November 11, 2021 • 42 mins
Airman Nishant Roy talks to host Rob Riggle about his choice to join the military and what it was like deploying in the months following the attacks of September 11th. Nishant discusses his storied civilian career working for the Clinton Foundation, Goldman Sachs, the USDA and USAID, and his current role as Chief of Staff to the CEO of Chobani.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Please be advised the following episode contains references to violence
and may not be suitable for all audiences. Welcome to
Veterans You Should Know a podcast from My Heart Radio
that celebrates the men and women who have honorably answered
a call to serve their country and the armed Forces.
(00:22):
I'm Rob Real, actor, comedian, and former Marine raw In
this special series Honoring Veterans Day, I'll be speaking with
four incredible veterans as they detail challenges they've faced and
how their experiences in military service served them in their
everyday civilian lives. I totally treated like it was the military,
(00:44):
so I broke it down and end up graduating in
just two years, get that four year degree done in
two years, thankfully graduated with honors, I think because it
was just so focused. In our final episode of season two,
we are speaking with Nishan Roy. Nashan is the first
in his family to serve in the U. S. Military.
He chose to enlist in the Air Force following high
(01:05):
school and followed a career path in the security forces.
Following his time in the military, he enrolled in St.
John's University and finished a four year degree in two years.
Nashat's varied civilian career includes working for the Clinton Foundation,
Goldman Sachs, the U S Department of Agriculture, and the
(01:27):
Agency for Internal Development. Deshan currently is the chief of
staff for the CEO of Shabani Nashat. Welcome to the show.
Tell me where you from, where you grew up, and
(01:47):
then tell me how your path crossed with the military. Robbed.
First off, thank you for your service, and it's truly
an honor to be on the show. I appreciate it.
So I guess taking it back to two thousand, which
is when I graduated from high school. I grew up
in Long Island, New York, in Great Next So if
(02:08):
you're happy to be familiar with the books The Great Gatsby, Uh,
it was West Egg and so I wasn't quite sure
what I was going to do coming out of high school.
I was a little bit of a jackass during high school,
didn't really take it as seriously as I should. I
think I barely passed to kind of get it through
high school. But ultimately I've come from an Indian family
(02:29):
and so my my dad kind of sat me down.
He said, well, where'd you get into school? You got
into the community college local and you got into Arizona State,
and then what are your choices? Like, what are we
gonna do here? And so I said, actually, I think
I'm not going to do the education piece yet. I
think I want to go serve the country. My dad,
who immigrated here in nineteen seventy nine so that he
(02:50):
could provide his children a better way of life and
not necessarily go through kind of difficult hardships, said well, okay,
what part of that equation is you getting an engineering
or PhD or mp D? And I said, none of it.
You know, I really want to actually go travel the country.
I want to pay for college on my own. At
that point, it's two thousands, so there's no conflicts going on.
(03:11):
So my dad said, you know what, all right, I'll
indulge this. Let's invite all four branch recruiters into our
house and let's have a conversation with each one of them.
And we met the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air
Force recruiters. I was going in enlisted. So my dad
asked really good questions and whatnot. I was gung ho
about actually joining the Marine Corps. Would love that, Rob,
(03:33):
I'm sure but my my father said, look, at the
end of the day, after having these conversations with these recruiters,
I'm actually pretty bullish about either the Navy or the
Air Force for you because this focus on education and
there's some transferable skill sets that you can kind of
apply into the private sector at some point in time,
so you have some additional optionality. Absolutely absolutely. And by
(03:55):
the way, just so you know, my father very similar, Uh,
we want to to talk to all everybody. Uh, and
actually was like, you know, the Air Force a pretty
good deal here and no DA and so I understand
that as well. But back to your story. So the
recruiters come and go, and the best salesman out of
all of them was the Air Force. Yes, I would say,
(04:17):
I would say they kind of checked more of the
boxes for for for dad, I was really more just
kind of bullish about joining the service. And what planted
the sea for me was my grandfather, my father's father.
He had actually worked for the British Air Force in
India because the Brits at colonized India at one point
(04:38):
in time, and so I that kind of planted the
sea for me about military service and the structure, the discipline,
the ability to travel. Now was my chance to kind
of go put this into reality, and so I said,
all right, let's do the Air Force. And I started
initially coming in to focus on the light, wide band
(05:00):
and telemetory systems. So there I was supposed to be
basically setting up communications and remote areas fast forward within
my my enlisting time, I basically said, well, I want
to do something a little bit more hands on, you know,
enter Lackland Air Force based in San Antonio, Texas, and
they start introducing us to the pair of rescue team,
the combat control team, and so I said, I wanted
(05:22):
to do security forces actually, and because it's it's the
basically the infantry of the United States Air Force. And
and so that's how I kind of got my entrance
into the into the military, and how we got into
security forces as a career field. That's fantastic. The security
forces in the Air Force are outstanding. They really are
very well trained, incredible skill set from a war fighting
(05:44):
perspective and security perspective because you're always on the cutting
edge of technology and communications and you know, go down
the list of I T possibilities. Air forces always out
there in front as they should be. They're the most
advanced force we have. So you find yourself in the
security force, you find yourself developing really amazing skill sets.
(06:07):
As far as I can tell, did you ever have
an opportunity to deploy or or go forward with all this?
I did, actually, uh, and and it sounds like reading
some of your history, Rob, I think we may have
actually overlapped in in Afghanistan at at some point in time.
So eleven happens. I'm actually at M sixty school in
San Antonio, Texas, the the goodal M sixty machine gun.
(06:30):
We had just completed our full training. We're now deployable,
and we got orders to go support an operation in
Afghanistan to start to take out some of these camps,
the training camps. I believe we got orders around October seven,
I want to say, to start engaging in support of
(06:51):
the bombing of some of these things. So our our
role in it was to get in secure the airfield
within Kandahar and later on make sure the assets our
aircraft were secured. And so that's uh, that was our role.
And I was on the ground for about three months
or so. Oh wow, So this is the fall of
two thousand one. Yes, Oh we did. I'm sure we
(07:11):
did cross paths then, whether it was going through K
two or because I was in the north. I was
in Missouri Sharief. But but there wasn't many. There wasn't
a whole lot there in the fall of two thousand one.
We were a very small footprint. Yes, as you can.
You remember. Uh, now they've got freaking burger kings and
stuff at these bases. You know, back then we didn't
have porterfar We're still digging our own holes. So so
(07:34):
what was your experience like then? I would say, you know,
that deployment first off was eye opening. You know, you train,
you train, you train, and then it's a matter of execution.
And I remember just almost having a little bit of
an outer body experience on that first deployment to kanadaar
I took it so personally, right, I'm from New York.
(07:55):
Why are we in Afghanistan? It's because we got attacked
on nine eleven and couldn't have been more proud to
be able to do something. The whole spirit here within
the United States was it's a big call to action.
Everybody wants to do something, even if supporting your local firehouse,
your local police Department, anything in the community that you
could do to bring us all together, and I couldn't.
(08:18):
I was so unbelievably proud to just take the fight
to the enemy. Having come from New York. Because I
just took it, took it that much more personally. It
wasn't just our country that was attacked, it was our city.
I'm right there with you. I was in New York
on not eleven. I took it very personally. Um, I
was in the reserves at the time. I just left
active duty and I've only been a resource for a year,
uh and volunteer to go back on active duty because
(08:40):
of that very same thing. I took it very personally.
It felt like a call, and I just felt lucky
that I was in uniform and I was in a
position that I could go do something about it. The
Shot completed his second deployment in two thousand three to
kirk Cook, Iraq. His mission was intelligence gathering and converting
an old Iraqi Force space into a US Air Force space.
(09:03):
When the Shot returned home, he was met with a
new set of challenges and obstacles to overcome, but he
also found an appreciation for some of the values instilled
in him from his time overseas. Was there a takeaway?
Was there something where you went, Wow, that is a
lesson I'll never forget. Um. Did you have any moments
(09:24):
like that? Did you have any epiphanies like that? I
think the big takeaway was, of course, on teamwork and
what it means right. You you say what you're going
to do and then you do what you're actually going
to say, and you don't actually necessarily see that in
the civilian sector, as you were saying, and that's a
point of frustration. But when I came back, I was
frustrated the fact that that folks were saying that they
(09:45):
were going to do things, they had a more kind
of a political lens to why they were doing it.
