Welcome to Lioness Origin Story, a special mini-series podcast presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club. Each week co-hosts Shannon Morgan, Army Lioness Vet, and Daria Sommers, Filmmaker/Writer, present, along with special guests, true stories of women who participated in Team Lioness. The goal is to provide an historical counter to Taylor Sheridan’s fictional Special Ops: Lioness. As the hosts and their guests trace the evolution of Lioness Teams into Female Engagement Teams and Cultural Support Teams, the series will reveal how these new roles led to the dissolution of the Combat Exclusion Policy and the eventual opening up of military roles to women.
In 2008 filmmaker and writer Daria Sommers and Meg McLagan released LIONESS, a documentary that revealed the history of a group of women support soldiers who went to Iraq in 2003 as mechanics, clerks and engineers but ended up serving as the original Lioness soldiers.
One of those Lioness soldiers was Shannon Morgan. An Army mechanic from Mena, Arkansas who served in Ramadi from 2003-2004. During the 2004 Battle for Ramadi, she was one of a group of Army Lioness soldiers attached to the 2/4 Marines during house to house searches. That put her at the center of some of the fiercest street fighting of the war. But, because the combat exclusion policy, when Shannon returned home, she had to fight to get the full extent of her service recognized and receive the benefits she was entitled to as a combat veteran.
Lioness
A feature-length documentary by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers
Trailer - https://bit.ly/44GR6fV
Available for streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video
Presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club - www.veteransbreakfastclub.org
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Welcome to Lioness Origin Story, a special mini-series podcast presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club. Each week co-hosts Shannon Morgan, Army Lioness Vet, and Daria Sommers, Filmmaker/Writer, present, along with special guests, true stories of women who participated in Team Lioness. The goal is to provide an historical counter to Taylor Sheridan’s fictional Special Ops: Lioness. As the hosts and their guests trace the evolution of Lioness Teams into Female Engagement Teams and Cultural Support Teams, the series will reveal how these new roles led to the dissolution of the Combat Exclusion Policy and the eventual opening up of military roles to women.
In 2008 filmmaker and writer Daria Sommers and Meg McLagan released LIONESS, a documentary that revealed the history of a group of women support soldiers who went to Iraq in 2003 as mechanics, clerks and engineers but ended up serving as the original Lioness soldiers.
One of those Lioness soldiers was Shannon Morgan. An Army mechanic from Mena, Arkansas who served in Ramadi from 2003-2004. During the 2004 Battle for Ramadi, she was one of a group of Army Lioness soldiers attached to the 2/4 Marines during house to house searches. That put her at the center of some of the fiercest street fighting of the war. But, because the combat exclusion policy, when Shannon returned home, she had to fight to get the full extent of her service recognized and receive the benefits she was entitled to as a combat veteran.
Lioness
A feature-length documentary by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers
Trailer - https://bit.ly/44GR6fV
Available for streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video
Presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club - www.veteransbreakfastclub.org
When former 1st. Lt. Colleen Farrell joined the USMC in 2008, becoming a trailblazer was the furthest thing from her mind. But by the time she left active duty four years later, she'd become part of two historic turning points for women in the military.
Starting out all she wanted was to serve her country, an ideal that resonated with her Quaker upbringing. In 2009, she left her MOS as an Air Support Control Officer to join the newly-created Marine Corps Female Engagement Teams, a program that sent female Marines out with infantry units to engage with Afghan women, assess their needs and collect life-saving intelligence in a way male Marines could not. “It was,” Farrell said, “a once in a lifetime chance to work at the tip of the spear.” She deployed in 2010 to Helmand Province as an FET Platoon Commander. During that time she and her teams worked to build girls' schools, conduct hygiene training, set up vocational training centers for women, collect intelligence and at times saw combat. They did all this despite having to return to their main base every 45 days. A logistical charade created to appease DoD's combat exclusion policy for women. Worse, when she and her FETs returned home in 2011, they were disbanded in three days, unlike the male infantry Marines who were given weeks to get the post-deployment help they needed.
Having experienced the military's gender inequities first hand and believing they hurt overall readiness, Colleen made the courageous decision in 2012 to become a plaintiff in the ACLU's lawsuit against the DoD's female combat exclusion policy. In 2013, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta rescinded the policy, paving the way for true gender equity in the services to occur. Ten years after the first Lioness missions in Iraq in 2003, FET Leader and 1st. Lt. Colleen Farrell stepped up, along with three other servicewomen plaintiffs, to help make the military a more equitable workplace for every citizen who wants to serve.
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The Lioness Origin Story Podcast
Welcome to Lioness Origin Story, a special mini-series podcast presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club. Each week co-hosts Shannon Morgan, Army Lioness Vet, and Daria Sommers, Filmmaker/Writer, present, along with special guests, true stories of women who participated in Team Lioness. The goal is to provide an historical counter to Taylor Sheridan’s fictional Special Ops: Lioness. As the hosts and their guests trace the evolution of Lioness Teams into Female Engagement Teams and Cultural Support Teams, the series will reveal how these new roles led to the dissolution of the Combat Exclusion Policy and the eventual opening up of military roles to women.
In 2008 filmmaker and writer Daria Sommers and Meg McLagan released LIONESS, a documentary that revealed the history of a group of women support soldiers who went to Iraq in 2003 as mechanics, clerks and engineers but ended up serving as the original Lioness soldiers.
One of those Lioness soldiers was Shannon Morgan. An Army mechanic from Mena, Arkansas who served in Ramadi from 2003-2004. During the 2004 Battle for Ramadi, she was one of a group of Army Lioness soldiers attached to the 2/4 Marines during house to house searches. That put her at the center of some of the fiercest street fighting of the war. But, because the combat exclusion policy, when Shannon returned home, she had to fight to get the full extent of her service recognized and receive the benefits she was entitled to as a combat veteran.
Lioness
A feature-length documentary by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers
Trailer - https://bit.ly/44GR6fV
Available for streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video
Presented by the Veterans Breakfast Club - www.veteransbreakfastclub.org
