In Order to Revitalize America, Our Concept of Leadership Needs to Change

The son of an Air Force veteran and a history teacher, Jeff Eggers attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., with his heart set on learning to fly jets off of aircraft carriers. Once he learned about the SEAL program, however, his future headed in a different direction because, “I wanted to get in the business of leadership,” Eggers explains. After a “mostly straightforward SEAL career,” Eggers transitioned from operations to strategic policy, most recently serving as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.
These days, Eggers has more work-life balance and the flexibility to invest in his family (which includes two small children) that his previous military service and government work largely prevented. Serving as a senior fellow at New America, his focus on leadership remains, researching how to revitalize American prosperity by changing how the business community thinks about workplace independence and how public policy must take into account behavioral science in order to be effective. NationSwell sat down with Eggers at the Washington, D.C., offices of New America to discuss the need to create a “self-driven, self-directed, more autonomous workforce.”
What is the best advice you’ve ever been given on leadership?
Someone once said to me, “don’t take yourself too seriously.”  We’re all the same species, and one of the greatest mistakes that occurs when people get promoted to increasing levels of seniority is that they start taking themselves too seriously. I think leaders can ground themselves in a sense of humility, empathy, awareness and a respect for others. Doing so is one of the cornerstones of effective leadership. It’s not about you; it’s about the team.

Jeff Eggers in the Oval Office with President Obama, Vice President Biden and National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

What’s on your nightstand?
It’s David Rothkopf’s “National Insecurity,” which is professional reading. I’m writing a longer piece on how our culture of fear is undercutting our national decision-making and that’s one of the books I keep for that research. Unfortunately, my nightstand is not well equipped with enjoyable, light reads.
What is your biggest need right now?
My greatest need was to rebalance work, life and family, which I did. That box is largely checked, and that was a big deal. One of my big needs right now is to create a network of experts and likeminded practitioners around this idea of behavioral policy and to develop a framework for how you could, with some scale, start to influence at a strategic level how you think about public policy, how we train people to do public policy. Bringing together this kind of core network will become the people who shape and build this program with me.

What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
Too many people said it was going to be easy and not to overthink it. I think that I wish more people would’ve said the opposite — that it was going to be very difficult, steady yourself; it’s going to be harder than you think. Because for me personally, my desire was to test this hypothesis: To do the work-life balance and put family first you need to accept risk and you need to leap and hope that the net will appear. I came to advocate for that in such a way that I had to promote it by doing it. I had to live it. I did and that coupled with this mantra of “don’t overthink it; it’ll be easier than you think” — whoa! The leap has been a doozy at times, and some cautionary note of, “Absolutely, take the leap, but do a lot of thinking about all the various aspects of it,” [would’ve been nice.]
What inspires you?
Mostly, I’m always inspired by people that I respect and admire. My parents have been the longest, consistent source of inspiration. They put a lot of their energies in to their family — invested in their family, made sacrifices for their family. But also, they significantly advanced from one generation to another in life for more opportunities and that’s pretty inspiring, especially at a time when so few people have faith in the American Dream.
Today, I’m inspired by people who have a lot of moral conviction and intellectual courage to speak up against the mainstream conventional wisdom, especially when the mainstream conventional wisdom needs to be disrupted. That takes a significant amount of courage.
How do you inspire others?
By making people believe there is greatness in themselves. No one needs to look to anyone else for greatness or inspiration. There’s a tremendous amount of potential for greatness is each person. Too often we look to people that we ascribe greatness as having some sort of inherent advantage that made them great and that’s not the case. I would like everyone to understand that they are themselves a superhero, a genius. There’s no reason why everyone can’t tap into that. If everyone taps into a little bit of that, that small amount of incremental change is going to be extraordinary.
What is your proudest accomplishment?
It hasn’t happened yet. My proudest accomplishment will be raising my kids [ages 3 and 6]. That’s going to be my life’s work.
It’s more gratifying to see pride in accomplishments made by people that work for me. You don’t get any credit for them, but in my case, they’re more important [than what I’ve accomplished].
Eggers paragliding in the Canadian Rockies in 2009.