It wasn't necessarily about the mission. It was about self preservation,
I think for folks more than anything else. And that
was that's been a bit frustrating still to kind of
observe as a behavior. And when I came back, I
would say I needed to find that mission again, because
(10:07):
I looked at everything that I was doing in my
life as if it was a mission, and I had
to break it down to its representative objectives. When I
did that, it made it made the integration back to
civilian life far more digestible. If you will, Yeah, and
you're you're still right too, because I talked to so
many veterans and I hear the same thing in different ways,
but I hear the same themes and some of those
(10:30):
things are you know, they miss having a mission, they
missed the purpose, they missed the integrity of the communication.
You know, if I say, if I say to you,
we're going to do something, you can pretty much count
that we're going to try to do this thing. We
understand our roles, we understand our responsibilities, we understand the team,
(10:50):
the bigger picture, we understand serving the mission. So we're
gonna find ways to make it happen. We're gonna adapt,
you know, if that means I got to do something
different or that will will find the way, we'll get
the mission done. And it was service to this bigger purpose.
You hit on something that reminded me of three things
that I just still live by today and it's been
(11:11):
ingrained in me since my time in service. Uh, the
Air Force has three core values, and I would imagine
it's got to be somewhat similar across all the different branches.
But it's integrity first, it's service before self, and it's
excellence in all we do. It sounds hokey, of course
to say those things, but how do you actually live
those values out is a very different story. And you know,
(11:33):
coming back into civilian life was initially challenging because of
the reasons that we said earlier, and my integration back
became frustrated for that very reason. I think I found
myself to be pretty angry for no good reason. I
was telling this to you know, friends earlier. But something
as harmless is like playing video games with my younger brother.
He was cheating and or maybe I don't know younger brothers,
(11:58):
there was a way to cheat. They know the coding
or something trick. I remember getting so upset with him
that I got up, threw the controller down, and I
punched a hole in the door and I'm like, whoa,
that was not a commenced response to a video game.
And I remember at that point I was like, Okay,
(12:19):
I need to go start seeking some counseling. I need
to start having some conversations with some folks, because that's
that's a flag for sure. So I started to reach
out to the v A. I started to reach out
to a couple of other like Wounded Warrior Project and
a few other folks. I wasn't necessarily taking it seriously
in terms of the follow up. And then another day
(12:39):
I found myself at a right aid CBS something like that.
So I'm on my way to check out, and somebody
literally comes over from my right side, and for whatever
reason not logical at all, ROB like, this person I
think of them is trying to go after my pistol
(12:59):
that's on I thought, which clearly do not have a
pistol in my thought, and I grabbed that person's hand,
I put them in an armor and I put them down,
and I caused such a scene. I'm like, yep, we're
not going to do this anymore. We need to start
taking counseling very very seriously. And so I started to
talk to folks through the v A and it's it was.
(13:20):
It was a process for a while. I feel so
much better for having done it. And thankfully, in the
spectrum of you know, what they've diagnosed as post traumatic
stress disorder, which is like a big tent of whatever,
I would say, that's like the lowest grade, you know,
in terms of what other folks may be going through,
and so that was a tough part of the integration back.
(13:40):
But then connecting, reconnecting with the folks that I had
served with, who came from all over the country, all
economic classes, talking about that experience made it actually easier
for all of us in terms of our integration back
into society. Um, so that was that was helpful. I'm
glad you brought that up though, because it is in
critically important and it's it's one of the reasons we're
(14:03):
you know, talking today, is because again, the veterans that
I've visited with yourself included, you know, when they get
home and they are experiencing these things, they don't understand
and why am I Why am I willing to get
out of my car and punch this guy because I
perceived that he cut me off. You know, maybe he
just didn't see me. Maybe I don't know, but there's
a rage level that's inexplicable. You just can't understand it.
(14:26):
And then then you start to question yourself and you
start to panic, and you start to think what's wrong
with me? And and then the worst case scenario, you isolate.
That's where veterans get into so much trouble is when
they isolate and they think I'm the only one with
this problem. There's something wrong with me. Why could everybody
else deal with it? And I can't and it's snowballs,
uh and it's terrible. So the v A and other
(14:49):
organizations great for being able to just go talk to
someone and when they when you hear their stories, you're like, oh,
I'm not a freak, I'm not weird, I'm not you know,
this is happening across the spectrum and talking about it's
a good thing and recognizing it like you did. Being
able to say that wasn't proportionate. I need to talk
(15:10):
to somebody. You know. I'm proud of you for being
able to say I need to talk to some because
a lot of people say, oh God, something's wrong with me,
and then God forbid, they start self medicating or any
of that other garbage. Being able to talk to someone
else and realize, oh, no, I'm you know what these
it's it's almost like when you learn about the steps
of grieving. You know, there's five steps to the grieving process,
(15:32):
and once you learn them, you're like, oh, well that
explains this, this and this and and it actually makes
sense to you and you're able to deal with it better.
And I think that's what you're describing with your outreach
and your connection with these veterans organizations. And that's huge
for our audience to hear that, because I that's if
nothing else, I hope they take that away that if
they are ever feeling this way, if they go talk
(15:52):
to someone, they might not be so lonely on this.
If there's so many of us that have kind of
gone through such traumatic experiences, and you made an even
view it to be traumatic because for so much e's
move but there's no harm. And of course talking to
somebody that actually could probably understand it better than other
folks in the civilian world. I think that was you know,
(16:13):
that's part of our frustration obviously, right coming back into
civilian life, is how do I articulate this in words
that experience. I don't want to talk about feelings. It's
not about I. It's about a team. You've always been
serving in a team. It's it's odd to be kind
of talking about one individual and and that that yourself,
or if you're talking to a wounded service member who's
(16:34):
got been you know, drastically wounded catastrophically wounded. You know,
you feel like, well, my my experience doesn't rate any
attention when I see these catastrophically wounded troops. So then
you you tend to clam up and go back in
your shell, when the truth is is your experience is
just as valid. You just need to talk about it
so you can work the process and get through it.
(16:57):
I want to ask you something that you know, maybe
different cult, I don't know, but to talk about. But
there was a time when you lost your vision. Yes,
take me if you would, from the beginning to the end.
How did it evolve? I mean, what was the diagnosis,
What was going on in your mind as this was
unfolding for you. I still get a little bit choked
(17:20):
up about this. But so I had just come back
from UH service in Iraq, moved back home to New York,
living with my folks. I enrolled at St. John's. I'm
taking some classes online and one day I start to
see that my vision in my right eye starts to
start to go. So I had vision, remarkable vision, And
(17:43):
what was happening was that there was it looked like
basically whatever was in front of me looked like it
was three houses over or something like that. It looked
like pretty far away and it was happening to one
eye pretty dramatically, and my dad was like, you're just
you know, you're going out to the clubs too much
and smoking too much shisha and stuff like that. And
(18:05):
I said, no, this is for real, this is something
that's going on, and I don't know quite what to do.
So I thought rest would make it a little bit better.
So I let a little bit more time elapse. Then
I start to losing in my other eye, and I
finally tell my dad. I said, either you're gonna take
me to the hospital, or I'm gonna call a cabinet,
or I'm gonna walk and take myself, but I need
(18:26):
to get to the hospital ASA, because something's wrong here.
For sure. I get to the hospital, the doctors didn't
know how best to diagnose it. They start running all
these different scans. At one point, I think the consensus
was that I had multiple sclerosis MS, and at that
point I'm just devastated, But you know, keep as much
(18:47):
composure as possible because it's just a diagnosis. For now.
The more time that's elapsing, the worst my vision is getting.
And the next day, I'm lucky enough to get an
appointment to go see this retinas specialist in Great Neck.
Shout out to Dr Jeffrey Shaken, who's remarkable. It took
him some time to to actually figure out what was
going on. He said, this is a rare condition, but
(19:10):
it's called void coin Nagi Hurada. It's named after the
three scientists that studied it. And I don't think I've
seen this since I was in med school. And this,
mind you, this guy was like seventy or so. He says, Nishantha,
this is if not treated, what ends up happening with
this thing, is your retinas detached. Yes, so you go
(19:30):
completely blind and your your hair follicles they all turn white,
and then you start to lose your hearing. So he said,
it's good you're here. Now. They start to run a
vision test and I remember my dad being next to me,
and my dad's a pretty stoic guy, and um, he
definitely never likes to project any sort of kind of
(19:50):
vulnerabilities because we've gone through so much in our childhood.
I mean, I didn't even get into the fact that
Mom wasn't around and all these other things. But he's
a he's a pretty well composed guy, and he I
hear him break down a little bit. He starts to
he starts to cry because, Um, they literally put a
license plate in front of my face. I couldn't tell
(20:11):
you what letters or numbers or anything like that. He's like,
my God, what happened? And thankfully they put me on
this kind of high dose I think of like prednisone
or something like that. And for about two months I
didn't have strong vision at all. I think my vision
when they did that test was about twenty eight hundreds.
