S2E19 with Janessa Goldbeck - Serving with Pride. Leading with Purpose

In this episode, I am honored to welcome Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation - a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying the voices of veterans in the fight for justice, equity, and lasting policy change. With over 15 years of experience in public policy, government affairs, and strategic consulting, Janessa brings a rare blend of frontline insight and legislative expertise to this powerful conversation.

Raised in San Diego by spiritually centered, activist-minded parents, Janessa grew up with a deep appreciation for social justice and community. Her global perspective was further shaped by time spent living in Africa, where she deepened her commitment to human rights and service. That passion led her to the U.S. Marine Corps, where she served as a Combat Engineer and Civil Affairs Officer, eventually leading a 120-person unit on a mission across eight countries.

Janessa is an out and proud lesbian and a fierce advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, using her platform to champion equity, inclusion, and representation - both within the veteran space and far beyond. She is a leader who shows us what it means to serve with integrity, lead with purpose, and fight for a future where all voices are heard.

Join us as we explore her remarkable journey at the intersection of leadership, identity, and impact - and why civic engagement has never been more urgent.

To follow Janessa on Instagram, visit https://www.instagram.com/janessagoldbeck

To follow her on Substack, visit https://substack.com/@janessagoldbeck

To visit Vet Voice Foundation, visit https://vvfnd.org/

Thank you for joining us and we can't wait to welcome you back again next week! New episodes drop every Thursday and can be found wherever you find your favorite podcasts!  

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Want to learn more about our host, Eric Nicoll?  Visit:  https://ericnicoll.com

Transcript

0:05

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Just Do You Podcast. My name is Eric Nicoll, and I'm your host. If you are a first time listener, welcome to the conversation and if you're a regular, I'm honored that you've decided to join me for another episode. The Just Do You Podcast is centered around a network of conversations, which are meant to connect us, to inspire us, to find our own confidence, our own voice, and to live our own truth. And who knows, we might even learn a little something new that ultimately allows us to live in the sweet spot that I like to call the Just do you space of being. Each week, I have the privilege of sitting down for unscripted conversations with friends, family, colleagues, community leaders, and influencers that all share their own personal journeys. I hope that you enjoy our time together as much as I have. We are certainly going to laugh, and yes, we might even cry a little, but in the end, we are going to know that we're not alone during our life's journey. So are you ready? Great. Let's do this. Welcome to the conversation. All right everyone. Welcome to today's episode. I am going to jump right in and introduce my guest. I have been so excited all week knowing that she was going to come on. I have wanted her on for quite a while, so it's an honor and a privilege today to introduce everyone to Janessa Goldbeck. Hi Janessa. Hey, thanks for having me, Eric. Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure. Happy post 4th of July. I hope you had a good time and enjoyed some hopefully rest over the weekend. Yeah, it's a weird, it's a weird time in America to be celebrating America. But I did have a really nice restful weekend. Saw some good friends and yeah, just enjoyed being in community. That's what it's all about. That's what we're going to talk about today. So thank you for being here. I'm excited for our guests to get to know you a little bit more. I'm going to go ahead quickly and just read your bio'cause I was super, super impressed with your background. We're going to get into that a little bit, but I'd like to do this and I have a couple questions for you. Does that work? Sounds great. Okay, so for our listeners and buckle up,'cause Janessa is super impressive. She's the CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to amplifying the voices of veterans in the fight for justice and equity and policy change. She's got over 15 years of experience in public policy, government affairs, strategic consulting, and she brings a great insight into legislative expertise into all of her work. She's a powerful voice that leads with purpose and advocates for marginalized voices, especially within that veteran community. And she educates on why civil engagement is, or civic, I should say, excuse me, engagement is really more important than ever. And her journey really began in the US Marine Corps, where she served as a combat engineer and a civil affairs officer. And I love this later leading 120 person unit on deployment that spanned eight countries. Janessa as consistently worked at the intersection of what she calls leadership. Impact and service. So welcome Janessa to the Just You Podcast. It's a pretty impressive resume on my head. It makes me just life. Life takes you in funny directions sometime. If you told me that I would've wound up in the Marine Corps as a young kid growing up, the child of two hippie pacifist vegetarians in San Diego, that I would wind my way into the Marine Corps and be a professional veterans advocate. I would've looked at you like you had two heads. I'm, regardless of that, I'm glad that you did and I'm glad that's where you ended up. And that's actually a great lead into our conversation today. As this is designed to be a casual conversation, like we're having a cup of coffee and just getting to know each other. But the powerful thing that I'm finding, especially within our community is that it's interesting how our childhood and our younger years really have shaped whether we thought it was directly or indirectly our future. So my first question to my guest is always to just take us back a little bit. Let us know a little bit about the young Janessa. Were you born, what was family life like, siblings, that kind of thing. What was young Janessa like? Yeah. It feels like forever ago. I'm turning 40 this year, so it's at, it's getting a little foggier every year. But I grew up here in San Diego County. I grew up in Encinitas, a little beach town. As I mentioned, my parents were hippies who had converted to Hinduism in the sixties and or late sixties, early seventies, around the time when eastern religions were picking up pop popularity amongst people who hadn't experienced them before. So they moved to Encinitas to be part of an organization called Self-Realization Fellowship, which is a sort of church of all religions, but centered around Hinduism and meditation and yoga here in San Diego County. And so that's what brought them here. So I grew up in that community. We, my, my favorite meal growing up was something called tofu italiano, which was basically tofu with cheese and marinara sauce on it, which is like really horrendous when I think about it. But that was a pretty exciting meal for me and my vegi vegetarian household. Yeah, it was into skateboarding and the ocean, very much like your typical Southern California kid. Sure. And when I grew up I thought I wanted to be a writer or maybe a marine biologist. Ended up going to college in Chicago, Illinois for both a degree in both journalism and African studies. I studied abroad in East Africa when I was an undergrad, and that's really where my sort of political and engagement awakening happened. I was studying in Rwanda and Uganda and learning about the Randan genocide. As I was learning about that and actually, going and visiting some of the sites where the genocide had taken place, where you could literally still see human bones and the pews of churches, I learned that there was a genocide ongoing in the country of Sudan in a region called Darfur. And as a young person who, had literally been standing in these