Special Ops Survivors Announces Hiring Terri Wallace as the New Executive Director

Terri Wallace brings more than 15 years of nonprofit leadership experience and expertise to her new position.

Terri Wallace

Special Ops Survivors, a nonprofit that embraces and empowers survivors of fallen Special Operations Forces (SOF) heroes, has announced that Terri Wallace has accepted the position of executive director. Wallace is a long-time nonprofit executive with extensive experience in nonprofit management, donor stewardship, grant writing and solicitation, developing and administering programs, executing growth plans, and building organizational capacity.

Wallace comes to Special Ops Survivors from the Camaraderie Foundation where she served as the organization's executive director since 2013. Earlier in her career, Wallace served as the executive director of Leadership Broward Foundation, Skills Essential for Life Foundation, the South Florida executive director for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and as director of development for Deliver the Dream, Inc.

I'm excited and honored to start working with Special Ops Survivors as their new executive director. Significant growth is planned for the organization especially in creating dynamic new programs that meet the needs of our survivor population.

Terri Wallace, Executive Director

"I'm excited and honored to start working with Special Ops Survivors as their new executive director," says Wallace. "Significant growth is planned for the organization especially in creating dynamic new programs that meet the needs of our survivor population. To do that effectively, we are calling on all those who want to give back to support this critical work for our community of Gold Star SOF spouses whose families have given so much for our country. Our donors truly make a significant impact in their lives."

Special Ops Survivors was co-founded in 2002 by an active duty Navy SEAL and is one of the only nonprofit organizations exclusively dedicated to serving Gold Star Spouses of active duty Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Special Operations personnel who have died in combat, training, or the result of injury or illness even after they separate or retire. This includes those who have succumbed to injury or illness that manifested itself in cancer, traumatic brain injury, suicide, or those who may have been killed during off duty hours.

"It's not how they died that matters as much as how they lived." says Wallace, "These were great Americans willing to defend our freedoms, training hard and ready to go to war as a team. Their surviving spouses should not suffer alone, and that's where we come in."

The organization embraces and empowers survivors to build healthy, post-loss futures as they transition to their new lives by providing individual, group, and peer-to-peer emotional support as well as individual financial, educational, and career development support.

Special Ops Survivors understands the healing power of community, encouragement, and peer mentorship to help turn these Gold Star spouses' tragedy into triumph. Survivors are bonded by how their heroes lived as part of this elite military community. Because of this, the bonds formed among these survivors are both durable and lasting.

While Special Ops Survivors cannot bring back a survivor's loved one, the organization's programs help survivors ease the transition to a new life - a life that honors the legacy of their loved one. This healing is accomplished by providing access to a community of other survivors who have gone through, survived and overcome similar obstacles.

For more information about the organization, visit Special Ops Survivors.

ABOUT SPECIAL OPS SURVIVORS

Special Ops Survivors' mission is to embrace and empower survivors of fallen Special Operations personnel to build healthy post-loss futures as they transition into their new lives. Over the last 15 years, the organization has grown from a small grass-roots organization to an established nonprofit serving close to 250 survivors from all military service branches. In 2015, the organization expanded its eligibility from only serving survivors who lost their heroes since Sept 11, 2001, to reach an additional 900 survivors who lost their heroes dating back to Jan 1, 1980. For more information about the organization, visit Special Ops Survivors.

Media Contact:
Terri Wallace
Email: Terri@specialopssurvivors.org
Phone: 619-437-1137

Source: Special Ops Survivors