25. Addressing and Healing from Sexual Assault in the Military with Susannah Stokes

Brock Briggs  0:00  

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast. Today, I'm speaking with Susannahh Stokes. In this conversation, we talk about her time in the Marine Corps as a uniform victim advocate as part of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program. Susannahh talks about some of the common problems facing our military members both mentally and emotionally, and how that role is working to combat the rampant sexual assault and harassment taking place. 

After her time in service, Susannahh went on to work at Facebook after a lucky connection with the COO, Sheryl Sandberg. Susannahh helped stand up a robust veterans program within the company which grew 10 times over while she was there. We talked about veterans in tech and corporate jobs generally, and specifically how to utilize this strong network of people you're gifted when you exit service. 

Nowadays, Susannahh is the president and CEO of DoUnto, a nonprofit focused on leadership coaching and development. Their main philosophy hinges around the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, hence the namesake. Susannahh has an infectious energy which is heard loud and clear and how she delivers her message. I think you'll learn something from her today. 

If you're a fan of the show or have an idea for the show, or otherwise, I'd love to hear from you. You can send an email to scuttlebuttpodone@gmail.com. You can find that email address in the show notes, love getting feedback and connecting with more interesting people in the military space. For now, enjoy this conversation with Susannah Stokes.

Brock Briggs 2:08  

Susannah, first off, I want to just say thank you for coming on the show from the limited chat that we've had prior to just now. I've been looking forward to this conversation. I think that you're gonna bring a super unique perspective to the show. And I'm eager to hear some of the stories that we've started to talk about. You were a Marine Corps officer from 2011 to 2016. And one of your major roles was a uniform victim advocate which is part of the SAPR program as you said. Talk to us about that. What is that? How does that play into the SAPR program? And what did that I guess mean to you?

Susannahh Stokes  2:51  

And thank you, Brock so much. I'm also really excited to be on this beautiful podcast that you've put together. And I deeply appreciate what you're offering to the world. And using your voice to talk about these critical topics of like transition and just getting our veteran and active duty, brethren and sisters into a new way of being which is a powerful thing. So thank you for using your voice for that. Yeah, I remember one time when someone asked me like, “What was your favorite role?” Or maybe they said, what role were you most proud of yourself for? And I was like

Brock Briggs  3:37  

Did you get that in an interview? That sounds like an interview question. 

Susannahh Stokes  3:40  

Yes, it does. It does. I think I have a lot of interview-esque conversations, whether it be through podcasts or other types of just like coaching and things like that. And someone asked me that question. And I remember saying, “You know what? I loved being a uniform victim advocate.” And what that was, was basically, the military designed after having immense amounts of sexual assault challenges over the past 20 years. They established this program called this SAPR program, which is the Sexual Assault Prevention Response Program. 

And then within that, they have these uniform victim advocates who advocate for and they are the sort of they're like them, I call myself like a mama bear, like the mama bear that would take you through the process after you had been harassed or assaulted typically, like physically assaulted in some way. And you take people to their medical like you take them to the hospital for rape kit. You work with them to get the right resources that they need. You're not necessarily a counselor, but you are someone who is going to be like the shoulder for them to lean on. 

And I loved that role. Because I think what I've realized now is it was sort of foreshadowing my calling. And it became an opportunity also for me to train people. And this was the first experience I had at like standing in front of people and giving them training. And it was the Marine Corps version of the training, of course, and I was like, “Oh, this like, this is not interesting. This PowerPoint is super dull.” So I completely like beefed it up. I put in like these fun, little snippets of like Anchorman, and all sorts of other fun videos, and I made the training something that really mattered, and that people paid attention to. So I enjoyed the creativity with it. And I really, really appreciated that the military actually had a program like that.

Brock Briggs  6:04  

What type of training was involved in a position like that? I know that in the Navy, we had the SAPR program as well. And I'm sure that each branch has some kind of variation of that. But unless you were involved in the program, or maybe say a victim of sexual harassment or assault, SAPR was, I'm just gonna use SAPR because that's the quicker version.

Susannahh Stokes 6:29  

Yeah, totally. That’s the whole program. 

Brock Briggs  6:32  

That kind of just was seen on the outside as like that was, it was a 5k run that we did. The SAPR run we did every year, or it was, you know, I think in some commands, it was actually kind of like a collateral duty, almost where you had like a phone. And I'm curious what training was going on behind the scenes to equip you to handle situations like that that are I'm sure at times like, not pleasant. 

Susannahh Stokes  7:01  

Yeah, great question. And let's say not enough training, probably.

Brock Briggs

Like the rest of the military?

Susannahh Stokes

Like the rest of the military, like everything in the military, right? They're like, here's like, here's, you know, two days of training. Now, go operate this huge piece of machinery. And you're like, “Wait, what??? Like, am I supposed to be doing this?” That actually happened to me with going to Afghanistan, quick tangent, which is I literally graduated, I left my school, which for like, unless it would be like ACE School. I left essentially ACE School for an officer two weeks early.

And I got shipped immediately out to Afghanistan, I was one of the first people from my graduating class at the Naval Academy to deploy. And they literally arrived in country probably two weeks later, and I'm sitting in there and they're like, “Okay, you're going on the gear tomorrow. And you're gonna be controlling all of the high flying aircraft above 16,000 feet.” And I was like, “Excuse me, like, what?” I've only done this in training for the last three months, and now I'm, you know, controlling aircraft in Afghanistan. 

So the same kind of thing with the SAPR program and the UVA program. You get 40 hours of training, which is five full days, five full work days of training on how to be an advocate. What are the resources that you're gonna offer people. What are the questions that we really ask, especially a lot of it's around response. So you're exactly right. Same thing in the Marine Corps, we would carry a cell phone around 24/7. That cell phone would be the number to call if you ever had an issue. It was always on, which meant I was always on, on some level. I would literally be in a club, like in San Diego, dancing, like holding on to this cell phone, hoping that no one called me at two o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. 

And then there were continuing education programs that you had to complete in order to maintain your certification. And it is nationally certified, like through the National Sexual Assault Awareness, like certification entity and you actually get that certification process. And that was I actually think it was probably some of the most effective training even though I don't feel like it was quite enough. It really resonated with me because I was able to kind of understand a lot of the power I had just to hold a certain emotion or like allow someone to go through emotions. 

