Angelina “Strike” Stephens brings more than two decades of global military leadership experience. In this episode, Angelina reflects on how sharing mental health struggles opened doors she never expected, and why recognizing our accomplishments matters just as much as naming the hard parts. We explore why transitions are especially challenging for high performers, how support systems shape resilience, and what real leadership looks like when honesty meets forward motion.

After more than two decades of Air Force service in aircraft maintenance — leading everything from 10-person teams to 3,000-member organizations — Angelina "Strike" Stephens shares what she calls the "human buffer" approach to leadership: protecting your team's ability to do their best work while managing up. She talks about the identity shift of taking off the uniform, why she had to learn to own her accomplishments alongside her struggles, and what it takes to lead honestly through hard things without skipping the part where you name them.

Transcript

Rachel Mandell (00:00)

We want to welcome today Angelina Strike Stephens. Her career spans over two decades of global military service, international operations, and high-stakes organizational transformation. Her experience includes being the commander of the 366th Fighter Wing of the US Air Force and the chief of integration for the US Air Force. Angelina has led everything from elite 10-person teams to 3,000-member cross-functional organizations, worked with international defense leaders and top industry executives, and spearheaded breakthrough shifts in aerospace manufacturing, supply chain resilience, and intelligence community operations. She is now a keynote speaker that shows audiences how to thrive beyond their comfort zone. Welcome.

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (00:45)

Thank so much for having me today. I really appreciate it.

Rachel Mandell (00:47)

We're so happy to have you. I know I just read a long bio, but can you give us the layman's terms of what you were up to and responsible for?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (00:56)

I usually give people a frame of reference for my military career. I was in the Air Force and there are a lot of people out there who flew jets. That was not my passion and my path. I worked in aircraft maintenance. The frame of reference I usually give people is — if you look up Rosie the Riveter, first you'll see the stereotype: perfect hair and makeup, flexing for the camera. If you look up Rosie the Riveter by Norman Rockwell, you'll see the real version: sitting, eating a sandwich, some grease smeared on your face, with a rivet gun in her lap.

Those were my people. I was in a leadership capacity throughout my career, which is why most of the tone in the bio is leadership stuff. But I spent a lot of time behind the scenes with the folks that were keeping fighter jets and other platforms flying in the Air Force for over 20 years. Then I did some consulting and work in the veteran space, and I do leadership training and development as well as speaking with a team now.

Rachel Mandell (01:42)

That's incredible. Thank you for your service. Can you give us an example of a specific project you worked on?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (01:48)

I worked in a world that was resource constrained and struggling to innovate and continue to thrive despite those constraints and a really tough mission tempo. I came in right around 9/11 and obviously the world was a bit crazy.

One example — you think about all these big flashy instances overseas, but it was often just the small things. I worked with a team that was struggling to recover coming out of 9/11. It was big airframes, the AWACS, which looks like an airliner but with a big spinny dome on the top. We ran some really cool innovation exercises and worked with a team of younger folks to come up with ideas on how to do things in a more innovative way. They ended up winning this incredible award. They got to stand on a stage — these crusty maintainers who usually don't put on the fancy uniforms — showing their pride for thinking differently and really pushing the envelope.

Sometimes it was those smaller moments when I was able to be that human buffer and help my people find the best version of themselves and push us to do things differently. Imagining them standing on that stage just so proud of themselves — those are the moments that usually stand out to me.

Rachel Mandell (03:13)

I'm curious if you could share more about your leadership and being the buffer — in between the team and upper leadership. That's an interesting and important place to be.

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (03:27)

Leadership wasn't something I stepped into naturally. I will never forget my first day in a leadership role. I had this old crusty senior master sergeant — the dynamic in the military is your officers come in and we are half the age of the people we're leading in the enlisted career fields. I was sitting there typing away on my computer and this mentor, who also worked for me, shut the door and came over and said, hey, we're going to assemble everyone in a break room in 30 minutes, and they're going to want to hear your vision, your leadership philosophy. I was leading 120 people on day one.

He said, 30 minutes, we're going to open the door and you're going to lead out loud and talk to people. It was terrifying. But over the years I realized I didn't need to be what they needed me to be. I just needed to be honest and open and listen and be somebody they could rely on.

Over the years there were so many instances of that — whether in my primary job or in mental health advocacy, sharing stories that help break stigmas, which were uncomfortable moments standing in front of groups. The realization that we just need to step into it as ourselves, authentic, and listen instead of trying to meet up to whatever expectation was there. I was lucky to have that mentor who firmly said, I'm going to shut the door, we're going to take 30 minutes to figure this out, but then you're going to do the thing.

Helping people understand that leadership is uncomfortable and none of us know what we're doing — that we've just got to lean into it and learn alongside the people that are there with us — was a big thing for me.

Rachel Mandell (05:20)

Can you talk about your entrance into the military and your experience getting there?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (05:26)

I came up in life without a lot of money, without a future path set ahead of me. I was pushed towards college and the military was something I was just drawn to. I had played sports growing up and that was really a place where I felt drawn to teams and supporting each other. I was more bench warmer than star player, but it was — how do we all come together and succeed as a team?

