say, thank you for your service.
Because you have to see someone, connect with someone, hear their story,
and allow that healing to occur.
So I created to2servetogether, and it's to2servetogether.org.
(50:09):
It's a 501c3.
And our hope is that we get these out to as many women as possible.
It becomes a symbol nationally known, just like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer.
And then we're creating a care connection.
We just had our first two Women of Valor retreats.
We partnered with Travis Mills Foundation, Boulder Crest, and Gary Sinise Foundation.
(50:33):
And we developed a post-traumatic growth program.
It was a week long.
And it was unbelievably powerful to see the sisterhood, the bonding, and the healing that
occurred.
And so my hope is that we can get this to really go national, and that our whole nation
(50:55):
will be grateful for the service of women.
And that website, again, is to2servetogether.org.
Perfect.
General, we've got a minute or two left.
Share with us what gives you hope, and why we should all have more hope in today's stress-filled
and challenging world.
Yeah.
So I think hope is a gift that you give yourself and you give to others.
(51:19):
And I really do.
I get hope every day when I look at the flag.
And I'll tell you why.
I look at it, and I see the threads that really are woven into it are the stories of millions
and millions of people over hundreds of years.
And I think they're quiet, stoic stories.
(51:42):
And I think there's threads of strength.
I think they're threads that connect us.
I think they bond us.
I think they unite us.
And I think it's the fabric of America.
And so when we have hope, nothing is impossible.
And I always believe that at the heart of what we do is if we can instill hope in others,
(52:05):
we can overcome so much.
And so I'm hopeful every day.
There's a cup that I use during COVID.
I got it, and I use it.
And it just says, I choose joy.
And I really believe that it's an action.
We have the action to choose joy.
We have the action to choose hope.
We have the action to be bold, to be humble, and to give mercy and to give grace to others.
(52:30):
And to me, that is a ripple effect that can occur across not just our country,
but around the world.
So it's been such a pleasure.
Thank you.
General Patty Horho, thank you so much for being with us today.
It was an absolute honor having you.
I've loved it, Chris.
Thank you for what you do.
Thank you for your servant leader heart, because you've made a difference each and every day.
(52:54):
It's a pleasure.
I'm Chris Meek.
Right on time.
We'll see you next Tuesday, same time, same place.
Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.
Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward.
Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time
(53:17):
and 1 p.m. Eastern time on the Voice America Empowerment Channel.
This week, make things happen in your life.
See you next time.
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