sites and really impacted by them, I really wanted to do something. So came back to the United States and started organizing on my campus, and that is, was my first foray in civic engagement. So go back a little bit. It's fascinating to me that you started your life off in Encinitas. That's where I'm sitting right now, actually. I know. This town has always been known for, it's now we call it bougie hippie hippiness. Yes. In the Yes. It's definitely way bou now than it was. I always like to say it's the Birkenstocks that pop out of the, the. Mercedes S wagon, so as they're dropping their kids off at school and then heading over to do Pilates. But it's a great town and it's a really great environment because it still has that really fantastic sense of community. And that's why I moved here and I've been really blessed since I moved here in December of 2019. Our community specifically around that time, obviously 20 19, 20 20, we were about to venture off into a another crazy time in our lives. And the one thing that got me through was this community, not only was it very diverse, we had several gay and lesbian couples and people who lived in the neighborhood. It was a place with just a lot of love and a lot of support and I have found that throughout our community here and also throughout San Diego. But I'm curious, as a young child, as you were growing up with these parents and you were obviously involved in this conversation around spirituality and that type of thing. What was that like for you as a kid?'cause that's not typical, right? What were the conversations that you were having in your head about it? Or was it just all that you knew? I. Yeah, it was like a, I had a foot in two different worlds. My mom was a public school when I was young, was a Montessori school teacher. And so I went to Montessori school with a lot of other kids that were being raised with similar in similar backgrounds. A lot of whom, were going to the same temple that I was going to, and so that felt very familiar. But then when I was in fifth grade, I transitioned to public school and this was the nineties and there were, in San Diego County in particular new agey Christianity was the popular thing. And, a lot of kids at my school who were in bands that played at the, the local Christian Church and there were all kinds of, there was all kinds of music actually coming outta San Diego that was like wrapped up in that religion. And I wasn't like, particularly religious, but as I'm reflecting back on it, where you went to church and where you went to school really obviously shaped you and who you were. So I always felt I'd go over to a friend's house for dinner or something, I would. Not say that I was a vegetarian'cause I was embarrassed or not talk about, meditation and yoga. It's so funny because in retrospect I'm like, what an amazing way to grow up. I was eating great food. I was really healthy food. I was literally would meditate and do yoga every day, but I thought it was so annoying and so different and awkward and so I just didn't really talk about it. It really wasn't until I got to college in Chicago and I would like pepper in little details about my personal life, going to surf PE and high school at San Guido and people were like, where did you grow up? Is this real life? Yeah. And of course now I very much appreciate, that foundation that my parents gave me. But yeah, it was a, it was, I just felt a little like when I was in that more public school world that I was that I was a weirdo and that my parents and family was weird. I've said many times,'cause a lot of the conversations that we have on this podcast will either end up there or meander its way through this conversation of wouldn't it be amazing if as children, I'm obviously a very different, I'm your parents' age. I have a feeling. I could be probably your dad close enough. But how amazing it would be if they had taught us meditation and taught us how to be in connect connection with our body and how to be in tune with our thoughts and feelings and not suppress everything. I think about my, PE was always about, jumping jacks and burpees and pull-ups and running, and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I wanted to go off and, do something super cool and different. Back then it wasn't such a big thing right as it is now, but I look at it now and thinking, God, what a great way to grow up. You may resist it in the moment, but knowing and looking back later that you grew up in a space that was very, grounded in what it means to be happy and to be able to, navigate and to deal with things that are stressful. These days I have meditation and I'm actually in class right now being certified in sound sound bath healing, and I'm really excited about that and just had a conversation last week with somebody who's really into music as a healing source. And so there's all these amazing opportunities now, which I think we need more than ever, but how great it would've been to grow up, with that. I can imagine going to friends' houses though. Like I just have a peanut butter jelly sandwich. Yeah, I definitely. Burger. I remember, I distinctly remember the first time that I was served like a chicken breast at a friend's house. I remember, it was at Rachel Nickerson's house and her mom, didn't know I was a vegetarian because I didn't say anything. And I remember I had never eaten chicken before. And I remember just my gosh the sensation of it, like sticking to my teeth and just like being, don't throw up at the table out. You can do it. But yeah, I mean that the grounding in meditation in particular and yoga and just, controlling your breathing and all of that, all those things really came to serve me as a, I went through my Marine Corps officer training Sure. In that role. And it's something that I like to bring, actually, I, I liked to bring into my military service when I was at a particularly. Challenging school that was really physically grueling. I was asked by one of my instructors who saw me doing yoga, like after our hikes or our larger evolutions, and he asked me if I would start leading yoga for our platoon. And our platoon ended up being the platoon that had the lowest injury rate because men typically don't stretch, which is something I learned. I know. And so we were stretching before and after and doing breath control and things like that. And those are really important and helpful things when it comes to your body and its ability to withstand really intense physical activity. Yeah. You bring up a good point, and I've said this just last week in the, actually the last two weeks on this episodes is that, wellness is starting to make its way into my industry in the meetings and events industry. And it's almost becoming a little. Kitchy or a little cliche because they're using it as a space to fill a gap as opposed to what are the real benefits of doing a 10 minute breath work session or breath, control before you go into a stressful situation, like sitting in front of a speaker for three hours where your mind and brain are going elsewhere, right? This is, we are so disconnected from that kind of source and ability to just sit and just be patient. And so I think it's a real benefit to have that When you were in elementary and high school, you may have said this, so I apologize. I just wanna get chronologically, where were you? Where did you think you were heading when you were going through middle school and into high school? Yeah. I think as a child I wanted to be the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. Some early indicators that I may have been a lesbian that I, quickly learned that was probably not going to happen. But I really, I always loved reading and writing and I, so I wanted to write and I loved the idea of being a reporter and going into journalism, which is what I ended up doing for school, but never actually did professionally. And yeah, and then I loved animals and being outdoors, so I wasn't really sure. And in retrospect, it's, the military was never on my radar. My, both my grandparents, grandfathers served in World War ii. But they didn't talk. I, my one grandfather