June 25, 2024 • 30 mins
Transitioning to civilian life after years of military service can be daunting. Some veterans pursue higher education, while others explore business and entrepreneurship, each journey uniquely personal. What remains constant is the importance of ensuring service members are well-prepared for this transition.
In this special episode of The Unshakeables, Ben sits down with Ryan Pavel, a veteran and CEO of the national nonprofit Warrior-Scholar Project, to discuss his transition from the military. Ryan shares how the discipline and determination he developed during his service helped him achieve his dream job: guiding and preparing other veterans for a fulfilling life after service.
Additionally, Ben is joined by Mark Elliott, Managing Director and Global Head of Military and Veterans Affairs at JPMorgan Chase, who offers his insights on why veterans often become exceptional leaders and passionate entrepreneurs
The Unshakeables is brought to you by Chase for Business and Ruby Studio by iHeartMedia
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
After years of work, Ryan Pavel had finally landed his
dream job with the Warrior Scholar Project. He was a
military veteran turned lawyer who dreamed of working with other veterans.
The Warrior Scholar Project had just received a huge grant
that would allow them to bring him on as executive director,
but right before he was supposed to begin, his boss
suddenly left the organization.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So I came on board. And I had this really
small team of people who believed in the thing, like
a few people, and we had enough money in the
bank to be able to pay the bills. But the
organization sustainability really depended on it grant. I didn't realize
how much depended on it until I actually got a
look at the.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Full on financials.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I also didn't realize that we were only in phase
one of this big grant application.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Okay, let me just make sure I have this right.
You come on board on spec. You don't know how
on spec it is. You desperately need this grant way
more than you realize. You desperately need this grant, and
it's a little further away than you sort of were
led to believe. Yeah shit, all right, Yeah, welcome to
(01:05):
The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia.
I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
And I'm Tanya Nebo, a lawyer and consultant for business owners.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
On The Unshakeables, we're sharing the daring stories of small
business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories
of how they got through it. And today I want
to introduce you to someone special who will be joining
us on this episode. Mark Elliott is Managing Director and
Global head of Military and Veteran Affairs for JP Morgan Chase,
where I work, and we're excited to have him join
(01:38):
us today. Hi. Mark, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Ben, Thank you for having me and thank you for
hosting this. I think this is important for not just
the veteran community, but the entire small business community.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
We're fortunate enough to be colleagues, but JP Morgan Chase
is a really big place, So why don't you tell
everyone what it is you do for the firm.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
I do lead our military invention affairs here at JP
Morgan Chase. I pinch myself every day just to know
that I get to do this. It's a way to
give back to a community that I spent twenty eight
years serving alongside.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So Mark, hopefully you know what our show is all about,
and I think you've heard a couple episodes, but I
wanted to have you join us today because you are
a veteran and just like Ryan, you work with veterans
all the time as they transition from military life into
civilian life.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Well, Ben, thank you for shedding a light on this community.
I think they are a treasure that we should be
proud of and make sure we're helping them be successful.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
On today's episode, the Warrior Scholar Project from Washington, d C. So,
first of all, I just want to say, in front
of everyone, I say thank you for your service.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Thank you so much for your support. It's actually really
interesting even that question about how veterans respond to that
question of thank you for your service. That's really topical
in the veteran community. There's a school of people that
really reject that as like something that people don't like
being thanked for their service. There's a whole lot of
conversation about it, and it took me years before I
heard somebody else say to do you didn't at all? No,
but but put to that point, right, that that my
response to that is actually what I found that is
(03:04):
the most comfortable that you say thank you for your service,
and then I always respond, you know, thank you for
your support.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Ryan, as you'll hear throughout this episode, has a complicated
relationship with the military, but one thing is crystal clear.
His support for veterans is unwavering. To understand how Ryan
got to the Warrior Scholar project, we have to go
back to the beginning.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I grew up in a upper middle class suburb, very privileged,
upbringing only child.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Very very fortunate in that regard.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
And since I grew up outside Chicago, with the school
everybody wanted to go to was University of Illinois, and
I got rejected, and rightly so. I was not a
particularly compelling candidate. I was not achieving my potential. My
extracurriculars were track and cross country and getting last in
a lot of those races.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
After that rejection, he didn't know where to turn. Then
he spoke with a recruiter from the Marine Corps.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Some things clicked for me.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
The path that I thought that I was going to do,
the path that seemed easy, is not the path that
I'm actually going to follow. Of just going to school
and taking a major and studying something for the sake
of studying something. It seemed like a really good way
to be able to wipe the slate clean, at least
of the junior ranks the military. It's a true meritocracy.
All that matters is can you do this number of
pull ups? Doesn't matter where you came from or anything
else like that. I like that a lot service of
(04:18):
country and a lot of pride, something that I could
take a lot of pride ownership over.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
So Ryan he joined up. He went to basic training
and took a series of aptitude tests to see what
career he would be best suited for. His testing indicated
he would excel in languages. So he set out learning
Arabic all day.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Every day. You're learning from native speakers.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's a tough language too, it's not a Roman alphabet
the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Right, And you're not just a college student either, right,
Like the Marine Corps still owns you, right, And so
you are doing all the formations and all the training
for the Marine Corps. But then you know your job
is really to be able to actually learn that language.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
And how that go well, ups and downs?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Right, It was not a particularly easy language right for
me to learn, and so I needed some additional tutoring
and I ended up doing okay. But the thing about
it is that it all that matters is one test
at the end.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
But you have to hit a certain line and you
can either be a linguist or you can't. And I
failed basically everybody around me passed it, and so it's
sort of this series of failures. It's like, okay, well,
I'm seventeen years old. I get rejected from you know,
via Like okay, well, now I'm going to be an
Arabic linguist. I tell everybody for a year and a
half between boot camp and all these things, but I'm
moving towards this thing, and I take this test. Well wait,
now I failed this thing too.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Ryan was given an option. He could either find another
specialty or he could double down, work harder, and retake
the test in eight weeks. Ryan decided to focus and
go for it.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I learned probably more Arabic in those eight weeks than
and the rest of the sixty three weeks combined. Wow,
And so I took it again and I passed, and
so then I was able to leave that duty station
went at North Carolina, and I went back and forth
to a Rock from there a couple times between two
thousand and twenty ten.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
During his time in the military, Ryan worked as an
Arabic translator.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
You are working in a secure environment and you are
translating whatever comes across your desk. We lived in a bunker,
just kind of buried into a dune on the side
of a base. I worked the night shift, so it's
twelve hours on, twelve hours off for seven months, for
seven days a week. So you get kind of weird, right,
you know. Imagine that the folks that you're with, like
you get real close in real weird ways. We were
attached to an infantry unit and a human intelligence unit.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
He wasn't only in the bunker though. On his second tour,
he went out into the field.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
A lot of my memories from Irock are those ones
when we were out in the field and actually translating
and meeting people from the communities. I grew up a
lot like just being able to be around different cultures
effectively kicked me into high gear in a way that
I was not feeling when I was seventeen.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
At that point, Ryan had been in for five years,
but he had never stopped wanting to go to school.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Two thirds of enlisted service members are first gen college students,
and so I was in the minority that I was
not a first gen college student, which means that I
had this familial support to be able to say, hey, like,
college is a thing that you should be doing, but
there still are these challenges in terms of what that
transition can look like for me.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So I'm sure many of you have heard of the
GI Bill, which was first introduced after World War Two
and provided veterans with a host of benefits, one of
the best known being tuition coverage for a service member
looking to attend college or vocational school. What we have
now is a little different, and it was passed in
two thousand and eight. This bill, the one Ryan would
have access to, covered the cost of tuition for any
(07:22):
university in the veterans' home state. One critique about the
implementation of that bill is that there's low awareness among
service members about the options that are available to them
as they transition out of the military. Many veterans end
up going to the college or university that advertises the
most to them, rather than the institution that might be
the best fit for their academic goals and needs as
a student. In twenty ten, Ryan was in the same boat.