What should people know about you that they don’t?
I’m a pretty avid paraglider pilot. It’s the remnants of a formerly active and robust recreational lifestyle that had to be whittled down and made manageable with a family. The only real thing that I couldn’t ever let go of is my passion for paragliding. I had a bit of a scare back in September [2015] and kind of grounded myself and I’m now going through the soul-searching process of whether I can be both a responsible dad and an active paraglider pilot. That’s kind of a big deal. [Paragliding] is kind of scratching that aviation itch that I’ve had ever since I was a tiny kid and it’s how I’ve become a pilot. So it’s very, very fundamental and hard to let go of.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MORE: How This Veteran Went from the Open Sea to Open Data

The Forecast for These Veterans’ Career Prospects Is Sunny

In a sunlit office building in northwest Austin, Texas, former Marine Corps electro-optical technician Logan Razinski greets his boss, a one-time sailor who maintained naval nuclear reactors. The day’s work ahead between the two soldiers won’t involve military operations, however. Both are now employees for SunPower, a solar energy company.
Razinski, a lance corporal (not “one of those movie star ranks”) who was previously stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, found the job through a Department of Energy-sponsored program, Solar Ready Vets (SRV), which prepares former service members to work in the solar energy industry. Living in California, where utilities will get one-third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, Razinski saw the field “growing like wildfire” and joined SRV’s first cohort. After receiving four weeks of intensive training (since expanded to six) covering photovoltaic panel installation, electrical grids and local building codes, Razinski interviewed and landed a job with SunPower, where he now remotely controls utility-scale arrays.
“There is still an alarming mix of veterans, who, as soon as they get out, look for work or try the college thing, and, for some reason, that doesn’t work out. Next thing, you know, they’re living on the street,“ Razinski says. Nationwide, in 2014, close to 50,000 vets lacked housing, and 573,000 lacked jobs. With SRV, “I went from somebody who was in the Marine Corps to being a far cry from the poverty line,” he adds.

Transitioning veterans at Fort Carson in Colorado receive hands-on experience working with solar panels as members of the base’s first Solar Ready Vets cohort.

So far, Solar Ready Vets has trained nearly 200 soldiers at five pilot bases: Camp Pendleton, Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Fort Carson in Colorado, Fort Drum in New York and Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
While the connection between military service and solar power might seem tenuous, Razinski says it’s about transitioning workers with proven leadership skills into industries that need talent now. As the solar industry adds new jobs 12 times faster than the overall economy, America’s veterans are a natural fit for various positions. “In an industry that’s growing as rapidly as the solar industry, you need somebody to actually be promotable. You need somebody who’s going to understand the magnitude of the situation and say, ‘Holy cow, this is growing faster than anybody anticipated,’” he says.
“This is definitely a path that I believe in,” Razinski adds. “I see it going nowhere but up.”
MORE: Going Solar Is Cheaper Than Ever. Here’s What You Need to Know About Getting Your Power from the Sun

