Episode 105 Transcription

Welcome to episode 105 of Behind the Mission, a show that sparks conversation with trusted partners and educational experts.

My name is Duane France, and each week I'll be having conversations with podcast guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans, and their families. You can find a show on all the podcast players or be going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast.

Thanks again for joining us on Behind the Mission. Our work and mission are supported by generous partners and sponsors who also believe that education changes lives. Our sponsor this week is Comcast. Comcast creates incredible technology and entertainment that connects millions of people to the moments and experiences that matter most.You can find out more about how they support the military affiliated population by going to corporate.comcast.com/impact/military.

On today's episode, I'm featuring a conversation with the honorable Patrick J. Murphy America's first Iraq war Veteran, elected to Congress and the 32nd under Secretary of the Army. He's a former prosecutor,board chairman, and is now a Wharton business school lecturer, Emmy award-winning producer and senior managing director at Anura, one of the top management consulting In the world. He is also the chairman of taskforce movement, a group of dedicated individuals who are bridging the gap between policy and the pavement by creating pathways to connect military families to industry with good paying family, sustaining careers. You can find out more about Patrick by checking out his bio on our show notes. Let's get into my conversation with him and come back afterwards to talk about some of the key points.

DUANE: So Patrick, you've had a varied career of service to your country, both in the military and as an elected official, and continue to be involved in causes that support your fellow Veterans and their families. Before we get into that and the work that you're doing, it'd be great to hear a bit about your background from the military to Capitol Hill and why these efforts are so important to you.

PATRICK: Hey Duane, it's great to be on with a fellow army Veteran, also, fellow paratrooper with the All American Division. appreciate what you do and appreciate what you do for PsychArmor. I'm a huge fan of the group. As you know, I was on the board and I think Tina and the team there are phenomenal.

To me it's simple. I come from a military family. I never thought it would be a career, like it was, for me. I did ROTC at a small Catholic college called Kings College. It's in Wilbury, Pennsylvania, where I played hockey, for all four years. And this was before 9/11. Although my dad was enlisted in the Navy and my brother, also did ROTC through the Air Force, it was peacetime. I didn't know what would become of it, but I was blessed enough to be as, to join the faculty at West Point, taught constitutional military law there, which I just thought was an awesome experience, especially for a blue collar kid from Philadelphia like I was. And I was there though when 9/11 happened. So Duane, the reason why I'm so committed to my brother and sister Veterans and why I devoted my life to it is because, I deployed the combat twice and I had lost 19 men in our unit, our brigade combat team with the 82nd Airborne Division and ,it just, it hurt my heart, it hurt my soul, and I was willing to try and make a difference. So I came back and gotten political public service, became the first Iraq board Veteran elected to Congress, wrote the GI bill, wrote the repeal of the don’t ask don't tell policy. And just worked my ass off to help my brother and sister Veterans.

DUANE: I think that's definitely an amazing life of service. I think it's always interesting to me when I meet service members whose military career spanned both pre and post 9/11. I had served probably for about nine and a half years. I was in Germany on 9/11. And so I think that we have a different perspective. Like you said, when you joined, it was peacetime. And when I joined it was after the Gulf War and you'd think that I'm gonna do my stint and get out. And then life really changed on 9/11 and the military really changed pre and post 9/11.

PATRICK: And again, the army opened up so many doors for me. But on 9/11 I knew I had to get in a fight. I had already been in airborne school in air assault school. I was getting ready for ranger school. I had lost friends that were murdered on 9/11 in New York and in the towers. And to me it was my duty to go get involved and get in a fight. You know, I spend my time in the military to go do that. And, to me it, it changed me as a person. I'm a big believer in post traumatic growth. I would never have been a US congressman at age 33, or professor at West Point or someone who helped lead the Army in the Pentagon.

But the Army was great to me. And I think we all have that kind of survivor skill. I think pretty much every day, the 19 All Americans that I serve with, that never made it home. And I'm trying to make it count. And even the ones that did make it home, most of 'em have changed forever. And while I do believe in post traumatic growth and a lot of positive things of military service, as you know, we have that ethic that we leave no one behind. Every day when we lose brothers and sisters that take their own life, that's an epidemic. We've lost more folks of suicide than the actual wars itself, and there's a lot more we need to do.

DUANE: Oh, absolutely. And I think about that concept of life after the Army. I was actually was on my way to the the local base here, this morning and realized that it's been almost eight years since I've been out of the military. And it seems like it's gone in a flash, but it's also, I'm gonna be a Veteran for twice as long as I ever was a service member when I served for 22 years. And like you, the military was such a large part of our life, but then there's that big chunk of life afterwards. And like you said, you continue to try to support service members and Veteran in post-military life in different ways. And some of that, before we started talking, you started talking about the concept of entrepreneurship or Veterans in business and entrepreneurship.