(07:46):
Unsure of where to turn. He did what millions of
people do every day when they're looking for answers.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I went to Google, and I typed in on Arabic
college and veteran and I applied to the schools that
popped up. So not like the most sophisticated, you know,
University of Michigan popped up at top of that list.
So many Arab Americans live in that area that they
have a phenomenal Arabic program at University of Michigan. So
I applied and was promptly rejected.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It was the University of Illinois all over again. But
unlike seventeen year old Ryan, who pivoted former Marine, Ryan
didn't back down.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I called the admission's office and said, hey, I was
very interested in your institution. Could you give me any
sort of input on what led to that rejection. They
connected me to somebody who'd actual viewed my application, and
she was very blunt about it. She's like, you got
some good things you want for you, but you haven't
shown you can be a good student, which is fair, right,
Michigan requires people to be good to studies.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Ryan knew he could study. He shown himself that during
his Arabic courses. So he enrolled at the community college
near his base in North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
While I was still active DUTEY in my last couple
of months, just whatever the classes were that were available,
which is a really common path for a lot of
veterans using community college.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
It's one of the most underappreciated assets we have in
this country. It's a whole separate podcaste. We agreed completely
under valued, underfunded, underappreciated all across the board.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Absolutely, And I was able to transfer to University of Michigan.
I was there for two years, took as many courses
as I possibly could to get my degree as quickly
as I could, which is not the way that I
advise veterans to go about getting undergraduate digression degree in
international relations.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So Mark, this is usually the part in our story
where we take a moment and talk about what we've
just heard. When I first met Ryan, we were introduced
and I said it's nice to meet you. Thank you
for your service, and he said thank you for your support.
And then we got into a discussion. He said that
there are a number of veterans who are very uncomfortable
with the phrase thank you for your service, and I
just wanted to understand that a bit more because I've
always felt, as a patriot so very proud to say
(09:43):
thank you, because I genuinely am grateful for people who
make the sacrifice to serve our country. Where where does
that come from?
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Different veterans are going to feel different about that type
of thank you. How that's manifested, I think is really
what Ryan was probably trying to say. How is that
mana infested in the actions of your organization, the actions
of your community, the actions of you maybe as an individual,
I think is where maybe the friction into that comes.
(10:12):
I always say, thank you for your service is important
to me, but let's see how does your organization actually
do that on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So that's really helpful because I'm educating myself now. Ryan
went to school, but many service members don't take that path.
Talk to me about other transitions out of the military.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Some people say I'm going to stay four or five
years and I'm going to get out. I was one
of those, and then some say I'm going to stay
thirty years and they get out at five and so
you just never know. Assignments happen every two to three years,
and so you know there's a transition opportunity every two
or three years. It just may not be a transition
out of the military.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
So when you talk to veter into a transitioning from
active duty into the private sector in some form, how
do you tell them to think about figuring out that transition.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
It's all about prepping yourself. And to me, that's what
this is all about. This is what helping service members
transition is all about, is making sure they are prepared.
If we can build relationship with service members while they're
still serving, to help them tap into skills that they
didn't know they had, help them develop skills that they
didn't know were dormant. You're not sure about how do
(11:22):
I value at You're not sure what you bring to
the table, and we're going to point you to some
resources that can help you think through that. Do you
want to go to school? If you want to go
to school, now, let us help you. Warrior Scholar Project
is one of those organizations that can help you as
a transition service member into college. How do you become successful.
How do you build the right relationships network You may
(11:45):
be working because you actually have a family now that
you took out of the military with you. Let's let
us help you think through how do you do all
of those things.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Back to Ryan, he got his degree in two years,
which is not something he would advise people to do,
by the way, but at the time he just didn't
know better. It was just one of a few challenges
he never anticipated about returning to civilian life as a
college student.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
One of the big challenges is, particularly when you're junior enlisted,
the question of why is not acceptable. Like if you
were to take it to the extreme example of a
boot camp of a drones Starctter says, you know, do
fifty push ups and you say.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Why, it's not going to go over well right.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
In the college environment, if you don't ask why, then
you're missing a huge part of it. If you don't
understand a concept, really understanding why going to office hours
doing those things.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
So there's a big.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Challenge there in terms of the difference of community and
in terms of what the culture expects of you in
one environment versus another. You can short circuit that if
you really directly ask the question of what's your response
the first time that somebody asks you if you've killed anybody?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Right? Like, that's a very stark question.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
But you should think about your answer to that question
before somebody asks it. It's a crazy thing to ask somebody,
it is, but it happens. How do you have these
sorts of discussions, How do you join student groups? How
do you go to these meetings? How do you embrace
everything that this college campus and this college unity has
to offer. But I needed some fellow veterans to walk
me through that.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Ryan's identity as a veteran stayed with him as a
student and then as he transitioned into the workforce.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So I wanted to continue to serve. So I actually
taught with Teach for America for a couple of years
in Detroit. My taught high school hardest job I've ever
had by some margin. I was not cut out for
that work. I committed to doing two years and there
was no chance that I was going to quit. But
it was not the best application of my skill set.
So I went to law school. And around that time
that I was going from finishing up my teaching requirement
(13:36):
to go to law school, I've heard about Warrior Scholar Project.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
We've heard this name, the Warrior Scholar Project a few
times now, but let's talk about what it is. The
Warrior Scholar Project is a national nonprofit five oh one
c three that equips enlisted veterans to succeed in higher
education classrooms and beyond. It was founded in twenty twelve
by Christopher Howell. Howell wanted to go to school when
(14:00):
he got out of the military, but he wasn't sure
he'd be able to To help him, Howell's brother designed
a crash course curriculum in student life that prepared Howell
to apply for university programs. Christopher went on to study
at Yale and that crash course went on to become
the Warrior Scholar Project's curriculum. He started this program to
help service members with two friends also students, and that's
(14:22):
the program Ryan came across while he was at the
University of Michigan. This is something I want to underscore
about this episode. Unlike the other folks we've spoken to
here on the Unshakables, Ryan was not the singular founder
of the Warrior Scholar Project, but he did found the
first chapter. Outside of its original incarnation at Yale.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
The first branch that they allowed us to really be
able to franchise what they were doing at Yale. That
was a very easy decision for me to be able
to do that because they were doing something at Yale
in this Warrior Scholar Project classroom that was unlike any
other transition program, any other classroom environment that I had
been a part of.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
It was this like intoxicating thing.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
The Warrior Scholar curricul KALEM creates a highly structured environment
where enlisted service members feel confident to prepare them for
academic life.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
It is primarily a series of academic boot camps where
you are taking enlisted service members who want to be
able to pursue their undergraduate studies, and we put them
in a safe, but ungraded, unaccredited environment that is really demanding.