was deceased and the other one definitely didn't talk about it. And, my parents were of the gener, Vietnam generation and like the military was certainly not on their radar for me. And basically the only thing I knew about the military was the Marines were up the street in Oceanside. And I was not verse supposed to go to Oceanside it just wasn't on my radar. It was like in, especially my mom as a teach, neither of my parents actually went to college. My mom got her teaching credential when I was in elementary school. Oh, wow. But it was still always, drill drilled into me that college was the next step. And I think if the military had been like, more accessible to me it might have been appealing to me. I was very adventurous, very outgoing. Very athletic. But it wasn't on my radar at all. I was going to say, did you do a lot of sports in school? Did you I did enjoy, I did, yeah. I played I was captain of the varsity lacrosse team, my s junior and senior year of high school. Played lacrosse and field hockey all through high school and then big ocean kids, so surfing, swimming, diving. All that. Yeah. It's interesting'cause I don't know if you hear that, when you, I love when people share about what they did and won't even put the connection together that here you were, captain of the team. And then of course many years later, you're leaving, you're leading people. But definitely, yeah, I was a, captain of the lacrosse team in high school. Yeah. And got outta the Marines as a captain. So yeah, definitely foreshadowed. That's awesome. Can I ask, do you mind when you came out? No. So let's see. Summer before my. Junior year of high school. I got an internship, so I'm in journalism school and I was part of that. They placed you at internships for a summer. And my internship was like my dream internship. I got as I was an intern at National Geographic Adventure Magazine, which was wow. In New York City. And so my job as the intern there was like copy editing basic research. And then when they found out that I surfed and skateboarded, then I became the, like tester for all the adventure gear that they would get sent by various companies. This was, gosh, this is early two thousands. I got sent the National Geographic Adventure, got sent a sector nine longboard. Which, sector night is all, those long boards are all over Southern California, but in New York, they'd never seen one. And they sent me with a photographer over to Columbia University to ride it around and get some photos and we got chased out of the library by a security guard there. And it was just like a dream internship. I was 19 living there. I didn't know anybody except one girl from my high school who was at NYU. And I reached out to her and she was like you gotta come meet all my friends. And so I started hanging out with her. She was a lesbian. And at that point, like I really didn't know any gay women. I had a couple gay guy friends in high school and college, but didn't know any gay women. In my mind, I had a very like. A homophobic sort of structure in my brain of who gay women were that they all looked a certain way, that they dress a certain way. And here I am in New York City meeting up with my friend from high school who had this incredible rainbow cast of friends who were all different sort of gender presentations and various degrees of binary, non-binary. Like just a million different types of people, just like we know that people are, but it was mind blowing for me. And anyways we, she invited me to my first pride in New York City, and me and the other straight girl hung out at the parade all day long. And then we made out on a dance floor and we dated the rest of the summer. And I came out to my friends and family that summer and really, no one was that surprised but I think it was just like a little bit of a late bloomer. Like I was never really, I dated guys, but I was not really that into it. And I. Just didn't realize. But it was like that sort of total cliche thing, or the first time I kissed her, I was like, oh, okay. That's, I often say that's pretty typical with many people. It's you may know or you may question, or, I was, I god lover to this day, but I dated somebody in high school'cause I was in love with her dad. Who was Oh man. Who was a swimmer. This was high school, so it was, yeah. High school. But her dad was beautiful and a swimmer, and they had the pool and we'd go over to their house after football games and I'd be like, walking in the door, all starry-eyed to this guy. There's a whole other story to that where he actually came out after his kids went to college. Oh, wow. Wow. I ran into him 10 years later. Didn't know it was crazy, but wild. I digress. That's a whole other podcast episode. But I think it's interesting because there, I think we all have that switch and when that switch happens, it's, and for me it was. Went to a very conservative school. My mom was a teacher. I was afraid to come out. I knew something was different. I didn't know what,'cause again, we didn't have, this was 19 84, 3 84 models, four models. We didn't have the role back then. Didn't have role models. We were all preppy. So everyone looked great in a pair of loafers and no socks. And, they're, she knows in a blazer it, so it was very confusing and didn't know, and didn't have the education, didn't have the language, didn't have the experience and the opportunity, especially with our parents. So I think it's always very interesting when that switch.'cause same thing happened to me. It was like, it took one that one time and. Kissed a girl in a bird vie area across the street from my house. And I was like, yeah, I don't, that's not it. And yeah, six months later kissed the boy in that same vie area. And I was like, ah, okay. Oh yeah, this is what it is. And it's so funny how universal it is too. Like I, like even more double down on the cliche, I totally had a huge crush on my best friend in high school, but it was like, she was like, oh, a separate, it's just her. That was, and then I didn't even connect any dots for me that maybe this was, you know who I was. But then you come out, you start dating people and meeting people in your community and you're like, oh, like everyone here had the same experience. Okay. And it's so different. Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, I'm not like. I'm not actually jealous of Gen Z and the generations below them because they have their own, crises that they're going to have to deal with. But definitely I think about it all the time with all of the, pop culture icons and television shows and movies that now have, queer representation on them and in them. And it's just it must be, it's so cool that now we have that where people can see themselves and there's still obviously a long way to go in that in the diversity of representation, but it's very cool that people can see themselves. Yeah and now more than ever. More important for those of us who are, seasoned, if you will, in our journey to get out there and speak about it and talk about it and make sure that our rights are retained and make sure that those stories continue to come out. I started this podcast so people could share their journey and share their story, and it's amazing when you see the response to this day, it blows my mind that we've had amazing episodes. All my guests, the last two seasons, every single one of them has just been mind blowing for me. And the one guest that's now been on three times who. Literally maintains the top three spots of the most downloaded podcasts of both seasons is the same person and it's a trans man named Archer. And if you would've told me that was going to be the case when I started this podcast, I would've told you that's not going to happen. Yeah. I was, it was just going to be this myriad and would people resonate with him? And I'll tell you it, they've resonated and it's ing, those are the top three, the top four is dating. So it's all very interesting. Okay. The conversations that people resonate with. Yeah. But I think it, it proves an interesting point in that, I may get a little flack for saying this, growing up into and through