The Team House - The Truth About Women in Combat (Cultural Support Team)| Stephanie Rotolo

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

Stephanie Rotolo joins us to talk about her path from Mortuary Affairs and MP work to joining the Cultural Support Team program and deploying to Afghanistan with Special Operations Forces. She breaks down CST selection, working with Afghan female tactical platoons, going out on missions with ODAs, and how those experiences shaped her later work in Civil Affairs across West Africa.Find Stephanie here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-r-d-rotolo-1b01641a6?trk=public_post_feed-actor-nameToday's Sponsors:Mars Men⬇️For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://mengotomars.com/GhostBed ⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start01:43 Stephanie’s origin story and path to the Army07:20 Mortuary Affairs and working at Dover12:53 ROTC, commissioning, and becoming an MP17:04 MP life in Germany and barracks chaos25:31 Discovering the Cultural Support Team program28:14 CST selection and Ranger-led training33:08 Cultural training and preparing for Afghanistan38:11 Training Afghanistan’s Female Tactical Platoon48:00 Operations with ODAs, Rangers, and JSOC58:00 Coming home, reintegration, and CST program gaps1:04:36 Smokey the deployment dog1:12:10 Switching to Civil Affairs and language school1:15:18 West Africa missions in Senegal and Benin1:26:30 Naples, the reserves, Altru, and final reflectionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, I want to tell you tonight about my new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, coming out June 9th. I think, like a lot of you, I read in high school, the short story, the greatest game, which is almost a century old at this point, but it's the classic premise of man-hunting man for sport. This book is based off of that a little bit, but also on stories that I have heard over the years about safari guides that have actually taken hunting parties, wealthy people, hunting poachers in West Africa. That idea kind of cooked off in my mind when I was asked to write a novel

and get back into writing fiction again. And this book is about a ranger with the Ranger Reconnaissance Company who's on a mission in West Africa and gets kidnapped and hunted for sport by a group of wealthy tech billionaires. I had a lot of fun writing this book. And I think you'll have a good time reading it. It's a quick, fast and furious, fast-paced action novel. And I hope you all check it out. It's up there. You can find it wherever books are sold, the hard copy, the hard back, the soft cover, and also the Kindle ebook edition. We'll have some links down in the description for you. The book comes out June 9th. And I hope you all let me know what you think of it. Hey, folks, welcome to the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with

tonight's guest, Stephanie Ritolo. She is currently an officer, a civil affairs officer in the reserves, previously served in civil affairs across West Africa, and also worked with the cultural support team, the female teams that augmented special operations abroad, in her case in Afghanistan, working with Rangers and Special Forces. So Stephanie, welcome to the show. We're really happy to have you here today. Hey, thanks so much for having me. It was really good to catch up with you at soft week as well yeah yeah i mean that's what soft week is good for it's all these people you only get to see like once a year yeah absolutely it's a nice mini reunion um but but this year man that event it's gotten so big um even just from a couple years ago it feels like it's

tripled in size i think they said it was like one third more people this year than last year it was it was visible like you could feel it there was like no room to move but it was It was still a very good time. And they had more security than like at the White House. It was ridiculous. Yeah. Which is crazy too because two of the guys that were working for Tampa PD, one was a guy I was a lieutenant with and one was a guy I was in CA with working for Tampa PD. So like the military is such a small world, but it makes it even smaller.

That Tampa community down there is very small too. Absolutely. Yeah. So let's let's get into you and your background, Stephanie. Let's start off a little bit with your origin story. If you tell us where you grew up, how you grew up, and sort of like what was that path that took you towards the military? Yeah, absolutely.

So I grew up in Brookville, Maryland. It's like 40 minutes outside of D.C., Montgomery County. Had a great childhood. My parents were both public servants, so my mom is actually still running ears to this day. And then my dad was in federal law enforcement. in my whole life. One of four, so kind of a big family, had a great time, spent a lot of time outdoors, spent a lot of time reading. And then despite my interest in reading, I was a really, really bad

high school student. I just had like, I was just like the Black Sheep Wildcard kid, despite my parents' best efforts. They tried really hard. So that was nothing they did wrong. It was just, I just had the bug in me. So I was getting in a lot of trouble doing really poorly in school. Somehow, by the grace of whatever deity, managed to graduate high school, went to community college, and was continuing to just be crazy, but at least I figured out how to get good grades because now I was paying for it. So just being like absolutely wild.

My dad was doing a couple trips overseas. they were still looking for some of like the key 9-11 bad guys. And so my dad was out and about. And again, my mom was running in ER, really busy, had three other kids that she needed to take care of. And so she was just like done with my, can I curse on here? Yeah. Okay, cool. She was just done with my shit, quite frankly.

And I kept going out, getting in trouble, like just doing bad stuff. You know, brushing up against like legal trouble, like things that probably would have impacted my trajectory for a while. And I came home one night after she had explicitly told me, you cannot go out. And my dad was on one of his hunting trips, as we called them. And I was like, whatever. I'm, you know, I think it was 18. Yeah, I was 18, 19. I'm like, whatever, I'm an adult.

I'll do what I want, even though I still live in my parents' house. So I went out and God bless my mom. She was also a legal nurse consultant. So she would go to depositions and testify. And so she had a lot of stuff going on. And I came home, stumbled in. I'm drunk, a little bit high. And she's sitting there working at the kitchen table.

And my mom is from the South Bronx and she has this really thick accent. And she says, where are you? And I'm like, I was out. And she just stares at me. And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm going to get away with this one. So I start walking up the stairs. And it was like, it's like three staircases in their wood.

And I'm starting to make it to my childhood bedroom, which again, I'm like an adult living at my parents' house acting like this. And I hear the creeks coming up the stairs. And I'm like, oh, this isn't good. So I'm in my room and she comes in again. And again, like, where were you? What are you doing? Like, who do you think you are?

And I'm like, whatever. Like, you can't tell me what to do. I have a job. I'm an adult. And no shit, she picks this giant wooden mirror off of my wall, my childhood mirror. It still exists to this day somehow and smashes this thing over my head probably as hard as she could. And I'm like down. I'm down, I'm out.

She has one in one strike. It's like lights out for me. I wake up in my baby brother who would later become a Marine. I don't know if this trauma did something to him or what happened. but he's like grabbing her and like getting her out of the room and I'm like coming to and trying to figure out what's going on. That was kind of when like the light bulb went off of like, man, I'm really making this difficult for my parents who are working so hard to give me everything and, you know, make sure I do the right thing and they tried really hard to send me up for success.

And I'm kind of being like a giant loser. And I'm dating this guy that's like junior enlisted in the Army and like he has a car and a house and he's going to college and him and his friends are like doing whatever they want halfway across the country away from their parents and being adults and I'm like okay so maybe I should do that. So right after that I went to the Army recruiter and I was like what can you do for me? And that's that's when I enlisted. I finished my associates and shipped out and yeah the rest is history. What did what did your what did your parents think about that decision? You know, I think they were, well, I know they were like horrified and scared. And my mom didn't want to talk to me for a while. But I think that's probably natural as like a parent is just

to be scared. I think it turned to pride pretty quickly. And my dad always laughs that like the easiest time now looking back in my military career for him was when I was at basic. But he like didn't think that at the time. What about what year was this? 2012. Okay, so yeah, I mean, it's understandable that they're scared, seeing the headlines for the last, you know, previous 10 years. Yeah, absolutely. And you came in the Army as a mortician.

Yeah, so Mortuary Affairs, 92 Mike. It's under Quartermaster. And I was going, you know, when you go through like the list of available jobs with the recruiter, and they're like, oh, that's a good one. This is a good one. The recruiter is like, I'm like, wait, what is that mortuary or something? And like, he's like, yeah, you don't want that. That's weird.

And, like, I was a weird kid, like, super, like, macab and just, like, dark and like reading Edgar Allen Poe. Yeah, yeah, just, you know, and like going to Warp Tour and thinking I was like so cool and pierced my ears in the bathroom. So I'm like, oh, that's, like, edgy. And so I'm like, all right, well, this guy thinks it's weird. Like, my interests are peaked. And so, yeah, enlisted as a 92 Mike Mortuary Affairs.

My first unit was at Dover in Delaware and super eye-opening. Really learned a lot, I think set the stage for my career to come. Like starting your career out with seeing the horrible final result of the failures of policy decisions and strategy decisions and the whole gamut. Like I did not realize the weight of that at 19th. at 19 years old, like I knew this was a very serious, like, sacred role and it needed to be taken seriously, and I needed to be a professional and really make sure I knew what I was doing and I knew how to do it correctly because of the seriousness. But yeah, I think it only really came to me later, like how much that probably set the stage for how I view military service

and also our leaders that deal in the blood of America's sons and daughters. Do you want to tell people a little bit about what mortuary affairs does? Because it is an important job. I mean, you guys receive the dead, essentially. Yeah, I mean, you're spot on. It's the processing and care of our fallen. So when I enlisted, there was only 900 across the active and reserve for, I think, all of the branches. So like Army, Air Force, everybody.

So it's pretty small. I don't know what the numbers look like now. But yeah, exactly as you said, I mean, it's from recovery to internment. So there's a lot involved in that. I mean, every death is pretty much treated like a homicide in terms of how the military process goes. So you do the full autopsy. There is like the chief medical examiner at Dover is in charge of everything. So you're not just like going in and doing your own thing as a private.