Everyone Should Stay Warm During the Winter — Especially America’s Heroes

Excluding Veterans Day and Memorial Day, it can be easy to forget the sacrifices that America’s former military personnel made on our country’s behalf. This winter, a national fuel retailer is stepping up to do something more for veterans, providing savings on an essential utility to help them stay warm.
Suburban Propane, a public company with headquarters in New Jersey and 700 locations in 41 states, is offering a special on the next delivery of 100 gallons or more of gas to households where a veteran or active-duty service member lives. For new customers with military ties, Suburban Propane will take $10 off the bill of their first delivery of 100 gallons or more and comp all charges for the change-out, safety check and the tank’s first year of rent. Existing customers have the opportunity to take advantage of the savings as well; they can receive $10 off the next delivery of 100 gallons or more, and by referring another veteran, they can earn an additional 35 gallons of fuel added to their next order.
Across the country, at least 49,900 veterans sleep on the streets on any given night. The shock of combat can make holding down a job, keeping up with bills and being responsible for other aspects of day-to-day civilian life difficult. Suburban Propane decided to lessen the financial burden on veterans after senior management realized how many of their colleagues had military ties, says Mark Wienberg, the company’s chief development officer.
Of Suburban Propane’s 3,600 employees, “many have family members who are veterans or are veterans themselves. Many have sons or daughters, nieces or nephews who are currently deployed. The head of human resources here is a veteran of the Marines. One guy that managed a local service center and is now overseeing our fleet and tank assets, he’s a military vet,” Wienberg says. The savings offer is “our way of giving back to those who have given for us,” he says.
[ph]
And it’s a way to reach veterans as the company ramps up recruiting efforts, offering military personnel employment opportunities. “Many, in their duty to the nation, have performed services that are similar to what we do here, driving major trucks and vehicles,” Wienberg explains. “Someone who comes back from duty could be a service technician, or an officer might run a service center.” The company is currently working with lawmakers on legislation at the state level that would streamline the licensing process for veterans who drove vehicles of a similar class overseas. “We’ll do whatever we can to assist them,” Wienberg stresses.
James Marentette, who was stationed on a Navy aircraft carrier in the 1950s, and his wife Cindy, recently signed up for the deal. The couple, who have a grandson serving in the Air Force, met in church after losing their spouses to cancer and now live together in Crossville, Tenn. Frustrated by their previous gas provider’s poor customer service, they switched to Suburban Propane two years ago at their daughter’s suggestion. The special savings for veterans has helped their pocketbooks, as they rely on fixed income from Social Security and a small pension.
“There is nothing more rewarding than serving your country. Not everyone has that privilege — and I considered it a privilege to do that. To be recognized by a company like Suburban, even in a small way, just means so much to me and so much to all of our friends too,” says Jim. “You get a lot of discounts in restaurants and things like that, but I never heard of a company that supplies utilities to homes helping vets.”
“We think it’s wonderful,” Cindy chimes in, “and we’re so thankful. It makes us feel like people really care.”
The offer is good for one delivery taken by March 31, 2016.

How This Veteran Went from the Open Sea to Open Data

As a Counter-Terrorism Officer in the U.S. Navy, Ian Kalin says that he fired expensive cannons at imaginary targets in the sea.
“Not a lot of terrorists floating in the middle of the ocean back then,” he jokes, pointing out how the service he was being asked to deliver was “completely disconnected from the actual needs of our nation.”
That experience helped shape Kalin’s path to becoming director of open data at Socrata, which helps public sector organizations improve transparency and service.
Kalin asks the audience at his Got Your 6 Storytellers talk where they would prefer to spend an hour: at the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Apple Store?
“The truth is that there is a big disconnect that we feel in our consumer lives compared to the services we’re receiving from our governments,” he says, addressing the widening gap between our expectations and what our government is able to deliver. “We have higher expectations because innovative products and services are making our lives better everyday.”
He also tells a story about a salmonella outbreak in jars of peanut butter. While he never would have checked the Food and Drug Administration website for the voluntary product recall, Google Shopping Express sent the grateful young dad a note saying the product he bought was at risk and even offered to reimburse him the $5.84 he spent.
Governments cannot empower people by themselves,” Kalin says, emphasizing the importance of public private partnerships to help governments improve their customer service.
Watch the video to learn how Kalin thinks open data can help us “improve the quality of our collective democracy.”

How Veterans Bring the Spirit of Service Back to the Home Front

Koby Langley, who directed veteran, wounded warrior, and military family engagement for the White House before overseeing services to the armed forces for the American Red Cross, stands before photos of his family members during his Got Your 6 Storytellers talk.
“The majority of the men and women that serve in uniform come from military families,” he says, gesturing to a black and white portrait of Felix Powel of the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet in the 1950s, a picture of Dr. Kimberlyn Brown of the U.S. Army Medical Corps from the War in Afghanistan, and another of Langley himself, who served in Iraq. “That spirit of service that we give to our sons and daughters is critically important as we think about our national security needs in the future.”
In his talk, Langley describes how the same spirit of service that compelled every one of his family members to sign up for every major United States conflict since World War I remains upon the return home. “It shouldn’t be any surprise that communities are looking for us,” he says. “They want us to leverage the leadership skills that we learned overseas here in our communities at home.”
He zooms in on stories of specific veterans who put their leadership into action, mentioning initiatives like Hiring Our Heroes and Team Rubicon. Langley also speaks of Chris Marvin, founder and managing director of Got Your 6. “Chris flew helicopters. In Afghanistan, his Black Hawk crashed. He was stuck in the rubble, close to death. He suffered surgery after surgery after surgery when he came home,” Langley says.
One of the first things Marvin said to Langley when they first met was how he really wished people would stop thanking him for his service. “Don’t thank us for our service,” Langley explains. “When we come home, say ‘Welcome home. We still need you. Are you ready to serve again?’”

