Lt. Col. Glennie Millard comes from humble origins in Honduras. Her stepfather loaded bananas on the docks; her mother was a seamstress, did laundry service and baked pies. “She kept drumming in my head that ‘you have to do much better than I did.’ She encouraged us to study, and she worked very hard to meet our needs.”
At age 18, Ms. Millard moved to Brooklyn, babysitting her aunt’s child by day and attending high school at night. She attended NYC Community College earning an RN. Her BSN from Long Island University came later.
After 15 years at The Brooklyn Hospital, in 1989, she joined the New York State Nurses Association and worked there for 24 years.
Ms. Millard also served 28 years in the United States Army Reserve and retired as a lieutenant colonel. “I went to Germany six times, three weeks each, to relieve nurses there,” she says of her foreign military assignments. “We saw very critically wounded warriors and military with post traumatic stress disorder,” she says.
Lt. Col. Millard is the president of the Brooklyn chapter of the Reserve Officers Association, is a member of 14 professional organizations, is a legislative district coordinator for State Senate District 14 in Queens and volunteers at Ft. Hamilton Army Base thrift shop.
With a distinguished nursing career that spans more than four decades, Lt. Col. Millard gratefully recognizes the mentorship from her professors and military officers.
She says, “I chose nursing because it is a profession that allowed me to provide care to the most vulnerable of populations. I also realized that I could make a living doing something that I really loved, wanted and needed to do.”