And like the folks at Dover, if you haven't had a chance to go to Dover, at least like just kind of check it out and speak to some of the people there. I mean, that is, you want to talk about professionalism in the Department of War? Like that is the cream of the crop. Those people really take it seriously, wake up every day, like doing the worst thing and being there for people on their absolute worst day. And they do it well and they do it professionally. So, yeah, I mean, it's basically just the whole process.

So it just depended on what part you were going to be assigned to. For our like clinical rotation things, I guess is what you would call them. So you could get hands on because again, it can be very jarring to handle remains. Like if you haven't done that or haven't been exposed to that. So it's kind of a, they do like an exposure cycle. But we went and supported the Richmond morgues in Virginia because it was like going through their murder capital of the world phase for a minute there. So they were super overworked.

so we went there, got some of that hands-on training, and then also like that diversity in cases. Because unfortunately, like what's coming through Dover or what was coming through Dover was was pretty much the same over and over again. It was, you know, IEDs, that type of thing, or like severe head injuries as a result of an IED or honestly motorcycle crashes. Like that convinced me that like nobody should ride motorcycles because the amount of young men coming through on those tables that were perfectly healthy and had entire careers ahead of them and were only in that facility because of a motorcycle crash and largely not because of something they had done but something that a driver near them had done was like okay cool I'm like a risky edgy kid but like

motorcycles ain't it yeah I mean those are going to be fighting words with some people I know but I I said what I said, at least my helmet. Yeah, no, I get what you're saying, though. And I mean, I think motorcycles are like the bane of the Army's existence in some ways because, I mean, it's like constantly an issue about the reflective vests and the safety gear they want you to wear and being registered and trained for that reason, because a lot of service members do wipe out and either hurt themselves or get themselves killed. Yeah, it was eye-opening in that regard. But yeah, I mean, overall, the experience, like I said, very formative for me. I'm very thankful. Again, it kind of dark, but I'm very thankful that that was my entry into the Army

because I think it it gave me the perspective to take all of my decisions later on very seriously that like this isn't call of duty. Like, these are real lives and I have handled the consequences of it. So, yeah, I was really glad that I made that choice. And about what time was it that you thought about becoming an officer? Pretty much when I was in, like, going to basic training. So my dad, again, while he was terrified and eventually proud, he was like, if you're going to do this, you have to promise me at some point you'll become an officer. So I got into, like, an ROTC program, came back, weren't into the reserve status,

and then was able to go to school and just finished. two years because I already had an associate's. And George Mason, I applied to like so many colleges. Again, terrible high school student. But I only figured it out when I went to community college and I did really well, probably because I was paying for it and nobody was like there to hold my hand. And so I was just applying to schools that I knew had good programs and then had money for ROTC programs and more importantly had slots that wouldn't delay commissioning. and George Mason is a pretty big ROTC battalion. I have to imagine it still is.

They had a spot. It would delay me by like a half a semester or so, but I was still going to commission, so I really didn't care. So yeah, I think like when I was going to basic training, once the reality of like going to basic training started hitting. And I wasn't like the cool, edgy bell of the ball anymore. And I had to wear my giant Coke bottles.

classes and, you know, slick my hair back. I think I realized pretty quickly, like, maybe I should listen to my father more. So yeah, that's when I make that decision. So I wasn't enlisted for for very long, but it was a, it was enough to at least kind of get some experience, kind of see what it's like, at least on the, the entry level. And you commissioned as an MP? I did. I commissioned as an MP. Was that your choice or was it the brand? given to you? It was, which I know is like, I don't know, I kind of laugh about it now because everybody was like, go am I, go am I. And my dad was like, go am I. And I did not listen to my dad in that scenario. I went MP, but I will tell you, I loved being an MP. I think the thing that

kind of swayed me was I really appreciated the like wartime, peacetime crisis mission of like pretty much no matter what if we're dealing with you state side, it's like you're having a really bad day. So I think, again, that's that like trend of like, if this is somebody's worst day or this is a dark day for mankind, maybe I want to have my hands on it. And I thought being an MP was a way to kind of like be helpful in crisis, be, you know, some kind of like support or guiding system when there's chaos going on. And I loved it. I had a great thing. I had a great time. Got to do my platoon leader rotation. We went to Germany. We did a rotation through Germany and got to work with the Politzai, which is like, I'm sure you've been there, but

the policing, like, wild, had so much fun with them, learned a lot. Got to see some, some crazy stuff because, as we know, soldiers make really poor choices when they get overseas. And so got to work with like a lot of different agencies. You were doing, you were doing sort of like shore patrol. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, it was, yeah. And then also it was joint patrolling

with the Politz eyes. So they had had a lot of the refugees from the Middle East had come in at that time. And they were having some pockets of areas where things were not going great. There was like a lot of community push back. And then of course, US service members

wanted to get in the mix of all of that. or it just so happened that the neighborhood was next to like the hottest club. So kind of getting to see how a European entity, especially the Germans, like, handled that was pretty eye-opening. And then a great opportunity to work with the Air Force. Hey, guys. I'm Jack Murphy here at the team house. And today I want to tell you about the sponsor for tonight's show, Mars Men. This is a natural testosterone support supplement.

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Upgrade your sleep with ghost bed makers of the coolest beds in the world. Some exclusions apply. See cipher details. Thank you, Ghostbed for sponsoring the show. Thank you guys for helping support the show. Bye. What were some of the crazy things that happened while you were over there doing that job? In Germany?

Yeah. Well, I did get subpoenaed for one thing. These guys, rigors, we all know, one of the craziest MLSs in all of the Army, which is insane because that makes no sense. If you're in charge of making my parachute, I want you to not use drugs and make poor choices. but they like beat this guy within an inch of his life, a cab driver in Germany,

and then they tried to run, and they ran into the barracks, hammer drunk. I mean, everybody was just three sheets to win, but they were so drunk that they couldn't figure out, like they should take their club clothes off and stuff. And I had just gotten off. I worked a midnight shift for one of my soldiers. Like I was like, hey, I'll work it.

You go, like, recover. You know, because that's what, like, leaders eat last and stuff like that. So I was like, I'm going to be cool and like take the shift. And so I did the shift and I'm like exhausted. And I come back and, you know, I already turned in like my service weapon and I just have my little like duty phone. And I was staying in the barracks, which is like MPs are not supposed to be co-located in the barracks, but their solution. So they put like my soldiers on one side and then they had the rigors on the other side. And then their solution for the MP officer to not live with her soldiers was to put me in the rigor side of the barracks.

So I'm like getting ready for bed and, you know, I have my big sweatshirt on and my glasses. Again, still super thick. I have my retainer in. And I start hearing like a commotion down the hallways. Like you know how barracks hallways are. A ruckus. Yeah. So you can hear everything.

And so I'm like, oh, that doesn't sound good. And I hear like the, I hear like radio chatter and I'm like, ooh, like really not good. And I hear somebody yelling like stop, stop, like stop, like stop military police. And I'm like, oh gosh. And like instead of taking like five seconds and I don't know, like putting pants on, taking my retainer out, like any of these other things, I just like grab my little baton and my duty phone and I like ran out of my barracks room like an idiot. Again, I had it.

The sweatshirt was like down to my knees. So I'm like, kind of may as well have been wearing like a dress. it was very clear that this was like bedtime attire. And so I like run out and I see one guy like whip past me and the other guy is, the other MP is like crashing this guy into the wall. And I'm like, where's your partner? Where's your partner? And he's like, he's coming.

He's coming. And so I'm like, I start yelling like, hey, we're down here. We're down here. Because again, I have nothing to assist in this scenario. Like I'm deadweight at this point. I'm just in the way. The next guy comes up and they are tackling with him. And I hear like, you know that metallic click on like the part of.

of, um, on like a holster, like the old ones. I start hearing that and this guy's so drunk, he's like reaching for the MP's weapon, like genuinely trying to like, and, uh, I hear O.C. O.C. Nobody wants to hear in a tiny hallway in the middle of the night. And so they just start blasting this guy. And so he's like, he's in this hallway, shoved up against the door. They're just blasting O.C. Not their weapons.

O.C. Um, and there had been like, a group of guys that had come through the hallway. And so I, like, grab them, and I'm, like, moving on the hallway. And I'm like, stop, military police with my retainer list going, like, get against the wall. And they're like, who is this? So very embarrassing for me, but I thought I was taking charge. And then the guy, the door in front of where they're spraying, this guy, he opens the door. That guy now inadvertently gets sprayed. And if you've ever been OC sprayed, which I have plenty of times, I would rather be tased over and over and over.

and for 24 straight. Like, it is crippling to me. And so he starts screaming. Everybody starts screaming. And then I'm like, guys, like, I'm going to go put pants on. What can I do to help? And they're like, do have any water? And I'm like, sure do.