We mean it when we call it a boot camp.
It's about seventy five hours of work per week, and
they are on these college campuses experiencing what it's like
to succeed at Columbia, at University of Chicago, at Yale,
(15:31):
at University of Michigan, at schools like this, and they
come out the other end of that ready to go
wherever they come out.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Of that with do this while they're already in school
or in prep to go to school.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
It's a mix. They cannot yet have a bachelor's degree.
For most of them, they're saying either I want to
make a change. I'm currently pursuing my studies and I
want to make a change, or they're people that are
just saying, Hey, I'm about to get out of the military.
I want to pursue my undergraduate studies. How do I
do this? So it's very much about confidence. It's about
saying no, you actually do have what it takes that Yale,
there was this legendary professor Charles Hill. They're reading Alexis
(16:00):
to Tookeville's Democracy in America and at the time there
were twelve veterans that were in the classroom, tatted at
vets and they're going toe to toe with this professor
on tokfille. It's a quality of conditions argument and they're engaging.
They've all clearly done the reading. It's just like what again,
Like what universe?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
What is this?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I asked afterwards, is this just like what classes are
like at Yale? And the press was like, no, this
is this is not your average class. There's something going
on here, and it was really about veterans respond really
well when you throw it on the gauntlet and you
challenge them.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Ryan loved working with WSP. He finished his own studies
at the University of Michigan and went on to law
school at the University of Virginia. I want to take
a moment here. This is someone who didn't get into
college the first time he applied, and now he's going
to one of the best law schools in the country.
Anything is possible.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
For five years, that was my part time involvement, was
going back every summer and doing this program.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
While Ryan was part time, the program wanted him full time.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Right before law school, I had this would go I'm
get to my second program the second time I had
run it, they offered me the position to come on
board and to become the executive director. The founder was
leaving and they wanted to be able to grow it.
And even though I felt so strongly about this thing,
I said no. And I wondered for years if that
was like the greatest professional mistake of my life, was
saying no to this thing that I really believed in.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
That little feeling that tickled his brain to enlist in
the Marines was also tickling him again. He wanted to
work with the Warrior Scholar Project, but he knew he
wasn't quite ready.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I couldn't really identify it when I turned down that
job to become the Warrior Scholar Project executive director back
in twenty fourteen. I couldn't have really told you here
are the seven things that I need to be able
to learn before I would feel qualified for it.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
He worked with WSP in the summers, graduated law school,
and went on to start at a large firm.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
I intended to be there for a few years, build
the connections, work a lot, make some money, and then
figure out what's next.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
For him, what was next was a federal clerkship, then
going back to public service. He still kept in touch
with the Warrior Scholar founders and would meet up with
them socially. One day, they were all out to lunch.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And I talked about that moment of when they offered
me that position, that executive directorship in twenty fourteen, and
I said, you know, I always think like, if only
there was a way I could work for WSP full
time now, And you just said, well, what if there
was the.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Warrior Scholar Project had just received a large grant that
would allow them to expand the team. They wanted Ryan
to come on board a COO working under the executive
director for the company. Ryan was over the moon. He
accepted the position in August, and he was winding down
his last case with his law firm. As he was
getting up to speed on WSP. In September, we.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Had a case that was in trial in the Northern
District of Illinois. So going back and forth to the
courthouse from there, as I'm starting to field everything that
happens on the inflow of my ramp up to WSP,
the executive director where I was supposed to be working under,
left right.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Then, as often happens in businesses, there are moving parts
that not everyone may be privy to. The executive director
that Ryan was supposed to be working with, learning from
and jumping into the organization with he was gone. He
was on his own.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So I came on board, and I had this really
small team of people who believed in the thing right
like a few people, but the organizations sustainability really depended
on it grant. I didn't realize how much depended on
it until I actually got a look at the like
full on financials. I also didn't realize that we were
only in phase one of this big grant application.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
The grant that WSP had gotten, the very grant that
allowed them to bring Ryan on board full time, wasn't
actually theirs. And it's not just that the money hadn't
come through, that had only just submitted the application. And
to make things worse, the application it wasn't great.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I've never written a grant application in my life. I've
never run operations for aniche. You can read, I can read.
And here's the thing. The thing that I had going
for me in spades is that I knew the core deliverable.
I knew the thing that we did on a visceral level.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Ryan brand New, relatively unsupported new hire a WSP had
to make the call. He had to find a way
to fix the grant to save both his future with WSP,
but also the future of the organization itself.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
One of the first calls that I had was just
to the program officer and just basically it's said to them, like, hey, like,
I'm the new guy. Here's the challenges that I'm up against.
Like I've never run a nonprofit. I believe in the thing.
I know what we do. I know that this thing
can work, and I know this grant application isn't really
going to get us there. I read that the bridge
band due diligence, this is not where it needs to be,
and they said, yeah, you're you're right.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
There will never be an alternate universe where Ryan doesn't
make that call. We'll never know what would have happened
if he didn't speak up and say, hey, guys, this
isn't going to cut it. We've got to do it again.
But that's what it means to be unshakable. It's to
be able to see a problem, tackle it head on,
and be brave enough to step in whatever is waiting.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
For you, being very real and being able to be
vulnerable in that moment. I know that it was as
a game changer. You know, I'm not going to rewrite
this application by myself, right like, I need the buy
in from everybody that's on the team, and so I
need everybody to be able to contribute to the thing.
And I need to have regular communication with this large
granted and to be able to say, hey, you know,
here's the deadlines, here's that we're going to be able
to get you, and that ultimately allowed us to be
(21:16):
able to get that.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Grant Ryan was promoted to CEO in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I was both very concerned and very honored by that.
There is a deeply embedded notion of feeling like an impostor,
like I don't have the chops to be the CEO
of this organization. I'm not a fundraiser. Right then you
have six or seven months later you have the pandemic
that hits, and so I'm start to get my I
start to get myself a little bit more in the
zone of running an organization, and then that happens. Same
(21:43):
sort of thing of digging deep and relying on the
team that's around you. We were able to pivot during that.
We made it through and converted all of our programs
to being virtual and made it work. I love talking
about the metrics for where we are today, but so
much of that is because we have people that have
been here for years that we have that institutional knowledge,
because it takes so much longer to rebuild that institutional
knowledge if people are just coming in and out of
the organization.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Today, the Warrior Scholar Project has served twenty five hundred
people through their academic boot camps. Ninety nine percent of
participants go on to recommend the program to others.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
The percent of students that complete their degrees within six
years for all veterans is about forty seven percent. For
our students, it's about ninety percent. Wow, that will persist
and will actually complete their degrees. Different and importantly even
for the ten percent. So long as that's an informed choice.
