Tag: military

A Hurricane Demolished My City. My Military Experience Is Helping Me Rebuild It

Posted on by robbie

When I took the job as city manager for Panama City, Florida — the place I’ve called home since 1988 — I never expected to be thrown back into Baghdad.
You see, this past year, I retired after 39 years with the Army, leaving as a two-star general. During my decades of service, I’ve seen what cities look like after they’ve been decimated. As a civil affairs officer in the Army Reserves, I was part of humanitarian efforts in Central America and the Caribbean. I also worked with civilians displaced by war in Baghdad and helped rebuild their city as commanding general of the 108th Training Command.
And I can tell you that after Hurricane Michael ravaged my city this year, it didn’t look all that different from Baghdad.
I’ve trained for exactly this kind of destruction. My experience in the military and opportunities to command have enabled me to not only help the citizens of Panama City recover, but also make our city better and stronger. I want to give back to my community, because my community has given me so much.
I’m not originally from Panama City. I spent my youth moving around — as an Army brat does — and I went to tons of different high schools; a new school for practically every year. But as a Boy Scout, service to my country and to my fellow citizens always stayed consistent.
My family also played a role. I had strong ties to the military growing up, with my father serving in Vietnam and my grandfather serving in World War II. And even though I was raised in the Vietnam era of the late 1960s and early ’70s, when returning soldiers were shunned and spat on, I still felt a duty to serve my country.

Panama City veteran 2
Before retiring as a two-star general, McQueen’s deployments included Operation Joint Endeavor in Bosnia, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq.

I eventually landed in the ROTC at Auburn University in Alabama and then the Army. That’s when everything changed for me. I was sent to Ansbach, Germany, during what I think was a very dark period for our military. This was around 1982, and I was seeing the effects of Vietnam on our soldiers in real time.
I was a young lieutenant then, and I remember taking soldiers to the hospital for in-patient alcohol and drug treatment. These men, who had served in Vietnam, were just emotionally crushed. I wouldn’t say we were a valueless army, but an army that had no compass. Things started to turn around, when a new division commander came in. He brought in a team of unbelievable leaders, and I saw what the power of leadership can do. When you uplift people and give them what they need, they start to raise their head a bit more.
Fast-forward some three decades later, when I was just a few months from retirement with the Army and I accepted the job of city manager. I’ve lived in Panama City for so many years, and as I was going through my military career, the city took care of me. It was my time to take care of the citizens here. Little did I know that Hurricane Michael, one of the worst hurricanes to slam the Florida Panhandle in decades, was going to hit just two weeks later.
After Michael made landfall, the mayor likened the area to Baghdad. He wasn’t wrong — it does look like Baghdad, except with trees. There was massive destruction. The city’s infrastructure was almost entirely collapsed, and an estimated 90 percent of homes were damaged or destroyed — like a war zone, but with nature as the adversary. The people here have the same needs as those in war-torn countries.
So I thought back to my time in service — my deployment to Bosnia, short time in Afghanistan and year in Iraq, where I helped rebuild infrastructure and organized relief efforts. A big benefit from my time in the Army is that I’ve been able to translate those skills to my civilian career. I approached this new crisis facing my city in a similar way. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, I worked to help ensure everyone’s safety and security. Then I focused on coordinating the efforts to provide food, water and shelter. Now I’m looking at the longer term, asking myself things like, How do I reinvigorate and rev up the economic engine of this community?  
I met with one of Verizon’s top executives when she came down to visit. Verizon has about 80 percent of the market share here, and when their towers got shredded it crippled recovery efforts. After explaining the needs of my city, Verizon decided to reinvest $25 million in the community. Initially, the company was planning on creating 5G networks in four cities. Now there are five, with Panama City joining Los Angeles, Houston, Indianapolis and Sacramento.
We in Panama City are resilient. I know, because I’m applying my military training and experience to this new problem set — and let me tell you we have a wicked set of problems currently — but Panama City can, and will, come back.

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As told to NationSwell staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for clarity and style. Read more stories of service here.

When the Mission Continues

Posted on by robbie

West Point’s motto, “Duty, Honor, Country,” is perfectly suited to the values of the military, but for graduate John Tien, these three words extend well beyond his 24 years of active duty in the U.S. Army.
“Even when I am not in the military, I am trying to live my life by this motto,” says Tien, Citi’s managing director of retail services and a steering committee member of the Citi Salutes affinity network, Citi’s veterans’ employee-led initiative that serves the veterans community. “I feel like it is my obligation, and my privilege, to continue to serve military families and veterans.”
Tien joined the bank in 2011, right after serving as a senior national security adviser to the White House.
Working with employees across the company, Tien wanted to bring veterans together as a community, and guide them through the challenging transition to civilian life by tapping into the military grit they cultivated during their service.

