Josie Beets 2000

As the manager of a federal program that helps military spouses pursue education and career opportunities, Josie Beets, Class of 2000, can relate.

After all, she married an Army lawyer and found herself moving every few years, unable to fully use the law degree she earned after graduating from Sweet Briar. She passed the bar in Louisiana when her husband was based at Fort Polk. But that didn’t qualify her to work as a lawyer in Kentucky, when her husband was dispatched to Fort Campbell for three years or to Washington, D.C., for the next six years.

Now an analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Josie manages programs that provide education opportunities, career coaching, resume review, and connections to companies committed to hiring the husbands and wives of service members.

“I joke that I complained so much about military spouse employment that they’ve put me in charge of it,” she says.

This lesson was learned early on at Sweet Briar. “During my freshman year, I complained a lot about the student newspaper, so they put me in charge of the student newspaper,” she recalls. “You can complain about things, but then you’re going to be part of making it better.”

Josie majored in government at Sweet Briar and earned her law degree at Brooklyn Law School. She was still a law student when hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, and she decided to volunteer in the aftermath. Her emergency lawyering involved helping families secure the documentation needed to qualify for federal recovery funds and entailed locating 8,000 jail inmates displaced by the flooding and connecting them with lawyers.

“I fell in love with that work,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I still work in public service and nonprofits.” She also fell in love and married another volunteer, a law student planning to join the Army JAG Corps. She followed him to various assignments, restarting her career with each move.

After stints as a lobbyist in Kentucky and as a civil servant at the U.S. General Services Administration in D.C., Josie shifted to the nonprofit sector, working to prevent drug addiction at the S.A.F.E. project and to encourage literacy among military families at United Through Reading. Throughout the past decade, she’s volunteered as a leader in the Military Spouse JD Network, which advocates for state licensing changes.

Her volunteer work made for an easy transition into her new post in the Military Community and Family Policy office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. She manages a series of contractors who offer programs helping spouses access education and training programs and find jobs.

“There are so many resources out there for military families, and so many of them are fantastic, and so many of them are just not great,” she says. “Being able to be part of a team that can really focus your fire and find the right education or employer for you, it’s kind of cool.”