Littleknown aspects on the lives and leadership of Union General ulysses s. Grant and then on real america a 1965 Progress Report on nasas projects including the manned Space Program and the mariner 4 flyby of mars and just before 9 00 writer and awardwinning documentary filmmaker rick burns on how the public learns about history through film and tell vision. American history tv, all weekend, and on holidays, too, only on cspan3. We have more now from the recent u. S. Chamber of comerlss daylong summit called Mission Transition creating Employment Opportunities for post9 11 veterans and military families. Up next companies such as Jpmorgan Chase, uber, usaa and others took part in a series of discussions on the Job Opportunities available and how to help veterans transition to civilian life. This is about an hour 40 minutes. My name is susanne clark. Im executive Vice President of the u. S. Chamber of commerce, and let me be the officially the 12th person to welcome you all here to this great building today. One of the great privileges i have at the chamber is to help lead its foundation where we spend a lot of time thinking about america, about its competitiveness and about our future. We all know that america is a special place. I came across a quote recently that sums it up perfectly. America is the greatest, freest and most Decent Society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and help me. Barbari barbarism. This country once an experiment unique in the world is now the last best hope for the world. We know this. Our military men and women know this. You served for it, sacrificed for it. We all know that america is a special place. And for that to continue, a strong country needs a strong economy. It needs a strong business community. It needs a strong, skilled, able workforce. So, my message to the military community is this your opportunity to serve your nation doesnt end when you hang up your uniform. It doesnt have to stop when you retire or transition into civilian life. You can continue to serve your country in new, vital, and valuable ways. America needs you. Our economy needs you. Our businesses need you. Theres been a lot of talk about hiring our heroes and hiring our Heroes Program to help veterans and Military Spouses participate in the workforce. But i would say thats just the start. Its really about empowering them to lead in the workforce. To propel innovation. To drive our economy and to create opportunities for so many other people. Many of the industries that we saw highlighted in this video represent the future. This is where were headed. And we believe and hope and pray that our military men and women are going to help lead the way. So, lets match up this great generation of talent with the next great generation of american business. If we do, if we harness our industrial might and unleash our human talent, theres no question that america will remain the greatest country on the earth. The nation with the most resilient economy, the most innovative businesses, and the greatest opportunity for individual advancement and reward. This is a new opportunity for service for americas heroes and there is no one better suited for the job. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome general peter pace, eric eversol, ross brown, and sandy ogg. Well, good afternoon, im pete pace. Its my privilege to be part of this today. And to troo these three gentleman whose organizations and as individuals are doing so much for our veteran community. Next to me sandy ogg from the blackstone group. Next to him ross brown from Jpmorgan Chase. And youve met before already today eric eversol who seems to be everywhere doing everything. A new amigo now. We have about 20 minutes so were not going to spend a lot of time on introductions. I would ask each of these gentlemen first to tell us about their organization, what theyve accomplished and the lessons theyve learned along the way. Thank you, general. Well, first of all, id like to say i consider it a real privilege and honor to be he here [ inaudible ] and for us [ inaudible ] set goals to hire 50,000 veterans and i know relative to some of the numbers that people have been accomplishing, you know, we feel like weve still got a lot of work to do. Weve been at it for two years now. Weve hired about 28,000 veterans so far. And we think that the original commitment we set that we will meet and exceed. And for us its been a very practical matter of getting it done, started with leadership, and then as we went to our ceos and we have 80 Different Companies that are led by excellent management teams, and we said, hey, is there something we can to. And they came back to us and said, we think so. And relative to that, so first thing was to ensure that we had leadership from the top. Now, i know that sounds almost like a cliche. But what that has done is it has created its given permission for every one of these organizations to run hard at it. It creates that sense of permission and alignment to go. And then once we secured the leadership at the top, then the second thing that we asked of those leaders was we need a number and we need a champion. And the number was not something we forced. The number was something that we asked them. It needed to come from them, and it represented ambition. Because Something Like this demands, requires ambition in order for it to happen. And that number was representative of that. And then with that number, we needed a champion. And we have a couple of the champions in the room here today. One person who without his leadership and guidance as our champion at blackstone, michael mcdermott, who is right here in the front. And i know that theres that we have Derrick Blake is here from la quinta. We have rod moses and melissa and lorna here from mihilton. These are the people who are really making this happen day in and day out and have and so a number and a champion. And then once we had a number and a champion, we knew we needed to mobilize. And our kind of theme of mobilizing Something Like this is to think big. So we wanted to have a big, bold number, but to start small. And not try to overwhelm the thing. Start small, meaning lets do some things, meaningful things, that can build momentum, and then move fast. And so with that mantra, you know, weve been able to get this initiative mobilized. And, you know, i would say, the second thing that besides leadership and ambition that has been extremely important for us is the partnership that has developed with the government. People told us in the beginning that, oh, you know, if you try to partner up with the government people, theyre going to slow you down. Well, thats been exactly the opposite of our experience. And i know kurt coy is here from veterans affairs. But the people from that, you know, that have helped us from labor, that have helped us from dod, that have helped us from veterans affairs. We got together the first time. We run a summit once a year. We got together and we said that there was this all this talk about having a warm handoff, that our Service Members need is a warm handoff and we all said, warm handoff, bull. What we need to do is build a bridge. And what the people that were in that room have done is to build a bridge, and there have been very practical things that have been delivered by kurt and the team at the va, by terry gurten and the team at the department of labor, by Stephanie Barna and the team at dod to help us to build this bridge. And essentially i thought Public Private partnership was a cliche, but its real, and its really working, and its helping to accelerate the way that were getting this done. So, a big thank you to all of those people, and even bigger thank you to the champions that are here that are representative of the group thats making this happen. So, thank you all for having me. Sandy, thank you very much to you and to blackstone and to all your portfolio companies. Ross brown, Jpmorgan Chase. Thank you, sir. Its a real privilege to be here today to represent jamie dimon and the rest of the leaders of Jpmorgan Chase and the commitment that the firm has for veteran. There are three pillars that comprise the veterans efforts at jpmorgan. They are employment, education and training and housing. And employment alone this year weve hired over 900 veterans at Jpmorgan Chase alone. Probably what were most proud of is being the leader of the 100,000 jobs mission, and the 100,000 jobs mission consisting over 200 fortune 500 companies has hired 242,000 veterans since 2011, so were extremely proud of that. To be a part of that. The second pillar for our firm is education and training. And under this pillar we partner with the ivmf and the great work that mike haney does at Syracuse University and we kind of focus our program on two things. One is weve committed a Million Dollars recently for a study of seven different universities and colleges to see what can be done to help facilitate the success of veterans as they pursue their education and i think theres going to be some great Lessons Learned from this that we can then provide back to the va and to other organizations. The other are the programs that mike haney kind of alluded to initially and i will follow up. The vctp, the Veterans Transition Program that we help sponsor that allows Service Members and their spouses to be certified on different different certifications that will afford them opportunities to be employed. I. T. Is one of them, another is program management. So, well continue to and look forward to continuing to work with the ivmf and education and training. Finally in housing. Jpmorgan chase alone has provided over 900 homes to deserving Service Members throughout the country. While well continue to provide these homes as they are available, were also looking at partnerships with our Public Partners to help the va and others fight veteran homele homelessness as well as continuing to look for opportunities to provide veterans the opportunity to own homes. So, in sum, id also like to thank our Public Partners and the support were receiving from them and look forward to working more with them