Adria Horn, the former director of the Maine Bureau of Veterans’ Services, will be the guest speaker at Skidompha Library’s Chats with Champions program on Wednesday, Oct. 31 at 10 a.m. Horn will speak in advance of Veterans Day in honor of those who have served. Horn’s presentation will include details about her military service, and her position as the director of MBVS. The Chat will take place in the Library’s Porter Meeting Hall. Please allow time for parking.

Horn graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York in 2001 and was commissioned as second lieutenant in the United States Army Military Police Corps. She served in various capacities as both a military police officer and a psychological operations officer. During her 10-year military service, Horn deployed five times in support of the Global War on Terror. In 2011, Horn separated from active duty. Prior to moving to Maine, she received her MBA from Northeastern University in Boston. Presently Horn is a lieutenant colonel and individual reservist in the United States Army Reserve and serves as a future operations planner for the United States Pacific Command.

During her three-plus-year tenure as director of MBVS, Horn led many notable initiatives including one which has become a best practice model for other state departments of veterans’ services across the country. She created a position within the bureau that focused on homeless veteran program coordination, working in collaboration with organizations across the state to reduce and eliminate the number of homeless veterans.

In collaboration with the Maine legislature, Horn’s initiative helped create the inaugural program to facilitate mental health care for Maine veterans. This program is open to all veterans, free of charge, no matter their discharge or length of service. She has also spearheaded a suicide prevention initiative that brought together leaders on the federal, state and local levels. In December of 2017, the bureau hosted Maine’s first ever Suicide Prevention and Awareness Symposium. Under Horn’s leadership, and due to the success of the Symposium, the bureau received the VA’s "Pillar of Excellence Award for Suicide Prevention."

Horn led an initiative to create a one-stop list of resources for every veteran organization and service in the entire state of Maine. The bureau now has an interactive resource map on its website and a resource guide in book form. In 2017, because of these resource initiatives, the bureau was awarded the “The Communicator Award - Honoring Excellence in Marketing and Communications.”

Horn recently departed from the MBVS for the private sector. She is married to Lokie Horn, a South African native. Together they have two young daughters and reside on a farm in Pittston, Maine where they keep a herd of yak, along with chickens, ducks, geese, and rabbits.

Chats with Champions is a free community offering from your national award-winning Skidompha Library and is sponsored by Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop. Recordings of many previous Chats are available on Skidompha Library's YouTube.com page. For more information call 563-5513 or online at www.skidompha.org