So I go in my room, put my pants on, start pouring water on this guy. They start escorting down the hallway. And that's when we realize right in front of the stairwell, there's like now a gaggle of all of this guy's drunk buddies who are like, oh, there's two MPs. some chick in a sweatshirt with sandals on and there's like six of us so they're like we're going to fight you like they start screaming they're going to like fight the pigs all this stuff and so just like gets out of hand um at that point i had started calling like the duty sergeant and being like this is where we are this is the barracks like we need people to get up here like i don't have anything to assist

with i have no handcuffs i have nothing so that guy comes up the stairwell and thankfully he's a big guy and so they like are all scatter like you know bugs um so we get out some side and I'm trying to get into contact with the unit's first sergeant and commander. And turns out like the commander left the country, but didn't leave like assumption of command orders. So there's just like terrified lieutenant that doesn't know what he's supposed to do. And his first sergeant's telling him that he needs to get up in the middle of the night and drive out there. And so we end up waiting for a while. And finally like the first sergeant shows up and is like, okay, everybody out of the barracks. So they just clear the barracks. Like if you were

in this section of barracks, you were coming outside in the middle of the night and you were lining up. And so we all line up, or they all line up, rather, and we were, like, walking along. And they're like, well, ma'am, since you weren't on duty, we need you to help, like, validate who was there, who was part of the, like, fighting the cops gang and, like, who you saw in the hallway. So I'm like, okay, so I'm, like, walking around the thing. And I'm like, not you, not this guy. This guy, definitely, not this guy. And I point to one, and I'm like, this guy for sure. And he's like, man, fuck you, bitch.

And my soldiers is just like, and so that it just turned to like a scuffle all over again. And it was just like, it was just like a crazy night. I was like, this cannot be real. At least I put my pants on at some point during this. So all that happens. Fast forward, a couple of the guys that got arrested during that ended up getting arrested like a couple weeks later. Like I don't know why they were out or what happened.

I wasn't part of that level of the investigation, but they're like in this barracks. And somebody like pulls out a pistol and like pistol whips somebody's girlfriend, which you're in Germany on a military. Like where did you get like a free range pistol to like just hit people with? So I was honestly like impressed. Like it was terrible. But I'm like we this guy like knows people. We should probably talk to him. And so they end up going to like real prison.

And there was this little holding area. I want to say it was called Sembach. I don't know if you remember. It was like this weird base that like, felt and looked like it was abandoned outside of Kaiser Shlton. And I'm doing like prison checks one night and guess who's in there. Those two knuckleheads. So I think that was probably the craziest in terms of like US mill.

You know, I'm watching like the pullets I get after it when people are not behaving is like fat. They do. They do not fuck around. Oh my gosh. Like people love to scream police brutality in the U.S. And like I won't get into that. But I'll tell you what, the police can be doing whatever they want to do. And people do not pull out their phones.

People do not intervene. People mind their business. And it was very interesting. Ah, those Germans. Oh, man. And if they want blood, they're taking blood. That was like the craziest thing to me. Like, none of this refusing.

Like, we're just going to pin you down and get it. Yeah, yeah. You know, things like that happens sometimes when MPs decide to go onto the Ranger Battalion compound. and they end up getting bowled up by a bunch of privates. And I may or may not have a photograph of a bunch of Ranger Battalion kids wearing Hawaiian T-shirts sitting and laying on top of an MP car in the Ranger Battalion compound. You know what? Everybody's got to bully the MPs a little bit.

Again, I had so much fun. I was so lucky to have, like, the best platoon sergeant in the world. I think that's like, I know it's not really underrated. That's what they always tell you as like a new officer. but seriously to have like a quality platoon sergeant, just like an icon that's willing to train you and work with you and like keep you on the straight and arrow.

Man, yeah, just a great guy who still talk today like 10 out of 10. Very lucky for him. So you're having this big adventure in Germany. When did it come or when did you first hear about the cultural support teams? Yeah, so I got like a, oh, I had subscribed to it. Do you remember S1Net?

No. I think it went away. There was this thing called S1Net. It was like all of the milpers that came out. You could enroll and they would just send the miltipers to your email. And like they were very. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Yeah. And I was in Germany and I was running like half marathon to a marathon like every weekend with this first sergeant who was an ultra marathoner. So we were like really getting after it. I was getting in great shape. I was a really big runner. and I got this like milper that was like, hey, this thing's coming up. And I was like, man, I want to get in on that. But I got to get back from Germany.

I got to figure out when I can go to the selection and do all that. So yeah, I literally just found out about it from having base level milpers forwarded to me. Like, very, very lucky. The timing was right because I had heard about it previously. Like, remember when Ashley's War, the book came out? Yeah, yeah. There was also some of the cadre in my RTC program had kind of talked about it like when I was, you know, going through that. And they were like, you know, this might be something you would be interested in later in life.

And it had just kind of, it ebbed and flowed about when they were doing selections and if they were making new teams. And so when I saw that milper, I was like, this is not a thing that I can wait on. Like if I'm doing it, it's happening now. And so I just started training really hard. And thankfully, my battalion command at that time was, like, super supportive. And he was like, all steam ahead. We will not get in your way. Like, as long as you finish your platoon leader time, like, good to go for us.

So what was, did you have to go to Fort Bragg and go to the selection course and all that? Yeah, yeah. So got back, had to go. We did CA selection, went through that. And then once you did the CA selection, if you got selected for CA selection, then you would continue into this little board with Ranger Regiment. And then there would be another selection on top of that that then you would go through the next couple months of training. So it was like really great when I got CA. So I had no idea what CA was.

Like they asked you, you know, like, why do you want to be CA? And I'm like, I don't know what you guys are. It sounds cool. I'm having a lot of fun at the selection. Like your workouts are great. everybody sounds really interesting. I don't know what you are. I'm just here to try and be a CST. But thankfully, did make it through that and got asked to continue to keep trying for CST selection. What was it like going to CST selection?

It was so hard. Like I said, I was a really big runner. So like lifting weights wasn't really a thing to me. I mean, I had played ice hockey in high school and then I did one season of women. in semi-pro football in D.C. And I kind of like learned a little bit about lifting weights, but I was like running all the way. And then showing up to CST selection and like all of these women are absolute muscle savages and they can run and they're smart. And so CST selection was awesome. It was very intimidating.

It was very stressful by design. But even if I hadn't made CST selection, like just the quality of training even within the selection itself, like to go. with, you know, rangers to the range every day and shoot for hours on end and have to train with them and learn how they do what they do. Like, you're not going to get that anywhere else in the Army. Yeah, yeah. I mean, particularly at that time being a woman in the Army, those kinds of opportunities weren't really there. No, it was so good. And like the medical training. Again, Ranger medics, like best in class, right? So to be able to train and learn all that stuff and then like the tactical

questioning and like the combative slash you found yourself in a bad situation now fight your way out of it like great training regardless if I made it or not and again the women like women that are going through that selection like that's top tier like those are quality cool smart capable people so just the friends that you you make through the process too was very thankful for that What was sort of your impression of what the CST program was as you're going through the training? I didn't really know. Like, it was very funny to me because in one of the like boards, they ask you like, what do you think that we do? And I was like, what do you mean we?

And they were like us. And it's all these rangers. And I'm like, get terrorists probably. And they're like, we shoot people in the face, motherfucker. And I was like, okay. They're like, can you shoot people on the face? And I'm like, yes. So like I didn't really know.

I thought, you know, like I had, again, like Ashley's War and stuff like that and just trying to piece together bits of like news articles that came out around that. I understood it as like getting information off women and children in the battlefield because it was 50% of the population that couldn't be accessed. And ultimately that's what it was. Yeah, it's interesting. It sounds like from what you're saying that the. Ranger Regiment was like very intimately involved in this whole program.

Yeah, I think way more than I expected. Like we did all of our selection was at Fort Benning. In like the little RAPS compound area. We had to take the R-Pat and do all of those things. That was super fun. I learned how to lift weights there because I did not have a choice. Yeah, so we did, you know, all their ranges, all like, the battle drills, like, you know, that CQB training, like all of that.

So, yeah, I mean, Rangers were, I didn't, I guess I should have known that there was other units we would go to once we got where we were going. But all of our training and everything was managed by Ranger Regiment. And I think that was great because, again, like, who's more professional at, like, mastering the basics and showing you how to do it right? Yeah, no, that's really interesting because I think some of the CSTs we've had on this show before probably came into the program a little earlier than you and they went through everything at Bragg as I recall.

Yeah, so we bounced between Benning and Bragg. Yeah, now that I'm thinking, it was between Benning and Bragg, but it was regiment guys and then J-Soc guys, but the bulk of like what I would call the actual selection and not the train-up was regiment. And then, yeah, we did a lot of the, a lot of the ranges with the J-SAC guys. And they were guys that come from bat. So a lot of overlap there. Yeah, so I mean, it was half and half between Benning and Bragg.

Bragg was definitely the more fun time. A little bit more laid back than the Ranger Regiment. Yeah, and also you were just kind of like further along in the process. And it was easier at that point, like, just being like sore and tired all the time to just be like, okay, cool, I messed that up next event. you like there were so many um you can only psych yourself out so many times during the selection that at like some point you're just like i'm just giving it up to whoever is in charge at this point and if i die i die so uh yeah it was just i think it was a lot more fun uh any other specific training you want to get into um before you actually graduate from the course um we did a lot of

like the cultural training because me and my partner I know some of the other CSTs that you spoke to that program had so many evolutions so I really admire them because like you know like Jess and Sam like there was not nearly as much structure around what they were going into and how they're trained up and selected so in retrospect and like knowing how their selections and trainups went like very thankful that there was more of a structure around ours and it was like, you know, actually targeted at what we would probably be doing. The cultural training was really helpful because me and my partner ended up getting the dual hat mission. So on top of our regular like combat missions to go out and, you know, get info from women and children on the battlefield. We also were training the Afghan

Special Operations Female Tactical platoon, so the FTP. So, I didn't know what to expect. Like I had never been anywhere in the world, really. I mean, I've been to Europe, but like I didn't really know what to expect. So I was very glad for like the precursor training on just how women are treated in Afghanistan. I mean, you can read about it and you can hear about it and people can tell you about it, but you don't get it until you see it and you live it and you watch it every day and you have to navigate it as you're trying to train with them. So I was thankful for that because there was a fair amount of trading on kind of how to navigate that space as well.