the communities of the cities in which I've lived, it has been a very predominantly gay, white, cisgender male kind of representation, right? There hasn't been a lot of people of color, there haven't been a lot of people from the bisexual community or the lesbian community or the trans community. And that was really important to me when I moved to San Diego after I left the desert, which was very cisgendered, white male, gay male. To move here was, I need to have that diversity in that circle. And as I've met you and many of the other members of our community, I think we live in a really beautiful city in which that diversity is definitely there and I appreciate that diversity. But again. I feel like we as, I'll use the word elder even though I don't want to as these elders, really make sure that now they have a chance to tell their story and that they feel seen and heard, especially with everything that's going on in our world right now. It's a scary place for them to be. I think even as easy as it is to see that representation when it's called into question, it's tough. So I am I'm grateful for people like you, especially out in the community and doing the things that you do. So you go to college, so you've come out, go to college, right? Talk a little bit about that transition between those college years and then moving into your service. What does that transition look like? Yeah, so I mentioned I, I came back from Rwanda and Uganda and I was, I really wanted to do something about the, what I felt was an injustice. And the US government wasn't doing enough or anything about what was happening in Darfur four, which was one of the first times that the UN had actually declared the first time that the UN had declared what was happening in Darfur four a genocide while it was still ongoing. So it wasn't like, we weren't sure what was happening, like we knew for a fact the international community knew for a fact that there was hundreds of thousands of civilians were being killed by the Sudanese government. And so I started organizing on my campus. I got connected with a couple of other students across the country who were also organizing around this topic. And this was right when Facebook and Gmail had just come out. And so for the first time, students had this ability to organize really rapidly and at scale across the country. So we started organizing. I became like the state director for Illinois. Then I became the national organizing director, managing a bunch of student volunteers. And by the time I was a senior in college, we had thousands, literally thousands of chapters at high schools and colleges across the country that were organizing around this. And we did some really cool things. We passed legislation. This is, height of Iraq and Afghanistan war. So there was not a lot of appetite for additional foreign engagement. But we passed a funding package through Congress that provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to the African Union which was. Providing peacekeeping operations there. We passed di state level divestment legislation for at like various states from their pension funds, divested from Chinese companies that were funding the government of Sudan and had their pension funds invested in these Chinese oil companies. And were able to pass that legislation in over 25 states. And so it was just this real, I didn't have any background or experience in this, but it was, we were able to learn and teach ourselves and learn from other movements and other things like the South African Apartheid movement and be able to apply that to what we were doing. And I just totally fell in love with it. Like the idea that you could see something that's wrong in the world and then actually work through the systems of government and levers of power to change it. And apply real pressure in doing so. And so that was intoxicating to me. So I moved, after I graduated from college, I moved to Washington DC to really put some legs under the student movement, turn it into a real organization with a few other students who were graduating that year and ended up doing that work for several years in dc. I apologize for backtracking just a little bit because I want, I wanna, I think this is an interesting transition. When you were in high school and in going into college, how did you decide on those two majors? What was the conversation? Because that's not typical. Yeah, no. A girl that grew in San Diego and Encinitas surfing and, how did, what was that conversation? Where'd that come from? I guess so I, I went to Northwestern because of it's journalism school and they offered me a full ride. So that was a no brainer. Nice. And went off to college for that. But I'd always been really fascinated by African history, like post-colonial African history, and maybe this is the political nature of my brain and my interests, but thinking about this country that had been artificial, or continent that had been artificially divided up into these countries based on colonial powers and, different things that had nothing to do with the cultures and the people that live there. And then in many instances, and in many countries where, new democracies or newly formed coalition governments, there's just so much happening on the continent and there is so much geopolitical, drama at play between the, the struggles between China and the rest of the world to gain foothold in African countries and around the resources that African countries had. It just was fascinating to me. It was like, you could, there are so many incredible stories that are unfolding in real time. It just felt very alive to me and I wanted to learn about it and be a part of it. And so I, picked up an African studies minor and then and then ended up being able to study abroad over there. And and then and that's, it's just in one tiny little corner of the continent. But that is how I got there. And so I thought, I think, I thought at the time that I was going to, maybe I was going to graduate and be, a journalist, an international journalist focused on Africa, but got a little way laid by activism. Yeah. Did you always have this confidence. Yeah, I think my family would say yes. I think less, I would maybe code it less as confidence and more as like a high capacity for risk and a love of adventure. Okay. Definitely been a lot of things that I'll take that felt, I have felt very uncomfortable and not confident doing, but I have a high risk, high reward kind of mechanism in my brain and and I just am like very passionate about seeing the world and experiencing different things and living in other people's shoes. Did that come from your parents or grandparents or where did they that came from? I think a big part of it came from my mom. She was very I mentioned she was a Montessori teacher and she was very, all about experiential learning and she was very. Confident in me. My parents were very confident in me. They definitely instilled this sense of, you can do whatever you want, even if we don't know how to help you do that. Like I remember when I went off to college, I went by myself and I was, my wife always makes fun of me.'cause I say I was 17 when I went to college. I really was. I turned 18 my freshman year. And I had only lived in Encinitas and here I was in Chicago now I remember calling my mom and I had a work study job and, all these an offsite job and all these ways that I was paying my bills and everything else. I remember calling my mom and saying, it's like September and it's getting really cold and the warmest thing I have is a hoodie.'Cause I'm an Encinitas kid. I'm walking around barefoot yeah. Most of the time. And she's oh, don't worry, hun, we got you a winter coat for Christmas. And it was like, I'm like looking out the window, there's already sleet. It was like September, October. And I was like, I'm going to be dead by Christmas. I don't get a winter. You know what? I can't afford this on my like$8 an hour job or whatever it was. And and so it was definitely a lot of trying to figure things out on my own that but my parents were always very supportive of me doing that, even if they like, weren't