I'm Samantha Crowder Gamble. I never planned on becoming the person pulling back the curtain on the Department of Veterans Affairs.

For nearly a decade, I worked inside the VA, first in hospitals, then at a financial center, and finally at the national office. I saw the system from every angle: frontline staff stretched thin, schedulers drowning in overtime, executives chasing “High Reliability” slogans, and data dashboards that looked impressive but told us nothing about what was really happening.

Everywhere I turned, I saw the same cycle: broken processes hidden under new buzzwords, reform efforts led by the same people who created the mess, and good employees forced into a choice, conform and stay silent, or speak up and risk burning out. I chose a third option: to tell the truth.

That’s what Behind the Curtain VA is about. It’s not about bashing every federal worker, and it’s not about politics. It’s about exposing how a system designed to serve veterans is instead burying them, and its staff, under inefficiency, denial, and bad data.

I created this platform to shine a light where leadership won’t: on the stories that matter, the data that’s been ignored, and the reforms we desperately need. Through videos, writing, and advocacy, I want to give veterans and staff the voice they deserve and prove that the problems are fixable if we stop pretending and start listening.

Because here’s the truth: our veterans and the employees who serve them are drowning in a system that could work, if only we had the courage to fix it.