Mary Beth Bruggeman says her first lessons in service didn’t come from the United States, but thousands of miles away. Born to Peace Corps parents and raised on an American compound in Saudi Arabia, her earliest years were spent immersed in a whirlwind of cultures, customs, and languages.
Despite bouncing around the globe at a young age, she says she always felt like an American.
“I loved being overseas,” she recalls. “It showed me how differently people live and was a great reminder of how special and unique the United States is.”
When she was 10, her family returned to North America and settled in the United States, and those formative memories came to the forefront during the Gulf War. Even then, she felt a conviction within her that she should give back to the country she now called home.
A trip to an Army-Air Force football game sealed the deal. Watching the midshipmen stream onto the field in crisp formation, Bruggeman sensed the same tight-knit camaraderie she had gravitated toward throughout her young life. “I said ‘I want to be a part of that,’ and I knew from an early age that I wanted to go into service,” she says.
By the summer of 1995, she was enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy and found herself following a path few women had traveled before her: joining the Marine Corps as a combat engineer.
Graduating in 1999, Bruggeman entered peacetime service where training and preparation for action consumed her days. Everything changed overnight on 9/11. “We packed our seabags that day, not knowing when we would deploy,” she remembers. Eighteen months later, she was part of the first wave of U.S. Marines into Iraq.
In 2007, after serving for eight years, she decided to exit military service, and it left her with more than an open schedule; she felt lost.
“The minute the uniform came off, my sense of purpose vanished,” she admits. On paper, her shift to civilian life looks smooth and even idyllic: starting a family with her husband, whom she met in the Marine Corps, working a normal job, and even graduating from Georgetown – but something was still missing.
Bruggeman volunteered, which helped to fill part of that void, but it wasn’t until 2015 that she found her true calling with The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that deploys veterans to facilitate vital service projects in struggling neighborhoods.
“It was like finding the organization and the team I didn’t even know I was looking for,” Bruggeman says. She was introduced to veterans who shared her drive to serve even after their tours had ended. Setting to work distributing food, building parks, and navigating the uncertainties of the COVID pandemic, she bonded with others who had the same grit and determination in civilian life as they had in combat zones.
Bruggeman found opportunities to grow through the organization, from regional executive director to vice president of programs eventually five years as CEO. During her time with TMC, she championed women veterans, helped other veterans find their purpose by helping neighbors, and emphasized the importance of community-first initiatives. Most importantly, she was part of a movement that valued real human connection over political polarization.
“Service projects became this pressure cooker where differences didn’t disappear. We just learned to work through them,” she explained. “You leave thinking, ‘That guy probably votes nothing like me, but we just built a playground together.’”
Her experience helped to cement something she long assumed: Veterans have a special power to heal a fractured America. They’re willing to do hard things and answer tough questions for people who are ideologically worlds apart.
“We’ve already shared a fighting hole with someone from a totally different world,” she jokes. “We know it works.”
That perspective led Bruggeman to found Angels 10 Advisors in 2024, a group that guides and supports philanthropists who desire to heal civic divides rather than widen them.
It’s quiet, long-game work. “We aren’t going to see the results of that in a week,” she admits. “We probably won’t see them in two years. But if we’re not doing it, we’re just going to keep getting further and further apart, and that’s scary.”
She has little patience for the “one-way bridge” mentality that is so pervasive in the country right now. “People say, ‘I’m going to build a bridge and then give you an opportunity to come to my side, because this is the correct side,’” she explains. “It’s never going to work that way. Those bridges are collapsing all over the country right now. They’re burning.”
Instead, she urges support and funding for local projects that bring strangers into the same metaphorical foxhole. Ways that people can get involved in their own communities include renovating a school library, organizing efforts to rebuild after a natural disaster, or repurposing an unused lot into green space where people can gather.
Bruggeman has spent time in neighborhoods that are very different from her own, working to understand local challenges and responding by helping to revitalize pockets of some of our country's most under-resourced communities. She is constantly amazed by how well people from all walks of life work together when faced with a challenge they can all agree on. As an example from her own life, Bruggerman volunteers as a poll worker. She first served in 2020, motivated by a desire to help others feel safe coming to the polls during a turbulent and uncertain time. Since then, she has volunteered in nearly every election – local, state, and national – helping to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to cast their vote without fear or intimidation.
“Poll workers are encouraged to work across party lines – in fact, it’s required that registered Republicans and Democrats are equally represented. I first heard about poll work through the veteran community, and I think it helps voters to have veterans there – people trust us,” said Bruggeman. “I welcome the opportunity to help others participate in the democratic process. It feels like a natural extension of my service. But anyone can do this – military or not – regardless of your political affiliation.”
That commitment to action over rhetoric is a throughline in Bruggeman’s life, serving on the battlefields of Iraq with her fellow Marines and the streets of Baltimore and St. Louis with crews of volunteers, and now her newest mission of ensuring philanthropists are able to make the biggest impact possible, connecting people rather than pushing them apart.
Time and again, she has watched the hardest jobs bind people together faster than any panel discussion could. She might not wear a uniform anymore, but her mission continues. “That’s what veterans do,” Bruggeman says. “They look for the hardest thing you can throw at them, and they get the job done.”
Jake Harriman is the CEO and Co-Founder of MPU.