in a position to actually support or help me navigate. Sure. Are you an only child? I am. Yeah. Yeah. I started out as an only child. Yeah. My, my parents got divorced when I was in college and my dad ended up marrying the mother of my, one of my childhood best friends. So I have a stepsister now who has known me. My, we've known each other our entire lives and we basically grew up together as sisters. But yeah. Yeah, there's a little, there's a little only I still cons. I have a half-brother from my dad's third marriage. I still consider myself an only child. Oh yeah, definitely. Because there was so much time in between and Yeah. It's just the attitude and the, that's the posture I think comes from, is we are only children through and through. Yeah. Siblings are great. My wife will tell you, my wife will tell you I definitely have a only child syndrome. Yeah. I'm very unique in this. My ex-husband told me the same thing, so I told the same thing. So I'm curious we know, we talked a little bit about the kind of confidence and that kind of drive and that kind of, it's. It resonates with me because my parents also got married right outta college and they both moved to Africa. They moved to Cairo, Egypt. Oh, no way. And spent many years there and I was supposed to be born there. It's a whole story in a podcast episode, but my dad worked for the UN and my mom was a teacher in the American school There. And they lived there for many years. And then my mom had some complications and went home and had me, and then of course my dad came home in 1966 and went off to war. So there was that kind of interesting timeframe, but I've had many conversations with her about what was that like to be a 25-year-old, blonde hair. She looked like a blonde hair. Jackie Kennedy, and she's walking around Cairo, Egypt, unsupervised what my dad was off to and his duties and what an amazing experience, an amazing time and a growth opportunity for her. What was that like for you when you started to, venture off and go do this school abroad? That's a very interesting place. Some people go to Europe and some people go, yeah. And you've gone off awful lot of US Americans in gone off to Africa in the Uganda. Yeah. Yeah. What was that like? That it, I love that you expressed that about, her really standing out in Cairo. And I think for me, that was one of the biggest actual lessons. We, it was a really unique program. It was all taught by local Ugandan professors, so we really, and we lived in a home, we lived in somebody's home that, that lived there. And we really got a like not an expat as much of an expat I should say. I'm sure. I'm sure it was certainly tempered by the fact that we were American kids, but less of an expat experience and more, a little more authentic. And that meant that, everywhere I went, I stood out. I was the white person that had, I had blonde hair at the time, and, I really stood out and everywhere I went, eyes were on me, and everything I did was scrutinized. And it taught me, it was an incredibly formative experience because, I grew up in Encinitas, predominantly white neighborhood. Northwestern was a little more diverse, but still very homogenous and in, in, in all types of ways, racially, class, like the whole nine. And so to be in an environment where I really experienced full-time, what it felt like to never not have eyes on me what gave me a really much better understanding of what it would be like to be a person of color in a predominantly white environment. Obviously nothing like what that's like in America or and with sort of the flipped, this idea that I'm a mazu, I'm a white person, so I'm like fancy and, wealthy and to be respected or whatever. Like it was a positive sort of projection of, but and that was very unique in a unique privilege on its own, but it's still no less uncomfortable to be in that position all the time. It just was, that was I think probably one of the most formative experiences I had from that time. The other piece being just how, learning how much I didn't know. I came in because I had, because I was an African studies major, with what, two and a half, three years of African history under my belt. I came into the experience with a little more information than a lot of my, the other American students who were in the program, who were studying other things and just wanted to be in Uganda and Rwanda and. I remember so distinctly, this was like the thing that really catalyzed my desire to get more involved in the df to get involved in the Darfur movement was we were driving back from Rwanda back to Kampala, and we had a really intense, I think week two weeks there. And on the radio there was a report that came over the BBC that the president of South Sudan's plane had fallen out of the sky. And just a few weeks prior there had been broke, brokered a truce between Sudan and South Sudan, which ended a multi-decade long civil war. And so this person dying in a sort of mysterious plane crash, jeopardized that. And I knew a little bit and I started explaining, what the politics of Sudan and how that related to Darfur and my, our the professor driving the van turned around and he was like. You don't know what you're talking about. You sound very uneducated. You need to read more before you start teaching. And I was so embarrassed. He in front of all my, he didn't, he wasn't unkind, he just was like, that is, be like a, I don't know, a, somebody trying to explain the politics of South Bay to, who lives in Canada. I don't know. But yeah. Yeah. It really fired me up to actually learn. And to check myself on my sort of hubris about what I knew and what I didn't know. And that then inspired me to want to educate my peers about what was happening. And involve them in trying to listen to. The solutions that were being brought to us by the African Union, by, people who are advocating for the US to do more, who were Sudanese and Dar Fori. And to let them lead the conversation about what they needed and then use the power that we had as American voters to, to try to put that into play. Yeah. How, not, how, what's the emotion, what's the feeling that's going on inside of you as you're living there and you are going through this journey of being in a foreign country, of learning all the things that you were learning and seeing all the things that you said you saw. What's the, what are the feelings that are going through it? It's easy to understand how that drives you and how that makes you make the decisions that will lead you to the next chapter of this journey. But what are you feeling?'Cause not everybody gets a chance to go and experience, a country that's in. Experiencing genocide. They don't. And so did that seem to drive you more towards a different direction? Had you studied somewhere else? Does that make, I don't wanna sound naive. Yeah, no, I think my, but no, it definitely, it's a huge experience. Huge. Yeah. It had a huge impact. And Rwanda, my time in Rwanda was a lot shorter than my time in comp in Uganda. But I think when you're, this was early two thousands. The Gemini was in the nineties, so this was very recent and we would like you would talk to people who were like, yeah, the, that is like the house I hid in, as a child when militias were coming through with Michelle. It was very recent in people's memory and even the physical damage of it, like on the buildings, at the memorials where there were still human remains, like visible it just really made it seem very real. It removed any sense that this was hypothetic, like violence is hypothetical, that it made it very real, that people can do horrible things to each other and especially people like, who know each other can do horrible things to each other. I hadn't yet been to Europe. I think that was later in, in the next couple years. And I like visited concentration camps in Germany and all that, but that felt even, even being there feels very real. But it's, it's generation, a generation ago and it feels a little, it's hard to imagine, but living in a place where you can still see it, like in the streets, in the pockmarks on the buildings. It made it really real to me. And so