Assad Raza hosts Heather Cotter, who recently gained a direct commission into the Army and Civil Affairs. In this episode, she talks about what it's like to go through the process and her first impressions of the Army.
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One CA is a product of the civil affairs association
and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.
We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations.
To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail dot com
or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org
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Credits
Sponsor: Civil Affairs Association
Host: Assad Raza
Showrunner / editor: Jack Gaines
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00:00:03 Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com. or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.
00:00:42 ASSAD RAZA
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. I'm your host, Asad Raza, and today we have a very special guest with us, Captain Heather Cotter. Heather has a unique and inspiring story about her journey into the civil affairs branch, and she's here to share that with us today. Heather, welcome to the show.
00:00:58 HEATHER COTTER
Thank you, Roz. Great to be here.
00:01:01 ASSAD RAZA
Oh, we're thrilled to have you. Can you start telling us a little bit about yourself?
00:01:05 HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, absolutely. Well, professionally, for the last 20 years, I've been working alongside law enforcement and allied emergency responders like firefighters, emergency management professionals,
00:01:19 HEATHER COTTER
paramedics, and most of my career, I expect working at nonprofits that support the advancement of this idea of an integrated public safety community. And in 2020, about three months into the COVID -19 pandemic, I received an email about the 38 Gulf direct commission program. And I was immediately intrigued by this opportunity. After a couple conversations with Lieutenant Colonel Koyanda, I decided to prepare a packet for the commissioning board to consider. All my life, I've been behind the scenes supporting first responders, whether it was through research. training, policy development, or other supportive roles, but I've never been on the other side in the field. And I thought this was a great opportunity to grow as well as serve my country.
00:02:10 ASSAD RAZA
That sounds great. So welcome to the other side. So moving on to your decision of joining the civil affairs branch, could you explain to us what the 38 Golf does and what attracted you specifically to become a 38 Golf within the Army Reserves?
00:02:24 HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, you bet. So where do you go? They're also known as military government specialists. The expertise that 38 Gulf brings, specifically, there are currently 18 unique still identifiers for 38 Gulf,
00:02:39 HEATHER COTTER
identifiers for 38 Gulf, and each 38 Gulf carries at least one of them. Some of them carry multiple. For example, I carry the one still identifier of a six hotel, which happens to be Long Order Enforcement. And there are, like I said, 18 total. A few others include four Delta, which are laws, regulations, and policies. Six Charlie, which is finance, money, and banking. Six Delta, which is education. And six Victor, which is heritage and preservation.
00:03:15 ASSAD RAZA
Man, so you said there's 18? Yes,
00:03:17 HEATHER COTTER
there are 18 of them. And every unit across the United States Army Reserve. and doing their best to fill the billet with a diverse group of agency leaders who carry these different types of expertise.
00:03:31 ASSAD RAZA
carry these different types of expertise. Can you kind of explain what the process was like for you from submitting your application to taking your oath to office?
00:03:39 HEATHER COTTER
It's a lengthy process, to be honest, on receiving a direct commission. But from my understanding, this isn't unique to civil affairs either. Some of the other branches also have a lengthy direct commission process. But specific to my experience, it was pretty long. It took me about two years from the time I submitted my packet until I took my oath of office. And there was a lot of paperwork in between that time. So essentially, from the time I submitted my packet back in July of 2020 until my board met, there was really little communication about my status as a candidate. I focused my waiting time on learning more about civil affairs, scanning my civil affairs network by reaching out to people like you, learning about our main history, foreign policy, international relations, hard events, and also improving my foreign language proficiency and improving my physical physics. I even applied to graduate school to get a second master's degree in international affairs. So during this time, like I said, a waiting period. But I tried to maximize it. And when I finally did receive the letter that the board obtained my conditioning appointment back in November 2020, my status changed from a 38 -golf candidate to a 38 -golf selectee. So once I became a selectee, and this is what other 38 -golfs will go through, there will be new next steps to take, like criminal background checks, obtaining a clearance, going through medical screening. And more paperwork.
00:05:19 ASSAD RAZA
So as a 38 golf candidate, as you're waiting to go through the process, you said it took about two years. You got your second master's in international affairs and you're working on foreign language proficiency. Two questions.
00:05:32 HEATHER COTTER
Yeah.
00:05:32 ASSAD RAZA
What foreign language were you trying to improve on? And what was your thought about getting a master's degree in international affairs and how it's associated with your personal development to be a 38 golf?
00:05:42 HEATHER COTTER
That's a great question. So when I was lumber, More than 20 years ago. Actually, when I was in grade school, I was in a program with German and French through college. And then when I entered the workforce, I didn't really use those languages, but I still had a lot of knowledge there deep in my brain. So while I was taking my oath of office and from when I got the approval letter, I was improving my perfect easy in both German and French. And I had also reached out to my unit. to ask them what language needs they had. So they were telling me Mandarin would be good to know, Tagalog would be good to know, as well as Korean. So I just started dabbling in those, but I never got too far. I don't know about you, Roz, but the way I suffer to learn is classroom study, if that makes sense.
00:06:37 ASSAD RAZA
Yeah, absolutely. Having that foundational within the classroom, and I think using the apps later on as a way to maintain the languages. having that foundational within the classroom, especially PACOM -aligned languages, which are a little bit more difficult compared to European languages.
