Joan Furey (she/her)

US Army Nurse (Ret.)

Established the National Center for PTSD, the VA's Center for Women Veterans, and was a recipient of the VA's Distinguished Career Award.

US Army nurse Joan Furey returned from the Vietnam War with a Bronze Star and a desire to put the terrible things she’d seen behind her. She tried focusing on her career; a master’s degree from NYU led to a nursing position at the VA medical center in Bay Pines, Florida. But once there, Furey saw the same trauma she’d tried to repress manifested in the Vietnam vets she was treating, many of whom were prone to violence and finding civilian life impossible.

“I had an important understanding of why this generation of veterans were different,” Furey says. “And I thought I could help.” Leveraging the credibility she’d earned as a surgical nurse, Furey pioneered not one but two innovations in veteran healthcare. First, she trained staff to recognize and respond to signs of what is now commonly called “post-traumatic stress disorder”; second, she established programs for women vets, who lacked gender-specific support and were often reporting trauma rooted not in combat, but in sexual assault.

Furey’s decades of advocacy on behalf of these veteran populations has created dramatic institutional change. She helped establish both the National Center for PTSD, and the VA’s Center for Women Veterans. She is the recipient of the VA’s Distinguished Career Award, a National Public Service Award, and many other honors. She’s even co-edited an anthology of poems by women vets, giving voice to their trauma. “Helping others confront their experiences,” she says, “helped me confront my own.”