Veterans Count, a program of Easterseals, is pleased to announce that Senator Kelly Ayotte, of Nashua, NH, has been elected to serve as a Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee.
In this role, Senator Ayotte will join a team of statewide volunteers to help oversee Veterans Count chapters throughout the Northeast including New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.
As the philanthropic arm of Easterseals Military & Veterans Services, the mission of Veterans Count is to provide critical and timely financial assistance and services when no other resource is available to veterans, service members and their families, to ensure their dignity, health and overall well-being. In the past decade, Veterans Count has helped more than 9,400 individuals in a variety of ways including suicide prevention, homelessness, substance abuse treatment, employment, transportation, and mental health issues resulting from post-traumatic stress disorder and/or traumatic brain injury. Veterans Count supports families through a care coordination model and provides emergency financial assistance for food, home maintenance, housing, rent, fuel assistance, utilities, vehicle repair, gasoline, medical bills, and child care.
As a tireless supporter of veterans during her tenure as Senator for the State of New Hampshire, Ayotte worked closely with Veterans Count and promoted it as a program to replicate throughout the nation. Her husband Lieutenant Colonel Joe Daley, ret., a veteran himself, has been an active volunteer in the Veterans Count Nashua Chapter for more than four years.
“Nothing is more important to me than ensuring that our veterans and their families receive the care and support they have earned defending our great nation and our freedom,” said Ayotte. “I am deeply humbled to serve on the Executive Committee of Veterans Count and to assist this incredible and important organization as it continues to serve the needs of veterans and their families in NH.”
Ayotte comes to Veterans Count with an extensive leadership background. Following a brief time in the 1990s as a law clerk in the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Ayotte was hired by McLane, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton in Manchester. In 1998, she became a prosecutor for the Office of the New Hampshire Attorney General. She was then promoted to deputy attorney general and, in 2004, was appointed the state’s attorney general. In 2010, Ayotte was elected to the U.S. Senate and officially began serving as senator for New Hampshire in January of 2011. Serving on the Senate’s Armed Services, Budget, Commerce and Small Business Committees, Ayotte was also the ranking member, among Senate Republicans, of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support.
“Kelly has been a tremendous advocate and supporter of Veterans Count as a United States Senator,” said Easterseals NH President & CEO Larry Gammon. “We are so privileged and honored to have Kelly join our executive committee and continue working on behalf of our veterans, service members, and their families.”
To learn more about Veterans Count and to get involved as a volunteer or with fundraising activities, visit www.vetscount.org/nh.
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