And for me to hold my boundaries and just be like, “I'm here. I’m a safe space.” And that's the first question that we're trained to ask people is when they call you on that phone and they say, I've been sexually assaulted, we say, are you in a place where you feel safe? Like is your body physically safe? And that's the very first step in then creating emotional, mental, spiritual safety. And to me, that is a significant question. 

And I think that that training was very helpful to then inform everything that I've done ever since then. And it was also a collateral duty. I was an air defense control officer. I was also an operations officer. And I was doing a lot of the training for one of the units at Miramar. So I was doing my regular job. And then I was also a victim advocate training, you know, 1000s of marines, sailors and joint forces.

Brock Briggs  10:58  

That sounds, I know that you said it's maybe not as much as you would have liked. But that sounds very extensive, and that there is a lot of like infrastructure in place to kind of like support people. And that is reassuring to me to like, hear that, that because I never really got to see that side of it. But also kind of like, damning in a way to where it's like, why do we have to have something like this? 

Susannahh Stokes

Yeah

Brock Briggs

Like, that's, I mean, you, I don't think that you could have been in the military at any point in the last 20 years and not known somebody who was a victim of something like this. 

Susannahh Stokes

It's true. 

Brock Briggs

This doesn't need to become like a bashing thing. And I'm, we're not here to, like thrash on the military, or if you want to, you can. This is like a bipartisan thing, like both sides. What can you say about the effectiveness of the program?

Susannahh Stokes  11:59  

Why is question. Let's see, this is interesting, because I actually did, I spoke on a panel. One time Congresswoman Susan Davis, who was the congresswoman for San Diego got busy. And they called me to speak on a panel in front of a bunch of lawyers in her place. And I was like, I feel like I'm gonna disappoint everybody. They're all expecting a congresswoman. And they're bringing in, you know, Lieutenant. At the time, I was Lieutenant Mizone, the uniform victim advocate, but I was speaking about, and in response to the documentary, The Invisible War. 

And I don't know if you've ever heard of that, or seen that. But that documentary was very powerful. Obviously, it is Hollywood. And so there are elements of it that are like really dramatized, and they focused on the worst cases. But the military needs a program like this, because there is an abundance of assault against each other, not just men on women, but also men on men and women on men to some extent, and also going out into the community and getting assaulted by people who are around that base, right? So it's not just responding to cases of assault that are between service members, it can be the community at large. 

And, the fact is that the statistics keep changing. But you know, for a long time, they were saying it was like, you know, 80% of especially women had been assaulted. And in the military and my guess is that it's actually higher, it's like the vast majority. I was assaulted in every single rank that I was in the military. So that's one of the reasons why this is so necessary. And I actually do believe in this program over a lot of other programs, because it's the only program in the military that was systematically required to help people heal in some way. And I was like, “Wow, this is blowing my mind that we even have this.” 

But it was because there were so many sexual assaults that were being reported. And they were tearing units apart, that the camaraderie was just crumbling. So I wish actually that a program like this, actually, I'll also share. The best part about this program is that they require a lot of it to be third party and civilian. So it's a lot of civilian oversight. The SAPR program is headed up by a civilian. And it's almost always a civilian overseeing the military units, so it's not like, not a fully in house thing. 

And I, as a victim advocate, have the power to not share information with the chain of command that everything could be completely like a restricted report, basically. So what I appreciated about this program was that it was this full program to help people heal from something that they saw was an actual issue. And what's surprising to me is that we haven't taken the same approach to PTS to, you know, to suicide to, like they're attempting it, but there's just no systematic approach for it with third party oversight. And I think that that really makes or breaks, you know, the healing process.

Brock Briggs  15:56  

It's funny that you mentioned that because I literally was just gonna bring up I'm like, why, if having third parties involved seems like a really critical element to it, where you can have an unbiased perspective. And if there's like systemic problems within maybe a certain unit or command or whatever level, you know, one, in very large organizations, the upper leadership isn't gonna see that. My carrier that I was attached to, we had just a really large amount of suicides that happened in like very, very short succession. 

And I don't know what the CO or the commanding officer, executive officer, I don't know what any of them could have done about it. Because there's so I mean, we've got 3000, 4000 people. How can you know what problems your people are facing when there's not many people? I just don't think that you can. And so I'm, I was gonna ask. It's crazy that you brought that up. That seems to me like it would be a step in the right direction to address at least a suicide problem. And then some of the others you mentioned as well.

Susannahh Stokes  17:10  

Yeah, I actually the parts of the SAPR and UVA system that I really think were effective, were that it has a third party oversight, like a civilian oversight. It's not necessarily a totally separate agency, but it is an affiliate agency with the Department of Defense. And it has, it gives the individual like, you know, the victim advocates sovereignty and agency within the chain of command that they don't actually have to go to their chain of command to handle these issues. Like they're completely separate. 

So it's this whole collateral duty where you don't report to anybody other than the SAPR chain. And I think that that piece of like, I'm sorry, sir. I remember, actually, I had a CO one time call me. And I think this is where we struggle with the suicide stuff. So I had a CO call me and he was like, hey, this person was sexually assaulted. And I'd really like this to remain a restricted report. And a restricted report is when the person who was assaulted comes to me and says, “I was assaulted. I don't want anyone in the chain of command to know. I just want your support through this process.” 

And I am able to then handle their restricted report and unrestricted report is where the chain of command knows. And then, there is the possibility for like legal action. And the CO calls me on behalf of someone else and says, “I want this to remain a restricted report.” And I was like, “With all due respect, sir, this is already not a restricted report. You have no ability to say that or to even request that because you already know.”

Brock Briggs  19:00  

Did that person go to the CO? Is that how it should be?

Susannahh Stokes  19:04  

It got reported up to the CO basically, yeah, outside of that person. So I remember being able to actually say, that's not how this works. And I am the final decision maker on this. And I think that was really empowering to me and to other victim advocates, because it gave us the ability to really advocate for the people who came to us. 

And I think if we had a system that was like that for PTS for potential for, you know, suicide, we have like the, in the Marine Corps, they call it the MFLAC program. They have like Family Readiness officer. They have yeomans. They have all these, you know, all these people who are supportive, but they're not really empowered, and they're not really given full on duties that can tell a commanding officer, like go jump in the lake. I'm sorry, that's not the way this works, right? And the commanding officer ends up having like full control over their unit. And I think that that can be damaging to people because also their politics get a little involved, right? As we know.