If one of our students says, hey, I went to
this boot camp and I actually don't want to do
undergrad instead of want to pursue a trade or an apprenticeship,
or it's just not for me right now, that's also
(22:37):
a success. If you are making informed choices and you're
not just going to school because you have these benefits,
then that's.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Also a success.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
This year will serve just shy of four hundred people
thro those academic boot camps and about six hundred people
through other services, through career services, through graduate school services,
community college services, we have partnerships with community colleges, so
we'll serve about one thousand people this year alone, and
we have pretty aggressive plans to be able to grow
and scale and next years. We have a five year
strategic plan. We have twenty partner schools operating this summer.
(23:04):
I still feel like an apostacy listening to this podcast
on the way. I'm not an entrepreneur, right, so there's
always been this sense of, you know, do I belong
in this space? I feel strongly about what we do.
We've had a lot of success in what we do,
and that's one of the things that really helps me
to be able to say, yeah, I'm the right guy
for it.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So talk to me a little bit, Mork then about
let's break it down into two pieces if we could, so,
you know, and for our listeners who you know, many
of them may want to hire veterans just like we do,
or they may be veterans themselves who are looking to
start a business. What are the unique challenges of veterans
and the transition from military service to civilian life in
(23:48):
the private sector. And then the second part of my
question is what are the unique attributes that are really
special and powerful that veterans bring to the private sector
that private techtor employers can really avail themselves into.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Yeah, so I'm transitioning. I'm leaving this thing called the
military big organization, but it was actually my family. It's
probably the only thing I've known. It's the thing that
I've grown up with. It has a culture, and now
I have to walk away from that. In the military,
you had this thing called a mission. You knew what
that meant, you knew what it took to deliver against
(24:23):
that mission. You understood what the larger organization was trying
to accomplish. And when you leave out of the military,
you're not sure what the mission is. You're not sure
what the major contribution that organization is trying to make.
So sometimes that's a barrier for your success. And one
of the other biggest barriers been is we tend to
suffer in silence because we've been taught to solve problems.
(24:46):
We've been taught to deliver what I don't having to
constantly run back for instructions I want to deliver, So
I'll suffer in silence. I'll study it, but I just
don't know how to ask for help. So that's one
of our biggest barriers. The cultures different. We believe we're
impostors and we're afraid to ask for help because it's
a sign of weakness, and we're taught not to be weak.
(25:07):
And so now what do I bring to the table.
I bring to the table. I'm adaptive. I do know
how to problem solve. I know how to take large
organizations and do amazing things with them. I know operating
in cultures and countries that never imagine you'd ever find
yourself in. And I do that on a regular basis.
(25:27):
And I do that without a lot of guidance. And
so what company wouldn't want somebody like that in their organization.
It's just it's inherent in the culture and the military
that you get it. How do companies tap into that,
recognize us there, and then leverage it and then teach
them all the other things you need them to know.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Many of our listeners are either entrepreneurs, slash business owners,
or aspiring business owners. Talk to the veterans who are
listening today who are thinking about starting their own business
and why that make such great entrepreneurs.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
As you think about a veteran, whether it's a young
enlisted kid who's coming up, who becomes a squad leader,
who's given a number of individuals that they're responsible for.
That's a little small company that you're running, and you
keep layering that to the platoon sergeant, the platoon leader,
and that scope gets a little bit broader. They're literally
(26:23):
running small businesses. They have equipment that they have to maintain,
they have a product that they have to deliver. We're
already small business owners, we just don't think of it
that way. So the thing I'd say to a veteran,
you've already learned some of the basic skills and principles
of running a business. We just need to give you
the more technical ways that the business world looks at
(26:44):
that and maybe apply some of the financial literacy that
you need to be more successful. But you have that
in your DNA.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
As a way of closing this out, Mark, can you
talk about what JP Morgan Chase as a firm is
doing to support veterans both in our own workforce and
as entrepreneur And because I want to see it as
many ideas out there as I can, so that a
broader portion of the population gets behind this idea and
comes up with their own ways of solving is challenged.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Yeah, I would say, first, know that you're not out
there by yourself, and know that JP Morgan Chase is
just one avenue. We actually lead an organization called the
Veterans job Mission, which is like minded Companies, something that
started back in twenty eleven with eleven companies. Today is
over three hundred and fifteen companies who are doing the
same things that we're doing, trying to ensure veterans can
(27:31):
be successful post their military career, whether it's in employment
or whether it's in small business. And we do that
not just for veterans, because we've used the phrase veterans,
we're talking about military spouses as well, who I always
say is the secret softas.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
To the military.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
And so organizations like that are ways that you can
tap into it. But it's also organizations like the Institute
for Veterans and Military Families IVMF, or Bunker Labs or
some of the nonprofits that we work with that I
would argue you are great places to start. When you're
saying I want to start a business, Okay, let them
help guide you in the early stages of that. Am
(28:08):
I really ready to start a business? Do I have
the right knowledge? Have I started to build a network
and then understand that you don't have to know all
the answers today? And that's to me, what JP, Morgan
Chase and other companies are doing is to help point
you to those answers so that you don't have to
discover all of those things on your own.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Well, it's a rich resource for a whole country in
terms of our veteran Phillips call it our veteran families
because it's veterans and their spouses and families. And I
hope we take more advantage of it and help them,
you know, lift themselves up as they as they transition
into civilian life.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Well, Ben, thank you for shedding a light on this community.
I think they are a treasure that we should be
proud of and make sure we're helping them be successful.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Ryan, what advice do you have for aspiring business owners?
And I accept that you don't give yourself as an entrepreneur.
That's okay. You're running something, you're running something from small
to large. Yeah, some of our listeners didn't start their businesses,
they bought them, so it's kind of the same. And
I'd like to know from you, you know, if you
could impart a little bit of wisdom that you've learned
along the way that you wish you'd known back when. Sure,
(29:14):
what would that be?
Speaker 3 (29:15):
It is?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Everything is about relationships. Everything is about relationships. To give
you one quantifiable thing. Two years ago we got a
five million dollar Mackenzie Scott grant or a five million
dollar organization, So that is a huge transformative, transformative. I
don't know which relationship triggered us getting on our radar,
but it absolutely came down to a relationship. I think
(29:38):
about like the reason that I'm at WSP to begin
with in twenty eighteen, just connecting with one of the
co founders and saying, hey, let's meet up. You know,
there's no job that I would rather have than this one,
And every single thing that we do comes down to
the value of relationships, and that not just being something
which is transactional. It's not like you and I'm meeting
and saying what am I going to get out of
this and what am I potentially going to give to you.
(29:58):
It's much more about the longer term view of saying, hey,
there's something to just being able to build that relationship
and then to be able to trust each other and
to build your network in a really authentic and meaningful way.
