True North Spotlight: Minna Ramos

by Leslie Parsons

Twenty-one years ago, Minna Ramos’ husband joined the United States Coast Guard and Minna officially became a military spouse. Since then, she has had four children and moved with her family to five different duty stations over the years. Minna eventually became a licensed massage therapist, personal trainer, and developed a solid reputation as a sports photographer. However, until recently, her career had been secondary to her husband’s service and the needs of her family.  

Now, thanks to the Dog Tag Fellowship Program(DTFP), Minna has been able to reimagine her career goals..

Before entering DTFP, Minna shared a similar story with countless other military spouses.l. According to Military Spouses in the Labor Market Report, which was published by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 2018, there are almost 700,000 active-duty military spouses in the United States. Many of these women and men find it difficult to build and maintain stable careers because of the geographical constraints placed on them by their spouses’ military service. 

Employers are often unwilling to hire people who might be called upon to move within a year or two and, even when they are hired, military spouses often earn less than colleagues who do the same job. Even military spouses who own and run their own businesses, like Minna, struggle to thrive in this environment of constant uncertainty.  

Licenses for massage therapists are issued and regulated by individual states, so every time the family has moved, Minna has had to go through the relicensing process. While work is being done to create a national system to allow military spouses to retain their licenses when they move, this is still in the early stages of development and not likely to be implemented any time soon.

Childcare has also been an issue for Minna and her husband. In 2010, when the family moved to Washington, D.C. they discovered childcare was expensive in the area and that it was more affordable for Minna to stay at home full-time. . By 2019, however, all the Ramos children were in school, and Minna decided that it was time to get back to the career she loved.

She first heard about the DTFP from a friend in the Coast Guard Spouses’ Association. The DTFP is a career guidance and training program that equips veterans, military spouses, and caregivers with the tools and education they need to build resilience and find renewed purpose. Minna felt that it was the ideal place for her to begin exploring ways she could build a profitable, sustainable, and satisfying business for herself while still having ample time to care for her family. 

In late 2022, Minna was accepted into the Winter 2023 cohort in Washington, DC. From January to May, Minna participated in university-level classes, learning labs, hands-on training, and special events that touched on all aspects of entrepreneurship and business development.

Unlike fellow Dog Tag alumni such as Lauren Warner, who needed to build her post-military career from scratch, Minna came to the DTFP with an established business. This gave her a different perspective on the program and allowed her to focus on acquiring exactly the skills she needed most. Minna believes that going through the DTFP “elevated her vision” for her business and allowed her to develop her communication and business planning skills. More importantly, the program helped her build her confidence as a business owner.

Minna was thrilled to have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with her classmates, instructors, and business leaders from a wide variety of industries. “That’s probably the best part of it all. The people,” she says.  The connections she made while in the program didn’t stop once she graduated. Minna describes the members of her cohort as her “second family” and shares that they stay in regular contact with one another through Zoom and WhatsApp. In addition to the support she receives from her classmates, Minna has also tapped into the active DTFP alumni network.

Minna feels as though both she and her business have undergone a transformation. She has refined and expanded her vision and is now much more familiar—and comfortable—with financial forecasting. Best of all, she has a new set of tools and skills she can take with her if she has to move again (which is a real possibility, as her husband recently received new orders).  

The True North Foundation is proud to celebrate the accomplishments of Minna Ramos and all the other Dog Tag Fellowship Program alumni. Applications for the 2024 Chicago and Washington, DC cohorts are now being accepted and Dog Tag recently announced that, for the first time since the pandemic began in 2020, new Fellows will have the opportunity to attend in-person classes, workshops, and events.