Andrea Plate, a clinical social worker licensed by the state of California, spent 15 years in the trenches of the largest VA compound in America. She was a Senior Social Worker at the West Los Angeles branch of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). She has degrees from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Southern California (USC). Andrea teaches “Gender and the Military” at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she is also a writing and editing instructor for its Asia Media International website. She has also taught at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York; USC; Santa Monica College; and Mount Saint Mary’s College. She is the author of two non-fiction books and has written magazine and newspaper articles.