Beyond ‘Thank You For Your Service’, With Kathy Gallowitz
Beyond ‘Thank You For Your Service’, we have the power to bridge the gap between the military and civilian worlds. We can create a workforce that embraces diversity, supports our veterans, and builds thriving communities. In this episode, we have the incredible Kathy Gallowitz, founder and CEO of Vanguard Veteran, joining us. Kathy is on a mission to cultivate and support civilians who champion veterans, providing strategic guidance to employers seeking to hire and retain veteran talent. As a retired lieutenant colonel with 30 years of service in the military, Kathy understands the challenges veterans face when transitioning into the private sector. She emphasizes how companies should consider veteran hiring as a vital aspect of their corporate citizenship and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Kathy discusses the essence of a true veteran champion – one that underlines the importance of camaraderie and resources that uplift the living standards of veterans. She showcases some of these inspiring stories from her book, Beyond Thank You for Your Service, which highlights people who have helped veterans in their communities. Tune in now and join us in going beyond “Thank you for your service”.
Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/kathy-gallowitz
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Beyond ‘Thank You For Your Service’, With Kathy Gallowitz
Founder And CEO Of Vanguard Veteran
In this episode, my guest is Kathy Gallowitz. Kathy is the Founder and CEO of Vanguard Veteran, which cultivates and supports civilians who want to step up and lead the veteran champion movement. Her organization also offers strategic and comprehensive support for employers who want to source, hire, and retain veteran talent. Kathy is a military veteran herself, having retired as a lieutenant colonel after many years of service on active duty in the Reserves and in the Air National Guard.
Over the course of her career, she started as a nurse and then did a mix of marketing, public affairs, and community outreach work. Kathy is the Author of Beyond “Thank You for Your Service:” The Veteran Champion Handbook for Civilians. She’s an active volunteer, especially with veteran-focused organizations. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Kathy, welcome. It’s nice to have you on the show. I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for having me.
I’m curious to hear about Vanguard Veteran and the work you do.
Vanguard Veteran overall equips civilians to become veteran champions and I specialize in two particular areas. One, helping employers source and leverage veteran skillsets in ways that make their company more mission-focused and productive, just gives you a stronger company overall. I help volunteer faith community leaders build military ministries in ways that promote practical support, a sense of belonging, and spiritual resiliency.
You’ve been doing this for a while and you’ve made this your life’s work. What are the issues that veterans face? I don’t think most people are all that familiar with the issues that veterans face when they leave the military and try and enter the private sector.
You’ve done this yourself. As you know, the hardest thing is the cultural differences coming from a hierarchical environment where things are somewhat predictable except for contingencies and crises. You’re always planning for that but the hierarchy, how decisions are made, what your next taskers are. There are usually pretty clear expectations about how to get the job done.
We also have a little bit of a different communication style. We focus on efficiency. A funny story, I’m married to a career active-duty soldier with four combat tours. Towards the latter part of his career and after, since he’s retired. He would say, “They’re using up good army oxygen,” when people don’t get to the point. There are cultural differences. There’s certainly the network.
Whether you’ve served 4 years or 24 years, you can assume that people who leave the military have a small to non-existent professional network for them to leverage to try to find work. As you know, most of our job opportunities come from networking and from personal relationships. The best things in life I contend come from that network, be it career opportunities, babysitters, or friends. The network is something that service members have it are disadvantaged for.
Sometimes, there are other consequences of war or stressors of military service, be it visible or invisible wounds that service members have to work through. I want to say real clearly and upfront that, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, only about 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder. There are lots of myths and misconceptions wrapped around that notion. People are fearful and uncertain.
I believe that uncertainty comes primarily from the sensationalism of the media and because we are finding more that people with PTSD can have good full lives, and learn how to manage their triggers. By the way, when 2/3 of us experience some trauma in our lives, it’s more likely that you’ll meet a civilian with post-traumatic stress disorder than a military member. Trauma can be a real nasty divorce. It can be a car accident.
It can be any civic unrest or civic national disaster. Many of us have been through so much. It seems to be more traumatic and events happening, school shootings, etc. When 1% of our nation serves in the military and 2/3 of us experience trauma, it’s more likely that you’ll meet a civilian. The good news is that even if you have that diagnosis, it can be managed well and accommodated very reasonably in the workplace.