I'll be honest. I never really understood what you guys do or why it matters for a while because women don't really have any power in that society. So it's like, well, what intel are you really gathering off of them? But we had Alana Duffy in here. She was a counterintelligence NCO. And when they go overseas, they have them do a lot of human. And they had her doing very similar things to what you did. And when she started describing about what a woman scorned will say,

it all kind of clicked and made sense for me. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have distinct memories of this on one old woman being like, I don't, basically rough translation, I don't give a shit about him. Please take him. Yeah, yeah. Take him away. This is where he keeps his stuff that you guys are interested in.

You see that shack over there, like, be careful because it's filled with explosives. like please take his lazy ass so very interesting and also i mean the children like children are one of our techniques my um my cst partner who is the most incredible person in the entire world um she had dyed her hair uh blonde she's natural brunette dyed in there and i was like this is so reckless like how are you going to keep your hair dyed and like i'm not even bringing razors dude i'm just like the hairiest person on you know the comments compound and she died her hair blonde and that was such a tactical asset for us let me tell you because we would come upon like these like hordes of children like my favorite women was this

like riverbed where all these kids were getting pushed down because the terrorists were doing things up further north and they were like flowing through this riverbed and um we start talking to them like the women are like not being helpful nobody wants to talk to us the I think we were with seventh group And seventh group is like, okay, what do you guys want? And we're like, cool, one rare occasion that we get two CSTs on one mission, which was more common for the earlier teams. But once, like, my team was only six women to support the entire country. So, you know, they had to decide where resources were going and how many seats we were taking and things like that. And long story short, they push them to the side of the riverbed.

Nobody wants to talk to us. Nobody is giving anything, even though we're pulling like all this money, like suspicious levels of money off of people. you know, and passports and all sorts of things. And I think like the key thing that we got out of that little adventure was my CST partner, like, flipping her dyed blonde hair and this like probably six year old boy being like mesmerized and just ready to tell us exactly where he was coming from. Who was up there? When they left, why they left. And it was all just like the blonde hair. So that's not obviously like the mission of the CST is to like manipulate children into telling you things.

But, you know, it's just a, it's a, it's a group of, they're essentially like flies on the wall. Like, they see everything. They see everything. They're internalizing everything. They know what the routines are. A lot of times they're in charge of managing the routines, right? Like they, just like any woman anywhere, they want to keep their kids safe. So when it comes down to it, they will talk.

There's just ways to try and get things. out of them, but you got to come and prepared for that. And so you were based at a Kabul, and as you said, you had this dual-headed mission where you were working with the female platoon part of the KCA, but also going out on ops too and doing the more traditional, I guess, CST mission. I guess let's start with the female platoon. Tell us about them and what it was like working with them. Man, just incredible badasses.

Like, it, you know, I hear so much conjecture, especially today about like women's rights are being taken away and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, let me tell you about, let me tell you about some women and women's rights. So you have the female tactical platoons, largely Hazara, right? So already a persecuted tribe. We had about 42 women. You know, they would answer these vague recruitment calls, often become the brats. redwinter of their family, often mothers, wives, daughters, whatever, have to get permission. They sign up to join this thing. They know they're putting themselves at risk. They know they're

putting their families at risk. And they're all about it, man. It was so funny to me too because it's like I was like a first lieutenant when I showed up and my deputy was a second lieutenant and we're like, we're here to train you and be in charge. And it's like, sure, but the female tactical platoon commander has been doing this shit for like 15 years. So like actually she should probably be like trading us on some things. But it was. was just like the ultimate um exchanging of of of of ttPs at the end of the day um you know we had just come off of all of these ranges with with ranger regiment and the j sock guys and so we're like shit hot at that so we're like all right let's get you out on the range and like teach you

this or at least like brush up on these skills and make you really good at this um so nobody can say that you can't shoot um the physical fitness thing like training was a big thing like teaching them how to lift weights, teaching them how to do what they need to do physically, especially when they're so tiny and oftentimes they didn't have access to no food or water. So trying to navigate around that. Also just navigating, I mean, the Catejas were much better about treating those women like valued humans. And I don't know how much of that was because we were watching or what. And like, you know, me and my partner were the third gender, like we're not women and we're not men in their eyes. Right. And so those guys were much better with them than I think probably the rest of the military forces would have been. But again, it was still, you were like dealing with that aspect of it of like, we are going to leave at some point. The U.S. military is going to leave. The intent here is not for us to do every mission together. If we are going on a mission, it's because we are doing it together so that you are prepared to take.

take this from us when we inevitably depart. Like, us withdrawing should not be a surprise to anybody. It is impending. We need to go out and do this thing. But it was really cool, like sending them out, not partnered with us. Like being able to send the FTPs out as like just the FTP is going on this partner-led mission. You know, no U.S. CST was like, that was really cool to see. It's like they're integrated.

And also that the U.S. is truly putting partners. or force missions. They are leading them to including their, using their enablers, their version of the CST. So that was very encouraging to see. Yeah, just incredible women that, I mean, their English, great. We did a lot of English classes. We did medical stuff, you know, sensitive site exploitation. Just kind, brave souls. Like we, we thought we were like so badass being these women that are like, yeah, we're going into combat units. Like, we're supporting special operations. And then you're like, okay, but this is like way cooler

because these are like 42 women out of this entire country doing that thing, but they're doing it from Afghanistan as women. Right, right. I wanted to ask you, you know, if there was a difference between how you saw the female soldiers approach, specifically the Afghan female soldiers approach the job and what the differences were between how the men approached it, be they American or Afghan, you know, was there a different way that they went about

things? I think the Afghan women, like, FTP side were like very aggressive and very confident. I think because these are their countrymen, right? And so like they know what these women are going through. It was easier for them to pick up on like subtle differences in like body language and translation. Like when I was going into a dark compound, I had a translator with me, right? Like I had my basic commands that I had memorized and things like that. But like I still needed a translator to know what is going on. They didn't need that. So they were able to be like a bit more direct and aggressive. I think I think they just like genuinely really had to give a shit to be there. Like there is not the hero worship that like we are.

We are given in the U.S. military of like, you know, bless our troops and support our troops. And if you're in the military, like, you know, for a day, everybody wants to call you a hero. They don't get the luxury of that, like, at all, even slightly. So there's no, like, valor in that, particularly for the women, right? So I think just that, that commitment and how seriously they have to take it and how committed they have to be to their survival of their country to even be in that position was, like, that should like make you stop and think. Yeah, I was going to ask, like, did you get to learn any of the like individual backgrounds of these women?

Because, I mean, that must have been a very interesting life path that took them to get to that place. And I'm wondering if they, you know, faced being ostracized by their families. They had to basically elope, so to speak, to join the military. I mean, a lot of them were for more progressive families. I mean, at some point, you know, they had to either get professional. or tell their families that they were doing this. And then again, they were largely, like, making money, um, having to travel, like, to and from.

So, like, let's say they, like, went home on leave or something like that, you know, they'd have to, like, stash their uniforms and all of their military documentation somewhere because they couldn't be stopped on a bus traveling with that. But yeah, I mean, I got, I got to know them, um, just great people, like just, I remain in all of them, um, very smart. like educated, if not formally, like informally and seeking it out every day. You know, we all say like, oh, I'm going to learn another language or I'm going to pick up a skill or I'm going to like, I'm always like, I'm going to get into woodworking. And like I can't even like commit to buying the initial kit on Amazon, right?

But these are not those type of people. Like they were like, I'm going to learn English. I'm going to learn how to shoot. I'm going to get really physically fit. And then they just get it because that's what they want. wanted to do. Yeah, just just an interesting like spread of people, especially between like ages and and where they were coming from.

But yes, largely Hazara. So that was that was a common, common trend there. What kind of operations did they do? In terms of like when they were on target. Yeah. Same thing as the CST. Oh, really? Yeah.

So if we were going. into a compound in the middle of the night and in and out they were there if it was going to be a multi-day type of thing they were doing the same exact thing so everything we were doing they were doing uh and then at the same time i mean how did it work were you getting pulled off of that mission off of that detail i guess to go out on actual combat operations with the american side of it yeah exactly so like i said i had a partner um so her and i would pretty much rotate out And then when we would do like the rare combined thing, we would basically have to go brief the Ranger commander

and be like, this is what the training plan looks like for the week. This is who's handling it. This is what the FTPs are doing. And then another, a CST from the previous rotation had stayed back to kind of fill this like weird civilian billet. And so we would work with her to at least like make sure that the training plan was staying on track. But yeah, I mean, you would just have to leave.

That was, yeah. There was only six of us. So there was only so much, you know, moving people around. And then, you know, my teammates in other places were busy as hell. Like, so, you know, they got to take it me. Like, you're going to be the one that goes. And also the other thing is, like, if you were a CST at that point fighting for a spot on a plane and, like, you understand the value of the mission,

maybe you don't have the crusty team sergeant that understands the value of the mission and it's like some new team commander who's making the decision of what the manifest is going to look like you do not miss out on an opportunity to be able to go support and show the value of the CST mission because CST will not be included for that team's missions again so like you better seize that opportunity and you better try really hard and do really well to make sure you basically don't like solely the name, but also so that you are actually value added and you're doing what American taxpayers are paying for you to go do

on their behalf. What was it like going out on missions with the Ranger Regiment? Most of mine were with the ODAs, thankfully. Ranger Regiment was like fast and furious, crazy. Yeah, the ODA stuff, though, those were, that was super fun. I'm very partial to ODAs. I just think I got along with them a little bit better. I'm sorry, I know, hope I'm not hurting any feelings.