“Too often the portrait is of the wounded and broken veteran,” says Tien. “Yes, some are wounded and need our help, but the majority of veterans are ready and able to be strategic assets for our community. These are great, young Americans who are given tremendous responsibility to stabilize chaotic situations. They have tremendous amounts of emotional intelligence and critical thinking, making them agile leaders. If we can teach them the concepts of banking as well as operations and technologies, they will be on a path to unlock their highest potential.”
Within a month of working at Citi, Tien realized that the company could leverage a huge talent pool of veterans. He and Micah Heavener, a Citi colleague and fellow Army vet, launched the Military Officer Leadership program at Citi to assist military leaders transitioning to civilian life. The 24-month rotational program connects veterans with mentors and prepares them for careers in operations and technology. It offers formal training in banking principles and financial services technology, and provides certifications through efficiency programs such as the Lean Six Sigma.
“About two-thirds of military officers leave the service after five to eight years,” says Tien. “These are the heroes and thought leaders we can pull into the bank.” 
Tien also wanted to start an employee network to support internal veteran colleagues and to boost engagement with local veteran communities and organizations in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was based at the time. Initially, Tien only knew one other veteran at that location.
“There has to be more than you and me,” he remembers saying to Heavener. “This is a 5,000-person site.” Tien was right. One building over, an Army ranger was working as a project manager in Citi’s technology group. When Tien asked him if he wanted to help start a local chapter of the military network, his reply was, “Hooah!”
Three months later, just in time for Veterans Day, Tien’s idea to bring vets together gave rise to the Citi Salutes network’s second chapter (The first was opened in Citi’s New York office).
“What’s even more amazing is that while the veterans formed the nucleus of the chapter, by 2018, more than half of the overall network consists of civilians who want to be part of the mission,” Tien says.
Over the past seven years, Tien has helped support and inspire the creation of 15 more chapters in North America and London. “The military is a brotherhood, it’s a sisterhood, it’s a family,” he says. “At Citi, I felt like I could find that form of camaraderie again, not just with fellow veterans, but with colleagues.”
Tien’s penchant for helping others is instinctual at this point. “I knew I couldn’t help serving,” he says.
When Tien moved to Atlanta in 2016, he wasn’t sure if the Citi-site was large enough to support a big network, but his colleagues proved otherwise. After reaching out to all 200 Citi employees in Atlanta, asking whether anyone had a connection to a vet — whether it be a friend, grandfather, husband or daughter — more than 60 people wrote back.
“I have often said that the next greatest generation is the post-9/11 generation,” Tien says. “These individuals are having an impact across the nation and their communities.”

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This article is paid for and produced in partnership with Citi. Through Citi Salutes, Citi collaborates with veterans’ service organizations and leading veterans’ champions to support and empower veterans, service members and their families. This is the seventh installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.

I Never Fought for My Country, But I Still Found a Way to Serve

Posted on by robbie

I never served in the military. And yet I find myself helping those who did serve, every day.
That’s not by coincidence.
I grew up in a military family where pride, honor and service were all part of our ethos. Our license plate says “Oorah”; my first stuffed animal was a bulldog. Military is very much part of who we are. My father was a Vietnam veteran, and though he didn’t speak much about those days, you could tell he thought back on that time with incredible fondness. I wanted something like that. To be part of something bigger than myself.
Whenever any one of us left the house, my mother always used to remind us, “Remember who you are.” It was a constant reminder that we were representing the values and strength that military families must have.
So serving was something I was expected to do, and it’s something I wanted for myself. Which is why when it came to going to college, I’m sure it was odd for my father — a 26-year veteran — to hear that I would be not attending a military academy or even registering to be in any branch of the military.  
Instead I had an incredible opportunity to play soccer at school, which tore at my heart. Would I be letting down my family? Is this not the opposite of how I was raised?
My father calmed me down and told me something that I would never forget, and that I carry to this day. He said, “Meghan, go to school and get a great education. You’ll find your way to service. Go be the best you can be.”

Meghan Service 2
Dog Tag fellows and staff during a surprise visit from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden.