You don't know where that goes, but holy cow, does
that pay dividends if you really lean into it.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Amazing advice for everyone. Ryan what an inspiring story. Thank
you for sharing it, and thank you for being on
the show.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Thanks so much for listening to The Unshakeables. If you
liked this episode, please rate and review it. It'll help
our show find more listeners. I'm Ben Walter and this
is The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio
from iHeartMedia.
After years of work, Ryan Pavel had finally landed his
dream job with the Warrior Scholar Project. He was a
military veteran turned lawyer who dreamed of working with other veterans.
The Warrior Scholar Project had just received a huge grant
that would allow them to bring him on as executive director,
but right before he was supposed to begin, his boss
suddenly left the organization.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So I came on board. And I had this really
small team of people who believed in the thing, like
a few people, and we had enough money in the
bank to be able to pay the bills. But the
organization sustainability really depended on it grant. I didn't realize
how much depended on it until I actually got a
look at the.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Full on financials.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I also didn't realize that we were only in phase
one of this big grant application.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Okay, let me just make sure I have this right.
You come on board on spec. You don't know how
on spec it is. You desperately need this grant way
more than you realize. You desperately need this grant, and
it's a little further away than you sort of were
led to believe. Yeah shit, all right, Yeah, welcome to
(01:05):
The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia.
I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
And I'm Tanya Nebo, a lawyer and consultant for business owners.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
On The Unshakeables, we're sharing the daring stories of small
business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories
of how they got through it. And today I want
to introduce you to someone special who will be joining
us on this episode. Mark Elliott is Managing Director and
Global head of Military and Veteran Affairs for JP Morgan Chase,
where I work, and we're excited to have him join
(01:38):
us today. Hi. Mark, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Ben, Thank you for having me and thank you for
hosting this. I think this is important for not just
the veteran community, but the entire small business community.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
We're fortunate enough to be colleagues, but JP Morgan Chase
is a really big place, So why don't you tell
everyone what it is you do for the firm.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
I do lead our military invention affairs here at JP
Morgan Chase. I pinch myself every day just to know
that I get to do this. It's a way to
give back to a community that I spent twenty eight
years serving alongside.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So Mark, hopefully you know what our show is all about,
and I think you've heard a couple episodes, but I
wanted to have you join us today because you are
a veteran and just like Ryan, you work with veterans
all the time as they transition from military life into
civilian life.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Well, Ben, thank you for shedding a light on this community.
I think they are a treasure that we should be
proud of and make sure we're helping them be successful.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
On today's episode, the Warrior Scholar Project from Washington, d C. So,
first of all, I just want to say, in front
of everyone, I say thank you for your service.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Thank you so much for your support. It's actually really
interesting even that question about how veterans respond to that
question of thank you for your service. That's really topical
in the veteran community. There's a school of people that
really reject that as like something that people don't like
being thanked for their service. There's a whole lot of
conversation about it, and it took me years before I
heard somebody else say to do you didn't at all? No,
but but put to that point, right, that that my
response to that is actually what I found that is
(03:04):
the most comfortable that you say thank you for your service,
and then I always respond, you know, thank you for
your support.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Ryan, as you'll hear throughout this episode, has a complicated
relationship with the military, but one thing is crystal clear.
His support for veterans is unwavering. To understand how Ryan
got to the Warrior Scholar project, we have to go
back to the beginning.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
I grew up in a upper middle class suburb, very privileged,
upbringing only child.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Very very fortunate in that regard.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
And since I grew up outside Chicago, with the school
everybody wanted to go to was University of Illinois, and
I got rejected, and rightly so. I was not a
particularly compelling candidate. I was not achieving my potential. My
extracurriculars were track and cross country and getting last in
a lot of those races.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
After that rejection, he didn't know where to turn. Then
he spoke with a recruiter from the Marine Corps.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Some things clicked for me.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
The path that I thought that I was going to do,
the path that seemed easy, is not the path that
I'm actually going to follow. Of just going to school
and taking a major and studying something for the sake
of studying something. It seemed like a really good way
to be able to wipe the slate clean, at least
of the junior ranks the military. It's a true meritocracy.
All that matters is can you do this number of
pull ups? Doesn't matter where you came from or anything
else like that. I like that a lot service of
(04:18):
country and a lot of pride, something that I could
take a lot of pride ownership over.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
So Ryan he joined up. He went to basic training
and took a series of aptitude tests to see what
career he would be best suited for. His testing indicated
he would excel in languages. So he set out learning
Arabic all day.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Every day. You're learning from native speakers.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's a tough language too, it's not a Roman alphabet
the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Right, And you're not just a college student either, right,
Like the Marine Corps still owns you, right, And so
you are doing all the formations and all the training
for the Marine Corps. But then you know your job
is really to be able to actually learn that language.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
And how that go well, ups and downs?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Right, It was not a particularly easy language right for
me to learn, and so I needed some additional tutoring
and I ended up doing okay. But the thing about
it is that it all that matters is one test
at the end.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
But you have to hit a certain line and you
can either be a linguist or you can't. And I
failed basically everybody around me passed it, and so it's
sort of this series of failures. It's like, okay, well,
I'm seventeen years old. I get rejected from you know,
via Like okay, well, now I'm going to be an
Arabic linguist. I tell everybody for a year and a
half between boot camp and all these things, but I'm
moving towards this thing, and I take this test. Well wait,
now I failed this thing too.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Ryan was given an option. He could either find another
specialty or he could double down, work harder, and retake
the test in eight weeks. Ryan decided to focus and
go for it.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I learned probably more Arabic in those eight weeks than
and the rest of the sixty three weeks combined. Wow,
And so I took it again and I passed, and
so then I was able to leave that duty station
went at North Carolina, and I went back and forth
to a Rock from there a couple times between two
thousand and twenty ten.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
During his time in the military, Ryan worked as an
Arabic translator.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
You are working in a secure environment and you are
translating whatever comes across your desk. We lived in a bunker,
just kind of buried into a dune on the side
of a base. I worked the night shift, so it's
twelve hours on, twelve hours off for seven months, for
seven days a week. So you get kind of weird, right,
you know. Imagine that the folks that you're with, like
you get real close in real weird ways. We were
attached to an infantry unit and a human intelligence unit.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
He wasn't only in the bunker though. On his second tour,
he went out into the field.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
A lot of my memories from Irock are those ones
when we were out in the field and actually translating
and meeting people from the communities. I grew up a
lot like just being able to be around different cultures
effectively kicked me into high gear in a way that
I was not feeling when I was seventeen.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
At that point, Ryan had been in for five years,
but he had never stopped wanting to go to school.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Two thirds of enlisted service members are first gen college students,
and so I was in the minority that I was
not a first gen college student, which means that I
had this familial support to be able to say, hey, like,
college is a thing that you should be doing, but
there still are these challenges in terms of what that
transition can look like for me.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So I'm sure many of you have heard of the
GI Bill, which was first introduced after World War Two
and provided veterans with a host of benefits, one of
the best known being tuition coverage for a service member
looking to attend college or vocational school. What we have
now is a little different, and it was passed in
two thousand and eight. This bill, the one Ryan would
have access to, covered the cost of tuition for any
(07:22):
university in the veterans' home state. One critique about the
implementation of that bill is that there's low awareness among
service members about the options that are available to them
as they transition out of the military. Many veterans end
up going to the college or university that advertises the
most to them, rather than the institution that might be
the best fit for their academic goals and needs as
a student. In twenty ten, Ryan was in the same boat.