as we move forward. Thank you very much, sir. Ross, thank you very much. Eric . Thank you. Eric, chamber and hiring our heroes. Thank you, general. We started our hiring our Heroes Program a little over three years ago. Actually its been four now. It was a Pretty Simple mission. We really wanted to utilize our vast network of state and local chambers to connect them with businesses of all sizes across the country. And we were going to primarily do that through hiring events and i think most people in the building thought wed do a couple hundred. Weve now done over 9 00 in the last 4 years but i think thats just one aspect, the hiring events, that we do. A lot of what weve done a lot of what weve been guided by has been our hiring 500,000 Heroes Campaign that i know you all have heard a little bit about today. We partnered with capital one on that. Thats really about to first and foremost make that commitment to hire veterans because it starts from the top down. But give them the tools and resources to actually help source and retain that great talent in the workforce. So weve really had the great privilege of working in communities large and small with businesses large and small all with the single focus of helping veterans and their families make that transition into the civilian sector and not just find them jobs, but find them the right jobs. While you have the microphone, if you dont mind, what are the gaps that remain and what are the next steps . We heard a little more about this today, but one of the biggest gaps, they need to learn how to sell or market their skill sets to american businesses. They certainly have them, but often times theres no course in the military, but theres really this need to help Service Members understand these value skill sets that translate in a meaningful and impactful way for businesses. Thats one aspect of it. But i also would encourage the Industry Leaders and Business Leaders not to sell their industries. These young men and women as we have all heard are tremendously talented, but they are looking for real Economic Opportunity in this country. Its the businesss responsibility to sell those opportunities to those young businesses. Let them understand that when they come to work for your business that they are continuing their service. They may wear a slightly different uniform, but they are still serving this great country. Those are the gaps i would focus on. Thank you. The one gap that ill talk to is data. Being in the Financial Services industry, numbers mean something, as you might imagine. While we all in this room know that hiring veterans is not only the right thing to do, but its a beneficial thing to do, theres an opportunity to provide more data in support of this case. Were going to pursue a study here soon wherein well look at the retention and performance of veterans within our coalition and specifically within Jpmorgan Chase. Because while i think we all know that its absolutely beneficial, we want to demonstrate that to the organization at large by providing this data and these numbers to support that. So i think we need to provide more information on the business for hiring a veteran. Even though those of us who are veterans know that. Across our coalition theres an opportunity to do that. I see two issues. One is accelerating hiring. Were off to a great start with a couple years behind us. But with the help of miguel and the help of eric, were getting the best practices. What are the things that can be done to help us move faster. So accelerating the hiring would be number one for us. Then number two, because we now have 28,000 veterans working in our companies, what are we going to do to retain them and keep them excited and to help them develop a career . Because we didnt take this on to hire people. We have a number of businesses where we have people come and go a lot. For example, we have people who take inventory in the middle of the night at walmart. Those people come and go. Fortunately, the veterans stick around. And they stick around at a higher rate than others, but you have to capture them in the right way. And so with our summit this fall, were going to balance our efforts. In the beginning we said we were going to hire people. We got busy doing that. And now we need to accelerate that, but with the population that we have, we have to dig in on this second issue, which is how are we going to transition it from a job into something that is a really meaningful career. Because if rod and the team at hilton bring someone in and they get them trained up and they are doing a great job running the front desk or running a whole hilton hotel, we want them to stick around and find ways that we can continue to help these people. Those would be the two things, general, that were really focused on now. Weve got some Interesting Data to potentially we will share with you in terms of the business case. Because we see each one of these veterans represent a very substantial business case. Not only the skills that they bring, the benefits that bring real, tangible things with them. We have the evidence now to say that not only is the right thing to do, but its smart, its smart business. Senator, thanks. You mentioned it and its absolutely true. Theres a huge difference between providing jobs and careers and to the extent that we can help folks get on to a career path. We have enough time left for one more question. Id ask each of you to go down the line. If you have a transitioning member in front of you, you have 60 seconds to give a speech about what they should be doing, what would you tell him or her that you think would benefit them in transition . The thing we did at our summit this past fall, which sort of blew everybody away sitting in the room are its not literally this way but on one side of the room that have done great work in helping us to build this bridge. The other side of the room, you have a bunch of people who are representing these businesses. They are really putting people to work. In front of the room we had five veterans we had hired collectively that we had hired. And you went down the row of the five veterans and people jump out of their chairs saying i have to get me some of that. These people were amazing to a person. One person was driving a humvee in iraq and another person was a Fighter Pilot from the navy. And is now an assistant general manager for us in one of the hotels. The thing if i were in front of a veteran would be to this notion of translation of what it is that you actually bring to the party i think that sometimes theres a little bit of shyness about what is it that im actually bringing that can be beneficial to this business. And i think its important to do a little bit of homework to understand a little bit deeper into that enterprise. What is it that i bring to the party that is going to help to to translate the why would you hire a sniper. I thought that was a pretty cool thing. Theres lots of reasons why you would hire the sniper. But that its like we need to find each other. The business has the need and the veteran really has the skills and we dont want to see it get lost in translation. What i would encourage them to do is harness the energy of their network. They had a network when they were in the military. Those that have gone before them in transition, i would suggest they make contact with those they respected and served with previously and get the Lessons Learned in the transition. Whether it be the communication, how to properly communicate what you have done but equally what youre interested in doing from the Lessons Learned from those that have already transitioned. You get the last word. Thank you. You have to own your transition. Just like you own your military service. You need to prepare just like you prepare for any mission. You have to go out and execute and do it early on. If you dont do those things, youre going to come up short and its no different than any day in the military. Own it and execute it. Thank you to each of you for your efforts and your organizations are doing for the veterans. Thank you all. [ applause ] my husband is a sergeant in the United States army. We have two kids. One is a 6yearold boy and one 3yearold girl. Money was tight. Christmas was coming. We werent sure how we were going to be able to pay for christmas. Thats the most heartbreaking feeling for a a parent. Thats what motivated me. My name is clarissa and im an uber partner driver. Its the best thing for a a Military Spouse that has kids. Now that i have been driving for uber, i didnt have to justify going to disneyland. Im the dad. I stay at home and take care of alice. Mom goes to work and makes the bulk of the money. If i can go out every weekend and make a couple hundred dollars, then i can contribute to the family. With uber, im able to earn income and provide the time with my family thats needed. When i left my job, the next week was valentines day. It was the first time in five years i was able to volunteer at my sons school. It allows me to be at home in the important times. The biggest thing that uber has given me is the convenience of my schedule. I turn my phone on and activate myself when i choose to. Good morning, everyone. Its a privilege to be here with all of you. The chamber, i want to thank them for their tremendous work on hiring our heroes. Theres no more Important Program in the country. And obviously, were also appreciative of the amazing work president bush and laura bush are doing on this program. All the remarkable leaders in the military and companies who are doing what they can to take care of those who take care of us. When i worked at the white house, one of the things i love to do most, i didnt get to do it often because the hours arent family friendly, but sometimes at night on a weekend i would take a run on the mall, which is one of the great running routes in the world. Partially because the gravel is nice on my knees. It was always a great reminder. It was going to be with all of us. Part of what i enjoy doing is a reminder of those who built this amazing country that we have the privilege to live in. We have won