Former Military Careers
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Read The Remarkable Story of Heidi Kraft
Heidi, a Clinical Psychologist with the Navy in Iraq, is a nationally recognized author and speaker, who heads a key Navy program at SAIC and delivers her expertise corporate wide.
Her story begins in San Francisco, where she was born into the Squier family. Her mother was a registered nurse, and her father was a career Navy submarine officer.
Following her lifetime ambition to work in the medical field, Heidi earned a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in 1996. During her internship at Duke University Medical Center, her love of flight and desire to serve her country led her to join the U.S. Navy as an aviation Clinical Psychologist.
"SAIC is always supportive of your endeavors. When a project starts, if there is a new direction that can be supported by our ethics and mission, the company will give you the freedom and support to pursue that new opportunity."
She attended Naval Flight Surgeon School in Pensacola and was stationed at the Naval Safety Center in Virginia as a Human Factors Consultant. While there, she met Marine Corps Harrier pilot Mike "Cheez" Kraft, who she married in 1999. When she learned she was pregnant with twins, her flying time came to an end. She delivered Brian and Megan in September 2002. In January 2003, the family relocated to the Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, where Heidi took a billet as a staff Clinical Psychologist.
In February 2004, Heidi was deployed to Iraq, where she was responsible for the mental health care of thousands of Marines and sailors in the western part of the country. She returned home in September 2004 and left active duty in March 2005. Soon after, Heidi put her email journal about her time in Iraq to pen and paper. The result was Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital, published by Little, Brown and Company.
The book, which provides anecdotes about her interaction with patients and her fellow soldiers, will also serve as a reference for her children, who are too young to understand or eventually even recall her deployment. Says Heidi, "I wrote the book with the hope that they will be able to understand, at last, why I had to go."
An SAIC employee since 2005, Heidi is now the Deputy Director of the Navy Combat Stress Control program at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton, where she works with active duty post-traumatic stress patients.
About her career Heidi says, "SAIC is always supportive of your endeavors. When a project starts, if there is a new direction that can be supported by our ethics and mission, the company will give you the freedom and support to pursue that new opportunity."
Ten percent of the sales of Heidi's book are donated to the Injured Marines Semper Fi Fund, an organization that gives grants to the families of injured Marines and sailors so that they can be together during recovery.
SAIC is a proud supporter of the Wounded Warrior Project and the Paralyzed Veterans of America.
