Family Building for a Career-Oriented Military Spouse

We're excited to welcome Katy Bell Hendrickson and Ellen Gustafson, Co-Founders of Military Family Building Coalition (MFBC); a non-profit organization committed to supporting military families build the families they want. Join these changemakers as they educate us on the importance of family planning and how that can have a strong effect on our careers.

Katy Bell Hendrickson

Arushi Grover

Katy Bell Hendrickson is a Military Spouse to a retired career Naval Special Warfare officer and mother of five children. She and her husband have experience with adoption, assisted reproduction and third party reproduction. Katy was the Reserve Flag Spouse Advisor for the Command Spouse Leadership School at NLEC in Naval Station Newport, Flag Spouse Advisor for CORE San Diego, and an Advisor to Naval Services FamilyLine in Washington DC. Katy has been active in the Warrior and Family Support Group at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado as a Senior Peer Mentor and has led multiple workshops on Family Building covering the topics of ART and Adoption. In her spare time, she is an architect by education and training - having spent the last decade working mainly in residential design and historic preservation. She is a former Board of Director for the Coronado Historical Association, Chairperson for the Heritage Committee, Chairwoman for the Coronado Historical Home Tour 2017-2019 and the recipient of the Cobb McCarty Preservation Award. Katy is currently on the Women's Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Arts and lives in Washington DC with her husband, youngest son, and twin daughters.

Ellen Gustafson

Arushi Grover

Ellen Gustafson is a social entrepreneur, author, activist, and, most importantly, Mom and Military Spouse. She has done extensive work toward food system change (Authoring "We the Eaters: If We Can Change Dinner, We Can Change the World", Co-Founding Food Tank: the food think tank, giving 4 four TEDx Talks on food system change and advising big food businesses like Barilla and start-ups like Food Stand). She is the Co-Founder of FEED and the FEED Foundation, an early give-back fashion brand that has helped provide over 100 million school meals to children around the world, has been the Co-Director of the Summit Institute since 2016, which applies creative solutions to the world's biggest challenges and has helped create diversity, inclusion, and anti-harassment programs at multiple conference companies. She is the Mom of three miracle toddlers and lives with them and her husband in "just seasonal enough" Virginia Beach, VA