And I did. I eventually found my way into finance at Lehman Brothers in 2005 and moved my way up the corporate ladder. But a few years and thousands of layoffs later, I stopped and had to ask myself what I was doing — was this really the service I was meant to do?
Service is meant to be selfless. My father talked about his time in service not with pride for himself, but with pride for his peers. But at some point in everyone’s time of service, there’s a realization that whatever help you’re giving often ends up bettering your life too. And I just wasn’t feeling that with where I was.
It was around that time when I was approached by a friend who told me about a one-armed Jesuit priest named Father Rick Curry who wanted to start a nonprofit for veterans in Washington, D.C. I just had to meet him.
I sat down with Father Curry for a whole weekend, and he sold me on this vision he had, built around men and women veterans who — unlike the people in the movies, broken and desperate — have a variety of different voices and talents, despite their physical or mental ailments acquired while serving.
And with that, he and his co-founder created Dog Tag Bakery, a space that utilizes veterans as employees, but also offers classes and the support to start an entrepreneurial venture of their own. I joined as their first employee in 2012.
I would never say I’m at the same level of my father, sister or mom. But I’ve helped establish a program that has a culture of acceptance and offers wraparound services to vets. It’s not about running a bakery — it’s about running the best bakery.
And this isn’t just about doing something good for people. This is about doing good business. We’re seeing an economic impact. Change doesn’t always happen on a national level; it happens on a small level in our communities every day. I think that there’s no greater calling than that.

As told to NationSwell staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for clarity and style. Read more stories of service here.

A Mission Unchanged

Posted on by robbie

I wanted to go into combat. After all, that’s what Marines are expected, trained and prepared to do. I wasn’t prepared to lose my legs, though.
I grew up on a horse farm in Lovettsville, Virginia. I had a pretty normal childhood — had chores to do, had friends, went to school. I was 20 when I joined the Marines in 2005, and it was a completely different journey than I had originally planned for myself. I didn’t grow up in a military family, per se. My father was drafted during the Vietnam era, but he never actually had to go over there, so I didn’t hear much about it.
My inspiration to join the Marines came from the book Brotherhood of Heroes, which is the story of a group of Marines toughing through World War II. They had traits that I didn’t possess that I wanted: courage, respect and a sense of purpose.
So I left college during my junior year at Virginia Tech and enlisted. Two years later, when my reserve unit asked for volunteers to be shipped to Iraq, my hand went right up.
I remember when they were reading the names of the people who were going on the platoon, I was nervous — like the kind of nervous when you’re nominated for an award and don’t know if you’re gonna get it or not. Then they did call my name, and I was excited and happy about it.
But nothing really happened that tour. And even though by that point I had gained most — if not all — of the traits I wanted when I enlisted, my mission as a Marine did not end. We were still at war, and there were more battles to be fought. And because I’m a Marine, my purpose was to fight those battles.

Mission Marines 2
Rob Jones (second from left) joined the Marines to develop courage and a sense of purpose.

It was during a tour in 2009 when things changed for me.
My team and I were going to Afghanistan, when it was kind of heating back up. We were clearing safe routes through danger areas — areas that had a high likelihood of containing improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
If we were gonna cross a bridge and we thought there might be IEDs on either side of the bridge, I would go clear the bridge of IEDs and then everybody would follow me across and continue on.
As we were doing a push into Taliban territory, there was an area we needed to check for IEDs. I ended up stepping on one.
After I woke up — about 20 seconds later — I realized what had happened. The other Marines ran over and applied tourniquets. The corpsman came and gave me morphine, and they loaded me onto a stretcher, took me to a tank and then the corpsman there gave me another shot that made me unconscious. I went from the site of injury to Maryland, all within five days.  
It’s a weird feeling to think you’ll never walk again, and to know you’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
But sitting there and wondering whether or not something was fair or deserved didn’t really matter. I realized, kind of instinctively, that just because I was a double amputee didn’t mean that I didn’t still have a mission or purpose in life, which was to make it enjoyable and meaningful —  and to get back on my feet and get my self-reliance back.
Mission Marines 3
Even after losing both his legs in Afghanistan, Rob Jones maintained his sense of humor and positive outlook on life.

My overall mission, to fight America’s battles, didn’t change. It just shifted.
You look at any Hollywood movie about a veteran, and I’d say there’s about a 100 percent chance it features a vet who came back broken and nearly destroyed his family. It’s an important story to show — and it’s a true story that does happen — but it’s not the story of all of us. And I want to show that.
Since my injury, I’ve received the USRowing Man of the Year award in 2012. In 2016, I was a bronze medalist in the triathlon at the Paralympics. I’ve been invited to throw out first pitches at major league baseball games. Last year, I ran 31 marathons in 31 days.
I did all of this not just to prove that I could do it, but to show America how strong our service members are.
There are plenty of awards I’ve won as a disabled athlete to prove I’m worthy and still a strong Marine. But I think the most rewarding thing I get is when people come up to me and tell me that I made a difference for them. Because at the end of the day, I do this to show others what’s possible, and to show people this journey that I’ve created despite the obvious shortcoming of losing my legs.
There are plenty of us in the military who have lost our legs — especially in these past few wars — but we’re not broken. We’re Marines. Oorah!

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As told to staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for style and clarity. Read more stories of service here.