(07:46):
Unsure of where to turn. He did what millions of
people do every day when they're looking for answers.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I went to Google, and I typed in on Arabic
college and veteran and I applied to the schools that
popped up. So not like the most sophisticated, you know,
University of Michigan popped up at top of that list.
So many Arab Americans live in that area that they
have a phenomenal Arabic program at University of Michigan. So
I applied and was promptly rejected.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It was the University of Illinois all over again. But
unlike seventeen year old Ryan, who pivoted former Marine, Ryan
didn't back down.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I called the admission's office and said, hey, I was
very interested in your institution. Could you give me any
sort of input on what led to that rejection. They
connected me to somebody who'd actual viewed my application, and
she was very blunt about it. She's like, you got
some good things you want for you, but you haven't
shown you can be a good student, which is fair, right,
Michigan requires people to be good to studies.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Ryan knew he could study. He shown himself that during
his Arabic courses. So he enrolled at the community college
near his base in North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
While I was still active DUTEY in my last couple
of months, just whatever the classes were that were available,
which is a really common path for a lot of
veterans using community college.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
It's one of the most underappreciated assets we have in
this country. It's a whole separate podcaste. We agreed completely
under valued, underfunded, underappreciated all across the board.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Absolutely, And I was able to transfer to University of Michigan.
I was there for two years, took as many courses
as I possibly could to get my degree as quickly
as I could, which is not the way that I
advise veterans to go about getting undergraduate digression degree in
international relations.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So Mark, this is usually the part in our story
where we take a moment and talk about what we've
just heard. When I first met Ryan, we were introduced
and I said it's nice to meet you. Thank you
for your service, and he said thank you for your support.
And then we got into a discussion. He said that
there are a number of veterans who are very uncomfortable
with the phrase thank you for your service, and I
just wanted to understand that a bit more because I've
always felt, as a patriot so very proud to say
(09:43):
thank you, because I genuinely am grateful for people who
make the sacrifice to serve our country. Where where does
that come from?
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Different veterans are going to feel different about that type
of thank you. How that's manifested, I think is really
what Ryan was probably trying to say. How is that
mana infested in the actions of your organization, the actions
of your community, the actions of you maybe as an individual,
I think is where maybe the friction into that comes.
(10:12):
I always say, thank you for your service is important
to me, but let's see how does your organization actually
do that on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So that's really helpful because I'm educating myself now. Ryan
went to school, but many service members don't take that path.
Talk to me about other transitions out of the military.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Some people say I'm going to stay four or five
years and I'm going to get out. I was one
of those, and then some say I'm going to stay
thirty years and they get out at five and so
you just never know. Assignments happen every two to three years,
and so you know there's a transition opportunity every two
or three years. It just may not be a transition
out of the military.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
So when you talk to veter into a transitioning from
active duty into the private sector in some form, how
do you tell them to think about figuring out that transition.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
It's all about prepping yourself. And to me, that's what
this is all about. This is what helping service members
transition is all about, is making sure they are prepared.
If we can build relationship with service members while they're
still serving, to help them tap into skills that they
didn't know they had, help them develop skills that they
didn't know were dormant. You're not sure about how do
(11:22):
I value at You're not sure what you bring to
the table, and we're going to point you to some
resources that can help you think through that. Do you
want to go to school? If you want to go
to school, now, let us help you. Warrior Scholar Project
is one of those organizations that can help you as
a transition service member into college. How do you become successful.
How do you build the right relationships network You may
(11:45):
be working because you actually have a family now that
you took out of the military with you. Let's let
us help you think through how do you do all
of those things.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Back to Ryan, he got his degree in two years,
which is not something he would advise people to do,
by the way, but at the time he just didn't
know better. It was just one of a few challenges
he never anticipated about returning to civilian life as a
college student.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
One of the big challenges is, particularly when you're junior enlisted,
the question of why is not acceptable. Like if you
were to take it to the extreme example of a
boot camp of a drones Starctter says, you know, do
fifty push ups and you say.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Why, it's not going to go over well right.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
In the college environment, if you don't ask why, then
you're missing a huge part of it. If you don't
understand a concept, really understanding why going to office hours
doing those things.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
So there's a big.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Challenge there in terms of the difference of community and
in terms of what the culture expects of you in
one environment versus another. You can short circuit that if
you really directly ask the question of what's your response
the first time that somebody asks you if you've killed anybody?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Right? Like, that's a very stark question.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
But you should think about your answer to that question
before somebody asks it. It's a crazy thing to ask somebody,
it is, but it happens. How do you have these
sorts of discussions, How do you join student groups? How
do you go to these meetings? How do you embrace
everything that this college campus and this college unity has
to offer. But I needed some fellow veterans to walk
me through that.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Ryan's identity as a veteran stayed with him as a
student and then as he transitioned into the workforce.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So I wanted to continue to serve. So I actually
taught with Teach for America for a couple of years
in Detroit. My taught high school hardest job I've ever
had by some margin. I was not cut out for
that work. I committed to doing two years and there
was no chance that I was going to quit. But
it was not the best application of my skill set.
So I went to law school. And around that time
that I was going from finishing up my teaching requirement
(13:36):
to go to law school, I've heard about Warrior Scholar Project.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
We've heard this name, the Warrior Scholar Project a few
times now, but let's talk about what it is. The
Warrior Scholar Project is a national nonprofit five oh one
c three that equips enlisted veterans to succeed in higher
education classrooms and beyond. It was founded in twenty twelve
by Christopher Howell. Howell wanted to go to school when
(14:00):
he got out of the military, but he wasn't sure
he'd be able to To help him, Howell's brother designed
a crash course curriculum in student life that prepared Howell
to apply for university programs. Christopher went on to study
at Yale and that crash course went on to become
the Warrior Scholar Project's curriculum. He started this program to
help service members with two friends also students, and that's
(14:22):
the program Ryan came across while he was at the
University of Michigan. This is something I want to underscore
about this episode. Unlike the other folks we've spoken to
here on the Unshakables, Ryan was not the singular founder
of the Warrior Scholar Project, but he did found the
first chapter. Outside of its original incarnation at Yale.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
The first branch that they allowed us to really be
able to franchise what they were doing at Yale. That
was a very easy decision for me to be able
to do that because they were doing something at Yale
in this Warrior Scholar Project classroom that was unlike any
other transition program, any other classroom environment that I had
been a part of.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
It was this like intoxicating thing.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
The Warrior Scholar curricul KALEM creates a highly structured environment
where enlisted service members feel confident to prepare them for
academic life.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
It is primarily a series of academic boot camps where
you are taking enlisted service members who want to be
able to pursue their undergraduate studies, and we put them
in a safe, but ungraded, unaccredited environment that is really demanding.