That's why I fought to get into the career field I did, because it's just supporting each other. As the leader, I was that human buffer. I was also drawn to that rough-around-the-edges career field. Very blue collar. People just wanted to get the job done. What it came down to was helping people be the best version of themselves for the team. Whatever that turned into, that was my job — taking care of them, making sure they had what they needed to succeed.

Rachel Mandell (06:31)

I'm really into this human buffer idea. It's the perfect way to explain being a leader. You had thousands below you. What was going on above and how were you managing up — being selective about the information you communicated to really motivate the groups that were executing?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (07:02)

It all comes down to building trust, where people are willing to speak up and you build an environment where they're going to bring you what you need to know. Then they equip you to lead up to those higher levels.

When you talk about the human buffer, you usually think about the toxic leaders. We've all had them. I've had the best and the worst. There were instances where we went into it thinking, this is going to be miserable and I don't know how we're going to survive this. But because we came together as a team and learned how to thrive as a team, those were the instances where we went, okay, we can overcome anything.

I was also led by incredible, empowering humans who said, that is your role, do what you need to do. They empowered me to serve in that role and knew I would bring them what they needed to know. That's the most beautiful example of it. But it's really that lens shifting from management — where we're down in the details trying to do the job for our people — to building that environment where we'd step up into those moments and be honest and candid with each other at all levels.

Sometimes my job was to just make sure that the people below me didn't feel some of what was happening above in those tougher leadership circumstances.

Rachel Mandell (08:30)

Anything to add in terms of being a woman in a pretty technical job?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (08:39)

I actually had a tough time the first time I was asked to speak in a room full of women who wanted to know what it was like being in an environment where I was one of very few women. I panicked because my perspective on being a woman — I realized that the moment I knew I was a minority was when I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2007. This was years into my career. I kind of didn't notice until that point.

I was deployed in a time with no cell phones and no real internet. You waited in line at a tent to get one 15-minute phone call a week. I called my husband a few times, then thought, I've got to call my grandma because she's going to be really mad. Her oldest granddaughter is in Afghanistan in the middle of a war zone.

I wait in line at the tent, terrified she's going to be watching the news and asking about rocket attacks. Her first question was: do you have other women there to support you? It shocked me because it wasn't something I thought about. I had kind of grown up in a world where the women were tougher on each other than the men were, and I often felt more comfortable around men because of my experiences.

I went back and looked at our roster. We had a group of about 350 and there were three women, myself included, and I was the only leader. That really shifted my perspective to go out and seek and understand other people's experiences, because mine didn't mirror a lot of them.

The biggest thing about being a woman in the military — and this isn't everyone's experience — is you throw on a uniform, you're given rank, a job, a responsibility, and the expectation is that you do those things. It doesn't matter who you are. Stripping away the identity markers, the stigmas, the demographics — it doesn't matter what color you are, what gender you are. Do your job. Do it well. That doesn't mean there weren't people who held stigmas, but it wasn't something that dominated my experience. It wasn't even really part of my experience until I had kids and became a mom. Then I realized people struggle with things much earlier than I did.

Rachel Mandell (11:17)

When you're in uniform, people know who you are, where you stand, and there's a hierarchy. Then you make a transition out and you're showing up as a woman where you have to tell your story for people to know where you're coming from. Can you speak about that transition?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (11:42)

The transition out of a military uniform is unsettling. I came into it working three jobs, going to college, massive debt. Working at Home Depot slinging tools, working as a waitress at the local Sizzler — nothing fancy.

You come out of uniform and it's like you flash back to that person and you go, okay, who am I? I've taken this off. Decades of leadership experience, managing billions of dollars. And you still feel suddenly like — I don't know who I am without it. I went through several veteran transition programs where they really work on your sense of purpose and how you identify yourself and your role in the world.

I'm married to a military member as well. We spent most of our career having a very non-traditional view of a military family because we're both active duty. He's still active duty serving. I stepped into this spouse role. Military spouses are some of the most resilient human beings on the planet. I didn't count myself among them in the same sense because I was also wearing a uniform.

Then that flipped. People don't know who you are unless you share your experience. I had a dear friend I called not long after that shift. She said, do you get why I'm so loud and so out there and have this big personality? Because if I didn't, no one would ever ask. I'm this invisible person that people nod past. She's got three master's degrees and has done all these amazing things and no one even asks. You lose some identity there.

It's a really shocking shift. People see you through a lens or they don't see you at all. Navigating that and becoming confident in yourself and who you are and not letting those perceptions define you — I've had people further along in their transitions tell me this is decades, not months or years. It's decades to settle out of that.

Rachel Mandell (14:05)

I really appreciate you sharing that. The military is very clear — you're in or you're out. But I think it applies to anyone making a transition. It's so useful to hear other people's stories and the fact that it is helpful to seek help and look for purpose outside of where you currently are. That grounding can keep our head on straight while we're shifting our identities.

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (14:47)

I was talking to a fellow veteran about when things slow down. I think that's very common for high-performing corporate individuals as well. When you make a transition where there's a slowdown period, many high performers avoid that slowing down just to not deal with everything else. Then it stops and you go, I don't like this.

