Eleanor Haack-Finney was named 2025 Heroes at Home Military Spouse of the Year last week for building something that billion-dollar health tech companies have failed to create: a mental health platform that actually understands military life.
Her digital platform, Defenders of Resilience , addresses problems that civilian mental health apps cannot solve. When a military family moves from Virginia to California, Eleanor’s platform moves with them. When a spouse deploys for nine months, the remaining parent can access counsellors who understand solo parenting under stress. When children struggle with their fourth school change, the platform provides resources designed for military families, not generic childhood anxiety.
What Military Families Actually Need
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The military lifestyle creates specific mental health challenges that mainstream platforms miss entirely. A typical therapy app might offer generalised anxiety management. Eleanor’s Operation Resilient app (available on Apple Store and Google Play Store ) includes modules for pre-deployment stress, reintegration difficulties after homecoming, and helping children adapt to frequent relocations.
The platform connects families with lay counsellors and life coaches who have lived military life themselves. These aren’t civilian therapists trying to understand military culture—they’re former military spouses, veterans, and military family members who know what it means to manage a household crisis whilst your partner is overseas.
Eleanor’s background as a board-certified biblical counsellor and ordained pastor allows her to integrate faith-based support for families who want it. Traditional mental health platforms typically avoid religious elements entirely. Eleanor recognised that many military families draw strength from their faith during difficult periods, so she built that option into her platform’s structure.
Building from Experience, Not Market Research
Eleanor developed these solutions because she lived these problems. As a military spouse raising four children, she faced every challenge her platform now addresses. When civilian mental health services couldn’t accommodate military family schedules or understand their stressors, she created alternatives.
Military spouse entrepreneurship often emerges from necessity rather than opportunity. Research involving 243 military spouse business owners (80% female) shows that frequent relocations make traditional employment difficult, driving many toward self-employment. Eleanor’s business model reflects this reality—she built something that could serve military families regardless of their geographic location.
Her dual structure as both LLC and nonprofit acknowledges another military family reality: some can afford premium services whilst others need support regardless of ability to pay. The nonprofit arm ensures no military family goes without help due to financial constraints.
Technology That Travels
Traditional mental health care relies on geographic stability. Find a therapist, build a relationship, attend weekly appointments. Military families destroy this model every two years when they relocate. Eleanor’s platform solves continuity by maintaining therapeutic relationships through technology.
When families move, their support network moves with them. The same counsellor who helped manage pre-deployment anxiety in North Carolina can provide reintegration support when the family relocates to Germany. This continuity is impossible with traditional practice models but essential for military families.
The platform also addresses practical scheduling challenges. Military spouses often manage single parenting during deployments whilst handling household emergencies, children’s needs, and their own stress. Eleanor’s system provides flexible access—support available at 3am when a child has nightmares about Dad’s deployment, or during nap time when a spouse finally has 20 minutes for self-care.
Market Recognition and Investment Trends
Eleanor’s recognition comes as mental health investment reaches record levels, with $2.7 billion flowing into the sector across 184 deals this year. However, funding for AI-driven mental health ventures dropped from 53% to 48% as investors became more selective about experimental technology.
Eleanor’s human-centred approach fits this trend. Rather than replacing therapists with chatbots, she uses technology to connect military families with qualified humans who understand their experiences. This resonates with investors seeking proven clinical outcomes over technological novelty.
Mental health disorders now cause more military hospitalisations than any other condition, creating both urgent need and significant market opportunity. Government investment of $240 million in mental health services across 400+ community health centres creates potential contract opportunities for solutions that demonstrate cultural competency.
Eleanor’s approach offers lessons for other entrepreneurs targeting underserved markets. Rather than building generic solutions and hoping for broad adoption, she identified a specific community’s unmet needs and built precisely what they required.
The broader AI-powered mental health market is projected to reach $8.47 billion by 2032 . Eleanor’s platform operates within this space but avoids direct competition with large technology companies by serving a population they struggle to understand.
Her upcoming book, “Perhaps This Is It,” will likely expand her thought leadership platform and potentially drive user acquisition among military families seeking guidance. Mental health now represents 12% of all digital health funding , indicating sustained investor interest in solutions that demonstrate both clinical effectiveness and business viability.
The Military Spouse Advantage
Eleanor’s success illustrates why military spouse entrepreneurs often succeed in serving their own community. They understand problems that market research cannot capture. They know which solutions will work because they’ve tested them on themselves and their families.
Traditional mental health technology companies face significant barriers serving military families because they lack cultural understanding and operational flexibility. Eleanor’s approach demonstrates how community knowledge can overcome these challenges whilst building sustainable business models.
For investors and executives, Eleanor’s platform shows how deep market understanding can create lasting advantages in competitive sectors. Her model provides insights applicable to other demographics where cultural competency matters as much as technological capability.
About Eleanor Haack-Finney
Eleanor is a 32-year-old Navy spouse and mother of four children. Her husband Austin is a Navy sailor studying to become a chaplain. She is pursuing her Master’s in Divinity with a focus on Discipleship and Outreach Ministries and serves as an advisor on multiple boards of directors. She is a published author and regularly speaks about military family resilience and mental health advocacy.
Her golden retriever puppy is currently being trained as a cardiac alert service dog to support Eleanor, who has undergone nine surgeries including four cardiac procedures.
To learn more about Eleanor’s platform and business model, visit www.eleanorfinney.com .
