Wendy A. Lang, Founder and Director

  Wendy worked in state government for ten years, including serving as Senator John H. Ewing’s Chief of Staff, staffing both the Senate Education and Women’s Issues Committee, and later, filling an appointment as Governor Christie Todd Whitman’s Education Policy Advisor. Since founding Operation College Promise (OCP) in 2008, she has managed all programming, research, outreach, public relations, and partnership development. In this role, she developed one of the first websites for veterans and those who serve them, authored the nation’s first comprehensive resource guide for veterans’ service providers, The OCP Field Guide, and designed the Certificate for Veterans’ Service Providers (CVSP) professional development program. Over 800 professionals from 40 states have received a certification through the CVSP program reaching over 250,000 military-affiliated students.In 2011 and 2013, Wendy and OCP published two landmark research projects evaluating student veterans success in the Post-9/11 Era – “Completing the Mission: A Pilot Study of Veteran Students’ Progress toward Degree Attainment in the Post-9/11 Era,” and “Completing the Mission II:  A Study of Veteran Students’ Progress toward Degree Attainment in the Post-9/11 Era.” In 2021, in collaboration with the Texas A&M University System, Wendy authored additional research on the impact of the COVID pandemic on veterans, “Continuing the Mission III: Assessing the Impact of COVID on Student Veterans and Campus Services.” “The Completing the Mission” reports have been widely cited and featured in the New York Times, USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Chronicle on Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Military Advanced Education, NBC, Fox News, NPR, Military Times, and CNN, among others.Wendy regularly presents at national conferences as a subject matter expert in best practices to support the military-affiliated student population. She currently serves on the Stockton University Veterans’ Advisory Board and was named Advocate of the Year award in 2017. She was a contributing author to What’s Next for Student Veterans? Moving from Transition to Academic Success, published by the National Resource Center in 2017. She currently serves as an Honorary Commander Emeritus at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst and serves on the Higher Education Task Force at the Military Service Initiative at the George W Bush Institute. Wendy received her BA in Political Science and MA in International Relations from Drew University where she was a co-founder for the John H. Ewing Center for Public Policy. She is a lifelong competitive equestrian with perennial state and national ranking. Wendy lives in a pre-revolutionary home in Burlington, New Jersey.