The Disaster Response Program That’s Building More Than Homes

Posted on by robbie

Susan Ward had only served five weeks in the military when she was medically discharged after an injury — but that didn’t change the fact that she wanted a life in service.  
“From that moment when I got out, I was devastated,” she tells NationSwell. “That was my life goal and plan. I didn’t know what to do. I love helping and serving people, doing what I can for people.”
That feeling isn’t uncommon for thousands of military veterans who have a hard time transitioning to civilian life. Though unemployment among veterans who have served since 2001 has gone down, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 370,000 veterans who were still unemployed this year.
Numerous transition programs exist to help vets bridge that gap, but for Ward, finding a gig — or even volunteer work — that was service-oriented was necessary for her happiness. She eventually became a firefighter in Alaska, but after 10 years a different injury forced Ward to leave yet another job she loved. She fell into a deep depression, she says, and struggled to find another role that allowed her to fulfill her passion for public service.
“I was on Facebook one day and just saw this post about Team Rubicon, and I had this moment of, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to do this,’” she says.
Team Rubicon began as a volunteer mission in 2010 after the earthquake that devastated Haiti. The organization offered disaster relief by utilizing the help of former service workers from the military and civilian sectors.
It has since evolved into an organization fueled by 80,000 volunteers. The majority are veterans who assist with everything from clearing trees and debris in tornado-ravaged towns to gutting homes that have been destroyed by floods. The teams, which are deployed as units, also work alongside other disaster-relief organizations, such as the Red Cross.
Similar to Ward, Tyler Bradley, a Clay Hunt fellow for Team Rubicon who organizes and develops volunteers, battled depression after he had to leave the Army due to a genetic health problem.
“After I found [Team Rubicon], I was out doing lots of volunteer work. My girlfriend noticed and said she would see the old Tyler come back,” Bradley says. “Team Rubicon turned my life around.”
“There’s one guy who says that just because the uniform comes off doesn’t mean service ends,” says Zachary Brooks-Miller, director of field operations for Team Rubicon. He adds that the narrative around the value of veterans has to change. “We don’t take the approach that our vets are broken; we see vets as a strength within our community.”
In addition to Team Rubicon’s disaster-relief efforts, the organization also helps to empower veterans and ease their transition into the civilian world, according to Christopher Perkins, managing director at Citi and a member of the company’s Citi Salutes Affinity Steering Committee. By collaborating with Citi, Team Rubicon was able to scale up its contributions, allowing service workers to provide widespread relief last year in Houston after Hurricane Harvey. Those efforts were five times larger than anything the organization had previously done and brought even more veterans into the Team Rubicon family.
“Being around my brothers and sisters in arms whom I missed so much, it was so clear to me the impact Team Rubicon would have not only in communities impacted by disaster, but also among veterans,” says Perkins, a former captain in the Marines. “Every single American should know about this organization.”
Although Team Rubicon doesn’t brand itself as a veterans’ organization, it does view former members of the military as the backbone of its efforts. And many veterans see the team-building and camaraderie as a kind of therapy for service-related trauma.  
“There are so many people who have [post-traumatic stress disorder] from different things, and when you’re with family you have to pretend that you’re OK,” says Ward, who deals with PTSD from her time as a soldier and firefighter. “But when you’re with your Team Rubicon family, it’s a tribe.”

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This article is paid by and produced in collaboration with Citi. Through Citi Salutes, Citi collaborates with veterans’ service organizations and leading veterans’ champions to support and empower veterans, service members and their families. This is the fourth installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.