From Military Officer to Entrepreneur: How One Veteran is Focusing on Renewing America

The Got Your 6 campaign is celebrating the accomplishments of veterans through Storytellers, a series of videos that media partners — including NationSwell — are promoting to raise awareness of all that our veterans have to offer the country.
In the weeks ahead, we’ll share the stories of a U.S. Army Combat veteran who uses comedy to heal war wounds, a punk rocker who found his sense of purpose through service, a West Point graduate who says the military taught her how to unf*** things and more.
The first video features Greg Behrman, the founder and CEO of NationSwell. His talk centers on three projects that he’s focused on since returning from deployment: NationSwell, the Connecticut Heroes Project, and his favorite project, which you’ll have to watch to discover!
Behrman opens his talk standing before a picture of his 10-week-old self, squeezed between his mom and his dad — who, as a boy growing up in South Africa, dreamt of moving to America one day. Behrman says that his perception of the United States has always been linked to the sacrifice his parents made and the opportunities that afforded him.
One such opportunity was at the Harvard Kennedy School, where Behrman was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. While there, he spent a lot of his time reading the stories of service members, coming to the realization that he wanted to be a part of the Armed Forces. He commissioned in the U.S. Navy (much to his mom’s surprise, given his tendency toward seasickness), then did two years of reserve duty before deploying to Afghanistan and returning with the desire to build something new.
Behrman also speaks about his motivation for building a media company devoted to elevating solutions to national challenges, before going on to discuss his work to address veteran homelessness in Connecticut, his home state, and concluding with his favorite project, who looks very much like his 10-week-old self.
“My hope for her is the same one, I think, that compelled my parents to move halfway across the world all those years ago,” he says. “It’s that she has the opportunity to pursue her dreams and the chance to realize her full potential.”

