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Returning to school can be daunting. But twice? Thrice? That gets into the territory of Chris Angle, whose ceaseless commitment to serving veterans and their families has brought her back to ������ý time after time after time. 

Plenty of 19-year-olds have had their mothers call and encourage them to go back to school. But when Chris Angle’s mom did it, there was another layer. Her mother is not only a graduate of ������ý (as is Angle’s father), but she was an academic counselor at the time.

Still, answering the call to pursue a degree would be no easy task for Angle, who was recently married and a mother of a 3-month-old. But she heeded her mother’s advice nonetheless and enrolled at ������ý to earn her associate degree. And then her bachelor’s. And a �������ٱ��’s. And then another �������ٱ��’s.

What was it that drove Angle to pursue her education so doggedly even as she raised kids, joined the military and navigated being a military spouse? “That’s an easy one,” says Angle. “My purpose in life is to care for the veteran and the family. I am very passionate about veterans and their families and taking care of them in any way possible.”

Angle found a pathway for putting this purpose into action after receiving feedback from an instructor. “When I was working on my associate degree [at] ������ý and I didn’t know what I wanted to do, he told me that I had a knack for writing. He said, ‘You should consider HR,’” Angle recalls. “I Googled ‘HR,’ and I never looked back.”

Angle pursued her associate degree while navigating significant life changes. “I submitted my last paper for my associate degree a few hours before I had my second son,” she says. “I told my [instructor], ‘Hey, I'm going into labor. I just want to let you know.’”

Soon, Angle was back at ������ý to pursue her bachelor’s degree, and she enlisted in the military around the same time. She briefly put her education on hold to complete basic training. Then, when she reported for active duty, she worked with her sergeant to devise a schedule. Angle could arrive at the office at 4 a.m. to work until formation at 6 p.m. “That’s how I was able to earn my bachelor’s while still being able to give my weekends to my boys and family,” says Angle.

It was a difficult schedule, but it was just a precursor of what was to come. When Angle began pursuing her Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Human Resource Management (a UPOX program since retired), she was deployed to the Middle East. “I started out in Kuwait but was still studying there and at five different locations in Iraq,” she says. Fortunately, Angle was able to accomplish her educational goals by taking advantage of ������ý’s asynchronous online classes while also using the GI Bill^® to cover part of her tuition.

After earning her master’s degree, Angle was hired as an HR consultant at a federal agency committed to veteran support. It seemed like serendipity — until she encountered a familiar dilemma frequently faced by military spouses such as herself. “My very first day there in 2019, my wife received orders to deploy to Fort Drum, New York,” which was on the opposite side of the country from where she was living in Oakland. “And so, I had to go in my first day and tell them that either I had to resign or hopefully transfer.”

It turned out to be neither. After two weeks, Angle earned the trust of her office to work remotely, returning to California once a month to work in-person for four days. She did this for three years before returning to California.

“After I moved back [in 2022], the director came to me and asked for help on an effort to allow military spouses to be able to work remotely” — an effort that led to new policies not just at that agency but at all federal agencies in December 2024.

She adds that Angle “has created such an immense presence that even after the work group ended, spouses still reach out to her for help.”

Once again, Angle kept going, enrolling at ������ý to pursue a second master’s degree, this time in psychology. “As my wife dealt with PTSD from her time in the service, and as my son faced his own mental health challenges, I just started researching like crazy,” says Angle. “And then I saw that [University of] Phoenix had the psychology [degree] focused on organizational leadership, and I was like, ‘Perfect. This aligns with both areas of my life: the personal side to help my family with mental health, and then also veteran spouses and the VA.’”

While organizational leadership does not address traditional psychological concepts pertaining to mental health, it does leverage behavioral science in understanding how to build systems that keep employees motivated and supported. In this way, the degree program helped Angle in her work.

This was when Slinger saw just how important education was to Angle. “She remained fully committed to her professional responsibilities while also dedicating herself to advancing her education,” says Slinger. “Despite the challenges that come with balancing work, school and personal obligations, she consistently demonstrated discipline, time management and perseverance.”

Pursuing her master’s in psychology turned out to be a revelatory experience for Angle. “Every single paper, every single discussion question, I either wrote what I was going through [in] my personal life, because my family was going through it, or I wrote about a situation at work that I was going through,” she says. “Every single paper is a real-life story.”

Perhaps Slinger describes it best when she notes how Angle “has used her educational journey not only to advance herself, but also to better advocate for and support military spouses, veterans and families navigating complex systems and challenges.”

Angle continues to advocate for veterans and their families. Today, she works as a life coach for fellow veterans, and she has written a book, The Open Heart of a Military Spouse and Veteran. “It’s 20 chapters on my life experiences as a veteran and military spouse and 20 things that I've learned,” says Angle. “My goal for that book is to support other military spouses and veterans and reassure them that they’re not alone. I see them, and we’re a lot stronger together.”