How to Translate Military Skills to a Civilian Resume

Posted on by robbie

A military job like U.S. Air Force aircraft controller doesn’t exactly translate to the majority of civilian career options. At least that’s how Eric Lundberg felt once he gave the Air Force his notice to retire.
Lundberg is not alone. Sixty-eight percent of veterans say that securing employment opportunities that match their military experience is one of the main challenges to finding a civilian job, according to a 2014 survey by VetAdvisor and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families. “There is a critical element in transition,” says Ruth Christopherson, SVP of Citi Community Development and program director of Citi Salutes, Citi’s company-wide initiative that supports service members, veterans and their families. “That’s the translation. Not everyone knows that veteran military language.”
Some of that difficulty is a result of the military mind-set that there is a playbook for everything — including finding a job. After all, most military operating procedures, from running a nuclear submarine to changing battery frequency, are spelled out in some sort of field manual. That’s just not the case, though, when it comes to snagging a job in the corporate or tech sectors.
For Angel McDowell, who was a major in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps, one of her challenges was that she followed the career map provided by the Army, as opposed to fine-tuning her skills to one unique specialization. In her two decades of service, her enlisted duties ranged from medical lab technician to troop commander — not one of which easily translated onto a résumé. As a result, she stuck to focusing on project management.  
“I asked my mentor for advice, hired a résumé writer and started looking for a job,” she says. “I followed all the transition steps you learn about while still in Army, but I did not have much success.”
For someone who enlists after high school or has never had to apply for a civilian job, the process can be daunting. Translating military skills to an appealing civilian résumé can be particularly challenging, because military titles are often obscure — “field officer” and “financial technician,” to name a few. Military-transition and mentoring programs, like Veterans on Wall Street or the university-accredited FourBlock (which prides itself on having a strong relationship with diverse employers), can help find clarity.
“Each veteran’s transition is unique,” Christopherson says. “Every aspect of their life is up in the air. Mentoring is that personal touch that takes the unknown and makes it less scary and less of an obstacle to be successful.”
Experts recommend that vets making the transition to civilian life outline their work duties in a typical day as well as for an atypical day. But, they add, it’s best to remove all military jargon. “Explain it as if you’re talking to a 4-year-old,” says Robyn Coburn, a résumé coach specializing in the entertainment industry and founder of WorkInProduction.com. “Then you can start seeing how your particular duties translate to job-speak.”
Veterans shouldn’t feel compelled to find a new job that exactly mirrors their former military duties. In fact, one of the perks of having general responsibilities like report acquisition and handling of multimillion-dollar equipment is that they translate to a myriad of jobs, from script supervisor to operations manager. Industries all across the board value personal interests and unique experiences that go beyond job titles.
For veterans seeking a civilian job, experts recommend creating a résumé that reflects a desired trajectory: Look up descriptions for dreams jobs and then incorporate keywords from those descriptions onto the résumé itself.
For vets who choose to go back to school, the Columbia University Center for Veteran Transition and Integration offers online modules that go hand-in-hand with specific higher education coursework. The program is like having an insider whisper all the tips and tricks to getting through school, from effective note-taking to navigating campus life. “Here is a university that understands the [transitioning] veteran,” says Christopherson. “Columbia’s program and partnerships help guide a career path into the workforce.”
Transitioning vets are also privy to tech-forward resources designed to help them enter civilian life. For example, Military.com’s Transition App, which is part of Monster Worldwide and supported by Citi, links vets with job matches based on specific experience and title by aggregating data from Monster.com’s employment website. In matching skills developed while in the military to databases, the app recommends jobs that not only target primary skills, such as leadership, but also takes secondary and tertiary skills into account. It also offers an interactive checklist to assist with transition concerns, like financial education and preparing for relocation. A planned update to the Transition App this spring will expand content for military spouses and veterans with disabilities, further assisting a smooth transition for the entire family.
Shift, a tech-focused recruiting platform for those transitioning from the military, is another service that assists with career changes. Shift’s founder, Mike Slagh, a former U.S. Navy bomb-squad officer, started the company in 2016 to give future veterans a leg up in finding tech careers by facilitating fellowships before officially leaving the military.
When Lundberg gave the military his six-months’ notice, he started to look for a civilian job. “The transition is crazy,” he says.
After 10 months of searching on his own, Lundberg reached out to Shift. The recruiter matched Lundberg’s Air Force skill set with the needs of tech companies, resulting in a three-month fellowship with Citrine Informatics, an AI platform aiding in the acceleration of materials and product development. As part of his fellowship, Lundberg educates material scientists on how to optimize Citrine’s AI platform by providing customized training.
“That’s exactly what I was doing in the Air Force,” he says. “When I’m at a training event, I can translate what I did to what I am doing now.”

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This article is paid for and produced in partnership with Citi. Through Citi Salutes, Citi collaborates with veterans’ service organizations and leading veterans’ champions to support and empower veterans, service members and their families. This is the third installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.

My New Mission: Saving Vets Who Can’t Save Themselves

Posted on by robbie

I wish I could’ve saved my soldiers.
I was 22 years old when I became a platoon leader overseeing and taking care of 40 soldiers in combat in 2010. At the time, I had only done one tour — 12 months — in Iraq. But many of my soldiers had served four or five tours and had seen much more than I had.
Our job was to drive up and down the International Highway, which connected Kuwait to Iraq, and build relationships with local Iraqi police and sheiks. But we also had to check for improvised explosives, or IEDs.
We didn’t get all of them. In one case, before heading out on a mission, a U.S. envoy truck came careening into our base, half blown to hell and torn to shreds. In the back: three dead bodies. We had missed an IED.
There’s a lot of guilt in seeing something like that, and it can lead to a major symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder called survivor’s remorse. There is a wear on the brain and the body that goes into being in the military, especially for those deployed.
But were you ever to suggest talking to a therapist, you’d be hard-pressed to find many service members who would take you up on it. In the military, getting mental health treatment is viewed as a weakness — which, besides the negative stigma, is just plain wrong. There were soldiers who’d give therapy a try, only to leave after a single session and say, “I don’t feel better. I need to get back to the unit. I need to help out. This is an hour out of my time when I could be spending that with my family.”
And within a few years, there were people in my unit who had attempted suicide. It’s been seven years since I left Iraq, and in that time we’ve lost two people who were in my unit, one of whom I directly oversaw.
As a platoon leader, I viewed it as my responsibility to take care of our soldiers beyond getting the mission done. But with the news of the suicides came a sense that I had failed as their leader. It was my responsibility to take care of these guys, just like they took care of us.
After I retired from the military in 2015, I went to business school in Philadelphia. It had become my mission to find out how I could make our soldiers know that therapy could actually work for them, if only they would stick with it. Just as you wouldn’t return to your normal, daily routine after breaking an arm and undergoing one session with a physical therapist, neither should you expect to be fully recuperated after one session with a mental health professional.