Meet the Former Navy SEAL Saving Lives — by Saving Energy — on the Battlefield

Doug Moorehead remembers the exact moment senior Marine Corps officials rendered their verdict. In the summer of 2010, soldiers being trained near the desert town of Twentynine Palms, Calif., had been testing a hybrid generator system — a system Moorehead himself had helped engineer to power everything an off-the-grid military outpost needs. Out on the scorched Mojave Desert, home to the hottest temperature ever recorded, the devices — made up of a diesel generator equipped with solar panels, a high-tech battery and automation software — sucked up energy from the sun and stored the excess. As a result, the generator systems used diesel fuel for only a few hours each day, rather than 24/7.
Flash forward several months. Moorehead, a Navy vet and the president of Earl Energy, a startup based in Virginia Beach, Va., was at the Pentagon to discuss the results. He had just finished presenting the data that the military had collected during the tests when the senior official across the table said the line that still sticks in his mind to this day: “It’s almost too good to be true, Doug.”
If the device Moorehead had helped develop after retiring from SEAL Team Two was unbelievable —  indeed, it reduced fuel consumption by a whopping 70 percent — it was in part because the military’s setup had been in need of an overhaul for quite some time.
MORE: Life After the Military: Helping Veterans With Their Second Act
mohaveThe Mojave Desert, a scorching hot area used by the Marine Corps for training. Thinkstock
But Moorehead was the right man to revamp the system. At the United States Naval Academy, he found he loved the problem-solving aspects of science and technology, and says he could have been happy studying everything from physics to electrical engineering. “Unfortunately you can’t be an undergrad for 25 years, you have to pick one,” he says. He chose chemistry. Then he trained as a SEAL pilot navigator, spending three years working with battery-powered submarines, traveling 40-plus miles underwater at a go on top-secret work in places like the Pacific and the South China Sea. Those subs’ rechargeable batteries did not last long, he recalls. He applied to grad school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work on building better ones.
There he joined forces with Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science and engineering, who encouraged him to try for something big in his research, rather than an incremental advance. Moorehead worked on coming up with a way to make self-assembling, rechargeable batteries: mix the right set of chemicals together, the idea went, apply them to a surface, then just add heat and watch the components arrange themselves. Going big paid off. By the time he finished his master’s degree, Moorehead was riding his bike across the Charles River several days a week to help train employees at the startup company A123 Systems in Waltham, Mass., which had licensed his technology from MIT.
Then it was back to the battlefield, in summer 2005. He trained soldiers in the Philippines and Colombia, and fought in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. After nine years in the Navy, he headed to Harvard for an MBA and went to work at A123. In 2009 he ran into a former Naval Academy classmate, Josh Prueher (at a string of weddings, Prueher recalls), and heard about Prueher’s new company, Earl Energy.
ALSO: When Veterans Leave the Service, This College Helps Them Process Their Experiences
Fuel is enormously costly on the battlefield, both monetarily and in terms of the lives lost when fuel convoys are attacked. An Army Environmental Policy Institute study found that between 2003 and 2007, one military fuel convoy in 24 was attacked and resulted in a casualty, either injury or death, and that 1 in 8 Army casualties in Iraq during that period occurred while defending such convoys. “I recognized that fuel and maintenance and spare-parts logistics on the battlefield was a critical vulnerability,” Prueher says. Moorehead knew this issue well: “We spent a lot of time as special forces, providing security for the movement of necessities around Iraq — fuel, water, food,” he recalls. And he knew that with his knowledge of batteries, he could help.
Earl-Energy-1Photo courtesy of Earl Energy.
The generator system they eventually produced is surprisingly simple. Normally, a military generator runs on diesel fuel all day long, and it uses enough fuel to power everything attached to it, should the need arise. But often the need doesn’t arise — and that’s wasted energy. Moorehead likens it to turning your car on, driving it to work, leaving it running all day, driving home from work, parking it in your garage — then letting it run all night.
With Earl Energy’s system, the generator only needs to run a few hours, at the level at which it has the greatest fuel efficiency. The excess energy is saved in the battery, along with any solar energy that might be available. Automation software switches the generator off when it’s not needed and power is drawn from the battery, until it’s time to recharge again. It’s not complicated, but it is the change the military needed. “The technology is evolutionary, but the concept and its impact are really interesting,” says Capt. Frank Furman, U.S. Marine Corps, logistics program manager in the Office of Naval Research’s Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism Department.
DON’T MISS: How This Navy SEAL Uses His War Wounds to Help Other Soliders
“If we want to fly a helicopter from point A, we need to get fuel to point A,” Furman continues. “That largely involves fuel convoys, which is why our enemies have relied on the IED as its primary weapon. That tactic is a reaction to our reliance on this specific form of energy. … We’ve been living it in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the cost of fuel rising and the costs of alternative energy generation — such as solar — falling, the economics of investment begin to make more sense.”
Earl-Energy-2Doug Moorehead. Photo courtesy of Earl Energy.
Moorehead’s technical savvy and on-the-ground experience led him to that panel at the Pentagon, where the numbers proved that Earl Energy’s generator system could perform above expectations. In addition to reducing fuel consumption 70 percent, it decreased the amount of time the diesel generators had to run by 80 percent. The Marine Corps bought two units, and dispatched them to Afghanistan for 18 months to be tested in a demanding combat situation. The hybrid generator passed with flying colors: Fuel consumption dropped 52 percent and generator run time declined by 80 percent. Ten Earl Energy generator systems are currently being used by the military around the world.
Now Moorehead and the rest of Earl Energy are working with defense contractors to incorporate the technology into products to be provided to the military. They are also developing new versions that run on natural gas and can be used in oil and gas prospecting. “We have ambitions that this technology could really change the way every single generator in the world operates,” Prueher says. “Not just the military.”
This is the first story in a series about former Navy SEALS who have gone on to serve the country in other fields, from business and government to social innovation and military affairs.
MORE: An Innovative Idea to Help Veterans and the Environment at the Same Time