USAA Joins Forces to Face the Fight Against Veteran Suicide

USAA, along with founding partners Reach Resilience and the Humana Foundation, launched Face the Fight® in 2023. This national initiative has brought together over 200 like-minded organizations to help reduce veteran suicide.

June 17, 2025 | BCCCC Staff

U.S. military service members and their families are the backbone of the nation's security and stability, which in turn supports the business environments where corporate citizenship professionals thrive. However, for many years, they have been grappling with a silent and deadly struggle: a suicide rate that is 1.5 times that of the general population. In 2024, one in four active-duty service members and their spouses reported that their unit or command had experienced a suicide.

At the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship’s 2025 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, convening sponsor USAA made sure that the care and support for U.S. military personnel and their families remained a central focus throughout the 2.5-day event. On opening night, Justin Schmitt, President of the USAA Foundation and AVP of USAA Corporate Responsibility, welcomed approximately 500 corporate citizenship practitioners to Washington, D.C. and highlighted the critical importance of supporting those who have served.

“The Iraq-Afghanistan conflict was the longest war in our country's history. Over a 20-year span, we lost more than 6,800 US service members in combat operations, and over the same timeframe, more than 120,000 U.S. military suicide,” Schmitt said. “For every one service member lost in combat, we lost an additional 17 veterans to death by suicide.”

Schmitt also pointed out the significant shift in the proportion of the U.S. population that served during World War II – 12% – compared to today’s 0.06%, emphasizing how this isolation contributes to the lack of understanding of challenges faced by the military community. He argued that collaboration and connection, the theme of the 2025 conference, are essential to addressing these issues and broader corporate citizenship challenges. He highlighted Face the Fight®, a coalition of corporations, foundations, nonprofits, government liaisons, and veteran-focused organizations, as a powerful example of what can be achieved through collective effort.

“USAA, along with founding partners Reach Resilience and the Humana Foundation, launched Face the Fight® in 2023. This national initiative has brought together over 200 like-minded organizations to help reduce veteran suicide,” Schmitt said. “Through this initiative, Face the Fight® is facilitating collaborative grantmaking to scale evidence-based interventions that have proven highly effective. Through dynamic data modeling, we currently estimate that 6,500 U.S. military veterans' lives will be saved by 2032 as a direct result of our efforts.”

A Conversation on Compelling Collaboration

The following morning, Schmitt returned to the stage to discuss the intricacies of the Face the Fight® initiative with an expert panel, including Captain Dan Goldenberg, U.S. Navy (Ret.), President of the Call of Duty Endowment and Board Member of the USAA Foundation, Inc. and USAA Educational Foundation; Danielle Neveles-McGrath, Chief Impact Officer of The Humana Foundation; Sonya Medina Williams, CEO & President of Reach Resilience; and Steve Schwab, CEO of The Elizabeth Dole Foundation.

The panel shared the origins of the program, which began with research, strategic planning and multi-million-dollar investments from USAA, Reach Resilience and The Humana Foundation, and has since grown into a national movement with companies like Lockheed Martin, KPMG, Cigna, Fiserv, Comcast NBC, Starbucks, Walmart, and many others, as well as nonprofits, foundations, and agencies.

“Complex issues like suicide prevention and mental health require long-term, multi-sector investments to ensure the greatest impact,” Medina Williams said. “Face the Fight® provides a groundbreaking model of cross-sector collaboration.”

The program’s success is a testament to the power of a collaborative model that leverages each organization’s unique strengths. Medina Williams and Schwab highlighted how partner organizations have been crucial to the initiative’s progress.

“We were trying to figure out how to get a Face the Fight® PSA out to increase awareness, and Jan Baaden Gee at Lockheed Martin – one of our coalition members – stepped up, offering resources and media contacts,” Medina Williams said. “We’re not only creating impact but also enhancing awareness, which is vital.”

Partner organizations are not only amplifying the coalition’s efforts but also utilizing its resources, which include career support, financial aid, training, and mental health services.

“Lockheed Martin, Cigna, KPMG, and others have donated and engaged in various ways,” Schwab said. “For example, 264 Cigna employees have taken part in a training program offered through the nonprofit PsychArmor to help them recognize and address signs of mental health issues among colleagues, employees, and customers. This training has made 264 employees healthier and better equipped, and Cigna values their skill-based volunteer hours at $220 per hour, creating an economic impact as well.”

To achieve such significant results, each coalition member focuses on their core competencies, developing strategies that are data-driven yet flexible enough to adapt to real-life experiences.“

At the Humana Foundation, we take a listening approach,” Neveles-McGrath said. “We spend time in the community talking to people to understand the barriers they face, especially in terms of mental health. The data reveals some startling facts.”

Neveles-McGrath shared statistics that highlight the unique challenges faced by the veteran community, such as a 23% unemployment rate among military spouses – five times the national average – difficulty in securing affordable housing, and suicidal ideation. These challenges vary by demographic, with LGBT veterans, black veterans, and Hispanic veterans experiencing higher rates of mental health issues.

“Seven percent of active-duty members had suicidal thoughts in the past year,” Neveles-McGrath said. “When you look at the data through the lens of different demographics, the mental health challenges become even more pronounced. LGBT veterans have higher rates of suicidal ideation, black veterans have higher rates of PTSD, and Latino veterans have the highest lifetime PTSD rates of any veteran population.

”Face the Fight® recognizes that addressing these issues requires a holistic approach, considering not only the veterans themselves but also their family members and caregivers.

“Caregiving is a significant issue for American families,” Schwab said. “The Elizabeth Dole Foundation focuses on supporting those who care for wounded veterans and service members at home. These caregivers are often spouses, family members, and even children as young as six, seven, or eight years old. We call them ‘Hidden Helpers,’ and there are about five million of them across the country, providing essential care like administering medications, bathing, feeding, and dressing their loved ones.”

The panel emphasized that supporting the military community not only benefits those who serve but also strengthens businesses and society. Captain Goldenberg, with his dual perspective as a veteran and a corporate leader, illustrated the value of effectively reintegrating a healthy military population.

“Besides being a veteran, I’ve spent over 20 years in corporate roles,” Goldenberg said. “It’s crucial to remember that the military – those who serve and those who support them – underpins our prosperity. Without them, we wouldn’t have the democracy or the economy we enjoy today.”

The panel also discussed the importance of updating HR practices to hire more veterans and military spouses, addressing both perception and programmatic issues.“

The veteran community faces numerous perception and programmatic challenges,” Goldenberg said. “The Call of Duty Endowment, the largest funder of employment for servicemembers, outpaced the federal government two years ago. Our nonprofit grantees placed veterans in jobs at one-fifteenth the cost-per-placement, with better quality outcomes.”

While hiring and supporting the military community is a step every organization can take, Schmitt emphasized that the lessons learned from Face the Fight® can be applied to all corporate social responsibility programs.

“I hope you’ve heard that some of the challenges you face as corporate citizens are too big for any single company,” he said. “Cross-sector collaboration can achieve greater economies of scale, and when you find others willing to put egos aside for a cause, that’s when the magic happens. The cause and the opportunity to serve must come first.”

To learn more about how your organization can engage with Face the Fight, reach out to Babs Chase, Executive Director, Face the Fight Coalition, babs@elizabethdolefoundation.org