Chris Molaro (left) served in Iraq as a liaison to local police and sheiks.

But, I soon realized, to get soldiers into therapy and keep them there, they needed to see — physically, with their own eyes — the progress they were making.
I read up on research that showed how you can use EEG technology, which measures electrical activity in the brain, to also measure one’s emotions. That was when a light bulb just went off, like, “Holy shit, you could make mental health as black and white as a broken arm.”
That meant therapists could measure and track the progress of patients, objectively. And by doing so, they could fight that negative stigma and give people more hope.
So I developed NeuroFlow. The idea is simple: Give therapists a technology that uses basic and affordable medical supplies, like EEGs or heart rate monitors, to examine the health of their clients. That way, patients could see how their heart races — literally — in real time as they talk about something traumatic. And then, over the course of their sessions, they would be able to see their heart rate slow down and return to a more relaxed state as they healed.
This is my new mission: helping the veteran community. With 20 vets killing themselves in the U.S. every day, there is still a lot of work to be done. So I can’t quite say my mission is complete … yet.

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As told to staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for style and clarity. Read more stories of service here.

Standing for Country, Standing for Self

Posted on by robbie

I didn’t grow up with military service in mind. Honestly, I joined the Air Force because I wanted to be an astronaut. In sixth grade, I went to a space camp and asked, simply, “How do I do this?”
From then on, I became obsessed with the Air Force. I was going to join the U.S. Air Force Academy, and nothing was going to change my mind. I even carried around the Academy’s college handbook in my backpack throughout high school.
I had such high aspirations for being in the military; I thought I’d be joining one huge family. But early on, I realized that wasn’t going to be the case. If the military was a family, it was one that wasn’t accepting of me. And that can make a person feel trapped and alone.
Before even enlisting in 2005, the fear of being outed was on my mind. That was because at the time, you couldn’t be gay and also serve in the military. Back when social media consisted of AOL chat rooms, people would mock me when I told them I wanted to join the Air Force Academy.
“‘Oh, you’re trying to go into the Air Force Academy, and you’re a fag?’” was something I heard often.
So I kept it in. After high school I attended Valley Forge Military Academy, a military prep school and junior college in Pennsylvania, and I made sure to stay tight-lipped about my sexuality. It wasn’t long before I saw first-hand what happened to people like me who didn’t keep quiet.
One of the cadets had been talking to other gay men online. Eventually word got out, and other cadets began blackmailing and harassing him. He was terrified, and it was my first experience of seeing what could happen to me under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which was still in effect. The law allowed a gay man or woman to serve in the military — so long as they stayed closeted and no one knew. If they were outed, they could be kicked out.
By the time I realized my dream and enrolled at the Air Force Academy a year later, a deep loneliness had set in. At some point, you realize that you are gay and that you need to seek out your own happiness and find other people like you. So that’s what I started to do.
What began as a way to simply connect and make friends with other gay cadets on Craigslist — the Academy has a unique zip code that makes it easy to find each other — turned into a nightmare. One professor, who was and still is very vocal about his ties to an anti-gay Christian organization, found out and began harassing me.
When I graduated in 2009, I was being blackmailed because of my sexual orientation. This continued even after I moved down to Alabama to start my technical training. Eventually, I had a breakdown. I couldn’t handle the stress, and I came out to my straight friends serving alongside me. They were all so supportive and understanding. The next day, they voted me their flight commander.  
To these guys, being gay and in the military was not a big deal. And that, for me, was a big deal — that here’s all these straight guys whom I just came out to, who learned about my situation, and they not only supported me, they also saw me as a leader.
That kind of empowered me to say to myself, “Wow, maybe I can change some things.”
So I did.

Josh Seefried, center, and members of OutServe-SLDN commemorate LGBT Pride Month at the New York Stock Exchange in 2013.

