Meet Liz Estabrooks, Deputy Director – Center for Women Veterans

The Proudly She Served (PSS) Portrait Unveiling & Book Launch is scheduled for late 2022 in in the Washington DC area. We will provide updates for the date and location as soon as we finalize our plans. We’ve invited the Center for Women Veterans (CWV) Deputy Director and Army Veteran, Elizabeth (Liz) Estabrooks to speak at the event. Liz is a friend and advocate for the PSS project and we are excited to team with her!

Liz leads development and implementation of new initiatives that support and enhance the Center for Women Veteran’s mission and vision. She advocates for cultural transformation both within and outside the Veterans Administration to recognize the service and contributions of women Veterans and servicemembers and raise awareness of the responsibility to treat women Veterans with dignity and respect.

Prior to coming to the VA, Elizabeth served as the Oregon Woman Veterans Coordinator with the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs where she brought decades of knowledge gained from her career working on a multitude of relevant issues. While at the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs, Liz spearheaded the “I Am Not Invisible” campaign starting in 2017. The vision was to bring awareness to the barriers and challenges that women Veterans face in obtaining health care and other services.  With support from the Center for Women Veterans this project has crossed 50 States, 75 cities, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 27 Native American / Alaska Native Nations to capture more than 3,053 women Veteran images.

Recently, as Deputy for the Center for Women Veterans, Liz has been involved with developing a survey designed to understand why women Veterans are not accessing their benefits and services. The survey is completely anonymous, takes less than five minutes.  A Spanish and Tagalog version of the survey will be available in January.  The goal is to get at least 20,000 women Veterans to participate in the survey and share why they don’t or won’t use their benefits or VA services.

We recently connected with Liz to find out a little more about the survey. In Liz’s words - “We learn and do best when we hear the voices of women Veterans, and this survey is a direct link from women Veterans to the Center for Women Veterans and VA. That’s why we are asking all women Veterans who do not have their service-connected benefits and do not use VA to please complete this survey.   This is the first time a survey of this type has been done at VA that focuses just on understanding which women Veterans are using their benefits and services and, for those who are not, why. The survey will give us a clear picture of not only those reasons but how VA and our partners can make adjustments to better meet women Veterans where they are and serve them.”

We invite you to take a look and participate in the Women Veteran Survey here.

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