The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) has awarded the MOAA Military Spouse Professional Development program and its hallmark symposia series, “Keeping a Career on the Move,” a prestigious “Power of A” Silver Award. The program is part of a suite of programs and services MOAA offers as a recognized national subject matter expert in the area of servicemember career transition.

In 2012, the MOAA Career Transition program received an ASAE Summit Award, ASAE's highest national honor given to only six organizations each year. In 2014, MOAA commissioned a study with Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families on the state of military spouse employment. The study found an unemployment rate among military spouses who want to work of more than 20 percent, and an underemployment rate of over 90 percent based on education and experience.

Given those findings and MOAA's award-winning career transition content and best-in-class instruction, MOAA built the “Keeping a Career on the Move” symposia series, social media platform, and supplemental publication for military spouses seeking to enter/reenter a professional field.

Then, through a highly successful 2017 collaboration with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Hiring Our Heroes program and funding support from USAA, MOAA was able to take its Military Spouse Professional Development program to scale offering complementary, one-day seminars nationally and overseas.

“We are proud to work alongside MOAA and USAA on this initiative,” said Eric Eversole, President, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Hiring Our Heroes. “Working together, we are able to bring greater visibility to the military spouse employment issue at the national level. We have made significant progress over the last year, but there is a lot more to be done, and we look forward to continuing this effort alongside MOAA and our partners.”

“We are honored to be the exclusive funder of the 'Keeping Your Career on the Move' workshops, which help ensure our military spouses find meaningful and flexible employment opportunities,” said Selene Martin, USAA Corporate Responsibility Director. “Along with access to supportive services and military spouse-ready employers, these workshops help overcome the many barriers to employment with timely, relevant and impactful training unique to the military spouse community. High-impact collaborations, like that of MOAA and Hiring our Heroes, have engaged more than 700 military spouses at live events across nine locations and, virtually via social media, have reached over 40,000 spouses to-date.”

MOAA President and CEO Lt. Gen. Dana T. Atkins, USAF (Ret), agrees. “When MOAA's board of directors launched the MOAA Military Family Initiative, MOAA's 501(c)(3) foundation, in 2014, its objective was to help fund these types of cooperative efforts and bring synergy and focus to a very crowded sector and obtain the greatest impact possible with donor dollars. This ASAE Silver Award is the most recent testament to how impactful these initiatives can be. We deeply appreciate the ongoing support we've received from both Hiring Our Heroes and USAA that made this award possible.”