In 2010, just before DADT was repealed, I started an organization called OutServe. Though its advocacy has grown in scope in the years since, OutServe’s original purpose was to build an underground network for gay service members. I advocated under a pseudonym — JD Smith — and worked on telling stories to national news networks while appearing in shadow to preserve my identity.
But more than the activism, OutServe-SLDN, as it’s now known, was starting to connect people at bases. For the first time ever, service members deployed to Iraq could find another gay person and connect with them over a cup of coffee. Or if someone from Ohio was redeployed to a base in Alabama, it would be easier for them to find other gay people.
That social network is the most important thing that OutServe-SLDN has ever created, and it is my proudest accomplishment because I feel it saved lives. Seeing it succeed, I finally felt like I was creating that bit of family that was missing from the military for me and others like me.
OutServe-SLDN has grown tremendously since I left the service in January 2017. And even though DADT has been repealed, it’s still not safe to be gay in the military.
Though I never faced direct and explicit homophobia while on base, after the 2016 presidential election someone said to my face, for the first time, “Maybe this time fags won’t be allowed to serve.”
And now, with the threat of a transgender ban on the table, we need advocates more than ever.
It’s like what Harvey Milk said, which is at the end of the battle, you have to take a risk. You have to be visible. And the moment LGBTQ people in the military are not visible anymore is the moment that other young gay kids don’t think that they can serve. So yes, it is going to be risky. And it is going to be hurtful, but we need gay service members to stay the course and stay visible — as much as possible.

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As told to staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for style and clarity. Read more stories of service here.
Homepage photo by Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images.

A New Battleground: Financial Balance

Posted on by robbie

Life changed quickly for Ernesto Olmos when he left the U.S. Marine Corps. After being stationed in North Carolina for four years, the corporal and his wife moved to California — and were hit with a drastic increase in housing costs.
“My wife and I had prepared for some of these financial differences in advance, but the hike in rent was substantial. We went from paying $750 for a townhome to seeing one-bedroom apartments for about $1,500 in Santa Clarita,” he says.
Olmos’ mother suggested the couple apply for a four-bedroom house with Homes 4 Families. The Citi-supported organization provides affordable housing to low-income, honorably discharged veterans. Their application for a new home in Santa Clarita Valley was accepted in 2016.
In addition to providing housing assistance, the Homes 4 Families’ initiative offers a free financial education program called Clearpoint Reconnect, operated by Money Management International.  The program includes online courses, workshops and counseling for military families transitioning to civilian life.
While Olmos’ home was being built, he completed a financial planning exercise to reduce credit card debt, took educational courses to increase his long-term financial security and learned to manage his new home as an investment.  “I have never been one to think about retirement, but the but the worksheets made me realize that we need to plan for the future,” Olmos says.
For veterans early in the transition stage, counseling programs like Clearpoint Reconnect can offer a particularly helpful field guide for understanding unfamiliar financial processes.
“Having that financial education stays with them long-term,” says Ruth Christopherson, Senior Vice President of Citi Salutes and Citi Community Development, which has supported the Clearpoint Reconnect program since 2012. “Things can change, but understanding their financial plan prepares vets for bumps down the road. If one’s car breaks down or if a vet loses a job, this counseling program can keep them out of debt, and they have the education to keep moving forward.”
The program includes phone, online and in-person sessions on subjects like understanding credit and debt, and avoiding bankruptcy. Clearpoint Reconnect also offers student loan and home mortgage consulting.  

“Many veterans find it challenging to adapt to the world of civilian finances, and it might take two or three years to sort things out,” says Kate Horrell, a military finance coach. “Most people don’t understand the many ways their finances will change when they leave the military.  Certain benefits will no longer be free, and your entire paycheck will be subject to taxes.”
Jeffrey Lodick, a former Army master sergeant and current host of the “On the Other Side” podcast, is no stranger to the challenges of decoding a civilian paycheck.  After retiring in September 2017, Lodick’s shift to the private sector included a salary learning curve. “I couldn’t tell you what my salary was in the military,” he says. “I knew what I got paid on the first and the fifteenth of each month, not what was going to the GI Bill and my taxes.”

As someone who hadn’t scrutinized his military paycheck for 20 years, navigating private sector tax paperwork took effort. “As silly as it sounds, I didn’t know how to fill out a W-4,” Lodick says. In addition to a new salary, Lodick entered a different tax bracket, which created another set of unknowns. “I never had any assets to deal with. It’s going to be a learning process.”
Lodick’s situation is not unique. “Military retirees are stupendously unprepared for changes in their tax situation,” says Horrell. When they return to civilian life, vets are often unaware that they need adjust their taxes to account for military retirement and avoid under-withholding.
“You could end up owing more than $10,000 because of under-withholding two different sources of income,” says Horrell. “Any income changes need to be reflected in a W-4. This doesn’t seem to be immediately apparent to everyone.”
The upside? Veterans and tech communities are responding to the challenges with a growing set of tools to ease the transition. In addition to Clearpoint Reconnect, whose services are free to all military personnel, Military.com, TheMilitaryWallet.com, and LaceyLangford.com are excellent resources that focus on military money issues.