We mean it when we call it a boot camp.
It's about seventy five hours of work per week, and
they are on these college campuses experiencing what it's like
to succeed at Columbia, at University of Chicago, at Yale,
(15:31):
at University of Michigan, at schools like this, and they
come out the other end of that ready to go
wherever they come out.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Of that with do this while they're already in school
or in prep to go to school.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
It's a mix. They cannot yet have a bachelor's degree.
For most of them, they're saying either I want to
make a change. I'm currently pursuing my studies and I
want to make a change, or they're people that are
just saying, Hey, I'm about to get out of the military.
I want to pursue my undergraduate studies. How do I
do this? So it's very much about confidence. It's about
saying no, you actually do have what it takes that Yale,
there was this legendary professor Charles Hill. They're reading Alexis
(16:00):
to Tookeville's Democracy in America and at the time there
were twelve veterans that were in the classroom, tatted at
vets and they're going toe to toe with this professor
on tokfille. It's a quality of conditions argument and they're engaging.
They've all clearly done the reading. It's just like what again,
Like what universe?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
What is this?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I asked afterwards, is this just like what classes are
like at Yale? And the press was like, no, this
is this is not your average class. There's something going
on here, and it was really about veterans respond really
well when you throw it on the gauntlet and you
challenge them.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Ryan loved working with WSP. He finished his own studies
at the University of Michigan and went on to law
school at the University of Virginia. I want to take
a moment here. This is someone who didn't get into
college the first time he applied, and now he's going
to one of the best law schools in the country.
Anything is possible.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
For five years, that was my part time involvement, was
going back every summer and doing this program.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
While Ryan was part time, the program wanted him full time.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Right before law school, I had this would go I'm
get to my second program the second time I had
run it, they offered me the position to come on
board and to become the executive director. The founder was
leaving and they wanted to be able to grow it.
And even though I felt so strongly about this thing,
I said no. And I wondered for years if that
was like the greatest professional mistake of my life, was
saying no to this thing that I really believed in.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
That little feeling that tickled his brain to enlist in
the Marines was also tickling him again. He wanted to
work with the Warrior Scholar Project, but he knew he
wasn't quite ready.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I couldn't really identify it when I turned down that
job to become the Warrior Scholar Project executive director back
in twenty fourteen. I couldn't have really told you here
are the seven things that I need to be able
to learn before I would feel qualified for it.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
He worked with WSP in the summers, graduated law school,
and went on to start at a large firm.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
I intended to be there for a few years, build
the connections, work a lot, make some money, and then
figure out what's next.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
For him, what was next was a federal clerkship, then
going back to public service. He still kept in touch
with the Warrior Scholar founders and would meet up with
them socially. One day, they were all out to lunch.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And I talked about that moment of when they offered
me that position, that executive directorship in twenty fourteen, and
I said, you know, I always think like, if only
there was a way I could work for WSP full
time now, And you just said, well, what if there
was the.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Warrior Scholar Project had just received a large grant that
would allow them to expand the team. They wanted Ryan
to come on board a COO working under the executive
director for the company. Ryan was over the moon. He
accepted the position in August, and he was winding down
his last case with his law firm. As he was
getting up to speed on WSP. In September, we.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Had a case that was in trial in the Northern
District of Illinois. So going back and forth to the
courthouse from there, as I'm starting to field everything that
happens on the inflow of my ramp up to WSP,
the executive director where I was supposed to be working under,
left right.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Then, as often happens in businesses, there are moving parts
that not everyone may be privy to. The executive director
that Ryan was supposed to be working with, learning from
and jumping into the organization with he was gone. He
was on his own.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So I came on board, and I had this really
small team of people who believed in the thing right
like a few people, but the organizations sustainability really depended
on it grant. I didn't realize how much depended on
it until I actually got a look at the like
full on financials. I also didn't realize that we were
only in phase one of this big grant application.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
The grant that WSP had gotten, the very grant that
allowed them to bring Ryan on board full time, wasn't
actually theirs. And it's not just that the money hadn't
come through, that had only just submitted the application. And
to make things worse, the application it wasn't great.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
I've never written a grant application in my life. I've
never run operations for aniche. You can read, I can read.
And here's the thing. The thing that I had going
for me in spades is that I knew the core deliverable.
I knew the thing that we did on a visceral level.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Ryan brand New, relatively unsupported new hire a WSP had
to make the call. He had to find a way
to fix the grant to save both his future with WSP,
but also the future of the organization itself.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
One of the first calls that I had was just
to the program officer and just basically it's said to them, like, hey, like,
I'm the new guy. Here's the challenges that I'm up against.
Like I've never run a nonprofit. I believe in the thing.
I know what we do. I know that this thing
can work, and I know this grant application isn't really
going to get us there. I read that the bridge
band due diligence, this is not where it needs to be,
and they said, yeah, you're you're right.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
There will never be an alternate universe where Ryan doesn't
make that call. We'll never know what would have happened
if he didn't speak up and say, hey, guys, this
isn't going to cut it. We've got to do it again.
But that's what it means to be unshakable. It's to
be able to see a problem, tackle it head on,
and be brave enough to step in whatever is waiting.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
For you, being very real and being able to be
vulnerable in that moment. I know that it was as
a game changer. You know, I'm not going to rewrite
this application by myself, right like, I need the buy
in from everybody that's on the team, and so I
need everybody to be able to contribute to the thing.
And I need to have regular communication with this large
granted and to be able to say, hey, you know,
here's the deadlines, here's that we're going to be able
to get you, and that ultimately allowed us to be
(21:16):
able to get that.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Grant Ryan was promoted to CEO in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I was both very concerned and very honored by that.
There is a deeply embedded notion of feeling like an impostor,
like I don't have the chops to be the CEO
of this organization. I'm not a fundraiser. Right then you
have six or seven months later you have the pandemic
that hits, and so I'm start to get my I
start to get myself a little bit more in the
zone of running an organization, and then that happens. Same
(21:43):
sort of thing of digging deep and relying on the
team that's around you. We were able to pivot during that.
We made it through and converted all of our programs
to being virtual and made it work. I love talking
about the metrics for where we are today, but so
much of that is because we have people that have
been here for years that we have that institutional knowledge,
because it takes so much longer to rebuild that institutional
knowledge if people are just coming in and out of
the organization.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Today, the Warrior Scholar Project has served twenty five hundred
people through their academic boot camps. Ninety nine percent of
participants go on to recommend the program to others.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
The percent of students that complete their degrees within six
years for all veterans is about forty seven percent. For
our students, it's about ninety percent. Wow, that will persist
and will actually complete their degrees. Different and importantly even
for the ten percent. So long as that's an informed choice.