I think that's why I felt so connected to what was going on in Dar four. There were people living this reality right then. And I don't know if it's being a woman or being gay or I don't, just how I was raised in a theology that really espouse, that we're all interconnected in a lot of ways that it just felt like my proximity to the issue didn't mitigate my responsibility to do something about it, and that I should be. Speaking up and speaking out and doing what I could to help. And there's a million different ways that I could have been involved at that moment. Again, two wars that the US is involved in under questionable circumstances, like lots of injustices at home. But for whatever reason, I think that really co you know, that experience of being there really made it seem much more personal to me. And that I could imagine my friends from those places. Being a part of that and being impacted by it. Yeah, it's interesting. I was in South Africa many years ago. I was there on safari with a family through my work, obviously coordinating this amazing trip. And we were in Johannesburg, which obviously was an amazing experience in of itself, staying in a hotel where Nelson Mandela wrote his manuscript. And even that was just, you're going through these amazing moments, and I'll never forget they took us on a tour and we went to the city of Alexandria where I think it was 300,000 people lived in a three square mile radius. And as we're on the bus on the way there, and we knew that there was poverty, we knew that there were some pretty dire conditions in our minds as Americans, as Californians, as. Privileged as we were. The assumptions that we had were met with such a stark reality, but it wasn't in what you think our experience was seeing this community of people who were tighter than any community that I've ever seen anywhere in the world. There may have been five or six or seven people living in a, shack with no floors, but they were beautifully dressed clean. They were, there was a beauty sh shop on every corner in a little shack. And the smiles and the sense of community, that welcomeness that we had, we went to an orphanage and, were there with 60 children and just it changed my life in a different way than the Safari did. That in and of itself, you're like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. It's not the zoo. But in that moment of being with those kids and spending time with these families and really understanding, I. Their plight. And this was, by Zambia. So where we were and they were still in the midst of a revolution even then. And and Zimbabwe. So there was this in incredible, wrong word, but there was this opportunity to really see that. Life was very different for many people. But at the end of the day, we were all human beings. We all wanted to be seen and heard and respected and safe. And for me that was an experience that I came back with and changed. Unfortunately for me, I think it didn't drive me into a particular avenue like you. I'm impressed and very grateful and in awe of people like you who come back and continue this fight. So you've, I'm going to jump a little bit ahead'cause otherwise you'll only talk for two days. Sure. So you have that experience and then you come home, right? So what happens then? What's that like? What's the next step? So I think I, there was a couple of kids at Northwestern who were already talking about what was going on in Sudan. There had been like MTV, this is. So crazy how this just wouldn't have been the case even like 10 years later just because of the way social media really revolutionized how and what we were all talking about. But MTV had done a special about DAR four that a bunch of college kids had seen. And there, there was a conference that was held at Georgetown University where a bunch of folks went and talked about what they could do. And a few of them were from Northwestern. And so they had started this little chapter at Northwestern and I got involved and started getting more involved. And I have a brain for organizing. I just, as soon as I can see a system, I wanna improve it and make it easier for people to engage with. And so I just started taking on more and more leadership roles and we were. We were our, like the head, the president, and the sort of the leadership com committee for this organization. It was called Stand Students Taking Action now, DAR four. It was all centered around Georgetown. So every semester we'd all fly out there on our own dime to do think about what the strategy was and then put punch that all out to our various chapters. And it was really interesting. We grew so fast. I think we had a million people on our email list after the first year, which was crazy back then because people were just getting, email addresses outside of their school emails and Facebook pages and things like that. And, all of a sudden you have a million people who are really engaged and they're like, what's next? What do we do? And we felt really strongly that we didn't want to just do the type of activism that makes people feel good, but doesn't accomplish anything. We really wanted to be strategic and we were super fortunate that there were a number of people who had come out of the Clinton administration who had been in positions of authority when. Rwanda occurred and had really not done much about it. Who felt extraordinarily amounts of guilt for their failure to act in that situation? They were, a few of them, John Prendergast was one. Were housed at the Center for American Progress, a liberal, progress, the Democratic White House in waiting.'cause this is during the Bush administration. And we reached out to them and we said, look, we're a bunch of students. We have a huge amount of numbers, but we don't know what we should be asking for. We don't know how the levers of foreign policy work. Like how do we get boots to the African Union soldier deploying without boots? How do we get training for these peacekeepers who have no training in gender-based violence? And yet, like we know that half the population of these refugee camps are women. Like how do we do this? And how do we get Congress involved in a smart way? And so they really helped. Guide us and say, this is what we could have used in Rwanda. Here are things we know that the African Union needs. So they became like the intel chip for the student movement so that we could actually advocate for things that were going to make a difference, and build real political will to do that. So all of that was like a, it was like getting a master's in, government relations as a, from a, the time I was an undergrad to the first couple years out of college to be able to. Be on the hill, be in a senior leadership position at 23 years old. And with all this grassroots power behind us, and then actually be able to do things that were going to make it a priority for the US government. It was pretty cool. Yeah. I know I said I wasn't going to use this word, but I'm going to use it anyway. I just, you're such a badass. I just love you. I really do. And I say that humbly'cause I know you are the most humble person. You are incredibly gracious and incredibly kind. You've hosted several events at your home, you and of your, you and your wife introducing the community to various political, leaders and people running for office. And it's been such a pleasure to be in that space. And you're so humble and so gracious and I just appreciate that. I'm not going to be after all these compliments, Eric. Here's the thing. I think especially these days, IM on complement's mission because we all need a little hug or a little love that's real. And we all need to sometimes hear that who we are in the world and what we're doing in the world is making a difference. Whether that means you're making a difference in your own community, just within your community, or you're out changing policy and creating change, it doesn't matter. We're watching what's happening now in Texas with the floods, and we're watching communities come together to, to go out and search and rescue. It's a devastating and tragic situation and that, that community will be changed