Brock Briggs  20:16  

Right. Well, it's like, kind of like another level of accountability to senior officers and not saying that they haven't earned the respect of, you know, their rank and all of this stuff. I mean, I'm not questioning like the captain of my carriers like position or authority. But you know, what other checks and balances are in place to kind of like, hey, like, let's just make sure we're within the guideposts here. And it sounds like that type of program with these positions that kind of have some autonomy can help do that.

Susannahh Stokes  20:57  

Very much. And I think when I was in the question around third party oversight, was like a really hot topic. And it was fascinating to me to watch that, because I remember a lot of commanding officers like really squirming in their seats and like hating that idea of having like a civilian or some other entity that would come in and check on. And this, I think, was specifically related to sexual assault, of having like a whole different process for like a tribunal kind of thing. Especially when you have like service member on service member assault, within the same unit, which really makes it difficult, because often is a senior person who assaulted a junior person. That's based on statistics. That's the normal, that would be what would happen. 

And so that makes it really difficult for a commanding officer to say, “Oh, my, you know, Senior Chief, assaulted this junior, like, petty officer, and who am I gonna like side with?” And that's why that checks and balances in that third party is really, really helpful. So I am a big believer in having something like this. And we have, I've seen too many beautiful lives lost to suicide and into that kind of reaction and lack of support. I think there's also commanding officers that are coming from their own perspective, and we're going through a big transition on what it means to heal. 

And for a long time, commanding officers were not really supported on an emotional level. And so they were like, “Oh, just, you know, pick yourself up by your bootstraps,” or like, “tough it out,” or “you're just a wuss.” And then that leads to someone hurting themselves. And we're gonna see more and more of that, and doing a lot of the trauma related work that I have done, that is going to continue to increase until empathy and compassion comes into play. And so some of these commanding officers just don't, they don't have the capacity for that compassion because they haven't received it in their own life.

Brock Briggs  23:30  

You mentioned healing several times. And you brought that up to me before we started talking about something that you are particularly passionate about. What does that look like for maybe somebody who has experienced sexual harassment, sexual assault? Or maybe just exiting the military generally? What are your thoughts about that? And where's the opportunity on how to better heal from like traumatic experience?

Susannahh Stokes  24:02  

Wooh! I love this question. Thank you, Brock. Thanks for letting me talk about this. 

Brock Briggs

I'm here for you. 

Susannahh Stokes

You are. Yeah and healing is going to look different for everyone. So I wanna say that first right off the bat, that everyone's healing looks different. Some people's healing is really messy. It's really loud. It's really out there. It's like, I've got this stuff and it's really, I'm struggling with it. 

Other people are gonna keep a lot of that healing within themselves or even the pain, right? So reminding all of your listeners that you don't know what someone's going through. You don't know their full story unless you ask, right? And reminding people that like healing is going to look different. So there's no right way. There's no wrong way. And one thing that has been a guiding light in how I work with people as they're healing, whether it's through their transition from the military, or it's as they step into leadership, and we'll talk about DoUnto in the future, is to remind them to feel their feelings. 

And this is something going back to talking about a lot of the commanding officers, a lot of these commanding officers were not given permission in their lives to feel their feelings. And, what that means is, I use this analogy sometimes is like, if you're an antelope, and you are running across the Sahara. Stay with me on this, Brock. It will make sense at the end. So you're an antelope, and you're running across the Sahara and you're just like really enjoying your life. 

And then a lion comes, and it starts to chase you. And your heart starts to pound and you giddy up. You move as fast as you possibly can. And somehow, you actually evade that lion. When danger is gone, right? And you're no longer have that life or death situation, you're the antelope. You actually will go into a shock phase, where your body will shake. Everything will move. You will literally go into almost like a seizure, because you almost got eaten by a damn lion. That's scary. 

Brock Briggs

It is. 

Susannahh Stokes

That's really scary. So that antelope is gonna go into a primal state of feeling their feelings of, “Holy crap, I almost died in the last hour. And that was really scary. So I'm gonna move through this.” But as humans, as we've been domesticated, we have forgotten how to actually feel our feelings and move through the fullness of the emotion. So if something really traumatic happens to me, or even someone gets in my face, and they start to yell at me, and I wasn't prepared for it, and I wasn't like, hunkered down in my body, like, “Alright, I got this.” Then I'm gonna need to process that experience. 

And it might involve me screaming, or crying, or shaking, or all sorts of things. So that's the first like step in my opinion. And that's hard to do with veterans because we've been taught for so long to just hide it, right? To just suppress it, to just be strong, don't be a wuss, don't cry. And these are all things are actually very natural, primal things that we need to do.

Brock Briggs  28:02  

How much of that do you think has to do with the kind of like, I don't wanna say former regime, but kind of, but I'm thinking of senior officers right now that are you know, commanding units and whatnot. And they were raised by the generation before them was like, I think of the World War ll generation really. And just that kind of like, hardened. Like, you're just gonna be a cast iron person. 

And like, you have to be that way to even make it. I know, several like, interacted with several senior female officers and like, enlisted during my time. And I was like, you are got to be the toughest person, like, maybe physically and mentally, you're just so hardened that like, I don't even know. It's hard to think about maybe seeing even emotion out of this person that wasn't angry. 

How much of it? Do you think maybe spurred on by that and like, you know, another person maybe somebody in that position might just say, oh, like everybody's too in their feelings now and like, this is the military like, what's the response to that? Is it the hey, we need to do something like this because we're human? Or how do we come back to people that are, you know, giving us a hard time for wanting to shed a tear?

Susannahh Stokes  29:34  

I love this and I was gonna ask like, I feel like you know some of these people, Brock.

Brock Briggs  29:42  

I know at least one. Yeah, at least one. 

Susannahh Stokes   29:46  

My dad is a Vietnam War era Marine. So I can tell you that while he's not fully in the like, don't cry, don't show any emotion. And he's definitely in the like, you know, just look on the bright side. Everything's gonna be fine, just forge ahead, right? And I know plenty of this sort of old guard, right? That are very hardened. And what I describe that as, this is not mine. This is Brene Brown, but she talks about having armor, right? So we have like armor that we've built. 

And sometimes I even say it's like a fortress, we've built this fortress around us. So we actually can't feel anything. We can't feel the good things. We can't feel the bad things. We can't feel the uncomfortable things. We can't even, we can't feel. And so we've numbed ourself and that old guard in particular has numb themselves and then told themselves and now us, that we really just shouldn't be feeling our feelings at all, because then you can just show up in a steady kind of grounded way every day, being numb. 