If one of our students says, hey, I went to
this boot camp and I actually don't want to do
undergrad instead of want to pursue a trade or an apprenticeship,
or it's just not for me right now, that's also
(22:37):
a success. If you are making informed choices and you're
not just going to school because you have these benefits,
then that's.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Also a success.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
This year will serve just shy of four hundred people
thro those academic boot camps and about six hundred people
through other services, through career services, through graduate school services,
community college services, we have partnerships with community colleges, so
we'll serve about one thousand people this year alone, and
we have pretty aggressive plans to be able to grow
and scale and next years. We have a five year
strategic plan. We have twenty partner schools operating this summer.
(23:04):
I still feel like an apostacy listening to this podcast
on the way. I'm not an entrepreneur, right, so there's
always been this sense of, you know, do I belong
in this space? I feel strongly about what we do.
We've had a lot of success in what we do,
and that's one of the things that really helps me
to be able to say, yeah, I'm the right guy
for it.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So talk to me a little bit, Mork then about
let's break it down into two pieces if we could, so,
you know, and for our listeners who you know, many
of them may want to hire veterans just like we do,
or they may be veterans themselves who are looking to
start a business. What are the unique challenges of veterans
and the transition from military service to civilian life in
(23:48):
the private sector. And then the second part of my
question is what are the unique attributes that are really
special and powerful that veterans bring to the private sector
that private techtor employers can really avail themselves into.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Yeah, so I'm transitioning. I'm leaving this thing called the
military big organization, but it was actually my family. It's
probably the only thing I've known. It's the thing that
I've grown up with. It has a culture, and now
I have to walk away from that. In the military,
you had this thing called a mission. You knew what
that meant, you knew what it took to deliver against
(24:23):
that mission. You understood what the larger organization was trying
to accomplish. And when you leave out of the military,
you're not sure what the mission is. You're not sure
what the major contribution that organization is trying to make.
So sometimes that's a barrier for your success. And one
of the other biggest barriers been is we tend to
suffer in silence because we've been taught to solve problems.
(24:46):
We've been taught to deliver what I don't having to
constantly run back for instructions I want to deliver, So
I'll suffer in silence. I'll study it, but I just
don't know how to ask for help. So that's one
of our biggest barriers. The cultures different. We believe we're
impostors and we're afraid to ask for help because it's
a sign of weakness, and we're taught not to be weak.
(25:07):
And so now what do I bring to the table.
I bring to the table. I'm adaptive. I do know
how to problem solve. I know how to take large
organizations and do amazing things with them. I know operating
in cultures and countries that never imagine you'd ever find
yourself in. And I do that on a regular basis.
(25:27):
And I do that without a lot of guidance. And
so what company wouldn't want somebody like that in their organization.
It's just it's inherent in the culture and the military
that you get it. How do companies tap into that,
recognize us there, and then leverage it and then teach
them all the other things you need them to know.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Many of our listeners are either entrepreneurs, slash business owners,
or aspiring business owners. Talk to the veterans who are
listening today who are thinking about starting their own business
and why that make such great entrepreneurs.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
As you think about a veteran, whether it's a young
enlisted kid who's coming up, who becomes a squad leader,
who's given a number of individuals that they're responsible for.
That's a little small company that you're running, and you
keep layering that to the platoon sergeant, the platoon leader,
and that scope gets a little bit broader. They're literally
(26:23):
running small businesses. They have equipment that they have to maintain,
they have a product that they have to deliver. We're
already small business owners, we just don't think of it
that way. So the thing I'd say to a veteran,
you've already learned some of the basic skills and principles
of running a business. We just need to give you
the more technical ways that the business world looks at
(26:44):
that and maybe apply some of the financial literacy that
you need to be more successful. But you have that
in your DNA.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
As a way of closing this out, Mark, can you
talk about what JP Morgan Chase as a firm is
doing to support veterans both in our own workforce and
as entrepreneur And because I want to see it as
many ideas out there as I can, so that a
broader portion of the population gets behind this idea and
comes up with their own ways of solving is challenged.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Yeah, I would say, first, know that you're not out
there by yourself, and know that JP Morgan Chase is
just one avenue. We actually lead an organization called the
Veterans job Mission, which is like minded Companies, something that
started back in twenty eleven with eleven companies. Today is
over three hundred and fifteen companies who are doing the
same things that we're doing, trying to ensure veterans can
(27:31):
be successful post their military career, whether it's in employment
or whether it's in small business. And we do that
not just for veterans, because we've used the phrase veterans,
we're talking about military spouses as well, who I always
say is the secret softas.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
To the military.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
And so organizations like that are ways that you can
tap into it. But it's also organizations like the Institute
for Veterans and Military Families IVMF, or Bunker Labs or
some of the nonprofits that we work with that I
would argue you are great places to start. When you're
saying I want to start a business, Okay, let them
help guide you in the early stages of that. Am
(28:08):
I really ready to start a business? Do I have
the right knowledge? Have I started to build a network
and then understand that you don't have to know all
the answers today? And that's to me, what JP, Morgan
Chase and other companies are doing is to help point
you to those answers so that you don't have to
discover all of those things on your own.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Well, it's a rich resource for a whole country in
terms of our veteran Phillips call it our veteran families
because it's veterans and their spouses and families. And I
hope we take more advantage of it and help them,
you know, lift themselves up as they as they transition
into civilian life.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Well, Ben, thank you for shedding a light on this community.
I think they are a treasure that we should be
proud of and make sure we're helping them be successful.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Ryan, what advice do you have for aspiring business owners?
And I accept that you don't give yourself as an entrepreneur.
That's okay. You're running something, you're running something from small
to large. Yeah, some of our listeners didn't start their businesses,
they bought them, so it's kind of the same. And
I'd like to know from you, you know, if you
could impart a little bit of wisdom that you've learned
along the way that you wish you'd known back when. Sure,
(29:14):
what would that be?
Speaker 3 (29:15):
It is?
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Everything is about relationships. Everything is about relationships. To give
you one quantifiable thing. Two years ago we got a
five million dollar Mackenzie Scott grant or a five million
dollar organization, So that is a huge transformative, transformative. I
don't know which relationship triggered us getting on our radar,
but it absolutely came down to a relationship. I think
(29:38):
about like the reason that I'm at WSP to begin
with in twenty eighteen, just connecting with one of the
co founders and saying, hey, let's meet up. You know,
there's no job that I would rather have than this one,
And every single thing that we do comes down to
the value of relationships, and that not just being something
which is transactional. It's not like you and I'm meeting
and saying what am I going to get out of
this and what am I potentially going to give to you.
(29:58):
It's much more about the longer term view of saying, hey,
there's something to just being able to build that relationship
and then to be able to trust each other and
to build your network in a really authentic and meaningful way.
You don't know where that goes, but holy cow, does
that pay dividends if you really lean into it.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Amazing advice for everyone. Ryan what an inspiring story. Thank
you for sharing it, and thank you for being on
the show.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Thanks so much for listening to The Unshakeables. If you
liked this episode, please rate and review it. It'll help
our show find more listeners. I'm Ben Walter and this
is The Unshakeables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio
from iHeartMedia.
Hosts And Creators
Ben Walter
Kathleen Griffith
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