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This article is paid for and produced in partnership with Citi. Through Citi Salutes, Citi collaborates with veterans’ service organizations and leading veterans’ champions to support and empower veterans, service members and their families. This is the second installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.

From Combat to Classroom

Posted on by robbie

Since the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions in 2003, more than 500,000 service members have entered into post-secondary education. While the military offers financial support to veterans transitioning from combat to classroom, it doesn’t address one recurring issue that student vets face: Self-esteem while in the classroom.
“I did feel a bit nervous competing with people not my age,” says Samantha Demezieux, a 28-year-old former Marine who attends Columbia University in New York City for Middle Eastern studies.
A 2016 study found that nearly half of veterans felt unprepared for civilian life — especially those who were in combat and suffer from medical issues — and even less prepared to deal with the anxieties of being on a college campus.
“When you enter the military, it’s so easy to go from a civilian and turn into a soldier, but not the other way around,” says Michael P. Abrams, executive director for the Center for Veteran Transition and Integration at Columbia University. “We need to be better at engaging veterans and letting them know that they have opportunities. It’s definitely an area for improvement.”
There’s a measurable benefit in having vets on campuses, says Abrams. He says it’s the mixture of street smarts and book smarts that make for better diversity in classrooms.
“Diversity is something everyone’s talking about, that should also include experience and age and what you’ve done with this life,” he says. “When you’re discussing Middle Eastern politics in an academic setting, it helps to have a vet who has been in Iraq in 2012 with the elections. It brings such tangible learning experiences to a classroom you wouldn’t otherwise get.”
Demezieux says her — and other student vets’ — perspectives have been widely welcomed, which has remedied some of her initial anxieties.
“I’ve sat in a couple classes where the professor or teacher’s assistant was privy to me being a vet, and they ask for context,” she says.
In addition to political perspectives, vets enter the classroom with a variety of soft skills taught in the military that education programs — not just universities — have been able to capitalize on, such as on-the-fly learning and leadership qualities.
At NPower, a nonprofit that specializes in training veterans for tech jobs, the organization capitalizes on those soft skills to help place their students in jobs.
Graduates of its 26-week coding bootcamps have seen tremendous success, with some veterans securing jobs that allow them to support themselves and their families — even without advanced coding skills that stem from a more formal education.
“What we’re seeing is that companies are hiring from us because they are beginning to recognize that veterans have such tremendous life skills they can bring to the table,” says Brittany Worden, program manager for NPower’s veterans courses. “What they’re saying is, ‘Hey, we want personality and willingness to learn over skills.’”
Worden says that Citi, one of the primary businesses that recruits from NPower, has been most receptive in hiring vets, with more than 100 interns and close to 50 full-time staff. “They’ve just taken our students and built on what they learn here within their position.”
One of those students, Nick Carillo, was an NPower intern and now is the program manager for Citi’s Architecture and Technology Engineering Analyst program.
“In the first few months after separating, I applied to at least 80 positions. I felt it was hard to understand corporate structure and life, so it was hard to answer interview questions at first,” he says, but adds that the soft skills he learned in service have helped him in his current career. “Being drilled to aggressively attack goals and to never give up has just been invaluable to me. I feel that’s why people look to hire veterans; they want people that not only have talent but ambition to put that talent to use.”
One of the biggest challenges at NPower is getting veterans up to speed on job skills, including how to manage the process of looking for a job.
“What I’ve learned is that a lot of [veterans] haven’t had to do an interview. It’s just not something you need to do in the military. They don’t know how to ask questions, they don’t know how to answer tough questions, and in return they don’t have lots of confidence,” Worden says.
That lack of confidence is universal, according to Abrams, especially since asking for help is somewhat taboo in the military.
“It’s tough to ask for help in the military. You’re the person that is supposed to help others. That is the culture and the attitude, especially in the Marine Corps,” he says. “It’s very difficult to go to someone and say I need help because it shows vulnerability, when in reality it means you’re very strong.”
Though admittedly hard, according to Demezieux, getting over the fear of needing help can result in being a better student.
This article is paid for and produced in collaboration with Citi. Through Citi Salutes, Citi collaborates with veteran service organizations and leading veteran champions to support and empower veterans, service members and their families. This is the first installment in a series focusing on solutions for veterans and military families in the areas of housing, financial resilience, military transition and employment.