The topic of mental health in general has become much more acceptable to talk openly about. The recording in June was Mental Health Awareness Month. It gets a lot more positive discussion and constructive discussion than even years ago. Whether you’re a military veteran who’s got PTSD or some other mental health issue or 2/3 of people who face some other trauma in their lives, it’s at least a lot easier to deal with that and integrate getting the right care into the rest of your life.
I’m very encouraged to see more employers having more robust mental health services for free. It’s exciting to see that it’s being embraced more fully. My first career in nursing and physical health is important but mental health needs to be paid attention to. Everyone’s going to benefit in this day and age from that increased awareness and increased action or intervention benefits that employers are offering, so that’s great.
You were a veteran. You served a lot longer in the military than I did. What was your experience like getting out when you transitioned into the private sector?
I’ve had quite a few different transitions. I have 29 good years but for 7 or 8 of them, I was probably part-time military. When I was part-time military, I was either a full-time mom or as a full-time employee in civilian settings. I didn’t have the experience of being full-time military and then becoming full-time civilian other than starting this business.
I started this business about a six years ago. As you know, as an entrepreneur, that’s a whole different story. The transition experience that I hearken back to when you ask me this question is, as a nurse, you would think that when I was a part-time military nurse and I was looking for full-time civilian nursing jobs. It’s apples to apples.
It is apples to apples when you’re looking at bedside care but when you start looking at trying to become a manager or a leader. I remember when I interviewed for positions. There were two things that struck me. I was nervous about how the civilian interviewers might perceive me. My fear was that they might think, “She’s been in the military, she’s probably bossy or she might be a little bit too direct in her communication style.”
Right, wrong or indifferent, this was many years ago that this was my thinking. I tried to adapt or be aware of my body language and my tone of voice. I try to smile a lot anyway but I was trying even more to smile more. I was very concerned and nervous about that. Not that anybody said anything but because there were some stereotypes about maybe women who were serving.
The other thing that I found that, although, I was hopeful that my military experience would be viewed as a very positive leadership, training ground, proving ground, if you will. I thought I brought that to the table. I always lost to the internal candidate. Now, I get that. A known product is better than maybe a risky product if you will, but I was disappointed in that.
I thought about that extra commitment on my part, that extra dedication, the potential stressors of moving away from home or whatever. I would hope that maybe there would be more willingness to give me the benefit of the doubt as compared to taking the safe route but I get it. That was what I experienced during my transition. I kept trying. Eventually, I moved on to different career opportunities because I had other interests.
When I got out, and this was back in the 1990s, I went straight to grad school. I described it as my halfway house into the civilian world but back then, I don’t remember. We were in a bit of a drawdown period. This is on the back of the Soviet Union breaking up and the Berlin Wall coming down. On the back of all of that happening, they were encouraging people to leave the military but I don’t remember there being any transition support back. What’s the military doing now to help exiting members with the transition?
When President Obama was in service, he did ask for an overhaul of the transition assistant program because it hadn’t been looked at in many years. The good news is that they are doing it sooner. What I’m hearing is at least a year out, maybe even closer to that. The best thing since sliced bread is the DOD Skillbridge program.
With the approval of your commander, as far out as six months prior to separation, you can go and do a paid internship in different companies that have applied and been approved. It doesn’t have to be six months. It can be less than that as I understand it but that is very popular and is used broadly by employers as a way to be their halfway house, test drive the talent and give the military member an opportunity to see if this is what they want, if this is where they fit well. That is very exciting.
What I’m hearing though about the Transition Assistance Program is that it’s still not where it needs to be. It’s about five days and it’s such a stressful time for people transitioning. They may not be completely focused on it. Some of the training potentially could be stronger. There isn’t enough emphasis on networking. Everybody I talk to, interviews I’ve done, service members that are transitioning, you can’t network enough and that’s not a strength of this program.
It also focuses more on maybe Federal jobs versus civilian jobs. There’s a long way to go in terms of preparing our service members for that transition but it’s certainly better than what you experienced twenty-some years ago. We’re on the right trajectory. The resumes are improving but resumes are difficult for most anybody.
There are lots of hurdles to go through and potential barriers in the overall employment process that makes it even more difficult for a service member who comes from a different culture who may not have interviewed for a job ever in their life. It’s a tough process for a service member to go through but with the improvement of transitioning service members, the preparedness is improving.
