An Introduction to the Military & Veterans' Initiative (MVI) Task Force

In 2012, SIOP initiated a volunteer prosocial psychology effort as part of the visibility committee. Dr. Nathan Ainspan launched the first prosocial project: the Veterans Transition Project. This concept has matured since 2012 to become what it is known as today – SIOP's Military and Veterans Initiative (MVI) Task Force. The Task Force, sitting within SIOP's diversity and inclusion portfolio, seeks to create a community for I-Os who are professionally and personally interested in exploring, networking, and collaborating on military, veteran, and military family topic areas. 

The MVI Task Force is a diverse group of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists who seek to advance SIOP's goals applied to the military and veteran communities and relevant I-O defense and national security topics. The MVI Task Force, chaired by Dr. Kristin Saboe, has members who are I-O students, researchers, and practitioners. All Task Force members are volunteers; if you are interested in volunteering in future years, be sure to look for SIOP’s annual volunteer sign-up period. Task Force members have diverse backgrounds – veterans, non-veterans, currently serving service members, military spouses, military family members, and government civilians interested in applying I-O psychology to workplace issues impacting military, veterans, military family members, and the defense sector.

In addition to creating a community within SIOP, the MVI task force draws upon its members’ unique qualifications, experiences, expertise, and understanding of psychological science and best practices. They forge efforts to educate and inform civilian employers about the military so that these organizations can improve or extend their efforts to hire and retain veterans and their families.

The MVI task force is further divided into four subcommittees, working on individual sections of the year’s efforts to serve our SIOP community. These sub-committees include the following:

• SIOP Programming: responsible for coordinating sessions and connecting I-Os with related proposals for SIOP's annual conference, planning the Task Force social gathering at SIOP (virtual or in person), tracking SIOP sessions highlighting military and veterans topics or populations (in coordination with Communications subcommittee) to bring awareness of sessions of interest for the community.
• Communications: coordinates content for Veterans’ Day and military appreciation events for SIOP, communicates relevant SIOP sessions before the annual SIOP conference, and manages the creation of white papers and other professional reference articles for dissemination through professional partnerships.
• Member Engagement: identifies opportunities to grow our community, promotes inclusion and awareness efforts of the task force and its members, and establishes and manages social media groups and announcements.
• Special Topics & Liaison: manages ongoing partnerships and ad hoc initiatives such as requests for information. Maintains commitments agreed to in memorandums of understanding with the Dept. of Defense and Division 19: Society for Military Psychology.