the lottery by living here every day. The general who founded this country and defeated tyranny and the commanderinchief who saved the union. You also see the world war ii memorial and the Korean War Memorial and youre reminded that theres tens of millions of people who stood by them who made everything possible. And so i think that continues today and will continue tomorrow. Those are the people who are the true heroes in america. They will never let us down. So all of us who have an opportunity to help them when they are done serving, theres no more important job. So we at uber are so excited to try to play our part. We have a program called uber military, which the video spoke to. It started last september. With the guidance of military leaders including the chairman and secretary gates. Our goal back then was to bring 50,000 veterans on to the platform. Were almost half way there already. Just in a few short months. We have now expanded this to Military Spouses and military families. Whats exciting is the opportunity it provides. Uber is a Technology Platform, its an app. You press a button and you summon a ride with an entrepreneurial driver. Who is there within a matter of minutes. Its in 311 cities around the world, but 70 of the people in the u. S. Have access to it. One of the reasons that veterans and families have gravitated to it, first of all, were all about serving cities. And you see our partners, thats what draws them. Is that they are able to deliver somebody home safely after a few drinks at the bar. They can take them to work or community college. They are able to take someone to chemo treatment at the hospital. They get a great nourishment out of that. Its no surprise our highest rated partners on the platform are veterans. They provide a terrific service. But they are so focused on serving. And what we hear from them about why they enjoy uber is is its a great way to get reconnected to your community. You get to meet people. Youre delivering people all over the city. You get to see new businesses that have propped up. So its a great transition. Were pretty unique in that we are a technology company, but veterans really enjoy the opportunity. To come home and serve and its a great transitional job. A lot of people come home and may go back to school or searching for their next career. May be interested in starting a business. What we allow is they can get on the platform, veterans love to drive, most of them have vehicles already. And within a few days they can get on the road and make money but on their own terms. Theres nothing like it in our economy. There are no hours. You can drive or not at all. You can drive one hour, eight hours or no hours. You basically turn the app on, turn it off when you want to. As people are coming home and trying to figure out whats next, its a terrific opportunity. Were so thrilled to play our part in providing it. Whats interesting is we hope a lot of Veterans Drive with us for a long time fulltime. But for many. It will be a a parttime and shorts time. But its a remarkable bridge that were so excited to be a part of to allow a this opportunity. So really making a big difference. They are also helping a lot in the economy. We have become a powerful economic engine. We have 20,000 people driving right now in the uber platform. Theres no company in the last few years that put that many people in an income producing opportunity. 22,000 in los angeles. 24,000 in san francisco. So these are huge numbers. Veterans are coming in because these people are going somewhere. This is one of the things we hear from veterans. A third of our trips end or begin at a Small Business. The veterans that the people are driving are going to local establishments and businesses, spending money and helping that local economy. You saw some of the stories there. We have a partner in austin named mike who served in the u. S. Army and completed two tours in the middle east and came home and someone he grew close to him died in a drunk driving accident. He came to uber in austin, texas, because he wanted to drive people home at night and keep them safe rather than endangering people. Were proud of the role were playing in reducing duis. People under 25, we know this from research, theres been a behavioral change in urban areas. They dont even think about drinking and driving anymore. Why would you . You press a button for a ride. You heard from theresa who is a Military Spouse. She used to be a restaurant manager. She had inflexible hours. She was able to volunteer at her kids school because of the opportunity the platform provides. We have a partner named bob who lost both his legs in vietnam. Lived in ohio. Was a telephone operator. Moved to a warmer climate for health reasons. Was having a hard time finding work. He uses a hand controlled vehicle which is allowed on our platform. And now he drives. What he said was uber is a way for vets to get out. Its a way to break down the barriers. Its a real powerful opportunity. We have a veteran named carlos who drives in miami. He has three daughters and is a dj. He likes uber because he has his prime business which is he spins at night. But he has three girls and wants to see them. So he can log on for a couple hours, log off, log back on. Its a very powerful economic engine that really works maybe better than anything for veterans as they are trying to figure out what they are going to do next. So we are going to continue this commitment. Were thrilled with the progress and think we can make a lot more progress. Wed like you to spread the word. This is an opportunity. This may be something that we have a lot of entrepreneurs who build up fleets. Maybe its a Small Business that somebody wants to start in partnership with us. But it may be a lot of people who say im going to do this for a few months for whatever hours make sense around my life. And so theres nothing that our employees are more passionate about than uber military. Its what gets them up in the morning and what so many of our engineers and people who run our cities are focused on, which is how to spread the word, how can we build this program and something that becomes a guarantee. So when veterans who serve come home theres a guarantee that as they are trying to figure out whats next for them, they have this opportunity. And they in the bargain will be doing a great thing for their city. They are going to be making sure less people die after drinking. They are going to cut down on distracted driving deaths. They are going to help the local economy and help Small Businesses. They are going to bring less cars on the road so cities are less congested. Theres a big societal impact. Were eager for your advice. If you have ideas for us about how to run the Program Better to spread the word, were all ears. We obviously are hungry for partnerships. If you have ideas in that regard, wed love for you to sit down and talk to us. If you see anything to improve on, dont be shy to let us ne. Were trying to build a business and were focused on that. In terms of uber military, nothing is more important to us than making sure were standing by veterans, providing opportunity, providing the kind of service they and their family need. Look forward to the road ahead with all of you. Thank you. [ applause ] good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. My mother told me dont follow pavarotti. This is an amazing crowd and an organization to be a part of. And the efforts are really commendable and timely. Im retired spider marks. U. S. Army general. Spent my life as a kid in the military and have been in business for the last ten years. I have had the honor of serving with are veterans and then in my civilian capacity. Im with a great team here. If youd take a few minutes to introduce yourselves. My name is justin constantine. I work for the chamber with hiring our heroes. They have events around the country. We have a successful event in fort bragg. I also have my own business as an inspirational speaker and consultant. Im karen hieland. Im a Lieutenant Commander of the United States navy acting reserve, acting as Public Affairs officer. In my civilian role, i work for bp america helping grass rots efforts and Political Action efforts as well. Im delighted to be here. Im pete corelli and i did not run the army. I want to make that clear. Its happened twice. You dont like to correct the president of the United States. I just want to make that clear. I was former vice chief of staff for the army and currently run a not for profit thats trying to get at the biological cause of traumatic brain injury in order to find better diagnostics and treatments. Thank you very much. Our objective here today is to retain talent for business. Id like to start with you, pete. In your research and your efforts in one mind, can you kind of dispel some of the myths and stereotypes that are out there so we can set the record straight in terms of pts and what that really means for business. Im very proud that this generation of warriors at least brought attention to postTraumatic Stress. Those who believe this is an injury of this generation of warriors are absolutely wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. Its been with us since war was fought. And thats a good thing. But at the same time, its a double edged sword. Theres a belief that anyone who was deployed has postTraumatic Stress. Theres a belief there are evidencebased treatments and nothing could be further from the truth. I had the opportunity to speak to some of a group of midlevel hr people and when you ask them the question or pose the question, do you believe anyone deployed has postTraumatic Stress, you see the bonking head. I look at them and say, you know, 8 of the population will have postTraumatic Stress at some point in their life. 8 . The numbers arent that greater in the armed forces. And if you think by not hiring vets you can escape having anybody work for you that has postTraumatic Stress, youre wrong. I promise you youve got at least 8 or more of your work population has it today. And you probably are giving them the treatment because your Insurance