And what I offer is that that technique now is leading to while it's not necessarily wrong, right? We're all approaching life, and we're doing the best we can. I encourage people to not numb themselves, but not numbing yourself also means to feel your feelings. And so how do we do that in such a way where we can actually show up for the mission every day and take care of ourselves and each other, and not completely fall apart but also feel the stuff? 

So a lot of the training that I do with companies with individual people, and then some of the like intensive healing work that I do with clients is related to feeling our feelings and really creating containers within which and where we can feel those feelings. So it's not about, you know, being in the middle of a meeting and breaking down sobbing, although I have done that. I have done that, been there. It's not about you know, completely falling apart when the shit is hitting the fan and being like, I don't know what to do and just giving up when the enemy actually starts to shoot at you. 

It's about having spaces, and particular times where we can go and people we can work with, to help us release some of those trapped feelings. So that they don't hurt us later on. Because what we're doing when we're numbing ourselves is we're actually just suppressing. We're suppressing all the emotions. And they slowly but surely, when you suppress too much, if you don't let it out, at some point, it's going to come out. And the only emotions right now that we're told are acceptable, our anger and aggression to some extent, and then just like happy or laughing and happier or joyful emotions. 

So if those are the only emotions that you're limited to forever, all the time in your life, then where are all the other ones going, right? So I'm a big believer in having like, dedicated spaces for that, of having that's why people go to therapy. It's why people, it's why we have a lot of folks who go to the gym, and they're just like letting out all the rage on the equipment. And I say, beautiful, that's a beautiful way of channeling that energy. But let's do it mindfully. Let's know when I go to the gym, I'm gonna let out a lot of anger on this friggin treadmill today. And then it will actually flow out of me so that I don't have to hold on to it and it doesn't literally eat me alive.

Brock Briggs  34:11  

Well, you mentioned containing things and like, calling on that or training or whatever to like, go through this process. We, people in the military are already trained to do that for but just for other circumstances. 

Susannahh Stokes

That’s right

Brock Briggs 

You know, like you're you go through basic training and you learn like firefighting, and like all of these kinds of weird things that you're like, “Man, when am I ever gonna need to do this?” And then something comes up and it's literally just like a switch flips. And you're, you're just like, start doing it. And after the fact everybody always has that, like, I don't know what happened. I just like started doing something and then like, here we are. It's like that's the training kicking in. And that same thing I think could be implemented as like in a way that you're talking about. I also

Susannahh Stokes  35:00  

That's perfect Brock, I think that's such a beautiful example. And to me, that's flow, right? So that is the flow state when something has become so natural to us that it is now intuitive in our body, and especially when it can be coordinated with other people, right? And we can be aware of where they are around us, like in a firefight, and suddenly you just move into the positions that you know, you're supposed to be in. That, to me, that concept of team flow, which the Navy SEALS and a lot of our other special operations folks have, like down. If we could do that for emotional, mental, and physical healing, we'd literally be unstoppable.

Brock Briggs  35:47  

You mentioned working out and I think that that is the go to for a lot of people. And I'm one of them. I'd never really. And I think if somebody asked me about what I do to kind of like, work through negative emotion or anger or sadness, or whatever, the gym or running or whatever is one of those things. But it's interesting that you talk about being mindful about bringing that up while you're doing it to kind of associate the two because it's also very easy to I've got my headphones in. I've got a podcast going. I'm like thinking about that. And then the association isn't there. What are the other things that we can be doing other than maybe working out to associate working through some of those, like negative emotions?

Susannahh Stokes  36:42  

Yeah. That's a beautiful example of like, when we have our headphones and we're working out, really what we're doing is we're disassociating. So you're using the word associating, right? And we're disassociating, which is there's all sorts of techniques that we do to disassociate, which I would also say as a synonym to numb, to numb what we're feeling. So we're not actually in the present moment. And we're not feeling the feelings at like their full capacity. And we're taught this we're taught to disassociate. Media teaches us to disassociate. Our parents do to some extent, right? 

Things like alcohol, all anything that can be addictive is a disassociation technique. All of these things take us away from our true center and our true feelings so that we don't feel them as intensely. And what I'm offering is like, if you go to the gym, and I kind of love it, when I hear somebody who's just like, growling when they're working, like some big dude. And he's like, “aaarrrhh!” And I'm like, “yeah, get it,” because that is actually, we can also process energy through sound, right? Screaming, wailing, moaning, all of these things, like help us to move energy. These are also very ancient and indigenous techniques that we're now remembering. 

But part of that when we go to the gym, what I invite you to do is yes, maybe listen to music. But listen to music, that's going to bring up the emotion or the particular thing that you're feeling in that moment. And maybe it is anger or rage or frustration, or maybe it's grief, right? Or despair, like I just lost another buddy to suicide, right? I'm actually grieving. And so allowing, and I remember during 2020 when we were all stuck inside for months, and we were all stuck with our feelings. I was going through a really, really tough few months. 

And one way that I processed the feelings and most of my feelings were anger and resentment is I would be working out. And I would envision every time I breathed in, I was breathing in like peaceful or calming energy and I was breathing out anger and resentment and rage. And I was listening to Pantera or Disturbed or something really intense, and allowing that music to like flow, like let it flow out of me. And I remember feeling sometimes I would feel like I was on fire. My body was like hot, because I was allowing that rage to actually flow through me and feeling it. And when I did that, I actually got to let that feeling go. So it wasn't like holding on and suppressing in my system, which is what disassociation does for our bodies.

Brock Briggs  39:48  

I recently have experienced so many things that you're talking about. I recently started. I like long distance running and recently started running without headphones. And I got into running by rewarding myself with listening to a podcast. And that was the only time and that was like such a good like, got the carrot on the end of the stick. It gets me to run. 

But then over like the last like week or two I've been doing without and I'm like, at first I was like, “This is miserable.” Literally so bad. But you go for like an extended workout or whatever. And you can think about a lot of things when you're just sitting there like trying to like think about something that is anything other than like, how bad you can't breathe or like, you know, whatever workout you're doing. That's I think that disassociation connection you're making there, I think is really good.