forever. And yet when you see the news and you're watching the people that have come together, they're out doing what they can. And that's where I believe our change will come. I think we're a little overwhelmed at the moment and we see maybe a lot of. Noise coming at us, but I think if we can stay focused, it's the little things that we do. It's the reaching out, making sure that your friends are fine, your family's fine, that people are good in the community. If that's what you can do, go out and do it.'cause not everybody has the opportunity to go out and do things to such a grand scale as others. And it's okay. A hundred percent and matters, I'm say in a time where. There's so much stuff that is just, we're inundated with whether, it's like, whether it's lawful but awful, like deployments of the National Guard into the streets of LA to seeing friends and neighbors be snatched outta their homes to all of the attacks on the L-G-B-T-Q community, on the specific attacks on trans people, especially trans people who served our country honorably, who are having their careers and lives upended and ripped apart by this like very hateful and spiteful administration. It's just so much, and the point I think of all of it is to make us feel cynical and like it's also bad, so I'm just going to tune it all out and I'm going to disconnect from other people and be alone. And in reality, like. Not everyone has the ability to go to a protest or has the ability to go to Washington and bang on their, their elected officials door. But the power that I've found and the inspiration and hope I've found in our community and just, and really doubling down on the things that I can control as an individual, my relationships, making sure I'm checking in on people. I'm, I, as I'm a board member of the San Diego LGBT Community Center. And that is like an organization that is doing incredible work every day, direct services to our community. And I have, an easier job than anyone who actually works there because I am not in the trenches. I just get to, tell people about the work they're doing and help them raise the resources to keep doing it. But that makes me feel. I'm actually like me specifically. I'm doing something that makes a difference. I'm not just adding to the noise. And I really try to not like, amplify and put in my friends' faces, all the bad stuff. My work is dealing with Washington now. And it's important for to educate, but it's also, there's a point where it becomes so overwhelming that it just causes people to feel like, that's it. I'm out, I'm done. And that's really the, that's when they've really won, is when they make us feel like we, there's nothing we can do and we're disempowered and too burned out. Yeah. I think it's great what you're doing here, Eric, like having these conversations and giving people the joy of our community and the stories that give people hope and inspiration is really neat. Thank you. And it means the world to me, coming from you and I'm really proud of our town. I'm proud of San Diego. We've stepped up on a couple situations and circumstances and we have a lot of people in our friendship circle that are out doing amazing things and running for office and making sure that people are getting into office. And we have people that are sick and stamps on postcards, at the center. And we have people that are out knocking on doors. And, even just like you said, checking in on people and doing what you can is what really makes a difference. I have a last couple questions that I have to ask you. Sure.'cause I know I can't show up in your house again and not ask, when did you meet your beautiful wife? Oh, thank you. We met, we actually met through a lunatic dog that we now own together. So I had, come back from my last deployment. I was stationed at MCRD, San Diego, the Recruit Depot, down by the airport. And I knew I was going to be getting outta the Marine Corps soon and I really wanted a dog. And I at this, my mom was really sick at this point in my life. I was taking care of her. It was like a full-time second job. And I was feeling really emotionally run down, just gone through breakup. And all I wanted was a dog, to come home to and go running with and all that. And I. But I had zero time. So every weekend I would try to get to the Humane Society as quickly as I could, but by the time I get there, there would only be like 20 people in front of me. And the building that I lived in had breed restrictions at the time, so I couldn't like just adopt a pit bull. It had to be, I. So anyways, I'm exhausted by everything that's going on in my life. I'm crying about this to a friend at a bar one night and she's oh, actually I have a friend who's looking to rehome her dog, and I have a photo and like information. She shows me the photo. She's a really good looking dog. And so I ended up texting the, this girl she's you can come over and meet her. She's got some behavioral issues. And so I'm like, okay. I drive over in my pickup truck, get out. I'm wearing skinny jeans, like a denim shirt, boots. This girl opens the door. We're wearing the exact same outfit. She has the exact same truck that I do parked in the driveway. We're like this dog is never going to know that. It's cha, she's clearly it's changed queer. Yeah. So I ended up taking this dog. The dog is an absolute maniac, but she and I become friends. She introduces me to her circle of friends and one of them was Carol and that's how we met. But from Carol's side of the story, if she's telling it, she's she heard that the dog got rehomed. Her name is Koa and she was like, what? Muck adopted that crazy dog. Crazy dog. Yeah. And now she's the favorite mother. And Oh, I love, yeah. So the dog's amazing. I've had the pleasure of meeting that dog. I love you two together. I, if you don't mind me sharing every time I come to the house I love the fact that you have chickens and you have your own eggs. I'm very jealous. I'm very jealous. I want to come over for breakfast. You should be. They're amazing. I wanna come over for breakfast sometime and have your eggs. You're welcome too. But I just wanna say thank you to both of you.'cause like I said, you're both very generous and you open your home and you allow people to come and learn and get educated and they. They learn and they experience what it means to be a stand for something just by virtue of being there. And so many times that I've been there and met some amazing people and heard some amazing stories of their own over the last couple years, I've always left very grateful to you and to Carol for being that not only that stand for us to be able to experience that, but also within the community. You two are just so well loved and needed and necessary. So I wanna say thank you for not only who you are individually for the community and for the world at large and all the work that you do through your organization and through your foundation. But who you both are as far as a couple in the community is really important and powerful. So I wanted to thank you for that. I appreciate that and I will make sure to let Carol know. Please do. What's next for you? Right now, so the work that I do in DC is it's really principally focused on elevating the voices of vets and military families to have an impact on issues that matter to us. And that sometimes is like very straightforward, like making sure that this administration doesn't fire everyone who works at the veterans affairs, administration, and guts our healthcare as they want. They've stated that they want to do, but also. Veterans are multidimensional people. We're our community is very diverse. A lot of veterans are immigrants. A lot of veterans care about conservation and public lands. A lot of veterans are members of the L-G-B-T-Q community. And so our special sort of niche is making sure that those stories are told, those voices are heard, and we're pushing through legislation that I improves the lives of everyone in our community. And so we have a lot to fight back against. Right now there's just, like we talked about earlier, so much going on, so much truly destructive things happening at both to the