Company probably doesnt cover postTraumatic Stress in the same way that the military has ensured that these people, those are willing to come forward to get. The treatment they need. So its a real myth that you can avoid this. It is everywhere. And what we really need to do is understand it. We need to get better diagnostics to separate it from the other depressions and type of invisible wounds we have out there and get to the root cause of it. We are so far behind in understanding it as we try to do. We are trying to move from the 1930s and catch up with the rest of medicine and understanding and getting good diagnostics and treatments for postTraumatic Stress. In your work, do you see employers at the midmanagement level and the hr, those folks on board identify that talent on board. Do you see the discussions of pts coming up as a matter of routine or is that something thats out there as frequently as we might be concerned it is. It comes up in a a number of ways. Its important to me as someone with pts and speaks openly about it trying to reduce the stigma about it. At our events, we have a oneday event where we have a workshop for the veterans and caregivers in the morning and then informal networking event in the afternoon. Would you have a onehour long workshop for the employers and were lucky we have morrison who is a clinical psychologist. We talked for an hour about invisible wounds of war. We received great feedback because some of the folks in the audience are veterans themselves and have been doing this for a long time. A lot of the employers there, the hr folks, this is a first time they have heard from a veteran or a Wounded Warrior or a psychologist or both of us at st. Johns talking about pts and brain injury and what it means and what it doesnt. Its so great to have statistics out there thats 24 Million People. 3. 5 of folks have pts. Thats 8 Million People in one year. Compare that to who knows what the status is, 500,000 of us have pts, over 12 years compared to 8 million in one year. So we have a chance is theres hr folks who love the opportunity to educate themselves because they realize we are mentally treating veterans differently and we shouldnt be doing that. So, karen, what are you guys doing to really bridge this divide thats been described between the military in terms of the understanding and the sympathies or maybe even the understanding importantly. From personal experience, i can tell you that when i realized i was deploying, obviously, i had had to tell my family and called my boss immediately. Just by dumb luck, he happened to be a retired navy captain in the reserve. So he understood the language and understood what needed to happen. I was able to tap into our hr system very quickly who understood the law. But more importantly, understood the spirit of the law and did everything they could to help me and my family transition to the active duty life and transition over to iraq. When i came back, again, they went by the letter of the law and the spirit of the law even more so. They wanted me to take as much time as i needed, as much time as i could. I chose poorly and opted to come back to work within about four days of coming off active duty orders. But i knew at every turn that i could tap into our resources to both the formal ones and informal ones. The informal ones were more beneficial to me than calling into our hot line or going through the official hr channels. I think thats because of the culture that the company i work for has, which is one team. Everyone is in it together. You can turn to anybody for help or turn to anybody to offer help. It was very, very beneficial for me to know that i could do that if i wanted to. I chose not to for quite some time and took quite awhile to come to terms with my experience from my deployment and dealt with my family first, but i took the opportunity when it presented itself to inform my boss, all my bosses and my colleagues that i was actually really struggling and i was suffering from pts. And like most veterans, theres a fear factor around admitting that to yourself and to others. The support i received was astonishing. Im very fortunate in that regard. I wish that every veteran has the same experience that i had because i realize its unusual. It goes back to the culture where every employee matters. Everybody is part of one team. Its very similar in the military so i recognize those similar traits and was able to reach out to the right people. You are blessed. General dempsey published a piece. He talked about the stereotypes that business and the civilian workforce might hold for the military members. Id like to talk about that or if you can share with us your own personal perspectives of some of those stereotypes that youve seen and experienced as Service Members transition. One of the stereotypes talked about was corporate employers out there feel that those of us coming out of the military, that we might do good work but we cant follow orders. That couldnt be further from the truth. Were very fortunate in our military in particular that we train or troops and make it happen. And i would say leading marines there, whether it was another officer we could be an a Night Mission because we couldnt see progress. We start receiving fire and turn to the sergeant, saying what do you think we should do. I want to come out identify how much longer we should stay there. Thats invaluable to a company. Thats not just doing what youre told. Thats understanding the intent whether its from your ceo or supervisor, making it happen. We just do what were told. Its important. I think that one of the great stereotypes that i encounter in this company and out in the general world are members of the military are robotic and we do just follow orders. That couldnt be further from the truth. We choose to do this it because we have a great passion for this country and great passion for service and getting things done in the right way. And we are not robotic. We are able to think on our feet. I believe general eisenhower said something along the lines of plans are useless but planning is essential. And thats absolutely true. We are flexible. We see needs. Were not necessarily linear. Were able to flex to different situations. Sometimes better than the average civilian can. But theres this belief for people who have not been around the military that we all think and feel the same way. Thats actually not true. I would offer that those differences, thats how you get things done as a team. When Companies Embrace that, you really see people flourish and succeed. Karen stole my stereotype. Let me build on it a little. One of the things that i have seen in moving to the civil sector is one of the things that makes people think were robotic is we dwell on trying to improve in just about everything we do. I really liked going to the National Training center and having a good day against the Operational Force and winning a battle. But we would sit down in a review afterwards and take five minutes talking about the good things and another hour and 55 minutes criticizing and looking at how we could have done it better and quicker and faster. Thats a part of our roboticism that we try to import into civilian business. I see a tendency there to spend all the time talking about the Great Success you have had and little time taking the opportunity to sit back and say how could we do this better. What are the things that we could do the changes we could make that make us better than we are today. In my experience in this love hate relationship we have with our general counsels, you look at a position description. You are looking for very specific skill sets. So you want these veterans to be ready when its a combination of competency. But they are 65 to 75 of the way there because of the foundation of the character. Thats the stereotype that drives me up the wall. jcnn lets hire someone who has some magnificent talent. We can spend the money to get them job ready. So in conclusion, what would yall fix moving forward if you were president of an organization in terms of try trying to dispel stereotypes. Clearly there has to be an element of time. Cant do that overnight. Any immediate thoughts. Ill just throw out there that if youre away for Corporate America to understand that because i think theres a myth or stereotype of people in the military is not good in the private sector. Youre polite to people when its appropriate. All these are intangibles. Its impossible to create as robust lew as we do. And also we have a lot of education in the military. A lot of our folks have more from the military. Than the civilian sector. So if people can understand how robust we are, they will be able to start. I would ask that people not label all veterans as people looking for a handout. People who expect something in return for something we all did voluntarily. And i think the broad brush is painted that way. I would implore people to remember that every veteran is unique. We all have unique personalities and experiences and were part of something for the greater good and weve done something in the team atmosphere. We have unique character traits and to embrace that and to run with it as you will. Dont see veteran groups as a large block. See us as individual people and what we can do for you. I would really love to dispel that everyone who comes out of the military has post Traumatic Stress or traumatic brain injury. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many dont have these problems. That doesnt mean we cant take the focus off of helping those who need our help. Thats a for sure. If everybody in here would go back and ask their hr person or senior vp or whoever to put together a little briefing laid out whether or not anyone in their company who had any kind of problem with any of the depressions whether or not their insurance covers the treatment for that in the same way that the military takes care of soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen when they need that help. I think youre going to find some surprising facts that is really not the case. Its a really important thing. We make sure that not just in the military, but in civilian society as a whole that when people have some of these invisible wounds that they can get the help and treatment they need. I would suggest that we all and i know we do, hire a vet. Its good for the bottom line. Look at it from your discussion with your board of directors and say i think this makes a lot of sense for us. Folks, any final thoughts before we depart . Wonderful, see you, thanks. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, please welcome shawn monasco. Everyone is getting up and clearing the room. Thats a good sign. I dont know about you, but this conference for me has been not only inspiring, but also encouraging because for some of us who have been a part of this activity for the last four or five years, it started off very fragmented. To see the Chamber Bring companies together, see the coalitions that are forming, im really encouraged about the future. Im a proud army veteran. Last time army won against navy i had a lot more hair. Today i had the privilege of being a part of a Great Company and being a part of that executive team and thats usaa. Any members out there . Great. Well, as you know, usaa was formed by the military for the military. So hiring veterans for us has been a practice in long standing. You have all seen the commercials, at least i hope you have, we know what it means. Now when you make bold statements like that, you actually have to walk the talk. So if you were to take a stroll with me or one of my teammates, you were to talk to our employees, this is what you learn about their lives. One in four have either worn a uniform or the spouse of someone that has. One in four. Someone who has the subject that were talking about, its personal for me. Given our commitment to veterans, at usaa its personal for the organization. Now retention is a tough topic. We talked a lot about it here today, but im going to try to put a fine point on our point of view. Hiring, you have to start with the right hiring decisions. Make no mistake, its all about connecting and developing. Companies that do that right, they are the ones that succeed and thats what we need them so very much to do. So if its all right, im going to take a few minutes to talk about the veterans and bring this to life in a story and talk about my teammate. Its a great picture of morgan. Maybe well find it. So before joining usaa she took on a position at the National Security agency. Fresh out of intel training she excelled. And over the next few years, she did exceedingly well and rose to the ranks. Then 2010 came around and it was her turn to deploy. The destination was baghdad, iraq. So if you remember back at the headlines in 2010, it went Something Like this. Baghdad bombings, american killed in the green zone. Car bomb kills 100. It was a tough time to be in iraq. Not exactly d. C. In the summertime. And morgan was there and saw it all. Gunfire, rocket fire, explosions, ieds. During her sevenmonth stint, morgan witnessed it firsthand. She finished her deployment. She came back and a year later she got out of the air force and left an indelible mark on her. If you talk to morgan, she would tell you she had a really difficult time reintegrating back into the normal world. She moved from job to job and never had a place to call home. So if you think about it, one minute youre deployed forward. Your purpose is noble, your mission is clear in the work you do and it is important. Youre proud to serve. The next minute, your enlistment ends, you take off the uniform and all those things are just about lost. Morgan will tell you when she left the air force, she lost her confidence. She didnt feel like she was important anymore. I dare say there are tens of thousands of veterans that feel exactly the same way as morgan did. The good news is in 2013 while at a job fair morgans trajectory took a turn. She met a usaa recruiter and at the time usaa was looking for a few good men and women to join this new program that had been developed in concert with local colleges and the texas work force mission. The program was called veterans for i. T. Or vet fit for short. Over 200 people applied for this 22long week Training Course designed especially for warriors in transition to develop the skills needed for them to be a Java Software developer. 22 people were selected. They joined usaa as fulltime employees and each week during their training was the equivalent of one semester in college, one semester focused on being a java developer. All 22 people graduated and they are still employed with usaa today. Im even more excited to tell you that we have a class thats currently formed. We have 28 participants in that class. They are all doing quite well and i fully anticipate that they are going to be graduates of that program and then will join fellow developers at our i. T. Shop. So at the end of the day when morgan was selected and she joined this program, she started to flourish. Because she was learning something new. She was surrounded by people that had similar experiences than she had. She was also working for a company that had a true mission that she could connect personally with and a company who she was proud to work for and was caring. Now morgan, if you talk to her, whenever she thinks about it she gets emotional. Because that sense of confidence that she had lost, well, its come back. This is a picture of the first graduating class of this program. Theres is class leader, morgan. I love this dog. Front and center, as it should be. So she has done exceedingly well. Shes not alone. Because others are doing exceedingly well. But what worked for morgan was the fact that she was doing something meaningful, she was surrounded by people that had the same experiences that she did and it was just the lift she needed to get back on track. Now morgans employed, graduate of the program, our work here is done, right . Its really not. Were talking about retention here. So even at usaa, when i sat back and look at the numbers, veterans still turn over more than any other population. Heres what we have learned. We have learned that, again, not only do you have to make the right hiring decisions, but you have to connect them to each other. This Vet Fit Program is just one of the ways in which employees a at usaa and veterans in particular can connect with one another. Our most popular is a network called vet net. Its designed specifically to connect veterans and spouses. If youre a part of that network you get access to career mentoring, access to Team Building activities and learning events. Its really quite helpful. Recent conversation i had with morgan, i met her on the very first day. Shes a very different woman right now. I talked to her recently and she said shes enjoying her job. She feels like the work shes doing is is meaningful and looking for other jobs at usaa. You know what . Im fine with that. This is where most Companies Just get it wrong. They are focused just on the hiring, but they are not focused on retaining. So if morgan has been a Successful Software developer and can take other roles in the company and other veterans can do what she has, our organizations are going to be far better off. Now this is a difficult challenge and not all companies today are equipped to be up for it. What i would argue is companies that are successful can help others and thats what i think this conference really is all about. Now, we believe that Successful Transition is about retention. Because the more people retain, the less candidly we have to hire. Weve proven we can hire them. Lets focus on retaining them. So its not just about the job. Its about veterans finding the right place for them. Not just about the job, but its finding the right fit. So i always ask myself the question, could we do more . The answer is yes. The question is can you all do more . And i dare say, same answer is true. General mcarthur said no good plan ever survives. First contact with the enemy. Theres a lot of great planning going on. Theres a lot of data that we can analyze. Thats important work that should continue. Make no mistake. But i fundamentally believe and we believe its the companies that allow their employees and their veterans in particular to learn about their organizations and then follow their own interest in aptitudes and give them the flexibility to explore new things. Thats going to be the key for success. At least what i would tell you is its one o of the keys for success at usaa. Heres what i challenge you to do. Motivate your recruiter to go find the morgans out there. Who are seeking their place and the quote unquote normal. Hire them. Connect them. To your organization. Develop them. Then watch them flourish. Make it personal for you and for your organizations. Thats what we try to do. When that happens, they like morgan, they can declare, Mission Transition accomplished. Thank you. [ applause ] rumor has it rumor has it rumor has it hope thats not me. Welcome back, everybody. Were talking mission, transition, hiring our heroes and magnifying our impact. I want to introduce you to our panelists. Then well jump right into our interview. Far on the other side, barbara parsen, shes the acting administraor for the office of Veterans Business development. Nice to have you. She was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States air force on her Graduation Day and she served as an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile crew member and achieved the position of senior missile combat crew evaluator for the peace keeper force while on active duty. She earned her masters degree from management from Leslie University in cambridge, massachusetts. She left and joined the reserve and earned the specialty. Currently a colonel at the ussba where she pursues the office of Veterans Business development, mission to formulate, execute and promote policies and programs to support veterans Small Businesses. Nice to have you with us. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Vivian greentree is right next to her. She joined first data as a senior Vice President and head of military and veteran affairs in february of 2014 and in this role, she created first data salutes, a company wide military engagement strategy to provide the military community with access to Career Opportunities and best in class Education Resources while offering premier Business Solutions to veteranowned businesses. She helped found blue star families. Its nice to have you with us. A lot of paper work. After that its not going to i want to give everybody a good sense of our panel. Craig is a svp Global Service delivery and chief procurement officer at usaa. He and his team are responsible for strategy, governance, procurement, global delivery, enabling all customers to better success, implement. He enlisted in the coast guard in 1984 to have a wide variety of roles and experiences in his four year career there. He joined usaa in august of 1997, bringing with him ten years of information services, engineering and business experiences. Barbara, im going to start with you. Give us what goes through specifics on what the sba is doing to help veterans interested in Small Businesses. I would love to do that. I think you heard multiple speakers say the word, entrepreneur, entrepreneurial. Im listing for it. I know i heard it. Im very grateful that Small Business administration is partnered with department of defense labor and v. A. And education in the Transition Assistance Program because there are options, military members and their spouses, you can get a job, go to school or make your own job and that has been the choice for 27,000 people who have gone through what we offer business to business at transition. Theres something i want to amplify. Transition assistance means the minute somebody walks through the door on active duty they and their show us are eligible for transition and what that means. Its good to think about whats next when youre at the beginning of a career. Entrepreneurship takes a long time to plan and do well. Quickly tell you what sba does, capacity building. Teaching a spouse and military member. Training them on what it takes to be a Business Owner and helping to make the choice to do that and learning what they must have in place to do that. Second is access to capital. Getting money. I have partners in this room, in financial institutions, sba also guarantees loans so that banks will take a bigger risk on veterans and Military Spouses. We have some deals for you. I can tell you about them later. Finally, we can find opportunities for you. Whether its federal procurement or going back and rejoining your community, farm, family owned business, a franchise. So, those are the things we are engaged in. What is usaa doing and what have been the challenges you listed, the transition. Its really hard. A completely different mind set to be an entrepreneur. What does usaa do for those interested in making that shift . We want to do more. Sean just gave you a great example from the hiring side, but from the procurement side, im constantly looking for either Small Businesses that have services that can align with usaa and a lot of what we talked about here today, Small Business owners that have that same character and willingness to serve, continue to serve through usaa because of our membership as well. So, finding the right people to connect to, like the Small Business administration and that binds us the sources, is very hard to do. But thats what were at. Working with the rosy network. I know some of that work thats going on and the coalition is trying to get into these networks where these Small Businesses live. Another thing we want to do is help build entrepreneurs as well. So, im actually, i work with some mentioned the american corporate partners. Im on my third mentorship and the gentleman im working with is a young enlisted guy whos 18 months out. The deployment road map hes thinking ahead, which is awesome. But everything were talking about in the mentorship is not about finding a job. Its about starting his own business. I need to connect him to the right places, go develop it. So, whether thats a concept like the bunker, weve been and go develop it. Whether its the concept of the bunker or other accelerators out there that can help those thrive and then as a private organization i can come back and then actually procure and source with them afterwards. I was just going to say, craig, ive got some resources for you, so why dont you send him. And i wont take too long, i promise. But in every community sba is there with free mentoring and counseling in terms of marketing and how you differentiate yourself and legal advice and taxes, so thats where you send him. What is first aid doing . Its a National Platform that will support the success of veteran, Service Member and Military Spouse and Small Businesses by connecting them to entrepreneurial education and training, Small Business resources and products and opportunities for commerce and supply chain and it was built upon much like 100,000 jobs mission was bringing companies together who wanted to hire veterans and Military Spouses its bringing companies together who want to support veteran entrepreneurship, many of whom are represented in this room, wed like many more in this room to be represented. Were represented very well on the stages that hiring our heroes and usaa and the sba are founding members which allows us to say that well provide unparalleled and unprecedented access to education, resources and training to veteran and Military Spouseown businesses. What have the challenges been . Because theres lots of ways to provide and lots of interest in providing the training and interest in providing the education. Where have you seen sort of the hurdles and what are you doing to get over those hurdles . Im way out of my league on this comment but the whole transition process which i think someone had mentioned earlier today as well that is being revamped, but when someone selfdeclares, they want to be a Small Business owner or an entrepreneur even, they dont even know they want to be a Small Business owner yet, they have an idea. Where can i start to think about how can i do that, access to capital, access to an accelerator, access to this those things, or am i just willing to sell my idea to a private company and say, look, im not just coming from a job, im coming with an idea and this is how you can use it for your customer . What were trying to do is create those opportunities and its past hiring and career and its now into innovation and how can we leverage those. If we cant use them at usaa we have a Supplier Network thats rather large and how do we offer them up to our suppliers as well. What kind of pressure can you all put on suppliers . Is it a challenging conversation . Is it an easy conversation . I had a great conversation just today about this. We think that weve seen a medal of honor recipient today as an entrepreneur, we have garrett on your team an entrepreneur. These are great people that people want to bring into their supply chains and do business with. Were asking Corporate America to be a good citizen like youre about to hire and make a commitment to them. Derrick blake when i had a call to action and i said what can you do, ill tell you what you can do, you can pay your vendors within 15 days of getting a valid invoice from them and that would show your commitment back. We need path finders like this in Corporate America so that is one of the its one of the conversations weve had and im already seeing results and im very grateful for that. Is there an argument beyond, you know, listen, be a good citizen that you can point to your supply chain and say this is a really brilliant business decision thats going to help you make a lot of money . Well, ill talk about first data as a supplier to usaa. When they declared at usaa new hires would be vets or spouses, i turned to our supply chain and said not only do i want you to do it, but id like you to do that as well not because youre a supplier of usaa it makes good business. I found overwhelmingly almost every supplier we worked with said we want to do that as well because we see the value of doing it, but then the question was how do i do it. And so much over the last couple years has been about helping teach people how to hire veterans and spouses. Now i think we need to focus on how they retain them in their careers but now really moving into this other part how do we bring innovation into it as well. First data has been part of that. On any given day we have 6 million clients in 70 countries who use our products and services to securely transact 2,000 transactions per second, leveraging that and activating that network, leveraging their resources, the access to capital from our coalition partners, the supply chain opportunities like with usaa, with walmart, we know that entree to supply chains across the country is something that veteran entrepreneurs and Military Spouse entrepreneurs are very eager to explore. Bringing everyone to the table that need access to capital and resources and training and networks and entering with the companies, nonprofits and federal agencies want to, its, like, the next wave now the hiring thing, were doing the retaining thing but we know from sba statistics that 25 of servicemen and women transitioning out want to pursue entrepreneurship so we want to do everything we can to engage them wherever that is they want to be when they are transitioning out. It sounds like navigation is a challenge as well, right . Sba as well. Theres the knowing and the actual doing. What are you doing on that front to help people who are also i mean, transitioning is a big life change anyway and then trying to transition into something that is another big life change, what does sba offer . The answer is our largest partner in business dr. Haney, thank you. Getting the word out is the biggest thing i need to do. I think there are Military Spouse owned businesses out here and military members that dont know we saved 8. 