Susannahh Stokes  40:49  

That's wonderful, Brock and way to go. Congratulations! I wanna celebrate you. Because to be honest, I mean, that's why a lot of runners end up kind of in like a Zen field or you know, they're very mindful. Because if you're running and you don't run with music, that's not to say you can’t also do this with music, you can. But when you're running and you're just listening to the earth around you, and you're listening to your own breathing, and you are full, like front and center with the anxiety in your brain. What's also happening on a physiological level, is when we move our body, when we're physically moving our body, we're actually breaking up things that are getting stuck. 

And I don't know if you ever read the book, The Body Keeps The Score. But that is a really great book because it does talk about how we hold trauma, and we hold emotions in our physical body. And that's really where we store them. And so when we're moving our body in working out, especially if it's aerobic, then those emotions and those patterns and those memories start to actually break up and like kind of. I always think they like bubble up kind of into our brain. 

And then we're like, why am I thinking about that time that I was bullied when I was in third grade by those boys, right? Like, why did this come up right now? Well, it's because now our body is moving that, you know, that memory that's been stored somewhere in your calf for the last 20 years. And now you're able to process it on a conscious level. 

I mean, we could also go into the whole, like neurology of it. But that is a fundamental piece. And if we can just stay present with it, and be like, “Oh, okay, I'm gonna like feel the feeling of what it was like to be bullied by those boys. I'm just gonna be with it, and I'm gonna run through it,” then we actually may not have that stored in our subconscious after that run. And we healed ourselves.

Brock Briggs  43:04  

Right. And you also have like the physical kind of like accomplishment of like finishing a run. And that's like it's super symbolic of like maybe overcoming something and so

Susannahh Stokes

Totally

Brock Briggs 

I'm excited. 

Susannahh Stokes

Excellent!

Brock Briggs 

All this stuff that I've like, I did an interview yesterday. And this woman was also a marathon runner. And I brought up to her randomly I was like, “Have you ever had this weird feeling when you're like, deep into a run and you just like gets crazy emotional, like you just start crying or like something?” And she's like, “Oh, yeah,” and I told her I was like, “I've never told anybody that before. But I'm glad that that's a real thing.” And that's super cool.

Susannahh Stokes  43:46  

I have one memory that just came up that you triggered, which was my and I have a shout out to one of my former leaders now Colonel Corponen. He’s in San Diego. He basically made me into a runner because I hated running. And he was like, “We're gonna go out at the hottest time of the day in the middle of the summer. In Afghanistan, we're gonna run six miles, three times a week.” And I was like, “You are absolutely insane. I am not doing that.” And he was like, “Yes, you are, because I'm your CO. And you have to do what I say.” 

Actually, he was much kinder about it. He let me choose. But we did that and that those six mile runs and it was just us. It was like him and you know, Captain, I think it was captain at the time. And we would just run around the base and it would be 110 degrees in Afghanistan. And those were probably like, I might get emotional. Those were some of the most healing experiences for me because not only was there like a mentorship that he offered, but I was moving through a lot of things. And I was healing from a lot of things. 

And that was actually right before I moved into a period of time where I was in a divorce with my partner and my ex husband, who started to, that divorce kind of started while I was in Afghanistan and that separation. And so those runs were like, next level for me and I trained for a half marathon and I did it. And I definitely think that running is one of the most powerful mindfulness activities we can do with our bodies.

Brock Briggs  45:40  

Absolutely, I would second that, and I preach it to everybody who will listen. Most people don't listen. But I think that this is generally a plug for finding what your thing is and finding a way to work through whatever you got going on because we all got our shit.

Susannahh Stokes  46:00  

Amen. Amen to that. Yes.

Brock Briggs  46:05  

I want to talk a little bit, this is gonna be a really rough transition. But I wanna talk about your transition out of the Marines and what that looks like. You went, was it pretty close to right after you got out into a job at Facebook?

Susannahh Stokes  46:23  

Yeah, one thing I've learned about myself and my body is I don't stop.

Brock Briggs  46:30  

So the day after you get your DD214 and you just start right there.

Susannahh Stokes  46:34  

I already had the job. I literally took 11 days between the Marine Corps and going up to Facebook, and that was simply to just move my life up there. But I was, one week I was in uniform at Miramar in San Diego. And then like a week and a half later, I was meeting Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook and like helping to run one of the the comms and policy team there. I was like, yeah, I don't ever stop. 

And that's the thing that I really encourage people to do is when you are getting out of the military, give yourself some space and time because you can. Because you really have the opportunity to kind of savor, go on a trip. Like go somewhere that seems really cool to you. I was definitely in a mode of like proving myself and I was like, I need to go from this. And I can't, I was also still in my healing process. So that, I'll briefly recap how that happened, which is an interesting story. So before my second deployment, my ex husband somehow. Bless him.

Brock Briggs  47:56  

Got something good out of it?

Susannahh Stokes  47:58  

Oh, he was the navigator of the rest of my life, which was so fascinating. And I say that, with all irony in the best way because he was also a navigator in the Navy. And he was such a beautiful navigator. And he literally connected me with Sheryl Sandberg via email somehow. And I got a personal email from her the day before my second deployment. And I broke down just in tears because she was such and is still such an inspiration to me. And I had done a lot of work with Lean In, in the Marine Corps and teaching courses on Lean In, which is her organization, her book. And so after that, I was like “Well, I have her email, like I'm going to email her back, obviously.”

Brock Briggs  48:52  

You have to.

Susannahh Stokes

You have to.

Brock Briggs 

That's all the authority in the world right there. 

Susannahh Stokes  48:54  

Yeah, exactly. So while I was emailing her this was a few years before I got out. We would email back and forth every now and then. And while I was in Afghanistan, that second deployment, she also met with the Commandant of the Marine Corps. And I happen to know the Commandant of the Marine Corps senior enlisted aid at the time. And so literally Sheryl and the Commandant of the Marine Corps were talking about me in their meeting, like nobody me, and they and so they both like came back to me with these stories. 

And I get an email from the commandant. And he's like, hey, I wanna know more about like the experience of women in the Marine Corps. Like let's talk about this. Sends me an email, Susannah, this is, you know, Commandant James Amos. And I was like, what is happening? So, as I was preparing to get out, I emailed Sheryl and I said you know I'd love to just like fly up to San Francisco and say thank you for everything that you've done to inspire me and other women. And she was like, “Why don't we just do a video call? We'll just do a video call.” And I was like, “Great. I'm anything.” 