I have a leadership coach and a therapist and cohorts and groups and accountability partners that I lean into, and I still struggle. It's having that support system and those mechanisms around you to allow yourself to slow down and reflect versus just speeding through into the next thing without thinking and feeling. So many people are transitioning right now that weren't planning on it, with as much turbulence in the world. Taking the time to slow down, but having the support to navigate that and step into whatever's next.

Rachel Mandell (15:46)

It's so important to hear you say that. You were managing billions of dollars. Of course you're self-sufficient. Of course you have a lot of skills to offer. It's that pulling up the emergency brake — the first thing you'd think is, I don't need help, look at all I've done. But in reality, it's the opposite. Help doesn't mean you're stopping. It's transformation. One thing we spoke about was really owning the accomplishments you've already had and sharing them. Can you talk about translating what you did into what you do now and how you talk about it?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (16:30)

The irony for me is I landed myself on stages not by talking about accomplishments or anything flashy. It was sharing struggle. Sharing mental health experiences. Sharing things that people needed to hear said out loud. I got really good at talking about the low stuff and the really tough stuff.

It was actually a performance coach I worked with in a speaking program who pointed it out. I wasn't crossing the streams between this high-performance leader thing and all the struggle and burnout. He said, do you realize that throughout the course of us working together, I haven't heard you express how proud you are of what you've done? And I said, well, I'm proud of myself. I have reminders of things I'm proud of around me. He said, that's fine, but do you feel proud of yourself? Do you let yourself feel proud of what you've done?

And I didn't. So many of us don't. We're too busy critiquing, too busy getting stuck in the struggle and the things that were hard, that we don't take the time to go — that was incredible. I am proud of myself for what I achieved. People in the military, in service communities, first responders — we have trouble turning that positive lens on ourselves. I still do. But at least being aware of it and going, I'm doing incredible work. It's not just in service of others. There are some things I should be proud that I've accomplished or overcome. Those proud moments can serve and help others as well. You don't just have to dwell on the tough stuff.

Rachel Mandell (18:23)

In terms of getting to the point where you're claiming your wins, is there any advice you'd give to people who are working on doing that?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (18:29)

I think there are so many things you can do to acknowledge where you've come from, where you are, and where you want to go. I coach leaders and executives and I actually had a conversation yesterday where I asked the positive question and immediately this person jumped to the negative. But here's the things I did wrong.

We have to come back to this, because if we keep trying to overanalyze the negative, we put ourselves into turmoil. There are some things we could just keep doing — the positive — and that impact could be far more powerful for our teams and for ourselves. But we have to pause and recognize it. We have to give ourselves credit for the things we do well and then build on that.

Sometimes we have to have other people help show that to us. Whether it's a coach, a therapist — I've had a therapist check me on the same thing and go, hey, do you remember where you were last year? And I go, okay, fair point. Sometimes it's looking at the contrast — I might feel like this is where I am, but where was I a year ago, two years ago? Having people in your life who will check you on that mindset, because once you're in it, it's really hard to see past it. Whether those are family members — my kids will check me on a negative mindset in a heartbeat and go, hey. And I go, all right, you're seven, here's your $350 an hour for coaching me back into a better headspace.

It's having people who will hold us accountable to the good and the tough stuff and surrounding ourselves with those people who help us see a better version of ourselves.

Rachel Mandell (20:06)

I'm curious about the connection between owning your wins, staying in a positive headspace in a leadership role — the folks that you speak to and coach — and how that actually impacts their team. Why is it so important for leaders to go through these conversations?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (20:27)

It's finding the sweet spot as a leader. Your teams need to see what's real. They need to see that you're struggling. They need to know that you acknowledge something is hard. But then they need to see what it looks like to move through that struggle into something better — whether it's a project or personal things or growing through feedback.

It's finding that sweet spot where, yeah, this is hard and I know it's hard and here's what I'm frustrated with. But now we're going to shift out of that mindset and figure out how we take this and make something better from it. If you skip the acknowledging-it's-hard part, that festers with your teams. They're just waiting for it. They think — do they not know what we're dealing with? There's a step there that's critical, because then we can move past it, acknowledge it, and create space for it.

At the end of this, let's debrief and really look at what we could have done better. But we've got to move through it — not around the hard things. That's in all things in life. A leader's greatest responsibility is being honest, transparent, but also focused and doing it in a constructive way. We're not just dumping all the hard things out there and going, well, now I'm transparent and vulnerable. People misunderstand what vulnerability means as a leader. It doesn't mean breaking down and acting weak. It means owning the struggle, acknowledging it, naming it, and then charting a path through it.

Rachel Mandell (21:59)

This is fantastic. Angelina, is there anywhere people can find you?

Angelina "Strike" Stephens (22:04)

My website is strikestephens.com — the call sign and then Stephens with a P-H. I work with Victory Strategies, which is a leadership development and training firm. You can find me in both places. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram. I'm happy to connect with people anywhere they are and have some of those tougher and joyful conversations to celebrate leaders and people that are out there pushing through and having those hard conversations.

Rachel Mandell (22:31)

Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciated it.