6 million in fees on loans to veterans and that Military Spouses are eligible for those, too, they dont know it. Im counting on partnering with folks who can help us make that connection, so those of who you dont think that you care about entrepreneurship, i guarantee you will run into a brother or sister in arms who does and you will have heard this today and youll be able to connect them and get them started on their dream so that is what i need from you. What are you finding is the best strategies in terms of public and private partnerships to make this happen . Like, if you could completely write the book on how to do it, where do you see the gap and what would you recommend is changed . You know, the i hate to say the mission of the coalition for veteran owned businesses, but access to entrepreneurial training and education, Small Business resources and solutions and opportunities and commerce and supply chain both from the businesstobusiness and the businesstoconsumer models. Reaching that Critical Mass will be the next, you know, the next great thing that we do for this next greatest generation of veterans and our families. Id add to that. I think we need role models. How do you mean . Not the folks like us who join organizations as advisory groups and champion the efforts. I think thats important, but we need role models of young enlisted folks, men and women, who have failed out of college, gone into the military, gotten their life squared away, and gone on to do something to where other people can say, wow, theyve done it. I can do it, too. I dont think we communicate that enough around our industry that you dont youre not going to be a senior Vice President tomorrow, right . Youre not going to lead the military and go to the title thats out there. You have to work for it. And i know they want to work for it, but theyre looking for role models to say who has gone before me that i can talk to . Who can mentor me and share with me and who can connect me to resources and who can prove to me it will work . I may fail along the way, thats lock, thats part of innovation, but theres another enlisted person that got out of the military who did this and i can do it too. Whats the platform for telling those stories . As you well know and as a member of the muchmaligned media at times, lets be honest, honestly, happy stories where people achieve great things that are role models, i could not sell that to anybody and get it on tv tomorrow, you know, really. If you told me something that was gloom and doom and ended badly, i probably could, you know, lead the newscast with that. That is being very serious, so how do you tell the stories, right . Role modeltype stories is what can motivate people but theyre also hard to get on a platform . Is there a strategy you have for that . I would love to show you and the national Small Business veterans will be the first week of november this year and were partnering with the public broadcasting system and ibmf to get out the stories. I need you and your communities to know where that veteran business is so that we can become aware of it, elevate it and open up some more doors for them and also many of you in the military have served and seen the hometown greetings, you know, hi, from wherever i am in the world. Were going to try to do that with Small Businesses on affiliates and a little snapshot so it will at least get people curious about what they can learn about and then build into the peer to peer which you just mentioned is an incredibly powerful mentoring its preferred over commandertype above to the lower in entrepreneurship. We want to see Somebody Just like us who has gone ahead and done it already. What are you seeing in retention . What are the challenges there and whats working . Not everybody at once. I mean, i think thats the next level of conversation. Right. Its not enough to say, here, were going to have you have this opportunity. It is really seeing that all the way through and its a challenge. Often inside the corporate world its really hard to take someone who has entered usaa at a lower manager level job because they wanted to work for usaa and part of their transition and then they assume theyre going to be able to run right through the chain. And then two years in say, you know, its not working out or youre not going you havent developed the way we expected you to develop. Thats on us as leaders inside of the organization to take these high talented people and use their skills appropriately. But its also an indication of the poor hr function we have a lot of times that we dont do it for all employees. I dont want it to be special for only vets and spouses, we should be able to do it with any employee in our organization but we need to be more proactive of leveraging their skills. Have you seen a similar thing . We know for Small Business owner on the hiring side, no one wants to hire Military Spouses more than i do because im a Military Spouse, no one wants to hire veterans more than i do at our company because im a veteran. Thats the way the whole team feels. Its the same way with small veteranowned businesses. If a blackston hires 50,000 but 50,000 small veteranowned businesses hire one, its the same. Its still 50,000 veterans being hired and Military Spouses and, again, no ones more committed to that cause than a fellow veteran or Military Spouse, so im going to turn retention into business mortality and how long a business lives and veteran success there. So veterans are 45 more likely to start a business. And then they completely flip the percentage on how likely theyre going to be successful five years out. Theyre 65 more likely to be in business five years later than a civilian counterpart business, so thats where you belong. Seven out of ten jobs are made in Small Business. Veterans and Military Spouses have the skills and values as president bush said to create this opportunity for themselves. And imagine how much more successful theyll be when we bring to bear the largesse, the passion, the access to capital, training, education, resources from our, you know, the leading companies in the country targeted towards veteran and Military Spouse owned business theyre that much more likely to raise that percentage and continue to start and own their small piece of the american dream. Even that statistic going back to your idea of role models, what a great statistic to know because i did not know that and thats fantastic. I appreciate it very much. Big thank you to our panel. Thank you. You bet. Rubber duck youve got a copy on me big ben, come on. Yeah. Ten four big ben for sure for sure. By golly its clean. Were at flagtown, come on. A big ten four there, big ben. Yeah, weve definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive it looks like we got us a convoy. Made it. And a special round of applause to the dos amigos over there and their wonderful teams and this incredible event. All right. I see my clock is ticking and i know everybodys probably hungry for lunch. And i thought just for fun when we all leave everybody requests your uber at the same time to see if they can keep up. My name is jim ray. Im the cofounder of fast port. For those of you who dont know who we are we have a Technology Platform that matches veterans and civilians to great jobs in the Trucking Industry. We also have the great honor of providing the technology and the leadership for the hiring our heroes trucking track. The trucking tracks mission is to get 150,000 veterans hired into great careers in the Trucking Industry. Five years minimum. Now i have a reliable source that this is the first time the convoys been played here and when eric asked me to present the idea of what he would like me to talk about at this conference, the idea of selling your industry to veterans, he said, yeah, you know, your industry has done a great job and i think it would be great for you to end the conference and kind of tie everything together and help everybody go out and go into the world and sell your industry. I want you to start with convoy. And we can even talk about thats the rubber duck there if you dont know and Everybody Knows bo bandit. And i was, like, im not sure i want to do that, i have, like, my biggest partners in the room, theyre going to kill me, okay . Because its not the way we want trucking, you know, displayed to the world. But if you think about it its genius, all right . And the whole way, hiring our heroes presents veteran hiring is smart, because they take an industry approach. Now, you think about it. Youre a veteran. Whats the very first thing you ask . You dont even know what industry to go into. So, the idea of taking an industry approach and selling your industry is huge. So, its hilarious to think trucking is the only industry that has an image problem. I mean, look at even the Biggest Industries in our country. Think about manufacturing. Do all our workers stand on an Assembly Line . Or are we dealing with lasers and computer design and robots . If you think about american agriculture, are we all sitting on tractors or are we really blending science and efficiency to feed the entire world . I met the starbucks guy yesterday, so i got to bring them up because i bring them up a lot, because they have a similar problem. Are they only hiring baristas or are you going to be part one of the most extraordinary companies in the world that have supply chains that reaches to the farthest corners of our earth . Let me talk a little bit about how trucking is misunderstood and let me tie it a little bit to some of the things weve talked about. Veteran homelessness, in our business this is a bizarre concept. This goes to the opportunity in our industry in how you should think about selling yours. Today, in the Trucking Industry we have 30,000 positions open. Every year just to replace our Truck Drivers and other positions that are retiring, we need 100,000 positions for the next 10 years just to keep up. Thats a million positions. We have starting salaries that go from 40,000 to 60,000. We have jobs, not from trucks to mechanics to executives to salespeople to safety personnel. Its nothing that our veterans havent nothing like what they imagined. And lets actually president bush this isnt what i was going to talk about. He said when we came back from vietnam we treated our veterans chablisha