And so I got a video chat with her and she was like you need to come work at Facebook. And I was like, this is totally left field from what I was interested in doing because I was headed to Berkeley. I was gonna go get my Master's of Public Policy and go work probably for a government agency. And she was like, “Don't do that. Don't do that.” She's like, come work here. Send me your resume. And then and, you know, long story short, that's where I ended up. And I, that was the first moment where I really like surrendered. And I let the universe just like, “Take me wherever it was going.” And I was like, “This is scary. But I'm doing this because you don't say no to Sheryl Sandberg.”

Brock Briggs  50:58  

Right, probably arguably, in the top 10 like most powerful people in the world, not by money sense but just in 

Susannahh Stokes

Influence 

Brock Briggs

Power and influence that a company like that has, what a crazy story. That and just kind of a seemingly coincidental series of events that kind of led to that. What I guess what was the job like that she was hiring you on to do? Or was it just like a hey, I'm just gonna hire you. It's like, there's maybe not a position or what did that look like?

Susannahh Stokes  51:35  

Well, we talked a bit about like whether I should come to Facebook, or whether I should go to Lean In, which is her nonprofit organization. And she's like, I think you actually should work at Facebook because it's more of a corporation. You really need some corporate experience. So after that, after I had her like blessing, I was then I went into the normal sort of Facebook system. I mean, I still had her recommendation. So I knew there was some place I was gonna end up. 

But then I was sort of passed on to the recruiting team, and then they, it was their job to find me a place of like, where to work because she doesn't have to worry about that, right? 

Brock Briggs

Not her problem

Susannahh Stokes

Not her problem. So what ended up happening, which was also a really big learning experience for me, was I ended up as the executive assistant to Sheryl's Director of Communications, which on some level, could have been very much like a secretarial job. Like it could have been, you know, getting coffee and dry cleaning, and like just keeping your calendar and those were elements of that job. 

But because I had the experience I had, I was able to do a lot more and offer a lot more and be more like a Chief of Staff for the entire communications and policy team, which was handling all of the biggest fires. So trending topics, which most people don't remember, but also, you know, eventually Cambridge Analytica, like all of these really huge issues that Facebook was struggling with. And when I got there in 2016, was when Facebook really started to have some scandals, which they really hadn't experienced before in the past. But what I learned from that was, first of all my manager and her name was Anne Kornblut. She was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who had broken the WikiLeaks story. She was literally that person, so an amazing, amazing woman and leader to work under. 

But what I found was like Facebook and most of these other organizations, these tech organizations in 2016, had no effing clue. I don't know if I can curse on here.

Brock Briggs

Let it fly

Susannahh Stokes

But they had no fucking clue about what to do with veterans. They were like, “Ahh, sure you could be an executive assistant.” Like, that sounds good. And granted, I was working with executives and for executives, but they had no idea that I could also like lead a whole team. I mean, I could be, I could step right into a product manager role and lead a team of five people and not even have a problem. 

So that was when I really took it upon myself to be like, “Okay, your onboarding and your recruiting system is broken. And we need to create a better process and veterans need to be respected on a different level because there's no understanding of what veterans can offer you, and you're putting them into jobs that aren't suiting them, which is why they're not gonna come here.”

Brock Briggs  55:07  

That's so shocking to me because, how many employees did they have at that time, like 10s of 1000s, easily.

Susannahh Stokes  55:17  

At that time, Facebook, this is interesting. So my employee number was like 14,000. So there was only between like 13 to 14,000 in 2016. But since I was there, in the three years I was there, it tripled or quadrupled in size. So the period of time I was there was a massive, like influx. And in that period of time, was when I and then a small group of other veterans. And they hired on a really amazing woman, Felipe Buzaid, who is their veteran program manager. And they like, actually began a whole program for veterans. 

And then I led. I was the global lead for the Veterans Resource Group, which raised a lot of awareness around like, hey, we're actually a diverse, we're technically a diverse group. You can count it toward your diversity numbers. And we have really unique skill set that you need. And you should probably stop hiring your veterans to get people's dry cleaning.

Brock Briggs  56:32  

Right. That's one thing that I've always thought is so comical, that they're like large organizations that have kind of like a Veterans Program or whatever, and it's like, oh, you get like an extra couple points or whatever. And it kind of, it feels like a snub in a little way. It's just like no, like I would be great for this job. Like and it's just because they have no idea like what the military does. 

Susannahh Stokes

That's right. 

Brock Briggs

You've got people that like, some people at 18 years old, are literally thrown into a, no 18 year olds who have led people into combat. I know for a fact that they can handle the stress of like a day to day corporate job. It might be a little bit different. Maybe not everybody, but people in the military are very capable. It's sad that you have to explain that to people.

Susannahh Stokes  57:26  

Totally, totally, totally Brock. And I couldn't agree with you more. And I had this really interesting call. One of the first calls I had with a recruiter, she said, “Well, you know at Facebook, we like, we work really hard. And there are gonna be times when you're gonna be working long hours. And I like I had to sit there and just like hold back. Like, your face right now. Like, okay, so I was like, “You know what? Yeah, you know, I worked seven days a week for seven months, twice in Afghanistan. Like we don't, there's no holidays out there. There's no weekend. You work every day.” And I was like, “I think I can show up for the long hours, like not a problem.”

Brock Briggs  58:16  

I've handled over 100 hour work week in Afghanistan. I think I can handle 60 at Facebook, and you guys are bringing me lunch and like

Susannahh Stokes

Yeah

Brock Briggs 

Come on

Susannahh Stokes   58:28  

I remember the military saying, like, you're not gonna find anything like the military. They're not going to provide you all these things. And then I went to Facebook. And of course now these tech companies like they it's basically like the military. They provide you everything, there like housing, moving, food, restaurant, like anything you could ever want. So that's a huge benefit. But what I saw as the big gap is there's just this like, this chasm. There's no real preparation on the military side for veterans or transitioning service members. Yeah, we have, like TRS. We have transition readiness seminar. You have TAPs, you have some of those. 

But really what they do is they just try to teach you how to write a resume for a week. And that's about it, right? So if I had known how to negotiate a salary or like a working contract, if I had known, if I'd gotten even like a list that said, hey, here's some common like titles. And this is what they mean in like military language, right? Which actually, Google has like a job translator now on Google, which you can look up and you can check out your MOS and I love that. And that was developed by veterans because there just wasn't that support in the military. 