But, you know, I just loved, like, the energy of, like, a bunch of these guys that you're, like, not sure if in shape or what. And then they'd be, like, running off of down mountains, like billy goats and stuff. But it was really fun. I really liked the multi-day ones. I liked the complexity of it. I liked watching how those plans came together. I liked watching how the ODAs like tag team problems, you know, contributing into that decision cycle where I could,

working with the 18 foxes to have a good understanding of what we were going into and likely where I was going to be most useful. and preparing myself to be able to pivot, you know, kind of getting, like, swapped out between ODAs, depending on who was in, like, what hot zone kind of thing, especially for those multi-day, multi-ODA missions. That was a lot of fun because you got to, like, kind of see how different teams run and, like, what the run is.

So you had, like, your surfer bro teams, and then, like, your edgy teams, which are always really funny to me, and then, like, your, like, jock dude bro teams. And so it was a lot of fun. And I got to work with a lot of like absolute legends in the community and, and see how they do what they do. It felt like it felt like almost reading like a war hero book like, like reading like lone survivors sometime.

You're like, there's no way. I mean, some of that stuff, not true, right? We know that now. But like you're like in the presence of these guys that like this is what they do. This is what they have done for the last 20 years. And this is what they will do until they are forced to stop doing it. And I found that the older ones, that was the other reason why I really matched with the ODA as well is like it was just an older group of people. So the maturity was there to understand how to use us effectively.

And there was less of the ego involved in like, oh man, there's a girl in our tree house, right? Like it was kind of just like they'd seen it before. They didn't care. They knew the utility. They looked at us as a resource. And so they were going to use us as a. essentially like a weapon system for them. Right, right.

And essentially an Intel platform that they could weaponize. And so I really very much so appreciated working with the ODAs and particularly like the foxes and then the Zulus. Yeah. I mean, that's what a good ODA does is they see what assets they have available and bring them in and make them part of the team. Yeah, they were great about that. Any particularly dicey operations that stand out in your mind? Um, there was one really horrible one where we kind of got stuck, um, in a compound and we were, folks were on their way to come help us out and we did lose, uh, service members that day.

Um, that's a tough one and it's like very weird because I still, like, I was there, but I have this weird, like, and nothing bad happened to me. Like I didn't get blown up or anything, but I have these like ins and outs of trying to piece together what's going on. That one was really terrible, but I can't really, like, speak to exactly the flow of that and what happened besides it was terrible, and we were outside of the golden hour ring. And so it was just a lot of conflating factors that just culminated in something very tragic. I can tell you, like, one of my favorite ones. Sure.

We were cruising alongside this little, like, little, like, ridge over this valley. And, I mean, we are, like, we've been out for, like, a couple days at this point, I think. And we started, like, taking pop shots and from the other side of the river. And then somebody noticed that there was, like, one of those tunnels, like, coming out of the river. And so these guys were just, like, popping out, taking pop shots. And so we ended up just setting up on the valley, basically, like, on the edge of the ridge. and like they would pop out like whack a mole and like shoot it on. And like everybody would just shoot back and one would drop.

And then another one would come out and it would be like and then they would drop. And it was like very like what are we doing here, man? So finally they're just like call it out. Like these people are just going to keep jumping out of here. Like let's just push down. Clearly they have some kind of like nest set up there. Let's just push down and just drop firepower. because this like Heidi hole like nonsense.

But it, it just struck me as like, just so cavalier. Like, like, like, because that was like the first, um,

the first like, no shit I'm within like, what I believe to be like viable shooting distance, right? Of like, I could feasibly shoot this weapon and hit somebody. And so it was like, oh shit, this is like,

this is like real. This is not a range. There's actually people shooting at us. Like this is, this is serious. But it was, a very good opportunity to see that ODA, like how they operate, how they communicate. I mean, it was like watching like a conductor of an orchestra, right? Like just all the hand signals and

everything they were doing. I mean, it was really, it was cool. And it made me, it made me more scared, but it made me more committed to like making sure I actually integrated with the teams and I understood the tactics that were expected of me. So I did not become a liability. And what were the differences when you supported J-Soc operations? Between, okay. Between ODA and the J-Soc side? You know, I didn't really like know half the time who you're with. I think that's the big difference is like, when you would go with the ODAs,

it would be like, oh, this is Chet and Brad and Volvo. And you're like, oh, great to see you again, you know? And but then when there was like other guys, like they would just kind of show up. and you never really knew who they were or what they were necessarily doing there, but they would be part of like all the briefs and the walkthroughs. And then you'd like march out and get on the birds and like they'd be there. And they'd just be like super chill, hanging out. I kept calling this one guy, Dan, because the guys in one of the ODAs kept calling him Delta Dan.

And so like, I just thought that was his name because he never introduced himself. And then so like, we get to. done with this like nighttime mission thing we're doing and it's like snowy as hell. I'm like up to my like hips and snow and, you know, hauling all my shit back. And we're like getting ready to get on the birds. And I'm like, like, hope you had a good mission, Dan. And he's like, my name's not Dan. Oh my. How the fuck would I know? Because you never introduced yourself. He's like, they just keep calling me Delta Dan. And so it was a lot like that was like they were just kind of like these like ghosts that would just like show up to things, do their thing in some part of the compound,

and then like disappear into the night. Yeah, that was that was like very, very funny. I never really knew what they were doing there outside of what I heard like in the briefing, but I just didn't know who they were or they would show up like right before we would go somewhere, right? So there wasn't like a whole lot of time to and realistically no need for me to be like briefing them on anything. As long as I was doing my job, what I was supposed to be doing, with the intelligence that I was supposed to be focused on, I would be feeding into that cycle anyways. So there's no reason for us to be like buddy, buddy. But I do wish I had been like a bit like just like more confident in older to be like, no, seriously, what's your name and

where are, like, where are you coming from? But I was just like, just really starstruck almost. And also just like really intimidated. Like, you know, it was a 25 year old woman dropped into this this thing that I like really wanted to do and had been thinking about for years. And then went through the selection and you're like yeah i did it but the selection is just like get into the super bowl like right right you still have to perform and the super bowl guess what is month long so i was just very like i think a little starstruck now i you know i certainly would go up and be like no like if your name's not dan then what is your name dude because at no point did you introduce yourself nor do i know where you're coming from but you know 25 you don't really have the confidence

for that yeah yeah oh i know those guys they like look over both shoulders then whisper up with the unit. Or you'd be like on the birds with them and they'd be like wearing some like with gray man outfit and you're like do you realize your gray man outfit like draws even more attention because you look like such a nondescript weirdo? It was it was like one of those things where you'd see them all over you'd be traveling with them like because because I was in Kabul and I had to support you know ODAs wherever or other units everywhere,

like green air would come out and kind of just pick me up from my compound and then we'd kind of do like the rotation and whoever else was going wherever. And so like guys would get on and off. And again, same thing. It's like they're in their little gray man outfit. It's just like staring at the wall.

You're like, you can sit on this helicopter for like 15 minutes and not say anything. That's fine, but it's like a little awkward at this point. And then what was it like rotating home after Kabul? Like coming back to the States? Yeah. You know, this is like one of the big things that I think is underappreciated when you have units that are or programs that are unique and different. There was no.

So, okay, so you come back with a regular unit, right? And there's the reintegration and they do the little march out in the field and see your families. and then you have to go clean weapons and you do the whole thing. There was none of that. It was literally like, get on the plane and go home. And so because all six of us had come from every duty station imaginable, we were kind of just kicked off to the four wins. And it was like, okay, like, it's over now.

And that was really, really hard. So thankfully, some of the girls, the program manager at the time was like, hey, if you guys want to like take leave and be together, like we will work something out and you guys can do that because technically I still have like command authority over you. And so she gave us the opportunity to take a good chunk of leave. And we all made a point to be together for those of us that could. I was living in Savannah at the time. And so two of the CSTs came out and stayed with me and it was just like yeah we just needed that like that wind down time um it was very hard coming back to the conventional army um especially to an MP unit again love the MPs but there's a

lot of like the McKismo and like the chest bumping and I was like I've just spent so much time around this but people that are like entitled to bump their chest and like scream about how they're big strong men so like I'm not going to take it from these stateside MPs right now. So that was a little bit hard. I like went kind of rogue and like, I'm like a super rule follower in the army, but I like came home and like put these crazy red streaks in my hair.

And I was like, I'm going to get like another really big stupid tattoo and like, pierced my ear. And so like I just kind of went like a little bit rogue. But yeah, I would say it was it was hard because there wasn't that structured integration program like that. And then when you go back to your unit, nobody knows where the hell you've been for a year, right?

So like everybody I had known at that unit for the most part had PCS or was about to PCS. So I came back to like a unit that did not know who I was, did not know where I just came from. And like certainly didn't appreciate that like these things that I had just done or these, these emotions that I probably needed to process on the back end. So that was tough. But I was so I'm always, I'm grateful to be an American every single day of my life. so grateful to be an American getting off that plane and driving from we landed in Baltimore, driving down to Georgia and just that long stretch of highway just in my old beat-up truck that

my dad brought to the airport parking lot for me. And I got a very serious speeding ticket. But I didn't care just to drink like cold Diet Coke and speed on American highways. I mean, what a lovely, what a lovely feeling. McDonald's and Starbucks is. far as the eye can see. Man, yeah, I just loved it. And that it didn't smell like trash all the time. And then I felt I didn't have like that grit of sand in my teeth.

