Anthropology Alumna Gretchen Klingler awarded Young Alumni Achievement Award
OSU Arts and Sciences Young Alumni Achievement Award
Gretchen Klingler is the Veterans Outreach Manager for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC), a bipartisan 501(c)3 based in Washington, D.C., whose objective is to educate the public on the broad mission of the International Affairs Budget (IAB) and advocate to U.S. Congress to fully fund this budget every year. Klingler is responsible for veterans’ outreach and event programming in-person and virtually across 16 states. She is also tasked with identifying veteran community leaders, educating these leaders on the breadth and depth of the IAB, and empowering veterans to share their experiences with their elected officials in support of diplomacy and development.
Prior to attending Ohio State, Klingler served on active duty for six years as an Airborne Tactical Systems Operator in the Air Force Special Operations community, deploying to Afghanistan in 2013 and Djibouti and Iraq in 2014. She learned the Iraqi dialect of Arabic while stationed at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and was able to utilize her language skills to supplement communication between U.S. forces and Iraqi local contractors while forward deployed.
At Ohio State, Klingler volunteered teaching English and American citizenship to the Iraqi and Syrian immigrant and refugee communities in Hilliard, Ohio, conducting classes in both English and Arabic. Her undergraduate research with Iraqi women was presented at local, national and international conferences. She also served two years as the president of Ohio State’s Student Veterans of America chapter, Vets 4 Vets, and was a Major Lawrence Miller Military Community Advocate. In 2017, she was honored as the Ohio State Veteran and Military Student of the Year and was selected by the Pat Tillman Foundation as the university’s first undergraduate Tillman Scholar. Klingler graduated in 2019 with dual bachelor's degrees in anthropology and Arabic with minors in women’s, gender and sexuality studies and Middle East studies.