So literally that license plate, I couldn't tell you a
(20:32):
single letter or number that was on there. At that point,
I kind of took that. I felt like I've taken
so much of for granted with my own vision. I
think for the first time in my life, I had
a panic attack. I don't think I've ever had a
panic attack before in my life. Despite all the crazy
and fun experiences that I've been through to date, this
was the first time where I felt like, oh my gosh,
(20:54):
I need to work on my breathing. I need to
get my composure back, get regain that perspective so that
I can kind of continue. But that that was a big.
That's a big, big moment for me. And and I assume,
I don't want to assume anything, but it appears that
you have had a full recovery. I have had a
(21:14):
full recovery, thankfully. I wanted to, you know, look at
this almost from like a military perspective, like, what's my
after action here? What what happened? What's the diagnosis, what's
the root cause analysis. I go to the doctor and said, what,
you know, what happened here? How do I prevent this
from ever happening again? And you know what, what what
was the cause of all this? And so he said, look,
the only thing I could speculate, because this is a
(21:36):
rare eye condition that's if if at all prevalent, it's
within the Japanese community. And you know, I haven't done
it twenty three in me and I know I don't
have any Japanese ancestry. But he said, the only other
thing that could be is that you had to exposure
potentially to some sort of kind of chemical warfare or
those sort of elements. It makes a ton of sense
(21:57):
because you spent a year in theater in you Rock
and the hometown of the guy who ran the chemical
warfare program. You know, who knows, who knows. I still
don't know to this day exactly what the cause was,
but the retina specialist is pretty bullish on the fact
that it was something that we were potentially exposed to
when we were over there, and my body reacted to
(22:19):
it um in some you know, over a period of time.
But thankfully thing it's in remission now and I do
constantly monitor, um, you know, what's what's going on with
the vision. But yeah, one of the scariest moments of
my life. For sure. It had to be. It had
to be. I you know, you talk about that fear
of that anxiety and that panic attack, and I hate
(22:42):
that feeling because I know it and it's a terrible feeling.
So I can empathize, especially when you're faced with the
possibility of losing your sight out of the blue. You're
going through life and then all of a sudden you
know you're being threatened with that. That's a tremendous thing
to over come. Stay tuned for more of the Shan
(23:06):
story after the break. Welcome back to veterans. You should
know you have this diverse background. You worked for domestic
(23:29):
policy right as an analyst for Goldman Sachs. You were
worked in the US Agency for Internal Development. I gotta
know what that is. And you work now currently for
Chobani and you're the chief of staff of the CEO,
so you're the aide. You're the aide de camp uh,
but even higher than your chief of staff. So you're
(23:49):
really getting uh. Probably one of the greatest seats in
the world as far as learning and understanding leadership like
that is one of the great grooming position is to
be in to become a leader. Hello, Mr President. So
that's what I keep saying, because you're bound for leadership.
So tell us about that. Tell us about your civilian son.
(24:11):
So I I come back to civilian life around two
thousand five, and I am behind the ball, if you will.
From my peers. They had each gone off to college
and now they're in the workforce in New York City
and they're earning. And so I said, Okay, I need
to catch up, and I need to catch up fast
because I need to make some money. Uh, I need
(24:33):
to get my degree. Uh. So I go off to
I enroll at St. John's University. Thank god, they are
so thoughtful about supporting folks that are returning from service,
I ended up going there for free. Basically they their
their remarkable institution. At the same time, I said, I'm
still missing this kind of mission aspect of things, and
(24:56):
I still want to break it down to its representative
parts again. And so I hear President Clinton speak and
he's talking about setting up this foundation and it's focused
on international as well as domestic and those sorts of things,
and so I was like, wow, this is this is
pretty remarkable stuff this guy is doing, and it's here
in New York and I happen to be available on
(25:19):
nights and weekends. I want to enroll and as many
classes as possible so I can catch up to my
peers and at the same time work for this guy
and whatever capacity I can work in and keep that
mission going. So I end up working on looking at
gentrification issues actually within New York City. One of the
(25:40):
things I think that President Clinton and others have gotten
flak four is like, hey, he set up his office
in Harlem, and folks said, hey, that's the reason that
gentrification happened in uh in Harlem, when in reality, like
economic livelihoods were actually just increasing and all across the country,
and folks were moving up to the places like Harlem
and unfortunately pushing out exist sting businesses. So what I
(26:01):
got to do was actually sit in on some of
these smaller businesses understand their baseline metrics. I got to
work with a couple of consulting firms and we started
to put together some plans to support those local and
small businesses. So that's how I got to start to
get this flavor of domestic policy and what it means
to support businesses and whatnot. With President Clinton. In parallel,
(26:24):
going to college, end up graduating in just two years,
get that four year degree done in two years. Fantastic.
I totally treated like like it was the military. So
I broke it down and thankfully graduated with honors, I
think because it was just so focused. And I got
to travel a ton with President Clinton in the process too,
which was which was awesome because whatever your political leanings are,
(26:46):
the guys brilliant, I mean just brilliant. He he can
have a full conversation with you, be fully engaged while
kind of quickly looking over his notes, and deliver enough
to deliver a two hour long speech about being a farmer,
which you know he's never been, but he can he
can talk about being a farmer as if he's been
a farmer's entire life while still having a full fledged
(27:07):
conversation with you. And so working with him was pretty
remarkable because he's like, I see, Nishan, that you are
pretty motivated to want to go off and do big things.
I would love for you to do it with the
within the foundation. And now that you've graduated from college,
you know, what are what are you thinking? You know,
post graduation? And I said, well, I'm thinking about just
(27:30):
taking that job at the foundation. He said, why don't
you forget the job at the foundation or forget anything else?
Why don't you think about going into engineering school or
to law school? I said, President Clinton, I've just worked
my tail off to get my four year degree done
in just two years. With all due respect, I have
no desire to go work on another degree. My peers
are earning money, everyone's living a good life. I don't
(27:52):
know if I want to go do this. Had you
been talking to your dad or something like how did this?
I think they may have been who knows, so he says,
He says, he goes, Nishan, you have far more life
experience than your peers do I think getting a degree
like an engineering degree or a law degree, it forces
(28:14):
you to think outside the box in terms of problem solving,
and that's what you need in leadership, and that's what
you need when you reach the highest ranks of government
or highest ranks of of the not for profit sector
or even business. I was like, look, I hear you,
lad and clear, but I want to just go and
make some money. So he brought in this guy, Bob Harrison.
(28:35):
Bob used to run the Clinton Global Initiative, and Bob
used to be a partner at Goldman Sachs. He's like,
you've got to think about what does the public sector
actually need. It needs to understand how to create sustainable
programming and understand what a bottom line actually looks like.
And so these are all fungible skills you need to
learn that in the private sector. What better training ground
(28:55):
than Goldman Sacks. And you can transition off into the
public sector at some point in time if you decide
to in the future, what was the time frame was
this two thousand eight or two thousand seven, two thousand seven,
and so write about the time the ship was hitting
the fans, so to speak. Financially exactly exactly. I'm now
thinking about whether or not this Goldman Sax move is
(29:18):
the right one. And then finally, I think the main
key thing that kind of drove it home for me
was President Clinton and Bob both say, look, if if
not for nothing, you make some money, you learn something.
And the beautiful thing is that they work in small groups.
And so just like in the military, you're working in
small teams and you're working on execution, and that's what
(29:39):
these guys are highly focused on. But yeah, financial crisis
comes two eight and every bank across Wall Street starts
laying off a bunch of folks to deal with that crisis.
I'm low on the totem pole, and they said, well,
guess what, you're responsibly just increased by three x because
we're we gotten rid of a couple of folks. Uh.
(30:02):
And thankfully, you know, affirmed like Coleman, they have remarkable training,
remarkable leaders and folks that have gone on to become
Secretaries of Treasury and masters and so forth. So I
felt like I was well equipped, well, you know, trained
to kind of go execute in the midst of what
was you know, what do they call it? The greatest
(30:22):
recession since the depression. Later in the Shot would go
on to earn his MBA degree. One day, he received
a call from his friend with a job offer. Come
work at the U. S Department of Agriculture. Without any
background in agriculture, but plenty of applicable life experience, the
Shot joined the U S D as Chief Scientist and
(30:45):
the Division of Research, Education and Economics. His Balls was
then nominated to run the US Agency for Internal Development.