Yeah, it was a little bit hard. And then that's ultimately why I was like, I can't stay conventional army. I need to find a way to keep doing something different. Yeah, I wanted to, because you mentioned this issue that with unit cohesion that the CSTs have. I mean, was that the way it was designed to work, that it's like a one-year detail, let you go and do and then you're just back to your old job. Yeah, I mean, I failed to mention I did get to, some of us did get to like come back slash stay on and do like these little like almost TDIY things to help with future selections for additional teams. So that was helpful like because

you kind of all got to come back together and do the CST thing again and then and then bring new candidates in and teach them like the tips and tricks that you had learned. But, Yeah, it was never, it's not designed to be like a standing unit. I mean, this is a thing that you, you come in and you do it and you usually go home. Especially when you think about like from the officer side, I mean, I kept getting warned about what it would do to my career progression. That I was like going off of the script, off the timeline script. And I don't really like, I don't care about that. Like, sure, I'm never going to be like a four-star general who gives a shit if I like did something cool one year.

But yes, it was never designed to be a standing unit, which is interesting, though, because now I hear these things of like, well, we don't need CST because we have women in SF and we have women Rangers. And I'm like, a female ODA engineer, medic, whatever, her job is to be an engineer, medic, whatever. Her job is not to deal with women and children on the battlefield. It's a totally different role. It's not simply the presence and the. ownership. Can I say vagina on this podcast? Vigina is cleared. Okay. It is not simply the owner, being the owner of a vagina that makes you just do that role. There's, there's training. It's a specific role. It's a specific techniques, tactics, things that you're doing. It's not simply

just being a woman in the room, right? So I think it's very unfortunate that it's not something that's a standing program or that it can't readily be pulled off the shelf and dust it off and be ready to be operationalized again. I will say later teams, like we have like skill identifiers that indicate that we did it, but the earlier teams don't have that benefit, which is also why a lot of them are fighting, you know, every single day to try and get their VA benefits to help them with the medical problems that they're facing as a result of their of their service is because they didn't They weren't given that designated.

They were basically just told, like, go home. So I'm thankful that some of us have that designator at least because it gives us a little bit more to push back on. Right. Yeah. Well, the last part of Afghanistan, I got to get out of you, of course, is your dog smuggling ring. It was not a ring. First of all. It sounds like a conspiracy to me.

If my lawyer is listening. No, yeah, met this puppy. the mountain right there, you know how cute those dang mountain dogs are over there. I would not describe them as cute. They're cute. And we had one kid get bit in the ass, and he had to get a series of rabies shots.

Young Ranger getting bit out on the target. Well, that's unfortunate. I'm sorry that happened to him, but this was a very little puppy who is very sweet and bold enough to hang out around us because he had figured out that humans, especially Americans. Like dogs. Love his kind.

So he was willing to hang out with us. So, you know, brought him down, kept him near us outside the compound, fed him. And he was really cute because he, like, he knew that I was like, I would come and go. Not an affectionate animal. Like this was purely a resource exchange to him. And he would go and hang out on the flight line. And like when the helicopter would come in, he'd be like hanging out, you know, like, where's my turkey sauce? Like, glad you're not dead.

Where's my turkey sausage? So he really didn't give a shit about me, but I have been a lifelong animal lover. And even, you know, even with my CST partner there, that was a very isolating experience. I mean, only two women basically on that Ranger compound. And then that's, I mean, that's pretty much it. So just like a bright, sunny spot in like a dark, dusty space and something hard to contend with when you're like 25 and your brain is still forming. So met this dog, took care of him. Finally, the Rangers, similar to the rabies story, started rounding up the dogs and shooting

them. And I had put a flea collar on this dog because I was like, I don't want to have fleas, you know? And I got a very nasty message from the ranger company commander saying, like, whoever's putting the flea collar on the dog, he knew it was me. Whoever's putting the flea collar on the dog, like, cease and assist immediately. And I was like, okay, well, I'm not. So I called back and I'm like, well, technically like this J-Soc Battalion commander's in charge of me. And he's like, really cool. So I'm going to call him.

And I'm like, hey, sir. I'm mommy daddy games. You're not my real dad. But I'm like, hey, sir, it was me. I put the flea collar on the dog. And I'm not going to stop putting the fleet collar on the dog. And he's basically like, I don't want to hear about it. Stephanie, like, live your life.

but like don't mess with the rangers like stop pissing them off um and so finally there was like a series of incidents where dogs started getting shot whether it was for good measure or not I don't know but I was kind of like I'm going to like snap like I'm going to have a very hard time if somebody kills this dog um and so I reached out to an organization called um puppy rescue mission and I was like do you guys know any Americans in the area and they were like actually we know this woman that's studying in Kabul. So if you can get him out of the camp, like, we can start helping you. You just have to send this money to this person and then, like, keep us posted basically. So I was able to get some of his basic veterinary meds brought in and

get him some of that stuff. So he was at least like a stronger start than he probably would have been. At this point, he was like outpacing his like half dead puppy brothers and sisters. I couldn't say them all. kills me i couldn't save him all i had to pick one and you know so he's 10 times bigger than everybody um and they keep telling me like oh at some point one night she's gonna call and i'm just like really hoping it's not while i'm like out on mission or gone or something and finally like do you remember those like shitty rochans that you have to add minutes to it was like these like next tell but these like really crappy like phone cards yeah and you had to like put them in these like really crappy phones um And so one night, I'm like really low on minutes, but they start calling and she's like, hey, I'm like on my way.

So it's like, she calls. She's like, how do I get on this base? And I'm like, well, you don't, but like you can get into like the outer perimeter and then I can meet you probably. So she ends up calling. She's like, I'm outside of the outer perimeter. So I geared up because I was going to have to leave the gate. And this was not a good decision. I knew it was wrong, but I was going to do it.

I don't think the statute of limitations has passed. This is probably unwise. But, yeah, basically me and my CST partner, who God bless her, was like, you're not going alone. So she suited up to. And so we put all of our gear on and everything, grab our rifles and pistols and everything, go out to the gate and we're like, hey, we're going to run the gate. We're going to take this dog and run the gate.

And it's snowing like hell. And they're like, all right, good luck ladies. Like if something happens, like, we're not responsible. Like, this is, you're not supposed to be doing this. And we're like, okay, but, you know. And so we run him out. This woman jumps out of the car, opens this car.

There's this Afghan man driving. And there's a cat carrier. And I, like, shove this puppy in, kiss him on his nasty face and tell him like, I love you so much. I'll see you on the other side. And this dog is just looking at me like, I should have killed you when I got the chance. And they just take off. And then I didn't hear anything for a while.

And I was like, damn, I think like they just like fleeced me for money, right? And then finally I get this email that's like, hey, Smokey is at this like safe house outside a couple. We're going to like try and get them on like a cargo plane. We need this amount of money for whatever. And I'm like, well, if they're still scamming me, they're doing a great job because I'm going to send the money. And one day I got a message with like he's making it onto the plane. do you have somebody on the other side that can get him? And I'm like, I really didn't consider that we would get this far.

So like, no, I made no coordinations for this. So I called my roommate at the time. And I'm like, hey, dude, if you take care of this feral animal that I'm shipping to our house, you don't have to pay rent. He's like, what? So sure enough, good guy. He took care of him. I got back like a month and a half, maybe two months later.

I don't remember. But he was like 10 times bigger. the last time I saw him, he starts barking and like howling at me. And then finally he like realized who it was. And man, you talk about like homecoming. That was like, that like completed me. Um, just to see this to go from this little tiny puppy to this like giant nasty mountain dog living in Georgia. And all his commands were, were in pastas. So like, I had to work with him on that too because I couldn't go to like a Georgia dog park and be like, Dil tarasha.

Like, this is like not a good look. He caught his freedom bird home. He did. So is he there with you now? He is. He's outside with my husband. Okay. His actual best friend.

I was going to say extra points if we could get him on camera, but that's all right. Oh, he's very, he's very suspicious about cameras. He doesn't want his likeness to be seen. So you get this talk back to the United States. And you're not. so much enjoying your reunion with the conventional military. So what did you, where did you go from there? So I called CA, called the CA branch, and I'm like, hey, I want to know if the CA selection that I went to a very long time ago is still good. And thankfully at that time, they were like, yeah, come on over. So even though I had done really bad on my, what was the D lab? Was it the DLAB, the one for language?

The language test, yeah. Yeah. So I had taken. that a week before I went, I went to selection, I want to say. Yeah, and basically the facility lost power in the middle of it. And so then they restarted it. And like, it may as well have been like sim language to me. Like I, it was so bad at the D lab. I couldn't figure it out. So they were like, yeah, I mean, your like language-based score is like not very good, but do you promise us that you'll like try and learn a language? And I was like, sure thing. And they're like, all right, come on over. So thankfully got to make the switch over to CA, went through soft triple C, had to pause the training because I had to get my shoulder repaired. I had a series

of traumatic injuries to it. I was just trying to like nug through it, tying it to myself at night, tying it to myself when I ran, you know, just it was like basically useless, just like a wooden arm that kept falling out. But that time, that was really helpful because they were looking for a captain to come to run the operations section at the Joint Special Operations Medical Training Center. And that was right when COVID was like really popping off. And I had been going to grad school before I left for Afghanistan for emergency and disaster management. So I was like, this is my time to shine. And so how has that? a lot of fun with that. That's just like such a cool professional organization. I mean,

that schoolhouse, like all of my admiration goes to the special operation medical community. I mean, what they do is truly incredible, just really, really amazing people. So to be able to be inside the schoolhouse and like keep them resourced, you know, make sure things were on track, advocate for them, like that was a really good opportunity. And then I resumed the pipeline, went through CA and was very blessed to be assigned to the 91st, so Africa I'm aligned. And did you end up having to go to language school? Yes, I did French. Not well, but enough to pass the test.