00:06:53 HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. And then to use second question about the degree in international affairs. So interestingly, before I even learned about the 38 Golf Direct Commission program, I was exploring opportunities before this pandemic hit us in March of 2020. So I think it was like January. I think it must have been a New Year's resolution. In 2020, I started exploring opportunities to get involved with humanitarian aid assistance and what that would require of me in order to go on humanitarian aid work. And a common thing that I saw was a degree in international affairs would be super helpful, which makes obvious sense, right? So I started realizing that This was before civil affairs became something on my radar. But I realized that a degree in IA or international affairs is something I wanted to do. And then, of course, when the pandemic hit, life changed for a lot of us. And then I received the email about the 38 golf program. So I started pursuing that. And when I got selected by the board, I knew. even more confidently that a degree in international affairs would be incredibly helpful for me as an incoming civil affairs officer. Because the one thing that I kept sad was there's a lot of downtime between when you start the process of submitting your application to when you get selected and when you take your oath of office. And for me, you know, time is something that shouldn't be wasteful. I'm going to maximize my time. For me, the best way I could do a service to civil affairs class would be to expand my knowledge in international affairs. So I ended up applying to graduate school at Arizona State University. And I started my master's in August of 2022. And I graduated just a few months ago in December 2023.
00:09:07 ASSAD RAZA
Congratulations on that. Seems like everything kind of worked out, everything kind of aligned itself. So once you pleaded all that, transitioned from being a 38 golf candidate to an actual 38 golf, and you took your oath of office, what did you do next?
00:09:21 HEATHER COTTER
So once I took my oath of office back in August of 2022, the same month I started graduate school again, because I got my first, this was after 20 years ago, but I... I took my oath of office in August of 2022, and I attended a few battle assemblies, really just to complete and processing with my unit. And then within a few months, I was at the direct commission course at Fort Worth.
00:09:50 ASSAD RAZA
So when you say battle assemblies, for our listeners that potentially wanting to be 38 golfs and never served in the military, what is that?
00:09:58 HEATHER COTTER
Well, essentially, it's an active duty training that we do. Typically on a monthly basis, so it's when you get together with your unit, basically you're working on readiness as well as other soldiering skills, whether it's weapons qualification or something else relevant to whatever the unit's working on. But the 351s, specifically, I can't speak to the other units because I'm not in them. But we meet in a hybrid model, typically quarterly in person. And then we'll do our other battle assembly remotely. And typically, there's kinds of online training and requirements that you have to complete on an annual basis, whether it's anti -terrorism training or cyber awareness training or any other readiness requirements is typically what we're executing. As well as if we're trying to get involved in the school, as well as any mission requirements. or meeting whether it's before you go on a mission or mission.
00:11:06 ASSAD RAZA
Interesting. Just a really quick question. Where is the 351st Civil Affairs Command located? In Mountain View, California. How far is that from where you're located?
00:11:15 HEATHER COTTER
I'm physically based in the Phoenix metro area in Arizona. So it's about an hour and a half plane ride when I do have to go in person. So I'll be at battle assembly next month. And I'll fly up there to San Jose, which is about a 90 -minute flight. And then I'll return home.
00:11:36 ASSAD RAZA
Nice. So you get to fly up to Northern California for the weekend. Sounds like fun.
00:11:42 HEATHER COTTER
It's not the worst place to be, that's for sure. It's a great location.
00:11:46 ASSAD RAZA
Awesome. Okay, so you mentioned the direct commissioning course at Fort Moore. Can you describe that to our listeners?
00:11:53 HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, we've got the direct commission course. developed for officers to receive a direct commission into the Army. So typically this course consists of mostly JAG officers, but you'll also see some civil affairs direct commission. You'll see direct commission into adjacent general, finance, fiber,
00:12:21 HEATHER COTTER
really any branch that the Army offers the direct commission to. So soldiers or those officers will attend the vaccination course at Fort Moore. And they offer this course throughout the year, I believe at a quarter of them basis, typically, and it's six weeks in duration. And throughout this course, you're going to learn how to review the uniform, how to do plan that, how to do basic rifle marksmanship. They'll take the ACFT a couple times, which is diagnostic. just to get you familiar with the requirements of physical fitness. And I'd have to say,
00:13:00 HEATHER COTTER
have to say, you know, my experience at Fort Moore was overwhelming and positive. The days were long. We had very little downtime. We were in the barracks and in uniforms, whether they were OCPs or APFUs about 98 % of the time. And we had staff duty in the middle of the night, training during the day. We ate a petite fast that we ate as a week, and we're information every three times a day. So it's a little bit like basic training, but it's designed for officers, and it's much shorter in length.
00:13:39 ASSAD RAZA
Nice. So you ate a defect three times a day, every day, for six weeks. Yeah. Did you get tired of the food? You know, I stuck with the salad box. Okay. That's great. I wanted to ask you, I know you said there was a lot of different other branches in there, like JAG and AG, Cyber. Were there any other civil affairs officers or 38 Gulfs in your course?
00:14:02 HEATHER COTTER
Yeah, in my cohort, there were a few of them. There was actually another one from my unit, which was fantastic, Capt