It's the arm of the government that focuses on humanitarian
assistance around the world. The Shot followed his ball loss
into this new agency. His first week on the job,
the earthquake in Haiti happened, and the Shan found himself
(31:07):
boots on the ground helping organize the relief response. The
Shan's resume is a list of fearless career moves. Today,
he is the chief of staff to the Chief executive
Officer of Chobani. If you were to look at my resume,
it's like a hodgepodge of things and you're like, what
is the how do I threat this all together? And
(31:30):
I would say this experience working with the founder and
CEO of Chobani is a kind of a culmination of
it all in in some thoughtful kind of packaged role.
What I really identified, you know, with Handy, who's the
founder of the business, is that he's a small business guy.
You know, he came from Turkey, immigrated here in he
(31:50):
came here just to learn English. He ends up getting
a small business administration loan and only has about three
thousand dollars or so in his pocket, starts learning English
a little bit, arts creating this cheese business, turns it
into something that we all you know, enjoy today, which
is Chabanni. It's a it's a remarkable brand. I saw
so many elements of my own family and him, So
(32:11):
if he were to actually come in here right now,
he'd probably call me brother before he says anything, because
we actually truly treat each other like we're a family.
That's fantastic. More than anything outside of just the phenomenal
products and so forth, what Hammy kind of stands for,
outside of his origin story and how he got here
to the States and and built the brand, what he
stands for today is he's the antithesis of a lot
(32:34):
of the CEOs that he saw growing up. He said, look,
business should be a force for good it should be
a force for change, positive change in communities. We want
to do what's good for the customer, and then we
also want to do what's good for the communities in
which we operate. You seem to find purpose and mission
and everything you do. Tell us about your mission. Uh
(32:56):
with Chabanni, tell us about why that's important to you. Uh.
Tavani is pretty unique place it Uh. You know, we
don't have a corporate social responsibility type of department within
the company itself. The whole company, from the lowest levels
to the highest levels, they kind of always want to
do what's right for the community. And so the mission
(33:18):
for us is always delivering delicious, nutritious, natural and accessible food.
So we follow this acronym using our military world d
n n A, and the accessibility part of it became
front and center for me, you know, particularly during the pandemic,
we turned our cafe into a food bank. We structured
(33:38):
different partnerships to kind of get our products into food
banks across the country. A lot of great companies came
across and decided to go support delivering food. There was
so much food and security actually, which was so surprising
to see during the pandemic so it was pretty awesome
to be a part of a company that thinks about
food not only for just like our specific customers, but
(33:59):
for the entire country. So it's that acronym of delicious, nutritious, natural, accessible,
is like kind of like, what's the mission and delivering
getting that food out there. That's a really great mission.
I can see why you wanted to get on board
with it. I would say one other thing though, that
Hampty is very much focused on is refugees, and so
of our work force Sierra at Chabani is composed of
(34:21):
immigrants and refugees. In fact, I think at one point
in time we had maybe like nineteen translators in the
plant helping refugees kind of get integrated into supporting the
mission of developing our our yogurt products up in upstate
New York. Because we had totally employed everybody in one town,
we said, what's the next town over? They said it's Utica.
Utica has got this big refugee population. Uh. And they said,
(34:44):
but hobdy, they don't really speak English that well. He's like, great,
I don't speak English that well either. Will bust them
over and we'll get translators and we'll train them how
to do the job. So where I get to kind
of come full circle now is this country is a
wonderful place for opportunity, and you have the refue g
cap that's now since risen, and we're now also supporting
(35:04):
folks that served in uniform with US in Afghanistan. So
the special immigrant folks that came over are coming over
to this country with a special immigrant visa. They're looking
for opportunities, they're looking for jobs. And so Hamdi's got
a foundation called the Tent Foundation. Uh and Chibani is
one of the anchor kind of businesses that's supporting the
Tent Foundation in terms of employing those refugees in uh
(35:27):
Chibani and other businesses across the country. I love that,
I really really love that that that to me is
fulfilling promises of keeping our word as a nation. So
your commitment to veterans is pretty clear. Your your commitment
to this country is obvious. What are some ways that
you stay connected to the ventry community. The military is
(35:51):
such a big part of my life in terms of
shaping who I was and creating that structure. I wanted
to figure out what's the best way to kind of
engage and help some of these veteran service to organizations
give back to the community. And so I said, well,
how how can I be a thought partner for them?
So I took a few approaches. One was I had
this transition out of the military to go into the
(36:11):
private sector, and I had my learning experience when I
was looking at those different bios and so forth, and
so I said, I could be a mentor to folks.
And so I started serving as a mentor to veterans
that were leaving the service to help them figure out
how they can come up with their game plan to
go join the private sector. The other way that I
did it was actually with Shabani itself. One day I
(36:32):
was sitting down with our founder and CEO and said, hey,
this is been a big part of my life. I
would love more than anything to kind of give back.
And he said, well what are you thinking. I said, well,
why don't we use the power of the brand to
go support other NGOs that are supporting veterans. And so
the other piece of it was on housing. So there's
(36:52):
a beauty of wonderful NGO called the Operation home Front.
We ended up structuring a partnership with them at Chabani
and we created a red, white and blue yogurt. Actually,
so every dollar that you buy of the Operation Homefront
SKEW goes to go support veterans getting homes. So that
was another way in which to kind of stay engaged
(37:15):
and support the veteran community. And then finally I looked
at I A v a UM, and I said, well,
how can how can I help those? One of one
of their commercials that they had was super powerful, and
I don't know if you remember this one, Rob, but
it was a veteran that's in the middle of I
want to say, Madison Square Park, he's walking, he's alone,
(37:36):
and then he goes to shake another veteran's hand, and
all of a sudden everything kind of comes to life.
And I said, well, I can continue to also serve
as an advocate, a mentor for folks that are kind
of coming out of military service and help them also
with their jobs. So I looked at two different vsos
(37:57):
to go help them with the job Integration vis IS
For those listening at Home Veteran Service Organization Veterans, Okay,
thank you very much our acronyms. You know, I don't
want to lose anybody, I want them to stay with
this something because that's amazing. That's the kind of work
that I don't know, I love hearing about it. I
think there's probably I think the last I heard there
(38:17):
was something crazy like fifty registered veterans organizations, and I
think I've met with all of them, um for one
reason or another. You know, they want me to be
a spokesperson or do something. And I listened to their
missions and they're they're always amazing. But to hear when
these organizations are supported by Corporate America or supported by
(38:39):
other resources that can make their missions come true, help
them fulfill what they set out to do, to me,
is one of the most honorable things in the world.
So thank you, Thank you so much for continuing to
keep that bridge open between the civilian and the veteran community.
I will just add one thing though to it, Rob,
(39:00):
is a lot of a lot of us that you
have served in uniform. Nobody wants to hand out. And
I would say a lot of these veteran service organizations
are structured in such a way that they're just providing
you the tools, They're not necessarily handing everything you onto
you with a silver platter, so you're not being spoon fed.
These are great institutions that are out there, and I'm
(39:22):
so happy that it's grown to be. You know over,
I love that too, and I'm with you. I think
most of the least of the organizations I work with
are designed to give you tools and skills so that
you can be a self sustaining individual, so that you
can go out there and succeed exactly. So thank you
so much for spending time with us and talking to
(39:44):
us and telling us your story. Uh, it's a remarkable one.
I can't wait to hear what you're gonna do next
as far as whether you're going to continue to develop
in the private sector or if you're gonna become president
of United States. It's whatever you want. Although right now
being PRESIDENTE say, it's a tough job, real, real tough job.
Nobody there's nobody. Nobody's winning that one right now. So
(40:06):
but whatever you do, just keep being a leader because
that's what this country needs. So thank you very much
for your time. It was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you, Rob.
I really appreciate being on the program, and thank you
for doing what you've done in terms of your service
of the country my pleasure. I want to thank the
(40:31):
Sean Roy again for joining me on today's podcast. I
am beyond and pressed with his drive and his career,
and I cannot wait to see what new role in
industry he decides to tackle next. Who knows, maybe we'll
be a run for the Oval Office. Thanks for listening
(40:54):
to Veterans you Should Know. To hear more inspiring stories
of perseverance and camaraderie, check out all our episodes, including
those from season one, featuring veterans who have overcome incredible
obstacles and found renewed purpose in their civilian lives. If
you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast.
We would love to hear from you. You can listen
(41:15):
to the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Veterans you
Should Know as a special four parts series from I
Heart Radio and hosted by me Rob Wriggle. Our show
is written and produced by Molly Sosia, Nikkia Swinton, and
Jackie Perez, with assistance from Quincy Fuller. The show is edited,
(41:39):
sound designed and mixed by James Foster and Matt Stilla.