And honestly, at the end of the day, that's all it matters. But yes, yeah. And we only got four months of language, which was pretty tough. So I felt really bad for the guys learning like Russian and Arabic. But yeah, I just got French, which is what I wanted because I really wanted Africa. Like, I was like, I will do everything that I have to do to get Africa. I want to go to Africa. And you did, right?

They sent you to West Africa a bunch of times. Yeah, I got to go to Senegal. And then Benin was the big one. Benin was probably the most impactful. Well, let's start with Senegal then. What was that deployment like? That was really fun. It was 30 people.

It was very much like a get immersed to figure out what's going on out here. Similar to what you had talked about when we spoke before, there was a kind of an OScent thing that they wanted us to test out and do stuff with. So that was a great opportunity for us to go. Kind of hard to keep a low profile with 30 people. But that was super cool. I mean, we went all over. We really like, really went like very like local.

Like it was it was really good Yeah just a good time Speaking as much French as humanly possible That was really the intent behind it was like get as many people a bit of on-continent experience as possible In a low threat Environment And like integrated with the embassy because West Africa is going to become a thing So we need to start

Rolling people into here and, you know, getting some names to faces. And was the intent also sort of like developing the relationship with the Senegalese? Yeah, absolutely. We went and met with the war college and then met with some of like the soldiers. And then there was like a fight house type of thing that a lot of soldiers were in. So a bunch of the guys went and did like combatives like in the sand. Oh, you're talking about that like that like the, the,

native wrestling that they do. Yeah, I mean, it was crazy. I didn't have a part in it. Again, I have a fake shoulder, so like, not good. I will watch. That's huge there. Huge. Yeah.

Yeah, super athletes. It was a lot of fun. We joined like a gym in the community and it was like such like a prison gym vibe. Like everything was just like filthy and busted. And it was like such a good workout every time. They have, I've heard the kids, because it's a way, you know, kids do that because they make a lot of money if they become good at it.

And I've heard them like lifting weights in cadence. The guys I call them like one, two, three, and you can hear the weights clacking. It was incredible. Like those gyms were incredible. I mean, these guys were, I don't know if they were using substances. I never asked. There was none of my business. But I mean, some of the largest men I'd ever seen.

It's so encouraging. Like, I usually get irritated at the gym when somebody's like, dude, check your form on that. But like when these guys gave me guidance, I'd be like, yes, sir, we'll implement that. immediately. Just a good time. It was really just make some friends, understand the area, get some faces to names, and ingratiate ourselves at that phase. Do you want to talk at all about like the leadership challenge that you faced out there? Yeah. Without like sharing anybody's private information, we had a pretty severe mental health crisis that happened. And this was like a pretty formative like leadership lesson for me.

The company commander stayed back. So I was like the ground force commander out there. And I was, which meant my peers, like I was responsible for reporting back on behalf of me and my peers as well. So other captains. And one of the one of the soldiers we took with us had a very serious mental health episode that we probably should have seen coming. like echelons above us probably should have seen coming, so I was very frustrated by that. But it didn't matter. Like at that point, it was like deal with it and do what we have to do.

And so again, thankful to the special operations medical community, the medics across the teams in that unit were just absolutely fabulous, did what they needed to do, got very creative, tapped in some embassy resources to help us out and hold us over to make sure nobody was in like an immediately life-threatening situation. And then we were able to coordinate a very interesting evacuation to get that soldier out and get him the help that he needed, which I mean, you've been over there. That's like not a place where you go to like local clinics or you. Right. Yeah, like mental health is not a thing. Yeah, no, it's not. I remember I had a local woman in Senegal tell me, she said, what was it? That like anxiety is a Western thing. Like we don't have

that here. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I mean, let's also think, like, I don't, I don't want to speculate, but like, let's also think about, like, the, the substances that are available on those markets that you might not even know. If you're, like, out on the town, you might not even realize that you're, you've engaged with, you know, probably not even on purpose, hopefully not on purpose. So I don't really know precisely what happened. I just knew that we had to, we had to handle it. And again, the team, like, really rallied to respond to that. And, and, get that soldier out. And then, you know, we came back and there was a big discussion on like what are civil

affairs medics carrying when they are overseas because if the ideas that were small, autonomous teams, we are not always going to be in a situation where you can call the embassy and say, hey, come help. And that's exactly what we had to do. So that was, that was an interesting learning lesson, I think, for everybody. Yeah. And then you said Benin was kind of. of a big one for you. Benin was like my CA Super Bowl. So we were the soft civil affairs country

opener for Benin. My team had the best team, very lucky. So we did a J set with them. That was awesome. It was like I said, the first civil affairs one. So the Simic focus. Benin was having a really hard time. The forces. They had been in Waugh, so we call them the fab, but they were having a really hard time because they were being a bit heavy-handed up on some of the border regions and, you know, rounding young men up, whether they were actually affiliated with terrorists or not, you know, they were still participating in general banditry to probably survive for whatever reason, you know. But they were being pretty heavy-handed, and so it was creating a really big riff with the community. And so SOCAF and AFROM were like, hey, this is a good place to target a civil affairs J-SET. Let's work through some of these SIV-MIL dynamics. So we had a great time, went out there, worked with them, 30 days. We maximized it.

We made the most of it. We did everything with them. You name it, we did it. And it was good because it was a totally different group that had not benefited from the ODAs. because they had like their, they're like more tactical units that, of course, you go to any country and you're like, we want to do a J set and they're going to give you their, like, they're a Ranger regiment, right? Because they're like, that's who we want to give all this to.

This was great because they were like, they genuinely understood that this does not necessarily need to be like their, their frontline guys that are like door kicking. It probably needs to be dispersed throughout the force. So they had like medics, vets, everybody in there, like lawyers. And then some, like some of the ground troop guys so that it could really disperse through the, through the formations. And then we closed that out and thankful to the gracious support of Spirit of America. We were able to secure a lot more money than I expected. And we were able to do a medical civic action program and a rural community.

We also brought in an ODA to help train the fab that had done the J-set with us. and then we're going to do this capstone event, was going to be the MedCAP for a couple of days. They came in and talked to them about, like, setting up security for these types of events. So it was, like, a lot of layering effects, and wouldn't have been possible about Spirit of America. But that was really, really eye-opening.

It was, like, I felt like I was watching the baby birds fly almost. It was like I had just spent 30-plus days with these guys, like teaching them everything I could possibly know about what they needed to know, or at least what I thought they needed to know. and doing it in French, right? And like, we had so much fun. And then that first day of the med cap, I was, like, being very micromanagey.

And just because I was, like, excited and jazzed up and I wanted it to go really well. And it was, like, so great because at one point, one of the guys, like, one of, like, the junior officers came over and he was like, we've got it. Like, we're doing this. We're okay.

Like, it's okay. Like, you can go hands off. And I was like, Cool. And then like for the rest of that med cap over a couple of days, it was like so much fun, just observing, helping, like using certain things as training opportunities. But at that like micro level with the intent that that would spread throughout the formation. And then the embassy did a really good job of amplifying that story. And so it's great now because I see the one of the kernels that was in that J set. I see him like on the news now all the time. I'm talking about Benin, like the work that the Fab is doing in the local communities and how they're repairing relationships and they're hosting events to get them a little bit closer to the population. So it just, I'm super proud of that one because I think there was there was ripples from that. And I don't think that you always get to say that. Like I didn't necessarily feel like there

was ripples from my time in Afghanistan, right? I feel like there was genuinely ripples from the time in Benin. And that to me is like, similar. Affairs isn't always seen as like the sexiest soft tribe, you know. But to me, that's like why it matters. That's really like the impact is, is that, that human terrain aspect of it. And so I was very, very proud, very thankful to be part of that, that mission. I mean, I'm really glad that you could explain to people what civil affairs does because there's a lot of misunderstanding or it's a more of a harder sell, I think, than like a special forces guy or a Navy SEAL. People kind of understand that. Yeah, 100%. But we do that to ourselves. I set my novel in Benin.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Had I known you were there, I would have called you up for some research. I don't know. I don't know about that. I was busy. And also I got like heat stroke like four times. So again, thank God for my medics.

Like I remember teaching teaching one of the classes with like an IV like running through my arm as I'm like trying to like fight through my French translations of how to speak to people. And so as you start, like, winding down your active duty time, I remember you had told me you spent some time in Italy. Yes. So my final assignment on active duty, I was the aide-de-camp to the Navy four-star. So that was super eye-opening to work for the Navy.