There’s so much that’s different. You have to think about saving for retirement, health insurance, creating a resume, and interviewing. So much is taken care of for you in the military that you have to figure out for yourself outside of the military. It is a big adjustment.
I want to highlight that in the military, we are surrounded by lots of directions but that doesn’t mean that we’re robots. That doesn’t mean that we’re not critical thinkers or independent thinkers. Our focus is, again, depending on your age and your maturity level. You may be more externally focused than you are internally driven.
As you know, in terms of making career choices and making decisions during your career, the fundamental piece is, “Who am I? What do I want? Where are my strengths? Where do I feel best performing?” You don’t necessarily understand that when you are externally focused based on the needs of the military. That is a huge process in and of itself but we are highly adaptable and train easily. We need to keep growing and figuring out who we are, what we want, and where we fit best.
More companies are focusing on this, trying to make a real practice of hiring military veterans. Are there particular industry sectors or companies that you would call out as doing a particularly good job?
It’s very interesting to me that there isn’t necessarily one industry that is the best brand or place to land based on your military skillsets because of banking or finance. You wouldn’t think that those are big obvious apples-to-apples matches. Chase through the job’s mission has built a coalition and Chase Bank, I tell them as a pioneer in the veteran hiring space with Jamie Dimon and hitting that hard. Wells Fargo Bank is doing a great job with that.
The industries that I’m excited about, that I think to be almost a perfect marriage, if that’s not too strong a statement, is manufacturing. The team focus, the structure, the technical pieces of it, the safety focus, manufacturers, and we have an American production renaissance on our hands. Manufacturing is just coming back into being.
If there’s a manufacturer out there reading and you haven’t been thinking about attracting veteran talent, I encourage you to get on it today. Why? It’s because the business case for hiring veterans is well understood. Veteran unemployment is at historic lows. Although I’ve read anything from 30% to 60% of veterans being underemployed, the competition for veteran talent is fierce now and it’s only going to get more competitive as time goes by. There’s a win-win for hiring a veteran. They can be hired for aptitude and trained in any industry. Manufacturing is ideally suited for this talent pool.
You described a little bit of the discomfort that you felt interviewing in a civilian setting. What advice would you give companies on how to source and properly interview military talent?
Let’s talk about sourcing first. There are lots of national sources that you can tap into hiring our heroes, recruiting military, all kinds of job boards, all kinds of tools but I encourage employers to be proactive in building that veteran talent pipeline by identifying your local sources. Be they nonprofits, agencies, bases, or state programs, tapping into those sources, developing trusting relationships with those people who know the military talent, distinguishing yourself in the local community, and participating in veteran recognition events.
Wearing your T-shirt, wearing your logo, and showing up as Team Red, White, and Blue. Going to the parades, to the recognition events, and getting to know the veteran community leaders so that they know that you’re serious about hiring veterans. A construction company in Ohio told me, “We went to the local Red Horse unit in an international guard base.” Red Horse, as you know, are civil engineers.
They hired one and their buddies started joining the same company. That’s the model for military hiring. Get known in a local unit, in your local regional community, build relationships and you will find that service members, more often than not, are going to follow their comrades and want to join that company if it’s a good company.
Interviewing, find some way to connect with that candidate. If you have a military parent or a military spouse, if you know you’ve appreciated and respected someone’s service in your community, talk about that. It’s important to try to put that candidate at ease. They’ll probably come in with stiff body posture and, “Yes, Ma’am,” and, “No, Sir.” They only answer questions when asked. Probably will not initiate conversation a lot, particularly if they’re younger and enlisted. The officers and those with more education are probably more at ease and yet still, that’s part of our demeanor and how we show respect to people.
One of the key things about our communication skills is we’re taught to listen more than to speak a lot of times. try to put them at ease. Try to find some way to connect and ask behavioral or situational questions that will help them explain how their strengths and/or the impact that they’ve made. Again, self-promoting, and talking about me is not something that we do well. It’s always about the team. It’s not about me. A skilled interviewer needs to try to pull that out of them. Some job seekers are being taught the star method of describing their answers. They may need to be taught that in the interview so that they can do a good job on their own behalf.