Please be advised the following episode contains references to violence
and may not be suitable for all audiences. Welcome to
Veterans You Should Know a podcast from My Heart Radio
that celebrates the men and women who have honorably answered
a call to serve their country and the armed Forces.
(00:22):
I'm Rob Real, actor, comedian, and former Marine raw In
this special series Honoring Veterans Day, I'll be speaking with
four incredible veterans as they detail challenges they've faced and
how their experiences in military service served them in their
everyday civilian lives. I totally treated like it was the military,
(00:44):
so I broke it down and end up graduating in
just two years, get that four year degree done in
two years, thankfully graduated with honors, I think because it
was just so focused. In our final episode of season two,
we are speaking with Nishan Roy. Nashan is the first
in his family to serve in the U. S. Military.
He chose to enlist in the Air Force following high
(01:05):
school and followed a career path in the security forces.
Following his time in the military, he enrolled in St.
John's University and finished a four year degree in two years.
Nashat's varied civilian career includes working for the Clinton Foundation,
Goldman Sachs, the U S Department of Agriculture, and the
(01:27):
Agency for Internal Development. Deshan currently is the chief of
staff for the CEO of Shabani Nashat. Welcome to the show.
Tell me where you from, where you grew up, and
(01:47):
then tell me how your path crossed with the military. Robbed.
First off, thank you for your service, and it's truly
an honor to be on the show. I appreciate it.
So I guess taking it back to two thousand, which
is when I graduated from high school. I grew up
in Long Island, New York, in Great Next So if
(02:08):
you're happy to be familiar with the books The Great Gatsby, Uh,
it was West Egg and so I wasn't quite sure
what I was going to do coming out of high school.
I was a little bit of a jackass during high school,
didn't really take it as seriously as I should. I
think I barely passed to kind of get it through
high school. But ultimately I've come from an Indian family
(02:29):
and so my my dad kind of sat me down.
He said, well, where'd you get into school? You got
into the community college local and you got into Arizona State,
and then what are your choices? Like, what are we
gonna do here? And so I said, actually, I think
I'm not going to do the education piece yet. I
think I want to go serve the country. My dad,
who immigrated here in nineteen seventy nine so that he
(02:50):
could provide his children a better way of life and
not necessarily go through kind of difficult hardships, said well, okay,
what part of that equation is you getting an engineering
or PhD or mp D? And I said, none of it.
You know, I really want to actually go travel the country.
I want to pay for college on my own. At
that point, it's two thousands, so there's no conflicts going on.
(03:11):
So my dad said, you know what, all right, I'll
indulge this. Let's invite all four branch recruiters into our
house and let's have a conversation with each one of them.
And we met the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air
Force recruiters. I was going in enlisted. So my dad
asked really good questions and whatnot. I was gung ho
about actually joining the Marine Corps. Would love that, Rob,
(03:33):
I'm sure but my my father said, look, at the
end of the day, after having these conversations with these recruiters,
I'm actually pretty bullish about either the Navy or the
Air Force for you because this focus on education and
there's some transferable skill sets that you can kind of
apply into the private sector at some point in time,
so you have some additional optionality. Absolutely absolutely. And by
(03:55):
the way, just so you know, my father very similar, Uh,
we want to to talk to all everybody. Uh, and
actually was like, you know, the Air Force a pretty
good deal here and no DA and so I understand
that as well. But back to your story. So the
recruiters come and go, and the best salesman out of
all of them was the Air Force. Yes, I would say,
(04:17):
I would say they kind of checked more of the
boxes for for for dad, I was really more just
kind of bullish about joining the service. And what planted
the sea for me was my grandfather, my father's father.
He had actually worked for the British Air Force in
India because the Brits at colonized India at one point
(04:38):
in time, and so I that kind of planted the
sea for me about military service and the structure, the discipline,
the ability to travel. Now was my chance to kind
of go put this into reality, and so I said,
all right, let's do the Air Force. And I started
initially coming in to focus on the light, wide band
(05:00):
and telemetory systems. So there I was supposed to be
basically setting up communications and remote areas fast forward within
my my enlisting time, I basically said, well, I want
to do something a little bit more hands on, you know,
enter Lackland Air Force based in San Antonio, Texas, and
they start introducing us to the pair of rescue team,
the combat control team, and so I said, I wanted
(05:22):
to do security forces actually, and because it's it's the
basically the infantry of the United States Air Force. And
and so that's how I kind of got my entrance
into the into the military, and how we got into
security forces as a career field. That's fantastic. The security
forces in the Air Force are outstanding. They really are
very well trained, incredible skill set from a war fighting
(05:44):
perspective and security perspective because you're always on the cutting
edge of technology and communications and you know, go down
the list of I T possibilities. Air forces always out
there in front as they should be. They're the most
advanced force we have. So you find yourself in the
security force, you find yourself developing really amazing skill sets.
(06:07):
As far as I can tell, did you ever have
an opportunity to deploy or or go forward with all this?
I did, actually, uh, and and it sounds like reading
some of your history, Rob, I think we may have
actually overlapped in in Afghanistan at at some point in time.
So eleven happens. I'm actually at M sixty school in
San Antonio, Texas, the the goodal M sixty machine gun.
(06:30):
We had just completed our full training. We're now deployable,
and we got orders to go support an operation in
Afghanistan to start to take out some of these camps,
the training camps. I believe we got orders around October seven,
I want to say, to start engaging in support of
(06:51):
the bombing of some of these things. So our our
role in it was to get in secure the airfield
within Kandahar and later on make sure the assets our
aircraft were secured. And so that's uh, that was our role.
And I was on the ground for about three months
or so. Oh wow, So this is the fall of
two thousand one. Yes, Oh we did. I'm sure we
(07:11):
did cross paths then, whether it was going through K
two or because I was in the north. I was
in Missouri Sharief. But but there wasn't many. There wasn't
a whole lot there in the fall of two thousand one.
We were a very small footprint. Yes, as you can.
You remember. Uh, now they've got freaking burger kings and
stuff at these bases. You know, back then we didn't
have porterfar We're still digging our own holes. So so
(07:34):
what was your experience like then? I would say, you know,
that deployment first off was eye opening. You know, you train,
you train, you train, and then it's a matter of execution.
And I remember just almost having a little bit of
an outer body experience on that first deployment to kanadaar
I took it so personally, right, I'm from New York.
(07:55):
Why are we in Afghanistan? It's because we got attacked
on nine eleven and couldn't have been more proud to
be able to do something. The whole spirit here within
the United States was it's a big call to action.
Everybody wants to do something, even if supporting your local firehouse,
your local police Department, anything in the community that you
could do to bring us all together, and I couldn't.
(08:18):
I was so unbelievably proud to just take the fight
to the enemy. Having come from New York. Because I
just took it, took it that much more personally. It
wasn't just our country that was attacked, it was our city.
I'm right there with you. I was in New York
on not eleven. I took it very personally. Um, I
was in the reserves at the time. I just left
active duty and I've only been a resource for a year,
uh and volunteer to go back on active duty because
(08:40):
of that very same thing. I took it very personally.
It felt like a call, and I just felt lucky
that I was in uniform and I was in a
position that I could go do something about it. The
Shot completed his second deployment in two thousand three to
kirk Cook, Iraq. His mission was intelligence gathering and converting
an old Iraqi Force space into a US Air Force space.
(09:03):
When the Shot returned home, he was met with a
new set of challenges and obstacles to overcome, but he
also found an appreciation for some of the values instilled
in him from his time overseas. Was there a takeaway?
Was there something where you went, Wow, that is a
lesson I'll never forget. Um. Did you have any moments
(09:24):
like that? Did you have any epiphanies like that? I
think the big takeaway was, of course, on teamwork and
what it means right. You you say what you're going
to do and then you do what you're actually going
to say, and you don't actually necessarily see that in
the civilian sector, as you were saying, and that's a
point of frustration. But when I came back, I was
frustrated the fact that that folks were saying that they
(09:45):
were going to do things, they had a more kind
of a political lens to why they were doing it.
It wasn't necessarily about the mission. It was about self preservation,
I think for folks more than anything else. And that
was that's been a bit frustrating still to kind of
observe as a behavior. And when I came back, I
would say I needed to find that mission again, because
(10:07):
I looked at everything that I was doing in my
life as if it was a mission, and I had
to break it down to its representative objectives. When I
did that, it made it made the integration back to
civilian life far more digestible. If you will, Yeah, and
you're you're still right too, because I talked to so
many veterans and I hear the same thing in different ways,
but I hear the same themes and some of those
(10:30):
things are you know, they miss having a mission, they
missed the purpose, they missed the integrity of the communication.
