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Born and raised in Annapolis, Maryland, Ms. Burl began her service to the Maryland Department of Veterans and Military Families as the Director of Communications, Outreach, and Advocacy in October 2013. She was appointed Deputy Secretary, Military Family Policy and Programs in July 2024.
Ms. Burl leads Maryland Joins Forces, a department program established in 2023 with the mission to unite public and private partners to foster innovative solutions to challenges facing our military connected community. Since taking over the program in 2024 she has grown the collaborative from 10 to almost 50 partner organizations. With expanded reach and intentional partner engagement, the program reached just under 30,000 service members, veterans, families, and those who serve them between 2023 and 2025. She also has oversight of the Maryland Veterans Trust Fund. Ms. Burl has served on the Governor’s Commission on Suicide Prevention since 2014, and previously represented the Department on the Governor’s Health Performance Cabinet, Opioid Overdose Advisory Council, and Interagency Council on Homelessness. She has co-led the Maryland-based VA/SAMHSA Governor’s Challenge to Prevent Suicide among Service Members, Veterans, and Families since 2020 when Maryland first received its invitation to join the nationwide initiative.
In 2014, she single handedly led Maryland’s first ever veteran hiring challenge, Operation Hire Maryland, a 90 day initiative to empower employers to hire more veterans. More than 175 employers participated in the initiative, almost 400 veterans were hired, and because of its success Operation Hire continued under her leadership for three additional years. Sustainment, along with regularly occurring employer networking events and outreach, led to increased awareness of best practices for recruitment and retention of veterans in the civilian workplace, eventually helping to reduce Maryland’s veteran unemployment rate.
Between 2017 and 2019, Ms. Burl was instrumental in implementing two statutorily mandated programs in the department, the Maryland Veterans Service Animal Grant Program and the Veterans Services Specialist Program in State Government. In 2020, under her leadership, the first ever joint state and county veterans commission summit was held, leading to ongoing collaboration, re-occurring meetings, strengthened communication, and improved service delivery across Maryland’s veteran serving organization community.
Ms. Burl has dedicated her entire professional career to public service. Since 1997, she has served in diverse roles which include an investigator with child protective services, a case manager at the Anne Arundel County Detention Center, and an adjunct professor of developmental psychology at Baltimore City Community College. In addition to her core duties at the Detention Center, she served as a training academy and in-service instructor as well as field training officer. She was primarily responsible for teaching mental health, suicide prevention, and substance use in correctional settings to uniformed personnel. She began her service to the veteran community in 2012 when she was hired as a resource coordinator with the Department of Health’s Maryland’s Commitment to Veterans Program. During her tenure with Maryland’s Commitment to Veterans she created her region’s first veteran services provider directory as well as wrote and facilitated a military cultural competency training curriculum for local health department personnel.
Ms. Burl received her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Delaware in 1997 and her master’s degree in psychology from Towson University in 2005. Although she did not serve in the military her patriotic roots run deep. Ms. Burl is the granddaughter of Sergeant John Burl who served active duty in the Maryland Army National Guard during World War II and stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day. Her great uncle was killed in action during World War II and is interred in France at Epinal American Cemetery. Her uncles also served in Vietnam, both in the Army and Air Force. She is a former military spouse and proud mom of two sons serving in the military, one in the Air Force and a second in the Army.