Minority Veterans of America
Founded in November 2017, the Minority Veterans of America (MVA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that was designed to change the narrative of the American military veteran. The team of MVA works to build a community around the unique identities that veterans hold, outside of their identity as a military servicemember.
The primary underrepresented groups that MVA serves are: veterans of color, womxn, LGBTQ, and religious and non-religious minorities. We believe that through bringing these four minority groups together, we can build a veteran community that encompasses veterans from a wide range of diverse backgrounds and experiences.
MVA was founded by two University of Washington Husky veterans, Lindsay Church and Katherine Pratt. Church and Pratt first began their work in 2014 through the Husky United Military Veterans where they built a Diversity Committee that celebrated the underrepresented groups within the student veteran community at the University of Washington.
Since 2014, Church and Pratt have collaborated to lead the student veteran population at the UW, Church through her role in the Student Veteran Life office, and Pratt as the President of the student veteran organization, Husky Veterans. Today, they partner to build and grow MVA in order to celebrate the identities that they both feel that they hold that make them underrepresented in the veteran community.