You know, if I say, if I say to you,
we're going to do something, you can pretty much count
that we're going to try to do this thing. We
understand our roles, we understand our responsibilities, we understand the team,
(10:50):
the bigger picture, we understand serving the mission. So we're
gonna find ways to make it happen. We're gonna adapt,
you know, if that means I got to do something
different or that will will find the way, we'll get
the mission done. And it was service to this bigger purpose.
You hit on something that reminded me of three things
that I just still live by today and it's been
(11:11):
ingrained in me since my time in service. Uh, the
Air Force has three core values, and I would imagine
it's got to be somewhat similar across all the different branches.
But it's integrity first, it's service before self, and it's
excellence in all we do. It sounds hokey, of course
to say those things, but how do you actually live
those values out is a very different story. And you know,
(11:33):
coming back into civilian life was initially challenging because of
the reasons that we said earlier, and my integration back
became frustrated for that very reason. I think I found
myself to be pretty angry for no good reason. I
was telling this to you know, friends earlier. But something
as harmless is like playing video games with my younger brother.
He was cheating and or maybe I don't know younger brothers,
(11:58):
there was a way to cheat. They know the coding
or something trick. I remember getting so upset with him
that I got up, threw the controller down, and I
punched a hole in the door and I'm like, whoa,
that was not a commenced response to a video game.
And I remember at that point I was like, Okay,
(12:19):
I need to go start seeking some counseling. I need
to start having some conversations with some folks, because that's
that's a flag for sure. So I started to reach
out to the v A. I started to reach out
to a couple of other like Wounded Warrior Project and
a few other folks. I wasn't necessarily taking it seriously
in terms of the follow up. And then another day
(12:39):
I found myself at a right aid CBS something like that.
So I'm on my way to check out, and somebody
literally comes over from my right side, and for whatever
reason not logical at all, ROB like, this person I
think of them is trying to go after my pistol
(12:59):
that's on I thought, which clearly do not have a
pistol in my thought, and I grabbed that person's hand,
I put them in an armor and I put them down,
and I caused such a scene. I'm like, yep, we're
not going to do this anymore. We need to start
taking counseling very very seriously. And so I started to
talk to folks through the v A and it's it was.
(13:20):
It was a process for a while. I feel so
much better for having done it. And thankfully, in the
spectrum of you know, what they've diagnosed as post traumatic
stress disorder, which is like a big tent of whatever,
I would say, that's like the lowest grade, you know,
in terms of what other folks may be going through,
and so that was a tough part of the integration back.
(13:40):
But then connecting, reconnecting with the folks that I had
served with, who came from all over the country, all
economic classes, talking about that experience made it actually easier
for all of us in terms of our integration back
into society. Um, so that was that was helpful. I'm
glad you brought that up though, because it is in
critically important and it's it's one of the reasons we're
(14:03):
you know, talking today, is because again, the veterans that
I've visited with yourself included, you know, when they get
home and they are experiencing these things, they don't understand
and why am I Why am I willing to get
out of my car and punch this guy because I
perceived that he cut me off. You know, maybe he
just didn't see me. Maybe I don't know, but there's
a rage level that's inexplicable. You just can't understand it.
(14:26):
And then then you start to question yourself and you
start to panic, and you start to think what's wrong
with me? And and then the worst case scenario, you isolate.
That's where veterans get into so much trouble is when
they isolate and they think I'm the only one with
this problem. There's something wrong with me. Why could everybody
else deal with it? And I can't and it's snowballs,
uh and it's terrible. So the v A and other
(14:49):
organizations great for being able to just go talk to
someone and when they when you hear their stories, you're like, oh,
I'm not a freak, I'm not weird, I'm not you know,
this is happening across the spectrum and talking about it's
a good thing and recognizing it like you did. Being
able to say that wasn't proportionate. I need to talk
(15:10):
to somebody. You know. I'm proud of you for being
able to say I need to talk to some because
a lot of people say, oh God, something's wrong with me,
and then God forbid, they start self medicating or any
of that other garbage. Being able to talk to someone
else and realize, oh, no, I'm you know what these
it's it's almost like when you learn about the steps
of grieving. You know, there's five steps to the grieving process,
(15:32):
and once you learn them, you're like, oh, well that
explains this, this and this and and it actually makes
sense to you and you're able to deal with it better.
And I think that's what you're describing with your outreach
and your connection with these veterans organizations. And that's huge
for our audience to hear that, because I that's if
nothing else, I hope they take that away that if
they are ever feeling this way, if they go talk
(15:52):
to someone, they might not be so lonely on this.
If there's so many of us that have kind of
gone through such traumatic experiences, and you made an even
view it to be traumatic because for so much e's
move but there's no harm. And of course talking to
somebody that actually could probably understand it better than other
folks in the civilian world. I think that was you know,
(16:13):
that's part of our frustration obviously, right coming back into
civilian life, is how do I articulate this in words
that experience. I don't want to talk about feelings. It's
not about I. It's about a team. You've always been
serving in a team. It's it's odd to be kind
of talking about one individual and and that that yourself,
or if you're talking to a wounded service member who's
(16:34):
got been you know, drastically wounded catastrophically wounded. You know,
you feel like, well, my my experience doesn't rate any
attention when I see these catastrophically wounded troops. So then
you you tend to clam up and go back in
your shell, when the truth is is your experience is
just as valid. You just need to talk about it
so you can work the process and get through it.
(16:57):
I want to ask you something that you know, maybe
different cult, I don't know, but to talk about. But
there was a time when you lost your vision. Yes,
take me if you would, from the beginning to the end.
How did it evolve? I mean, what was the diagnosis,
What was going on in your mind as this was
unfolding for you. I still get a little bit choked
(17:20):
up about this. But so I had just come back
from UH service in Iraq, moved back home to New York,
living with my folks. I enrolled at St. John's. I'm
taking some classes online and one day I start to
see that my vision in my right eye starts to
start to go. So I had vision, remarkable vision, And
(17:43):
what was happening was that there was it looked like
basically whatever was in front of me looked like it
was three houses over or something like that. It looked
like pretty far away and it was happening to one
eye pretty dramatically, and my dad was like, you're just
you know, you're going out to the clubs too much
and smoking too much shisha and stuff like that. And
(18:05):
I said, no, this is for real, this is something
that's going on, and I don't know quite what to do.
So I thought rest would make it a little bit better.
So I let a little bit more time elapse. Then
I start to losing in my other eye, and I
finally tell my dad. I said, either you're gonna take
me to the hospital, or I'm gonna call a cabinet,
or I'm gonna walk and take myself, but I need
(18:26):
to get to the hospital ASA, because something's wrong here.
For sure. I get to the hospital, the doctors didn't
know how best to diagnose it. They start running all
these different scans. At one point, I think the consensus
was that I had multiple sclerosis MS, and at that
point I'm just devastated, But you know, keep as much
(18:47):
composure as possible because it's just a diagnosis. For now.
The more time that's elapsing, the worst my vision is getting.
And the next day, I'm lucky enough to get an
appointment to go see this retinas specialist in Great Neck.
Shout out to Dr Jeffrey Shaken, who's remarkable. It took
him some time to to actually figure out what was
going on. He said, this is a rare condition, but
(19:10):
it's called void coin Nagi Hurada. It's named after the
three scientists that studied it. And I don't think I've
seen this since I was in med school. And this,
mind you, this guy was like seventy or so. He says, Nishantha,
this is if not treated, what ends up happening with
this thing, is your retinas detached. Yes, so you go
(19:30):
completely blind and your your hair follicles they all turn white,
and then you start to lose your hearing. So he said,
it's good you're here. Now. They start to run a
vision test and I remember my dad being next to me,
and my dad's a pretty stoic guy, and um, he
definitely never likes to project any sort of kind of
(19:50):
vulnerabilities because we've gone through so much in our childhood.
I mean, I didn't even get into the fact that
Mom wasn't around and all these other things. But he's
a he's a pretty well composed guy, and he I
hear him break down a little bit. He starts to
he starts to cry because, Um, they literally put a
license plate in front of my face. I couldn't tell
(20:11):
you what letters or numbers or anything like that. He's like,
my God, what happened? And thankfully they put me on
this kind of high dose I think of like prednisone
or something like that. And for about two months I
didn't have strong vision at all. I think my vision
when they did that test was about twenty eight hundreds.
