Kristyn King: Mom of the Month [March 2024]

The Washington, DC area is full of amazing moms. There are working moms, stay-at-home moms, single moms, moms of multiples, foster moms, adoptive moms, etc. We want to highlight some of those moms like our Mom of the Month: Kristyn King. Each month we will feature one special mom as the Mom of the Month. Know a fellow amazing local mom here? Nominate them here!

Meet our March Mom of the Month: Kristyn King

Kristyn King is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Penn State University. She is a military spouse, a devoted mother of three children, and has a passion for Peloton. With a background in Marketing and Business German, Kristyn has spent the past 17 years working in the automotive industry. More recently Kristyn focuses on the Digital Transformation space, working to transform the customer’s shopping experience both online and in-dealership. She currently is the Digital Buying Experience manager at Audi of America, headquartered in Reston, VA.

Kristyn also serves as the Community Impact Council Director of the Junior League of Washington (JLW). Since 2009, Kristyn has been a devoted Junior League member, relishing the chance to volunteer and receive leadership training. She also leads her daughter’s Daisy Troop and enjoys being a weekend hockey and flag football mom. Kristyn happily spends time with Jared, her husband of 14 years, who serves in the U.S. Air Force.

Here is our Q&A with Kristyn King

1. Tell us about life as a military spouse.

Being a military spouse is its own unique career path of sorts. First, there’s a new world of acronyms you didn’t know you needed to know (like BAH, PT, DOD, NAS, AFB, OCONUS, PCS, EFMP, )…to which, I say, (If you know you know).

Second, supporting your spouse in moving regularly to new duty stations, and making your house a home and finding a place in your new community is the greatest blessing and curse of military life.

Moving often can be difficult on jobs, friendships, extracurriculars, and mental health. But moving often also means you have friends that become family throughout the world, and it allows you to build appreciation for other cultures, geographies, languages, and more. My military brats (what we call children of those in-service or retired from service) were born in Germany, Alabama, and Virginia. That gives us special connections to each one of those locations.

Lastly, most military spouses are living far away from their hometowns and their families. It’s difficult to appreciate just how important living near family is, until you are a working parent raising children far away from support. Military spouses are known for asking a neighbor they just met to watch their kids so they can go run an errand on base. We know just how literal the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” is applied in military families. As a result, we are grateful for friends who become family at each duty station.

2. What advice do you have for military spouses as they navigate moves/building new communities?

Join spouse clubs, Facebook groups, volunteer, and attend events outside your comfort zone; make friends unintentionally. Learn about preschools, summer camps, bakeries, and neighborhoods from spouse affinity groups on Social Media.

Thanks to being a military spouse, I’ve been blessed to attend events like: the White House Holiday Tour, Afternoon Teas, Tour of the National Security Agency (NSA), comedy shows, career fairs, and galas and balls. Which I tend to really enjoy because playing dress-up is one of my favorite pastimes! My Grams worked in retail at Gimbels, which eventually became Macy’s, and I’ve inherited her love of fashion & accessorizing.

Remember to use VetTix to access events in your new area. VetTix offers tickets to a wide range of activities across the U.S. for service members and their families. We’ve had the great fortune to go to concerts like Coldplay, The Black Keys, and OneRepublic and to sporting events like Penn State football and the Baltimore Ravens (my husband’s hometown team). Plus, our kids have gone to shows like Paw Patrol Live or showings of the Nutcracker, all thanks to VetTix and the generous donors who make those tickets available to military members.

Furthermore, if serving in your community is something that interests you, consider joining a local chapter of the Junior League. The Junior League is an international organization of women volunteers committed to improving communities and to advance women’s leadership. As a Junior League member, when my service member gets a new assignment, I look for local Junior League chapters I can transfer to at our next duty station. It’s a quick way to meet like-minded women and to quickly get involved in, and learn about the new community. 

3.  What can colleagues do to support military spouses?

Military spouses who also work are often doing so without any family around to help with their children. Be understanding and empathetic if a military spouse gets to work late or has to leave early to do kid drop-off or pick-up duty. Often, our spouses don’t have the opportunity to work from home due to their clearances and in many cases SCIFs (sensitive compartmented information facility).  In SCIFs employees cannot even have a cell phone or Apple Watch, they aren’t always as available to help with children (this is the case for both male and female service members who work in these environment).

Colleagues can also extend an invitation to Thanksgiving or to gatherings, as that military spouse might not have family nearby or the means to travel with their family back home.  Sometimes the best Thanksgivings are the Friendsgivings with your military friends who become family. Lastly, if you’re the colleague of a spouse who has a service member deployed or on TDY (Temporary Duty), bringing over a meal goes a long way. This can serve not only as fellowship and a visitor, but having a night off from figuring out dinner for your family can be one of the best gifts.

Do you know an amazing mom? Nominate a mom of the month here!