And then on the private side in the tech industry, especially, they had no idea also. There was no translation, right? It was like coming from one country to another, and then trying to match your job, and they didn't have any clue. And one thing that I tell companies when, I do very limited consulting with some companies on how to establish veterans programs. And one of the things I say is like, also veterans are not gonna wanna come to your company, if you're not celebrating them in some way as a community, and not creating a space for them to have that camaraderie. So I think that was really my mission at Facebook was to make Facebook, the premier tech company to hire veterans. 

And I wanted to make it a really welcoming community for veterans when they arrived. And I think we did that actually, in three years. We grew it 10 times. We grew it from 200 members to 2000 in our veterans group. And it went from 2 chapters to 26 chapters around the world, including international veterans, not just American Veterans. And yeah, to see the rapid growth, we went from zero budget to almost $200,000 a year for our budget of just for like, you know, like diversity and inclusion activities. So powerful stuff. Yeah.

Brock Briggs  1:01:31  

Very much so. I've had several people on the podcast, a little bit selfishly, that are very deep down the rabbit hole of like, owning your own business, entrepreneurship, etc. And I have been driven that way with my interest because of the fact that I feel so underwhelmed at corporate America's desire to bring on very high skilled, quality work in like, kind of the veteran world. What? So that's kind of a side, I get on my soapbox about that. 

Susannahh Stokes  1:02:15  

I hear you and I agree. 

Brock Briggs  1:02:19  

Okay, good. I didn't think you would.

Susannahh Stokes

Totally 

Brock Briggs 

For those that may not be right for and people that are want to go work at a high tech job like Facebook or something like that. And maybe they've got a veteran program where you get the extra points or whatever, maybe they don't. From your time there, other than like the translator up like the titles, what do you think are some ways that people can stand out to a company? You really leveraged your network, like that was really instrumental. What or is it? Should people just be dialing in on network? Or is there anything, any other thing that people can be doing to kind of stand out without the veteran label?

Susannahh Stokes  1:03:12  

Yeah, great question. And I briefly worked with, I'll give a shout out to this amazing man, Tom Kent, who runs a business called CareerNerds. And he basically helps veterans either transition or bump up especially into like senior leadership roles in companies. And so I very briefly, like learned the ropes of career coaching a bit. And I can mostly speak to my own experience and how I did it. I don't have as much of the perspectives of like other techniques. There’s many, many different ways that you can approach this. 

But for me, I do believe in networking. And Tom does too. Like we believe in, hey, go out and find the people in your community and you're, granted my networking was a bit like around. I don't necessarily recommend trying to connect with the CEO of every company or a COO. But I would say that the military, unlike almost any other organization in the world, has a brotherhood and or sisterhood that is unlike any other. And people will bend over freakin’ backward for you. Especially if you've been in a wartime environment together. Or you've been, you know, at a school together in some way and you've been through this shit together, then, like reach out to those people. 

And don't be afraid of saying “Hey, brother! Hey, sister, can you help me out because I'm now getting out? And I'm interested to know about your organization.” So I would say, reach out to those people. And you don't have to ask them, “Hey, will you help me get a job?” But you can say, “I'd like your wisdom. And I'd like your advice on how would I enter into this organization. This is a company that I really wanna work for.” The other technique that I highly recommend, and I've done this with a ton of veterans is, there are, I recommend beefing up your resume to match the particular role that you are looking for, right? So especially if there's one on that website that has certain wording, right? 

And you really want that one, they put those into a computer system. And I am not smart enough to know all of the keywords. But there are resume writers that will help you out there that can help you kind of, you're not really cheating the system. You're just you're just matching what the computers are searching for. And that is how they, if you submit your resume online to an organization, that is how they're going to like, process it, right? It's typically not gonna be a human. But that's why the networking piece is so critical. Because when you are a referral from an existing employee, your resume goes in, like at the top of the list. So that's what I always recommend. 

And I also recommend, like finding jobs that actually align with the work that you have done in the past, not being like, oh, I was, you know, I have no skills in logistics, but that's what I wanna move into, right? Start with the roles that you know, that you have skill sets in. So if you were supply, let's say in the military, that's a great way to transition over and get that first job. And then you can hop around the company from there. And I know not everybody wants to do that, because they're like, “Oh, I hate supply. I don't wanna do this anymore.” But there is such a benefit because you can get in so much faster. When you're like have been doing supply for like 15 years. I'll do it for another year, and then transition over. 

So those are my recommendations. I think actually hiring a resume writer that particularly like tailors your resume to that role, and to the keywords that the computers are looking for. And then I would say reach out to your network because they wanna help you. I wanna help you like, reach out to me, right? And I have a ton of friends at every major tech company you can possibly imagine. So

Brock Briggs  1:07:47  

You heard it, folks. That’s an open request. 

Susannahh Stokes

I volunteer.

Brock Briggs 

That's a large part of what I hope that people will get from this podcast is everybody that comes on here is like kind of by default, I think willing to like talk to anybody else. If you're willing to spend two hours on the phone with some schmuck like, you'll probably talk to another person too. But I like what you're, where you're going that with like the targeted like specific requests. 

I know like on LinkedIn, you can if you just pull up people that work at a certain organization, and it'll say, “Oh, you both worked at x thing,” and then not say, you know, “Hey, I want a job.” But like you were saying, like, hey, I'm looking to get a job. Would you look at my resume or like, if you come in with like, the low bar requests, like people always, especially other veterans will always take it to the next level and say, “Oh, well. You know, let's get on a call and like, let's talk.”

Susannahh Stokes  1:08:49  

That's perfect. And I think that's typically how I approach people. I approach people, when I, let's say, if I ultimately want something, I don't ask for anything at the beginning. Or I asked for something very, very small. Like, hey, could I just have 15 minutes of your time because I'd like to ask you a few questions about working at Amazon, Google, whatever company. And I'm not trying to like, I'm not trying to get anything from you. I really just really just wanna ask you a few questions and see how it might fit me. And then and people love to share their opinion.

Brock Briggs  1:09:28  

People love talking about themselves.

Susannahh Stokes  1:09:31  

They love talking about themselves. I am an offender of that too. So yeah, reach out to people and appeal to their ego. And they'll be happy but they also like the military. I really want people to understand what a beautiful, like family, the military is. 

And even when I meet people in airports and they like overhear me or somehow we figured out that we were both Marines. Like they're like, oh, you're a Marine? My husband, where were you stationed? And then we have this whole conversation and it's so beautiful to make those new connections and I think there can be pain with leaving the military, various types of pain that we can kind of work through. But one of the huge benefits that can ease that is knowing that you have a brotherhood and sisterhood that is always there for you.

