The Leap of a Lifetime

Brooke VanRosendael, BSBA ’17, MSA ’20, wasn’t born until 50 years after the allied invasion of Normandy, but last June she got an expanded view of that historic campaign as part of the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

A company commander in the US Army Reserve and a certified jumpmaster, she joined scores of other US service members who parachuted into the Normandy countryside—echoing those WWII paratroopers who had to make the jump in support of the amphibious invasion at daybreak.

“To be there and actually talk to the survivors and the families of survivors, it’s a feeling like no other,” VanRosendael says. “You finally get to kind of comprehend the sacrifice that was made, because you’re standing on Omaha Beach.”

Dedicated to her duty

VanRosendael, who is originally from Maine, joined the US Army Reserve in 2017 during the final semester of her undergraduate year at the Sawyer Business School as she was finishing up her Bachelor of Finance degree. Her father and both her maternal grandparents had served in the military, “and I wanted to do something that would be rewarding,” she says.

She completed her intensive Basic Combat Training (BCT) at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and Officer Candidacy School (OCS) at Fort Benning, Georgia (now Fort Moore), and then returned to Suffolk to pursue a graduate degree in accounting. She was called to active duty by the Army Reserve in 2019 and ended up completing her graduate studies while on assignment in the Middle East, graduating from the Master of Science in Accounting program, summa cum laude.

VanRosendael was a logistics officer for four years in Westover, Massachusetts, and for nine months deployed with her brigade to Jordan, where she worked as a Contracting Officer Representative (COR), helping to build up infrastructure at various military facilities around the country. “One of the bonuses of that work was getting to travel around Jordan and get eyes on the ground to see how things worked economically and militarily,” she says.

She has also worked with the Royal Army in Morocco to train their soldiers in civil engagement and reconnaissance. But she says one of the highlights of her military career remains that group jump over Normandy.

“So I’m standing in the airplane door waiting for the green light to come on,” she says. “I was thinking, ‘This is my life. I’m really about to jump out of an aircraft into the French countryside right now.’”

For the past several years, VanRosendael combined her Army Reserve service with work as a management consultant at PwC. Now she’s studying for her MBA at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

“The most important part of my eight years in the Reserve is that I get the opportunity to make a difference in soldiers’ lives,” she says. “Nothing makes me happier.”

The Suffolk University community joins in thanking all our service members as we celebrate Veterans Day 2024.