Let’s say a junior person says, “I drove a truck in the military.” What is that truck? Ask questions surrounding the amount of equipment that they were responsible for, the dollar amount, the number of people, the health and safety of those people, potentially if they were in combat. Very simple statements can be made by the job seeker. The interviewer needs to be alert, attuned, and sensitive to what could be all around surrounding a very simple statement and pull that out of the job seeker.
Again, self-promoting and talking about me is not something that we’re very good at. That’ll get you going in the right direction. The other piece did not forget is to use military skills translators prior to the job, so you understand the military occupational code and how that translates into civilian positions. Look at the knowledge, skills, and abilities. Dig through that a little bit so that if you don’t understand what they did in the military, you can compare notes on the military skills translators. The one I liked a lot is O*net. Do your homework before you get to the interview so you know what questions to ask.
What about getting them onboarded and getting them comfortable so that they stay in the longer term?
As you know, a good onboarding process for someone who’s never been in the military is important. It’s one of the early indicators of retention but someone who has served in the military and honestly feels like a fish out of water is even more important. Research shows that about 55% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans feel disconnected from mainstream America.
A good onboarding process for someone who's never been in the military is important. It's one of the early indicators of retention. Share on XThat disconnection makes them feel very unfamiliar, if not, like a fish out of water, feeling different. There may be some levels of, “Is this an environment? Is this a person that I can trust?” A good thorough onboarding checklist that’s not pencil-whipped. That’s my language for, “You’re going through the motions.” That’s the language that we use in the military. Take it seriously.
I recommend assigning a veteran in the company as well as a civilian who has an open-door policy that will receive questions on the spur of the moment as much as possible because that new military hires going to going to have a lot of questions. They’re going to feel, very oftentimes, uncertain about who to ask and when to ask. Some of them are super small and some of them may be much bigger. I offer an onboarding checklist template on my website.
I recommend maybe a year-long template with frequent check-ins and taking nothing for granted. Have a central point of expertise to coordinate benefits and to ask questions. Another good best practice is to have somebody in your organization who gets all things military. Whether they’re serving in the garden reserve, they’ve retired, or they’ve been discharged, having somebody in the organization who gets all things military is a good idea and part of onboarding that will help that person succeed.
Connect them to their veteran employee resource group if you have one. If you don’t, maybe a committee or a group of people. Veterans usually attract other veterans. You know who each other is. You tell stories and they show up to help you. If you can help facilitate and promote that, it’s going to help with the onboarding of that new hire.
You feel it’s important to link veteran hiring with corporate citizenship and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Why is that so? What does that look like in your view?
Military hires are one of the most diverse people you will meet. Not only are they diverse in terms of ethnicity or race but they’re diverse in their cognitive processes and work experiences. Diversity inclusion and hiring go well beyond hiring minorities and women. Military people are part of diversity inclusion but my bias is that it’s a workforce attraction and retention approach that you cannot miss.
It’s bigger than DE&I. It’s part of talent, traction, and retention. Oftentimes, it’s nestled in within DE&I, but having a close collaboration with talent acquisition and with the recruiters is going to benefit the company most because veteran talent has shown to be more productive and less absent. With those two key components, there’s a good opportunity to generate cost savings if veteran hiring is done well.
Corporate citizenship is all about being out in the community, leveraging your brand to do good in the community, doing things in ways that aligned with the mission of your company, and helping the community at the same time. Oftentimes, there are things like volunteering or philanthropic efforts that are part of corporate citizenship or corporate social responsibility. Aligning your philanthropy in the veteran community and not talking the talk but walking the walk. That is a proven veteran retention tactic.
If the veterans in your organization see that you’re supporting veteran causes or veteran events outside your community, that’s very powerful. Oftentimes, companies will match volunteer time or volunteer hours and give back or allow you to spend work time on volunteer charitable efforts. Align those in the veteran community. Wear your company T-shirt and again, out in the community, that speaks very powerfully of the company’s commitment to veteran hiring and commitment to veterans in general. If you’re spearheading a military hiring program, make sure it’s nestled in talent acquisition, recruiting DE&I, and corporate citizenship. That’s how you’ll get a big bang for your buck.
Let’s turn to the topic of veteran champions. How do you define being a veteran champion?