Really great experience. He was the commander, Naval Forces Africa, Naval Forces Europe, and Allied Joint Force command Naples, so the NATO command in Naples, Italy. And so that's what I did for the last two years of my active duty time. How do you like that? On paper, it sounds like a pretty Cush assignment. It was so not Cush. Like, you know, my husband came over there for a little bit and then he was like, no, I'm going to go back because like you're never here. And when you are here, you're just like so stressful to be around. It was an incredible experience. The experience, the exposure. I mean, I went to like over like, I think I did the count. It was like over like 25 countries or something crazy. Some of those multiple times. The peak behind the curtain, you know, if you're the person that's attached to the hip of a four star, especially in those commands, like to see historical events playing out in real time that nobody in the world but you and those people in that room are that are happening right then. And then knowing you can't tell anybody about it. And then you see it on the news.

couple days later and you're like, okay, cool, now I can like kind of talk about it. Just a really good learning opportunity. To the, I would say to like anybody that's still in the military and deciding like broadening assignments like that. So I had to choose between that or an assignment at first group. And I really wanted the first group one. And that would have been an amazing opportunity as well. But there was like something niggling in the back of my brain that like a NATO assignment is like crazy.

and a NATO assignment in a four stars like personal staff is like nuts. So I'm glad that I did that because the NATO exposure fabulous. Like just to be in an environment where you're not immediately like the big dog when you walk in. Like you know, you go overseas, you go to all these places and you're like, I'm an American. But then you walk into a NATO command and it's not always like the Americans in charge of the thing. So that was very humbling and very helpful. And then again to go to some of those countries that like in what world would I be going to like Serbia right you know or like watching like crises in Kosovo like unfold from you know the back of a plane and trying to figure out what we're going to do when we hit the ground

like we had like an emergency landing in Poland that was nuts and like I was in the cockpit with like the little GPS tracker like trying to figure out where we were going and what needed to happen like just crazy shit like that. because, like, you're responsible for getting the four-star where he needs to be because he's a four-star. He's got a lot going on. He's the only guy that can do the thing. So very high pressure, but a lot of fun. Very thankful to have worked for that commander because he was very patient, very kind, very cerebral.

And so my exposure to the Navy in that regard was, I think that was good Navy exposure. And then just such a professional staff around him. But you didn't care for Naples so much. No. And, you know, I'm ethnically Italian. Like, Deriso is my maiden name. Ritolo is my married name. You know, I'm wearing a Cornicello necklace.

Like, I'm Italian. But Naples, man, Naples was the food 10 out of 10. The wine, 10 out of 10. When you went down to the Amalfi Coast, beautiful. But living in Naples, like, felt like Syria. It's just the governance is very poor. They've been pretty gutted in terms of the resources in southern Italy. It was just chaotic.

It kind of felt like a war zone. So I also, you know, I took the assignment thinking, ooh, my European vacation, and it was very much so not a European vacation. One, because of the nature of the assignment. And two, just the location wasn't necessarily what I think. One thinks of when they think about going to Naples, Italy. But nice to be able to just jump in the car on the weekend and go to Sorrento or go like, you know, rent a boat for like barely anything and just go cruise around even though I'm like in no way qualified to drive a boat. And now you are in the Civil Affairs Reserves and also out on Sivis Street working a real job.

Yeah. How are you finding that? How's that treating you? It's good. You know, I got off active duty with 14th. years, made that decision for my family because, as I think a lot of people that are drawn to this community, if we don't actively pull ourselves out of it, we'll just continue to get on planes and go to other countries. And we're going to chase that feeling every time. So I had to make a

hard decision, get out. My husband had gotten out like four years before. So he was, he was pretty over the Army experience and went and did good things from there. I was terrified because so much of my personality is the Army. I mean, like I said, I genuinely believe the Army saved me from a really bad future. Like, I was going down a bad path like I talked about. So I owe a lot of my, like just my everything, my education, my confidence, my friendships, everything I have to the Army, my dog, my husband. I met him in the Army, right?

Like I owe everything the Army. So very hard for me to make that transition, which is why I made the decision to stick with the reserve. So got off active duty the next day I was assigned to a reserve unit. That reserve unit is super cool. They're out in Virginia Beach. They're actually getting after stuff. Really good, realistic training and super high quality

experienced people willing to learn, but also teach. just a good time with good access out there. Virginia Beach is like incredible. So like sure, I'll go do drill in Virginia Beach because it's just beautiful. And then yeah, working on the civilian side, I work for an AI enabled decision intelligence company. They're London-based. And I have a lot of autonomy. Absolutely love what I do. It's a platform that I wish that I had had. Definitely would have been helpful in Afghanistan, would have been very helpful in West Africa, especially towards the soft and a regular warfare mission set. So, you know, if you believe in the platform that you're helping people get onto and learn about,

and the team culture is awesome, that is really very much so making the transition easier. It's a great team, really great company. Everybody's awesome. A lot of former military, from allied nations as well. So I still get that kind of like NATO feel to it as well. And so it's been it's been really great. But you know, I still keep tabs on everything. I still get those those hunger pangs for the army sometimes. But then I go on the army subreddit and like read all the crap that's going on and I'm like, yeah, I'm good. I was going to say. It sounds like there might be another adventure or two for you out there with the reserves. if they some more uh time spent in africa maybe yeah absolutely i mean i think that's the seriously

like undersung aspect of the reserves is like if you what i'm coming to realize is like if you want to do something and you want to get after it those opportunities available um and you're so much less uh at the whims of timing like i feel like it is on active duty where like you missed the deployment by a month right or you know whatever you recycle to school so then it delayed something like that. It's not like that in the reserves. Like if you want to do it, you want to contribute, even if it's for shorter stints, like you can go do that.

So there's definitely opportunities that could come down the pipeline if it makes sense. So tell us about Altru. So Altru was formed by former CSTs. Jess Yon, you had her on one of your episodes early in. is incredible. So nonprofit founded by former CSTs, like I said, and it has grown to be an amalgamation of women and men from the soft community that are all about empowering future generations. So they're doing a lot of great work. They've done some incredible stuff in Ukraine, and then Kenya was a recent one, and they've got a lot of great stuff coming up. But that has

been so critical to such a that tiny community of women that were CSTs of like just being like, I see you. I know what you did. I know what you're about. And just the rallying around each other, advocating for each other. And then all of the men that are part of that that worked with us or worked around us that also believe in that that operational imperative of essentially like, I don't want to say weaponizing gender, but knowing there's value. in using that gendered aspect for operational success. And also you want to talk about Guerrera. Guerrera, yes.

Did you watch Guerrera? No, I haven't seen it. I'm sorry. I don't watch Guerrera. So Guerrera is a three-part series produced by Altru and Dulcinea Productions. It tells the story of Jenny, Captain Jenny Moreno. She was killed in action when she was a CST. but it also tells the story of the broader CST story

and also the Afghan female tactical platoon story from CSTs that were there, FTPs that were there, and then the men that we, or at least those teams, I was not on those teams that was early in the CST program that were there and worked with those women and saw their value and still beat the drum for it. Like I said, three-part series, Apple, Apple TV, YouTube,

premium, and then Amazon. It's really incredible. If not just for like the footage alone. I still don't understand how they got some of the footage that they did, like archive footage. Just really incredible. If you've been to Afghanistan, like, you will, you will be like transported back.

You can like, you can smell it almost. Like that distinct Afghanistan sent while watching this. But very moving, very important story. captures a part of our history that I think a lot of people don't know about and probably would never know about unless they went looking for it. Just because the CST story has not been captured in that way necessarily before. So I think if anybody's interested in that, they want to learn more about the ODAs and Ranger Regiment and all of that and how we worked with them. That's a really good primer. And then the context of like everything that was going on

for the CST program to be set up. I think that's an important part to understanding the policy and the strategic failures of the global war on terror as well. So just a different approach to capturing that history. Definitely. I'm looking forward to it. I'll have to check it out. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

Anything I failed to ask during this interview that you'd like to get into? No, I feel like we've been talking for hours. I've just been talking so much. No, I really appreciate it. I think what you're doing, spreading the word capturing people's stories is really important. You know, it's, we were talking about before, like, this just makes, it's a small world, but the military makes it even smaller.

So I think it's really important to know what our brothers and sisters are doing out there or have done because it informs what you could possibly do or what you might be interested in, right? Like if people hadn't talked about the CST program, I wouldn't have known about it. I wouldn't have known to keep, you know, I wouldn't have known to like key in on that when it came out in the mill per message because I would have had no context. So I think it's very important to talk about these programs. Even if they're sunsetted, they don't exist. I personally believe there will be a need for a CST or a CST-like program again. And so I think it would benefit us all to learn about it now and take some of the lessons from it.

So we're a little bit more prepared next time. Definitely. Where can people find you? Are you on social media or LinkedIn or anything? Yeah, the only social media I have is LinkedIn. I'm a LinkedIn girly these days. You know, you make the pivot to corporate. You've got to be on the LinkedIn game.

So, yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. It's Stephanie R.D. R.D. R. R. R. R. If you want to see my dog, I do, I have put pictures of him on there. He has his, like, very own branded aspect. But, yeah, that's where you can find me. I'm on there all the time. Yeah. Okay.

And, yeah, we'll have a link down the description of this podcast also for folks. Well, Stephanie, I mean, thank you for doing this interview. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. It was super fun. Yeah. Yeah. Well, stay in touch.

And everyone else, we'll see you guys next week. Hey guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about the Teamhouse podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free. And what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, the things that are on the team house, on our geopolitics podcast, eyes on, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, anything else that we have going on, books we recommend, upcoming guests that we have coming on the show and also, you know, filtering in some fun stuff

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