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Leah Evaschuk grew up in Southern California in a family of athletes. Her mother was a gymnast, her father was a minor league baseball player and she excelled at varsity-level soccer in high school.

After high school, Evaschuk decided to give up soccer and pursue a college degree. However, in the midst of her studies, she became a single mom and classes took a backseat. Later, as a military wife, the upheaval of deployments and relocations made it hard to go back to school.

“I see this frequently amongst my friends and family who are also military or veteran spouses. Oftentimes we can get our education or career started but frequently cannot continue due to the constant relocations,” Evaschuk explained. “This has been my cycle for almost 18 years now. [We face] the high demand of supporting our spouses’ careers, child rearing and, in some cases like mine, experiencing all the above then assuming a caretaker role.

According to the Women’s Bureau Fact Sheet, only 30 percent of military spouses have a four-year degree and only 15 percent have advanced degrees, even though 89 percent of military spouses have some college education. According to a new report from Lumina Foundation, overall, more than 54 percent of the U.S. population had college degrees in 2022. 

Evaschuk broke the 18-year postponement of her education by recently enrolling at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), where she is among this year’s 14 recipients of the Pillars of Strength Scholarship. She hopes to use the scholarship, which covers the tuition and fees for students who are caregivers of servicemembers or veterans, to become a psychiatrist.

“My husband Nick and a few of our other friends have been previously and/or currently enrolled at UMCG and have had great things to say about the institution and their success rate was impressively high,” Evaschuk said. “It is often difficult for expatriates to attend universities while living abroad and moving very frequently. I knew that this institution would be a great platform for me to continue my education.”

Throughout Nick’s deployments and recovery from injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, Evaschuk has supported him in every way that she can. She and her family currently reside in India before that living in Taiwan for three and a half years. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, they lived all over the United States with Texas as their homebase.

It was in 2006 that Evaschuk met her future husband, while he was on temporary duty (TDY) for the U.S. Air Force in Arizona. A year and a half later, they got married in between deployments and now, nearly 20 years later, they have four children. 

“Nick has been away on deployments or other TDYs with not just the U.S. Air Force, but also continuing the same career in military defense with Lockheed Martin, for the majority of our marriage,” Evaschuk explained. “The kids and I would often celebrate all the things he would

miss in one large party once he returned home. After one deployment, we had a Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday, Easter and Halloween party all at once.”

After being medically discharged from the military for injuries to his shoulder and brain, Nick grappled with life outside of the Air Force. He continued to need surgery on his shoulder and brain; alcoholism exasperated the situation. Last year, he participated in an intense substance abuse detox program, electromagnetic brain stimulation therapy to help with his post-traumatic stress disorder, and counseling.

“We both are still in counseling to help us continue to grow and cope in a healthy manner,” Evaschuk said. 

In 2013, Evaschuk started a nonprofit in Atlanta called Rooted in Love to feed homeless and low-income families. The enterprise grew to feed up to 70 individuals per week. Rooted In Love evolved into a food pantry offering hygiene items and its tutoring services formed the beginning of what is now a school.

“Many times, most of my volunteers were the homeless that we were helping, which I also really encouraged,” Evaschuk said. “The biggest goal for me was to create a sense of community and togetherness, bridging the social and economic gaps.”

Evaschuk has also worked as a dyslexia therapist with children, a yoga instructor, has volunteered at both suicide-prevention and women’s crisis centers, and other food pantries. Currently, she volunteers at an orphanage in India.

She is also an artist and activist. After taking a humanities course at a community college in 2018, Evaschuk became interested in documentary art, which is referred to as Docu-Art. She takes topics, people and events and reimagines them in art. 

“I would take photography from some of America’s first documented journalists from the Library of Congress’s website, create a transfer of that image onto a canvas, and use many different mediums to create graffiti using words that would help provoke the viewer’s mind into thinking more deeply about the struggles and the outcome of the Great Depression,” Evaschuk explained.

Since discovering Docu-Art, Evaschuk has shared her artwork, mostly focused on humanitarian efforts she has seen, in galleries around the world.