WASHINGTON — A top aide to Jill Biden for a decade who oversaw the first lady’s initiative to support military service members and their families is stepping down later this month, NBC News has learned.
Rory Brosius will be replaced as Executive Director of Joining Forces by Sheila Casey, wife of former Army Chief of Staff General George Casey.
“As a young military wife who went to the East Wing to intern with Joining Forces in August 2012 and entered the Biden-Harris administration on day one to stand up Joining Forces, this was the journey of a lifetime,” Brosius said in a message to the military community, which she has been working with to announce her departure.
Joining Forces was created in 2011 by Biden and Michelle Obama, then First Lady, to bring the public and private sectors together with military members, their families and veterans and to support them with educational and employment resources.
Biden revived the initiative when she became first lady in 2021, tapping Brosius as director.
In an interview, Brosius said that while the overall mission remained the same, they were able to redouble their efforts to support military families in particular, recognizing that while service members and children have significant government resources available to serve service members and veterans, they also have special needs have .
It is especially important to highlight these needs at a time when the US is no longer engaged in an active military conflict, as President Joe Biden eliminated the remnants of the US military presence in Afghanistan in 2021.
“The challenges faced by many military and veteran families are not a consequence of the war. They are a function of the military lifestyle,” Brosius said in an interview. “They are a function of moving every two to three years. They are a function of the high rate of deployment, whether we are in direct combat operations or just deployed on a ship for seven months.”
In a statement to NBC News, Jill Biden commended Brosius for leading Joining Forces “with grace, compassion and determination to support America’s military and veteran families, caregivers and survivors.”
“Rory has done an exceptional job as Executive Director and has done the hard political work that matters. Joe and I are grateful for their dedication over the past ten years,” she said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Source : news.yahoo.com