veterans community and in the active duty military. So lots of fight back against, but we're also not taking our eyes off what's ahead. And a big part of the work that I do is also focused on getting democratic veterans elected at every level of office. So our, last cycle, our priority races were a couple of races in the US Senate and in the house, but we also endorse all the way down ballot and our we had 169 candidates win the last cycle. All the way down to, local school board and a lot of conservative and purple places. So we know that veterans are a really effective candidate to run in this environment. They can speak across party lines. They do appeal to people who might not be interested in voting for Democrats, but would vote for a veteran. And 20, 26 and beyond is really where we're keeping our eye on the ball. And and then we're also suing the heck out of this administration all kinds of different ways. Yeah, I feel very privileged to have a job that lets me have an avenue to fight back. And, we've actually had some wins. We've won a couple of court cases. We succeeded in getting a horrible provision stripped out of the very, very bad, big bad bill that just passed. But that provision would've made 250 million acres of public lands eligible for private sale. We got that out of the bill. We did that through organizing and strategic pressure. So it's not all bad. There's a lot that's really bad, but we're also winning on some fronts. And I refuse to preemptively acquiesce to authoritarianism. So we're going to keep fighting and keep fighting for our democracy. You bring up a good point. And before I say the point, I'm going to, you're always welcome to come back. There's a lot to unpack and there's a lot to talk about. So you are amazing. You're always welcome to come back and join and be a guest on the show. You made a good point and I think it's something that Kate Bishop also said when I talked to her last season, was so much is focused on, the top of the ticket so much is focused on that president that who's that going to be? And it's really important for people to get educated all the way down ballot to local school boards and to judges and all of those things. It's it's overwhelming, but there are ways, and I've learned so much over the past couple years, being around you all, there are ways for people to have it not be overwhelming. There are organizations that you can reach out to and you can use their recommendations on who to vote for in your in your ballot. So as we come up into midterms next year, I think it's important for people to not, like you said, don't. Don't bury yourself under the covers. Know that vote matters. Know that your voice matters. Talk to people. I'm having difficult conversations a lot these days that I thought I would never have to have with people that I never thought that I'd have to talk to about it. Yeah. But it's. It is so important, and I don't want people to feel overwhelmed because every single person can make a difference. So thank you for saying that.'cause it just prompted me to remember that you've gotta look at the ballot. It can't just be at the top. It's gotta go all the way down to the bottom. So thank you for that. That's exactly right. And the flip side of that too is that every. There are a lot of issues out there that might not seem like they directly impact us or or you specifically, I know in our community, for instance, like people don't necessarily see the connection between the fight for trans rights and their own lives as members of the lesbian or gay community. The reality is that all of these cases, court cases and policies like they, they are all connected on the right, on the far right's brain. And, the SCT Supreme Court decision that just came out that is a test case. I proving ground for a gay marriage challenge. And so if you think that what's happening to trans people doesn't impact you, or you think that, the. The kidnapping of people by uni uniformed masked men on the street doesn't impact you because you're not an immigrant. Like all of these things are erosions of our rights that we've fought hard for, whether it's, the right to marriage or the right to rule of law and due process. And I think you don't have to be a member of a particular community to an ally to that community. And I think we, we need to not fall for the trap of being divided and really stand together and these core democratic principles that we all believe in. Yeah. I've used this visual a lot with people that I've talked to, and it makes me not feel so overwhelmed. But I've likened this administration to Pigpen in the Peanuts cartoon, who shows up and there's just dust kicked up everywhere, and I have a client like this and they leave, and the you're like looking through the dust. You're like, what just happened? They're kicking the dust up on purpose, right? Because people don't think that these things that are happening will affect them or relate to them. And that's the key component of the conversation that I'm having now with a few people is that. You think that these harsh and horrific things that are happening to the trans community don't affect you, but they do because they affect me. They affect my chosen family and the people that I care about. And at some level, they're going to affect you and someone that, you know down the road. And so it's not just about what you think is your little bubble. And I've used that pigpen analogy a lot, makes people laugh a little bit, which I think is also important. That's good. Yeah, it's important because it's true. It's like the dust is all flying and we're completely lost in our own dust. And that's intentional. Yeah, it's intentional. And to not stick your head in the ground. So my last question to you on this conversation is if you could go back to that young Janessa in elementary school living in Enc Suns eating her tofu what would you tell her about her life today? I. I think I would say that I like hit the jackpot. At the time of my life that I live. And there might be other millennials who were like, what are you talking about? We've been living through crisis after crisis. But for me personally, like I grew up in a time where gay people had no rights and couldn't get married, couldn't serve in the military, couldn't even be open like, safely. And I live a life now where I'm married to a beautiful, incredible person. I was able to serve openly and be discharged honorably. I'm able to use my voice and who I am as a person, as like a thing that is my whole sort of professional life. It is tied to my personal experience and the change that I want to create in the world. And so I feel. Like I stand on the shoulders of a lot of people who came before me who fought for those things and struggled and lost a lot in order for me to have the life I have now. And so I would think, I would tell my younger self that you are benefiting greatly from all of those things and you're living a life of purpose and with a lot of joy in it. And that you owe that to the little girls that are, and little boys that are growing up now to make sure that they have the same rights not less, more more ability, more upward mobility. And you know that we're going to be in the fight for the long haul. Goosebumps happens every time. Goosebumps. Amazing. Thank you again, Janessa, so much for being here. Thank you, Eric. This is a real pleasure. I really appreciate you and thanks for who you are. Appreciate you. Likewise. Take care. Bye for now. Bye. Alright, everyone, thank you again for joining us on today's episode. I hope our conversation resonated with you like it did me, and I cannot wait to sit down with you all again next week. Remember to subscribe to the Just You Podcast on your favorite platform so you can make sure not to miss a new episode, which drop every Thursday. If you like what you hear, you can easily share the podcast and episode. Directly with your friends and if you would rate us and leave us a review, we'd love to hear from you. You can also follow us on Instagram at Just Do You pod as you go out into the world today. Remember to just do you. Alright, talk next week.