Brock Briggs  1:10:24  

Very true. So now, Susannah, you are the president and CEO of DoUnto, where you guys, that's a 501(c)(3), offers immersive Leadership Development Program. Talk to us a little bit about how that came to be and what you guys do.

Susannahh Stokes  1:10:45  

Yeah. So after experiencing the corporate world, it's funny because when I was on that call with Sheryl Sandberg, I was like, I don't think I wanna go into corporate. I wanna be in nonprofit. And she was like, just work in the corporate world. And she was so right. I'm so glad that I had that experience. And I am deeply grateful that now I feel much closer to my purpose. And what I knew I always desired was to lead an organization that really just aims to do good in the world, and aims to spread awareness. So DoUnto, it's based on the golden rule, which is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” 

And, there's been some controversy over the golden rule in the recent years of like, well, if I treated everyone the exact way that I wanted to be treated, that wouldn't be very fair, because I wanna be treated differently from how other people do. And what we see is actually it's take a step back from that. Like I wanna be treated with compassion and empathy. I want you to reach out and want to ask me questions and understand me and understand how I wanna be treated. And then you treat me that way. And I imagine that that's the same for you, right? That most of us wanna be asked how we wanna be treated. 

And we wanna have this ongoing ability to be compassionate and to have grace for each other. And so we are not seeing a lot of that in the corporate world. And so I founded this organization with my parents, who have been labor and employment attorneys specializing the top like hospitality attorneys working for every major hotel chain for many years. And they handled discrimination case after discrimination case after discrimination case. And so for about a collective 70 years, they've been practicing law and recognizing that we are not treating each other with dignity and respect, because we're still very separated from each other. So we've created several different programs and workshops. We have a workshop on, basically that that does your legal training on sexual harassment. 

So every company that's over a certain size, depending upon what state you're in, is required to have sexual harassment training, much like the SAPR training in the in the military and all of it. I don't wanna say all of it, almost all of it is total shit. Almost all those trainings are just terrible, because they're just checks in the box, right? So you just go in and you check, check, check, and you're like, oh, did Sam harass Pam? No, Sam didn't harass Pam. In this scenario, yes, Sam harassed Pam. And what we learn is, we're actually just wasting our time on this. 

So we created a training that also includes like nonviolent communication and talks about diversity, equity and inclusion. And then we also have a 12 week golden leadership training that allows your leaders, all of your managers to go through a comprehensive training together, and then also to integrate that training with integration calls. And it all comes straight to their phone. And then we have zoom calls to really understand like, what are some of the issues that your managers are experiencing? Because I discovered when I got into the corporate world, we don't have leadership training. 

Facebook didn't have leadership training when I was there. And I was like, “You guys have 40,000 people. And there's no leadership training.” There's a management training of how to use the systems to put people's like EVALS in, but that's about it. And I was like, this is crazy that these big organizations don't develop their leaders. And so we did that. And we created a program that's for busy leaders, but also helps people to treat each other with dignity.

Brock Briggs  1:15:18  

Yeah, that's an important thing. People, we like dignity. That's important. That's shocking that Facebook didn't have something like that, especially organization of that size. Who are your guys's customers right now? Or who are maybe some examples of people that you've worked with? And who is this for? Who are you targeting?

Susannahh Stokes  1:15:41  

Yeah. So we target right now, small to medium businesses, especially those that are growing quickly. Conscious companies, we work with B Corporations. We work with organizations. And also I have also done some work with, like teams in the alphabet company in the alphabet system. Tech companies, any company that's kind of on the front edge of whatever they're doing, and they wanna support their people in a new and collaborative way. That's who we are really targeting. And right now we have the capacity to support companies that have teams of up to about 2000. 

And then, as we grow, of course, that will grow, but we really wanna focus on companies that actually are interested in creating some kind of change. And companies that are fully remote or virtual, because all of our programs are fully virtual and remote. And we find that there are a lot of companies that are not, that don't actually wanna commit to their people. And so then they have a lot of retention problems. And what we often say is that there are, I mean, dozens of statistics out there, but one of the ones I know is like it costs 120% of someone's salary to hire them back again, 20% more on that person's salary to hire them back again. 

But then over time over that, let's say a year of that person leaving and then the next person coming in. It's almost double the salary. So you're, it's almost like you're hiring two people during that year to do that work. And so companies are just paying out the wazoo for turnover because people are unhappy. And people don't leave bad companies, they leave bad bosses. And bad bosses are not born bad bosses. Bad bosses are made bad bosses because they don't have any support, and they don't have resources. 

So we wanna show up for those leaders to be able to understand and to actually develop and to bring some of the techniques and the wisdom that that the military, you know, has taught our leaders to some extent, and then also make it even more compassionate, perhaps and feel our feelings a little more.

Brock Briggs  1:18:19  

Compassion and the military in the same sentence. I've never heard that one before.

Susannahh Stokes  1:18:28  

Yeah, it can be. It's possible, but not probable, let's say.

Brock Briggs  1:18:35  

Well, I think that if there's somebody that can do it, I think you'd be the person to do it. It's clear that you've got the passion. And I wish you and your company all the success in the world. I'll maybe have to have you back on and hear how your company is doing. 

Susannahh Stokes 

I love that.

Brock Briggs 

Where can people go to find out more about you? DoUnto? Whatever you'd like to give out?

Susannahh Stokes 1:18:57  

Yes. I'd love for you to follow me on LinkedIn. That's where I do most of my talking and sharing of resources. I share a ton of resources and statistics and research that we do on on behalf of this and you can go to dounto.co, D, O, U, N, T, O, dot co and visit our website there and you can also download. It got some freebies and some little things that you can download and actually just take it into your own organization because we're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we also give away scholarships to nonprofits and social impact organizations. 

So if you are a nonprofit and you are interested in receiving coaching, a workshop or training, reach out to us and you can find my Calendly almost anywhere online, and I invite you to set up a meeting with me and we'll talk about you receiving some of our support because we love, love, love to help you. And you can also donate, just so you know. Everyone can donate to DoUnto.

Brock Briggs  1:20:08  

Perfect. Yeah, go do that. Susannah, thank you so much for coming on today.

Susannahh Stokes  1:20:14  

Thank you so much, Brock. It has been such a pleasure. You are a joy. I appreciate you sharing your voice with the world. And I look forward to, yeah, more discussions in the future.