The title of my book is Beyond “Thank You for Your Service:” The Veteran Champion Handbook for Civilians. In this book, I’ve featured about twenty, mostly Ohioans who are demonstrated civilian veteran champions. That is people who have built mutually beneficial activities and services that promote the quality of life of our veterans. By so doing, I contend to improve their quality of life, the civilian’s quality of life, or these civilian veteran champions improve the workforce by hiring veterans or their community because veterans are civic assets.
By knowing the veterans in your community, you will help them assimilate and transition better into civilian life. A civilian veteran champion knows who the veterans are, develops relationships with them, acts go beyond thank you and beyond words, and acts in ways that improve quality of life, workforce, and community. The book is full of practical strategies that you can use as an employer, lawyer, doctor, community leader, educator, and member of the faith community to go beyond thank you and implement strategies that bring our service members all the way home and improve our communities, workforce, and the quality of life of our veterans.
Where do we need those veteran champions the most?
Employment and faith. That’s why I spend most of my time there. I believe that your job is a huge part of your identity, a huge part of your financial health, and your emotional health. If we can help our veterans get a career and not a job, help them develop and reach their potential, and serve that employer well, it’s such a win-win for the employer and the military hire.
In the faith community, I believe that our spiritual health is fundamental to our overall well-being. A military ministry promotes connection, practical support, and spiritual resiliency and decreases social isolation, and will help curb veteran suicide. Especially now that so many of our warriors are coming home. They’re surviving combat now more often than.
In our forever war, there are so many more warriors that could benefit from some spiritual resiliency and from leading on their faith. Research shows that about 40% of our service members have a difficult time finding meaning or purpose and regaining touch with their spirituality after military service, especially if they’ve been in combat. You don’t have to have been in combat to experience the stressors of military service or the stressors of life. Leaning on and strengthening your faith helps promote your overall well-being and happiness.
For somebody who wants to be a veteran champion, where should they start?
I’ve encouraged you to read the book to get an overall understanding of what you can do from where you sit in society. It’s available on Amazon. Do a Veteran-Ready Assessment of your company to see how you’re doing with veteran hiring. Another is to look at military ministry. Where is your congregation in terms of building that? I offer a complimentary discovery call for employers and a monthly coaching call for people who want to be involved in even looking for or considering building a military ministry.
Tell me about how you got into the military in the first place. Did you want to be a nurse and the military was the way to do it or did you want to be in the military and nursing just happened to fall out of that?
It was the latter. I grew up in an active-duty Navy family. I followed my dad around the world, attending a French-speaking preschool in Paris, graduating from high school in Iceland, and going to college in Munich, Germany. Fundamentally, I grew up learning to love my country. My brother went to the Naval Academy and I wanted to serve. It was something that was ingrained in me very early on. It’s typical for members of military families to want to go on and serve. About 80% of the military comes from people who have a family heritage of serving. That was important to me. My choice to be a nurse came second.
My parents paid for my college. Air Force nursing was my first-choice career. I wanted to join to serve but then also, the leadership opportunities, educational opportunities, and the incredibly diverse values-based people are the people I wanted to get to know and work alongside. I also was excited about the physical fitness aspect of serving because I enjoy exercising. Attempting to be somewhat physically fit is important to me. There were lots of reasons but the primary one was the opportunity to serve and give back.
You did have that transition. How would you describe the differences in terms of the way leadership works in the military and how leadership works in the civilian world? You moved up to the ranks. What’s similar and what’s different?
What’s universal is that leadership is influenced, nothing more and nothing less. I borrow that from John Maxwell. Leadership is about relationships and trust, whether you’re wearing a uniform or not. A good leader keeps those primary, having good relationships, building trust, and taking care of your people. In the military, we have a little bit of a benefit to motivate people and that is because of rank. Rank gets people’s attention.
Our workforce is very highly trained to respect rank and be motivated to make the team work. That’s all part of basic training and our mindset. Leadership, in some ways, is different in that because our workforce is very motivated and disciplined. The best leaders are going to be focused on taking care of their people and have lots of integrity.
We have a lot of good leaders in the military. What’s different is that, sometimes our leaders can be a little bit direct, or maybe sometimes forget that I do need to take care of that person. The mission is important but you have to take care of your people too. Now, the other thing that’s wonderful about military leadership is that there’s an emphasis on grooming your subordinates and on developing your people.
