While serving during the evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021, U.S. Navy Reserve Corpsman Brooke Christenson helped a woman deliver a placenta that was stuck following childbirth – on an airplane – ultimately saving the woman’s life.

Christenson, 32, of St. Charles Township continues to serve her country as the senior enlisted leader in the U.S. Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base in O’Fallon, Illinois.

“We do patient movement worldwide,” said Christenson, whose full title is chief petty officer hospital corpsman. “Any person who has to be medevacked, any patient movement request from Afghanistan, from Germany – anywhere."

As the senior enlisted leader of the Transportation Command, or TransCom for short, Christenson and her colleagues “send Reservists all over the world. ... I like to call us the UPS for the military: ‘Wherever you are, we deliver.’”

Christenson is part of a joint command with the U.S. Air Force, Marines and the Coast Guard.

“I fill a gap. That is what Reservists do for active-duty” military, Christenson said.

While she has not been on the front lines, she has served in combat and hazardous command situations. South of Saudi Arabia is considered a combat zone, where she has served a dozen times over 10 years.

“When I was overseas, one of the deployments I did was in a mental health ward,” Christenson said. “... I realized they were just giving people medication, not treating the symptoms with therapy. And I heard later some people ended their lives because of that. I told myself, ‘This isn’t care. It’s symptom management.’”

She went to graduate school and, in 2020, became a licensed marriage and family therapist with an office in Hampshire. Her focus is on treating complex trauma.

She sees patients when she’s not directing USTransCom – or taking turns homeschooling her two little boys, Malcom, 5, and Maverick, 3, with her husband Cory.

Christenson said she was also homeschooled by her parents, Susan and Rob Russell, who was formerly Kane County coroner.

“Something I really admire about Brooke – when she reached Chief Petty Officer in the service – is that she has a servant’s heart,” Cory said. “And that she’s also authentic.”

He said he also admires her ambition. Those three things “come together in a beautiful way,” he said, “not just with the military, but with everybody she deals with, in every facet of her life.”