So literally that license plate, I couldn't tell you a
(20:32):
single letter or number that was on there. At that point,
I kind of took that. I felt like I've taken
so much of for granted with my own vision. I
think for the first time in my life, I had
a panic attack. I don't think I've ever had a
panic attack before in my life. Despite all the crazy
and fun experiences that I've been through to date, this
was the first time where I felt like, oh my gosh,
(20:54):
I need to work on my breathing. I need to
get my composure back, get regain that perspective so that
I can kind of continue. But that that was a big.
That's a big, big moment for me. And and I assume,
I don't want to assume anything, but it appears that
you have had a full recovery. I have had a
(21:14):
full recovery, thankfully. I wanted to, you know, look at
this almost from like a military perspective, like, what's my
after action here? What what happened? What's the diagnosis, what's
the root cause analysis. I go to the doctor and said, what,
you know, what happened here? How do I prevent this
from ever happening again? And you know what, what what
was the cause of all this? And so he said, look,
the only thing I could speculate, because this is a
(21:36):
rare eye condition that's if if at all prevalent, it's
within the Japanese community. And you know, I haven't done
it twenty three in me and I know I don't
have any Japanese ancestry. But he said, the only other
thing that could be is that you had to exposure
potentially to some sort of kind of chemical warfare or
those sort of elements. It makes a ton of sense
(21:57):
because you spent a year in theater in you Rock
and the hometown of the guy who ran the chemical
warfare program. You know, who knows, who knows. I still
don't know to this day exactly what the cause was,
but the retina specialist is pretty bullish on the fact
that it was something that we were potentially exposed to
when we were over there, and my body reacted to
(22:19):
it um in some you know, over a period of time.
But thankfully thing it's in remission now and I do
constantly monitor, um, you know, what's what's going on with
the vision. But yeah, one of the scariest moments of
my life. For sure. It had to be. It had
to be. I you know, you talk about that fear
of that anxiety and that panic attack, and I hate
(22:42):
that feeling because I know it and it's a terrible feeling.
So I can empathize, especially when you're faced with the
possibility of losing your sight out of the blue. You're
going through life and then all of a sudden you
know you're being threatened with that. That's a tremendous thing
to over come. Stay tuned for more of the Shan
(23:06):
story after the break. Welcome back to veterans. You should
know you have this diverse background. You worked for domestic
(23:29):
policy right as an analyst for Goldman Sachs. You were
worked in the US Agency for Internal Development. I gotta
know what that is. And you work now currently for
Chobani and you're the chief of staff of the CEO,
so you're the aide. You're the aide de camp uh,
but even higher than your chief of staff. So you're
(23:49):
really getting uh. Probably one of the greatest seats in
the world as far as learning and understanding leadership like
that is one of the great grooming position is to
be in to become a leader. Hello, Mr President. So
that's what I keep saying, because you're bound for leadership.
So tell us about that. Tell us about your civilian son.
(24:11):
So I I come back to civilian life around two
thousand five, and I am behind the ball, if you will.
From my peers. They had each gone off to college
and now they're in the workforce in New York City
and they're earning. And so I said, Okay, I need
to catch up, and I need to catch up fast
because I need to make some money. Uh, I need
(24:33):
to get my degree. Uh. So I go off to
I enroll at St. John's University. Thank god, they are
so thoughtful about supporting folks that are returning from service,
I ended up going there for free. Basically they their
their remarkable institution. At the same time, I said, I'm
still missing this kind of mission aspect of things, and
(24:56):
I still want to break it down to its representative
parts again. And so I hear President Clinton speak and
he's talking about setting up this foundation and it's focused
on international as well as domestic and those sorts of things,
and so I was like, wow, this is this is
pretty remarkable stuff this guy is doing, and it's here
in New York and I happen to be available on
(25:19):
nights and weekends. I want to enroll and as many
classes as possible so I can catch up to my
peers and at the same time work for this guy
and whatever capacity I can work in and keep that
mission going. So I end up working on looking at
gentrification issues actually within New York City. One of the
(25:40):
things I think that President Clinton and others have gotten
flak four is like, hey, he set up his office
in Harlem, and folks said, hey, that's the reason that
gentrification happened in uh in Harlem, when in reality, like
economic livelihoods were actually just increasing and all across the country,
and folks were moving up to the places like Harlem
and unfortunately pushing out exist sting businesses. So what I
(26:01):
got to do was actually sit in on some of
these smaller businesses understand their baseline metrics. I got to
work with a couple of consulting firms and we started
to put together some plans to support those local and
small businesses. So that's how I got to start to
get this flavor of domestic policy and what it means
to support businesses and whatnot. With President Clinton. In parallel,
(26:24):
going to college, end up graduating in just two years,
get that four year degree done in two years. Fantastic.
I totally treated like like it was the military. So
I broke it down and thankfully graduated with honors, I
think because it was just so focused. And I got
to travel a ton with President Clinton in the process too,
which was which was awesome because whatever your political leanings are,
(26:46):
the guys brilliant, I mean just brilliant. He he can
have a full conversation with you, be fully engaged while
kind of quickly looking over his notes, and deliver enough
to deliver a two hour long speech about being a farmer,
which you know he's never been, but he can he
can talk about being a farmer as if he's been
a farmer's entire life while still having a full fledged
(27:07):
conversation with you. And so working with him was pretty
remarkable because he's like, I see, Nishan, that you are
pretty motivated to want to go off and do big things.
I would love for you to do it with the
within the foundation. And now that you've graduated from college,
you know, what are what are you thinking? You know,
post graduation? And I said, well, I'm thinking about just
(27:30):
taking that job at the foundation. He said, why don't
you forget the job at the foundation or forget anything else?
Why don't you think about going into engineering school or
to law school? I said, President Clinton, I've just worked
my tail off to get my four year degree done
in just two years. With all due respect, I have
no desire to go work on another degree. My peers
are earning money, everyone's living a good life. I don't
(27:52):
know if I want to go do this. Had you
been talking to your dad or something like how did this?
I think they may have been who knows, so he says,
He says, he goes, Nishan, you have far more life
experience than your peers do I think getting a degree
like an engineering degree or a law degree, it forces
(28:14):
you to think outside the box in terms of problem solving,
and that's what you need in leadership, and that's what
you need when you reach the highest ranks of government
or highest ranks of of the not for profit sector
or even business. I was like, look, I hear you,
lad and clear, but I want to just go and
make some money. So he brought in this guy, Bob Harrison.
(28:35):
Bob used to run the Clinton Global Initiative, and Bob
used to be a partner at Goldman Sachs. He's like,
you've got to think about what does the public sector
actually need. It needs to understand how to create sustainable
programming and understand what a bottom line actually looks like.
And so these are all fungible skills you need to
learn that in the private sector. What better training ground
(28:55):
than Goldman Sacks. And you can transition off into the
public sector at some point in time if you decide
to in the future, what was the time frame was
this two thousand eight or two thousand seven, two thousand seven,
and so write about the time the ship was hitting
the fans, so to speak. Financially exactly exactly. I'm now
thinking about whether or not this Goldman Sax move is
(29:18):
the right one. And then finally, I think the main
key thing that kind of drove it home for me
was President Clinton and Bob both say, look, if if
not for nothing, you make some money, you learn something.
And the beautiful thing is that they work in small groups.
And so just like in the military, you're working in
small teams and you're working on execution, and that's what
(29:39):
these guys are highly focused on. But yeah, financial crisis
comes two eight and every bank across Wall Street starts
laying off a bunch of folks to deal with that crisis.
I'm low on the totem pole, and they said, well,
guess what, you're responsibly just increased by three x because
we're we gotten rid of a couple of folks. Uh.
(30:02):
And thankfully, you know, affirmed like Coleman, they have remarkable training,
remarkable leaders and folks that have gone on to become
Secretaries of Treasury and masters and so forth. So I
felt like I was well equipped, well, you know, trained
to kind of go execute in the midst of what
was you know, what do they call it? The greatest
(30:22):
recession since the depression. Later in the Shot would go
on to earn his MBA degree. One day, he received
a call from his friend with a job offer. Come
work at the U. S Department of Agriculture. Without any
background in agriculture, but plenty of applicable life experience, the
Shot joined the U S D as Chief Scientist and
(30:45):
the Division of Research, Education and Economics. His Balls was
then nominated to run the US Agency for Internal Development.