You heard this. You might get hit by a bus tomorrow, so to speak. You have to have somebody be able to step into your shoes. In the civilian workforce, there is some interest in that but I’m not sure it’s done very well. There may even be people that feel threatened by that. Maybe advancement. A lot of people want to advance but, in the military, we expect you to advance.
If you don’t, most people get out. Having a career development process is important to retain military people. The leadership in civilian work life is less clear and more ambiguous. From what I’ve read, I understand that there’s a lot of opportunity to do more in the civilian workforce to develop your people, groom them, and help them reach their potential.
You’ve been in a lot of different situations. You’ve been a nurse, in marketing, PR, public affairs, community, and outreach. You’ve been in the active military, reserve military, Air National Guard, entrepreneur, and worked in the civilian world. I read your background. What are the strengths that you’ve consistently drawn on?
Before the age of 35, I’d lived in at least 20 different communities. That’s not moves. That’s just communities. I know you’re living overseas. Most people in the military, on active duty, do a lot of moving and so do civilians. When you are mobile and transition a lot, you learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable not knowing, finding your way, extending your hand and friendship, and getting resources.
What comes along with that is a level of confidence. I got through this. I did that. You learn that the answers emerge and that there are good people everywhere if you keep asking the right questions and you don’t give up. You have a good attitude and you work hard. More often than not, you can be successful. It takes a lot of perseverance and stamina and resiliency to do that. That’s what comes to mind when you ask me that.
Last question, what do you wish somebody had told you back when you were in the beginning part of your career that you’ve learned since then?
My parents never said, “You can’t,” but I didn’t necessarily hear from people that, “You can. Go do it. Go get it.” My mother instilled in me a strong sense of identity and self-worth. Believe in yourself and be willing to take risks. Informed reasonable risks because it’s a big, beautiful world out there and there’s lots of opportunity. We need good people to do good things.
Believe in yourself and be willing to take informed, reasonable risks, because it's a big, beautiful world out there, and there are lots of opportunities, and we need good people to do good things. Share on XThat’s a good way to wrap up. I’ve learned a lot from this. Thank you. Given that I’m involved in our veteran ERG at work, it will be helpful in that setting. I sincerely appreciate your time.
Thank you. I appreciate your interest. Thank you for your service and all you’re doing now to help military people transition well and reach their potential.
You as well. Have a good rest of your day.
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It was good having Kathy on the show. As I mentioned to her at the close there, I’d learned an awful lot about the ways that we can all help veterans transition out of the military and get them into the companies that we work for or the companies in our communities. If you’re ready to take control of your career, whether you’re a military veteran or not, you can certainly visit PathWise.io. If you’d like more regular career insights, become a PathWise member. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on the website for the PathWise Newsletter. Follow PathWise on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Thanks. Have a great day.
Important Links
- Vanguard Veteran
- O*net
- Beyond “Thank You for Your Service:” The Veteran Champion Handbook for Civilians
- Transition Assistance Program
- Vanguard Veteran Overview
- Veteran Talent Academy
- Complimentary Veteran-Ready Assessment
- O*Net Online Military Crosswalk Search
- Military Ministries Matter Coaching Call
- Military Ministries Quiz
- Invite Vanguard Veteran to Speak
- Women Who Lead: A monthly free hybrid Leadership Discussion Forum for women Veterans and non-Veterans to empower women leaders and foster mutual support. We hope you will join us! Register here
- LinkedIn – PathWise.io
- Twitter – PathWise.io
- Facebook – PathWise.io
- YouTube – PathWise.io
About Kathy Gallowitz
Kathy Gallowitz is the Founder and CEO of Vanguard Veteran, which cultivates and supports civilians who want to step up and lead the Veteran Champion movement. Her organization also offers strategic and comprehensive support for employers who want to source, hire and retain Veteran talent.
Kathy is a military veteran herself, having retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after 30 years of service on active duty, in the Reserves, and in the Air National Guard. Over the course of her career, she started as a nurse and then did a mix of marketing, public affairs, and community outreach work.
Kathy is the author of “Beyond ‘Thank You For Your Service,’ The Veteran Champion Handbook for Civilians.” She is an active volunteer, especially with Veteran-focused organizations. She lives in Arizona.