Iris Collis

Iris Collis was a military spouse for over a decade before her husband retired from the Navy in June 2015. She holds a degree in Journalism from Plymouth University in England and went on to use that knowledge to explore different careers—from teaching to journalism, marketing, and PR—as she traveled the world. Her love of teaching found her in a Japanese Language school in Tokyo, where she met and married her husband, ultimately leaving that position following the birth of their first child. As Iris transitioned into the role of stay-at-home-mom, she was inspired to use her love and experience of teaching to open her own school using the tatami mat room in her family’s home. It became popular in the local neighborhood and had an enrollment of 62 students ranging from preschool to adult age. When Iris’s family was assigned new orders, the school closed, which led her to dedicate the next few years to raising her growing family throughout the moves and deployments that followed. These challenges brought about many highs and a few lows, which comes with the territory of being a military spouse. Although returning to work was never far from her mind, there seemed to be no easy way to go about it. With the retirement of her husband from the Navy after 21 years of service, Iris now resides in Burke, located in Northern Virginia. She remains a busy mom of four and is also a 5 a.m. runner, an active volunteer on the school PTA and in her church, a music and PE teacher at a private preschool, and a student of WithYouWithMe (WYWM) academy. She is actively studying cybersecurity and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), with hopes to fully enter the workforce in the very near future.