It's the arm of the government that focuses on humanitarian
assistance around the world. The Shot followed his ball loss
into this new agency. His first week on the job,
the earthquake in Haiti happened, and the Shan found himself
(31:07):
boots on the ground helping organize the relief response. The
Shan's resume is a list of fearless career moves. Today,
he is the chief of staff to the Chief executive
Officer of Chobani. If you were to look at my resume,
it's like a hodgepodge of things and you're like, what
is the how do I threat this all together? And
(31:30):
I would say this experience working with the founder and
CEO of Chobani is a kind of a culmination of
it all in in some thoughtful kind of packaged role.
What I really identified, you know, with Handy, who's the
founder of the business, is that he's a small business guy.
You know, he came from Turkey, immigrated here in he
(31:50):
came here just to learn English. He ends up getting
a small business administration loan and only has about three
thousand dollars or so in his pocket, starts learning English
a little bit, arts creating this cheese business, turns it
into something that we all you know, enjoy today, which
is Chabanni. It's a it's a remarkable brand. I saw
so many elements of my own family and him, So
(32:11):
if he were to actually come in here right now,
he'd probably call me brother before he says anything, because
we actually truly treat each other like we're a family.
That's fantastic. More than anything outside of just the phenomenal
products and so forth, what Hammy kind of stands for,
outside of his origin story and how he got here
to the States and and built the brand, what he
stands for today is he's the antithesis of a lot
(32:34):
of the CEOs that he saw growing up. He said, look,
business should be a force for good it should be
a force for change, positive change in communities. We want
to do what's good for the customer, and then we
also want to do what's good for the communities in
which we operate. You seem to find purpose and mission
and everything you do. Tell us about your mission. Uh
(32:56):
with Chabanni, tell us about why that's important to you. Uh.
Tavani is pretty unique place it Uh. You know, we
don't have a corporate social responsibility type of department within
the company itself. The whole company, from the lowest levels
to the highest levels, they kind of always want to
do what's right for the community. And so the mission
(33:18):
for us is always delivering delicious, nutritious, natural and accessible food.
So we follow this acronym using our military world d
n n A, and the accessibility part of it became
front and center for me, you know, particularly during the pandemic,
we turned our cafe into a food bank. We structured
(33:38):
different partnerships to kind of get our products into food
banks across the country. A lot of great companies came
across and decided to go support delivering food. There was
so much food and security actually, which was so surprising
to see during the pandemic so it was pretty awesome
to be a part of a company that thinks about
food not only for just like our specific customers, but
(33:59):
for the entire country. So it's that acronym of delicious, nutritious, natural, accessible,
is like kind of like, what's the mission and delivering
getting that food out there. That's a really great mission.
I can see why you wanted to get on board
with it. I would say one other thing though, that
Hampty is very much focused on is refugees, and so
of our work force Sierra at Chabani is composed of
(34:21):
immigrants and refugees. In fact, I think at one point
in time we had maybe like nineteen translators in the
plant helping refugees kind of get integrated into supporting the
mission of developing our our yogurt products up in upstate
New York. Because we had totally employed everybody in one town,
we said, what's the next town over? They said it's Utica.
Utica has got this big refugee population. Uh. And they said,
(34:44):
but hobdy, they don't really speak English that well. He's like, great,
I don't speak English that well either. Will bust them
over and we'll get translators and we'll train them how
to do the job. So where I get to kind
of come full circle now is this country is a
wonderful place for opportunity, and you have the refue g
cap that's now since risen, and we're now also supporting
(35:04):
folks that served in uniform with US in Afghanistan. So
the special immigrant folks that came over are coming over
to this country with a special immigrant visa. They're looking
for opportunities, they're looking for jobs. And so Hamdi's got
a foundation called the Tent Foundation. Uh and Chibani is
one of the anchor kind of businesses that's supporting the
Tent Foundation in terms of employing those refugees in uh
(35:27):
Chibani and other businesses across the country. I love that,
I really really love that that that to me is
fulfilling promises of keeping our word as a nation. So
your commitment to veterans is pretty clear. Your your commitment
to this country is obvious. What are some ways that
you stay connected to the ventry community. The military is
(35:51):
such a big part of my life in terms of
shaping who I was and creating that structure. I wanted
to figure out what's the best way to kind of
engage and help some of these veteran service to organizations
give back to the community. And so I said, well,
how how can I be a thought partner for them?
So I took a few approaches. One was I had
this transition out of the military to go into the
(36:11):
private sector, and I had my learning experience when I
was looking at those different bios and so forth, and
so I said, I could be a mentor to folks.
And so I started serving as a mentor to veterans
that were leaving the service to help them figure out
how they can come up with their game plan to
go join the private sector. The other way that I
did it was actually with Shabani itself. One day I
(36:32):
was sitting down with our founder and CEO and said, hey,
this is been a big part of my life. I
would love more than anything to kind of give back.
And he said, well what are you thinking. I said, well,
why don't we use the power of the brand to
go support other NGOs that are supporting veterans. And so
the other piece of it was on housing. So there's
(36:52):
a beauty of wonderful NGO called the Operation home Front.
We ended up structuring a partnership with them at Chabani
and we created a red, white and blue yogurt. Actually,
so every dollar that you buy of the Operation Homefront
SKEW goes to go support veterans getting homes. So that
was another way in which to kind of stay engaged
(37:15):
and support the veteran community. And then finally I looked
at I A v a UM, and I said, well,
how can how can I help those? One of one
of their commercials that they had was super powerful, and
I don't know if you remember this one, Rob, but
it was a veteran that's in the middle of I
want to say, Madison Square Park, he's walking, he's alone,
(37:36):
and then he goes to shake another veteran's hand, and
all of a sudden everything kind of comes to life.
And I said, well, I can continue to also serve
as an advocate, a mentor for folks that are kind
of coming out of military service and help them also
with their jobs. So I looked at two different vsos
(37:57):
to go help them with the job Integration vis IS
For those listening at Home Veteran Service Organization Veterans, Okay,
thank you very much our acronyms. You know, I don't
want to lose anybody, I want them to stay with
this something because that's amazing. That's the kind of work
that I don't know, I love hearing about it. I
think there's probably I think the last I heard there
(38:17):
was something crazy like fifty registered veterans organizations, and I
think I've met with all of them, um for one
reason or another. You know, they want me to be
a spokesperson or do something. And I listened to their
missions and they're they're always amazing. But to hear when
these organizations are supported by Corporate America or supported by
(38:39):
other resources that can make their missions come true, help
them fulfill what they set out to do, to me,
is one of the most honorable things in the world.
So thank you, Thank you so much for continuing to
keep that bridge open between the civilian and the veteran community.
I will just add one thing though to it, Rob,
(39:00):
is a lot of a lot of us that you
have served in uniform. Nobody wants to hand out. And
I would say a lot of these veteran service organizations
are structured in such a way that they're just providing
you the tools, They're not necessarily handing everything you onto
you with a silver platter, so you're not being spoon fed.
These are great institutions that are out there, and I'm
(39:22):
so happy that it's grown to be. You know over,
I love that too, and I'm with you. I think
most of the least of the organizations I work with
are designed to give you tools and skills so that
you can be a self sustaining individual, so that you
can go out there and succeed exactly. So thank you
so much for spending time with us and talking to
(39:44):
us and telling us your story. Uh, it's a remarkable one.
I can't wait to hear what you're gonna do next
as far as whether you're going to continue to develop
in the private sector or if you're gonna become president
of United States. It's whatever you want. Although right now
being PRESIDENTE say, it's a tough job, real, real tough job.
Nobody there's nobody. Nobody's winning that one right now. So
(40:06):
but whatever you do, just keep being a leader because
that's what this country needs. So thank you very much
for your time. It was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you, Rob.
I really appreciate being on the program, and thank you
for doing what you've done in terms of your service
of the country my pleasure. I want to thank the
(40:31):
Sean Roy again for joining me on today's podcast. I
am beyond and pressed with his drive and his career,
and I cannot wait to see what new role in
industry he decides to tackle next. Who knows, maybe we'll
be a run for the Oval Office. Thanks for listening
(40:54):
to Veterans you Should Know. To hear more inspiring stories
of perseverance and camaraderie, check out all our episodes, including
those from season one, featuring veterans who have overcome incredible
obstacles and found renewed purpose in their civilian lives. If
you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast.
We would love to hear from you. You can listen
(41:15):
to the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Veterans you
Should Know as a special four parts series from I
Heart Radio and hosted by me Rob Wriggle. Our show
is written and produced by Molly Sosia, Nikkia Swinton, and
Jackie Perez, with assistance from Quincy Fuller. The show is edited,
(41:39):
sound designed and mixed by James Foster and Matt Stilla.
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