shabbily. Some people didnt do a good job treating them. But the Trucking Industry when i was a little boy and i was in my dads and grandfathers terminals, those people and those terminals came from the vietnam war and they started in the Trucking Industry and they went on to own their own trucks and really a lot of them are still trucking today because we have some pretty old Truck Drivers. So, we have a long, long history of employing veterans. And then i cant even im not even sure i want to try to talk about it but the idea of how many veterans commit suicide because they dont have a good connection to their community. So, the general population of the United States about 1 military veterans. In the Trucking Industry, its north of 20 and nearing 30 . Our entire staff are filled with a Community Already ready to accept them in. So, were a great model. When you think about selling your industry and how were going to do it. And last year i think weve done great. Eric and his team, i mean, weve been selling it. Weve been changing perceptions and were having more veterans entering the Trucking Industry than ever before. So, ill come up with some specific tips, okay . So, my first tip is when its time to sell your industry, youre going to need some buddies. Youre going to need to circle the wagons. Youre going to need to take the industry approach. So, our concept was lets get 12 of the Coolest Companies that we can think of in the Trucking Industry, that have great jobs, that are veteran affinity, that are innovative, that really show us to the world. And here are the folks that stood up within a month. Im going to skip some. These companies stood up almost immediately to do this job. And heres theres a practical reason this is important, too. We also get about 80 great minds from these companies that we work with every day to do this effort. So, even if your industry doesnt have a huge number of players, get your players together and Work Together. Next tip. Solve for the whole industry. True, true team work. So, when i was growing up in trucking, ive seen these Companies Compete like you wouldnt believe, and my grandfather probably rolled over in his grave if he actually saw how well these companies worked together. The best example in our industry if we go to the wonderful hiring fairs that hiring heroes has that you will see proudly walk over to a recruit j. B. Hunt which is just unheard of because we know we didnt have the best job but j. B. Hunt might and j. B. Hunt might walk it over to tmc and they might walk it over to transport america. I have never seen anything like it. We can compete like you would not believe in the Trucking Industry and its that concept that if you Work Together like this, a rising tide will lift all our boats. Key. Now, i think it was sandy who talked well sandy who was talking about the Public Private partnerships and for somebody in the Trucking Industry sounds a little bit Like Washington mumbo jumbo, but it really is the real thing. Terry gurten with the department of labor and the va has helped us a lot and the department of defense has helped us a lot. But i want to call out a special group that have just been incredible. Colonel rock and his soldier for life team, fantastic, as you sell your industry and you want to work with some people, these people are incredible. They have traveled with us to events to talk to veterans and employers. They have counseled us on our own software. You know, saying, hey, do you know what, if you did this, the veterans would get it better. They helped us design our mentoring program from the ground up. So, these companies that support us, they provide 30 mentors for free around the clock for the veterans to talk to. It was a soldiers for life influence. We had some carriers say we have guys that had trouble, what do we do. We went to soldiers for life and they connected us to the right people and that company put together a program internally to say, hey, if you guys are having trouble, this is not going to hurt your employment and they even put on some onsite counselors. Incredible stuff. Incredible stuff. Next thing is demand courageous leadership from your Industry Associations. So, theres two industry probably our biggest Industry Associations in the trucking business are the American Trucking association and the truck carriers association. The American Trucking association committed to hire 100,000 veterans on behalf of their membership. The tca which doesnt have quite as a big a membership because theyre a different segment of the industry committed to hire another 50,000 veterans. Thats 150,000 veteran commitments. But whats courageous about governor gray with the ata and Brad Bentleys leadership is not just that they made this public statement, its that they have dug in and theyve created big efforts to get the word out, to educate our employers on how to do it, to promote the programs and they even go down to on the veteranbyveteran level and sometimes pass people directly into the program. Its extraordinary stuff. Okay. So, in closing, im going to recommend my last big recommendation. So, convoy. I mean, we have a media problem. We all can see it in that. Some of you do, too. Weve talked about that. So i want to tell a little trucking story that demonstrates how we really look at it as an industry. And maybe you can come up with similar stories in your industry. December 12th of every year 70 trucks show up in a small town in maine. Each one of those trucks are filled completely with christmas wreaths. And they travel down the east coast of the United States. And as they travel this convoy of trucks theres people lining the roadways, waving flags and holding back tears. And they show up at Arlington National cemetery and deliver these wreaths into the hands of 20,000 volunteers that place these wreaths on every single grave in the cemetery, 400,000 graves. And i had to ask brad bentley yesterday how many other cemeteries we cover, how many other trucks, about 189 trucks in total, 1,039 cemeteries. So, folks, thats our convoy. I want to leave you with a short video. I had a hard time picking which one because we have a lot of real cool videos in our business, but i like this one because it shows how important it is in our industry, what happens when theres natural disasters, what happens when the towers fall and we have to haul away the wreckage but then build it back up. So enjoy it. Have a great lunch. Enjoy it, everyone. Thanks, everybody. Wed like to close by thanking you for your leadership. Over the last five years our government leaders, our nonprofits and the Business Leaders represented in this room and beyond have had an impact, have moved the needle, have had dramatic effect in terms of addressing a crisis in veteran employment, but now is not the time to take our foot off the accelerator. Now is the time to institutionalize these great Public Private partnerships and to leverage the Lessons Learned and the best practices and apply them to the gaps that are remaining, so we thank you for your continued leadership to this effort and we ask you to help us empower and arm the men and women that need to map out and better navigate through that process to meet your requirements in your businesses through the vet roadmap. Thanks, eric . Thank you, all. We really appreciate your support and really look forward to continuing the collaboration in the years to come. Thank you. Thank you. Tonight on cspan3 American History tv on the civil war. Coming up at 8 00 eastern its the 150th anniversary of the confederate surrender at ap poe m apoe mat tax courthouse and Confederate Forces held more than 45,000 union soldiers. This holiday weekend, American History tv on cspan3, has three days of featured programming. Beginning friday evening at 6 30 eastern, to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of president dwight david eisenhower, his granddaughters, susan, ann, and Mary Eisenhower gather for a rare family discussion at Gettysburg College to talk about his military and political career as well as his legacy and relevance for 21st century americans. Then on saturday afternoon at 1 00, 60 years ago rosa parks defied a City Ordinance for blacks to leave their seats on a city bus to make room for white passengers. Her stand helped instigate the montgomery bus boycott. Well reflect on the boycott and see what role lawyers played in that protest and the Civil Rights Movement as we hear from fred gray attorney for rosa parks and montgomery bus boycott demonstrators. Then at 6 00 civil war author and historian William Davis on the littleknown aspects of the lives and leadership of Union General ulysse s. Grant and robert e. Lee. And then on real america a 1965 Progress Report on nasas projects including the manned Space Program and the mariner 4 flyby of mars. And just before 9 00, writer and awardwinning documentary filmmaker rick burns on how the public learns about history through film and television. American history tv, all weekend, and on holidays, too, only on cspan3. The franklin project at the Aspen Institute and defense one hosted a Panel Discussion recently on making National Service more appealing to young americans. Panelists shared ideas on expanding voluntary Service Beyond the military and bridging the military civilian divide. This is about 90 minutes. Im Walter Isaacson, and im Walter Isaacson and im with the Aspen Institute here and its our pleasure at the institute to be the host and the facilitator of the franklin project. The project began when general Stan Mcchrystal was out talking about the importance of National Service two or three years ago in aspen, and everybody related to it, and one of the things we try to do here at the institute is turn thought into action, so we said, well, if this is important, lets try to create a program around it. General mcchrystal agreed to chair it. He also thought to himself, im never going to raise another idea in aspen again. You get enlisted if not drafted to do something, but i think he was able to convey to us that this works on so many levels
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.