PATRICK: Yeah, I think I look at the Veterans from the Greatest Generation. They came back from World War II and they didn't just win the war, but they came back home and they drove our economy. They created incredible global, iconic brands like Nike, the largest sports apparel company in the world. Started by Phil Knight, an Army Veteran, or Comcast, started by Navy Veteran Ralph Roberts or Sam Walto, starting Walmart, the largest retailer in the world. You know, we should be really proud that our brothers and sister Veterans from past generations of that generation were about half to start growing small businesses. Our generation between of Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans, it's less than 5% though that start growing small businesses. So when I say I've devoted my life and I've devoted my life to my brother and sister Veterans, it's in different capacities. Yeah, I wrote the GI Bill and there's about 1.1 million young Americans in college and universities using the GI Bill right now. But when I was in Congress, now I'm in a private sector, we've raised tens of millions of dollars in investing in Veteran companies across the country to create the next Walmart, Comcast, Nike.

DUANE: Yeah, absolutely. And you hear that, the World War II generation, they came back and like you mentioned, iconic brands or they became doctors. But, I had two grandfathers in World War II. One came back and became a tailor, opened up his own tailor shop, and another became a mechanic and was working as a mechanic, as a solo entrepreneur, so that was the foundation of my family and built for later generations. A lot of people don't really consider that. Obviously as you said, Phil Knight and Sam Walton, that we have these big iconic brands, but hundreds of thousands of service members came back and built stronger lives for their families as well as really establishing quality of life for themselves.

PATRICK: Yeah, and I think that's what we gotta get back to. Veterans, our incredible civic assets to this nation. Veterans are more likely to be employed than non-Veterans. They're more likely to vote in elections no matter what their political persuasion is, than non-veterans. They're more likely to volunteer as little league coaches or pastors in their churches than non-veterans. So I think we should take a great source of pride that our brother and sister Veterans are these great civic assets. The problem is that, we do live by that ethic that we leave no one behind. And, I know what PsychArmor and your organization and what we're doing with Task Force Movement and others. We gotta make sure that we create opportunities, especially during that transition time when people do fall through the cracks. And every year we have just under a quarter million active troops become Veterans, and we gotta take care of them and the military spouses as well.

DUANE: Yeah, absolutely. And I've heard many people say that in some ways, Veterans, especially as you were talking about current era veterans post 9/11, Veterans coming out now, maybe uniquely suited for entrepreneurship. The flexible thinking that's involved, the doing a lot with the very little resources like, like we had to do sometimes when we were deployed. There are a lot of characteristics that especially current a service members have that lend itself to entrepreneurship.

PATRICK: Right, and that's why, spearheading this effort, as the Chairman of Taskforce Movement and Taskforce Cyber, to make sure that we rally, not just the public sector, but the private sector and this public private partnership to drive opportunities to meet some of the greatest challenges that our countries facing. When we had Covid, our supply lines were really, really vulnerable. We couldn't get supplies to frankly, the stories that we needed, baby formula, et cetera. . and you know we had veterans who led the way, leading convoys of trucks, down and distributing the, you know, the baby formula, across this country. And part of that was, we're 80,000 truck drivers short, so it's 80,000 folks that don't have their CDL commercial driver's license. So we just launched, at the White House this past April and we launched Task Force Movement. It is now expanded into Task Force Cyber, but it was there.

President Biden and Secretary Peter Judge who as you know, is a Navy Veteran, launching, saying, hey Veterans, could you please help us, stand up and, you're Dr. Fellow 80,000 truck drivers that we need right now. But the desperate need that we need Veterans that lead the way, once again across America.

So we've already, in the middle of distributing over 9 million in scholarships. We launched a drive to 500, with the US Chamber Commerce. And indeed, getting 500 veterans, getting 'em through the process of getting their CDL license. A CDL license, Duane by the way, cost about eight to $10,000 per so it was just a great expedited program that's been very successful. And then we were in Pennsylvania with Secretary Buttigieg launching 2.9 million in Department of Transportation scholarships, for Veterans and underserved communities. We got foundations like the Justin Amir Foundation to step up and I think one of the greatest things, Duane, is we actually gave an actual truck, a brand new truck to an Iraq war Veteran named actually, Eva.

And she's a single mom. She got a brand new Kenworth, T six 80 truck. It's phenomenal. We were there at the Chamber of Commerce with her and the Kenworth executives and company called Fastport and some others, really,showing folks, hey, you can be an entrepreneur as a truck driver.

You can average starting salaries, $77,000. Those initiatives aren't just in some vacuum, it is really all hands on deck, a public awareness campaign, because most folks think if you're an American truck driver that you're gonna be gone for days on end, that you're an over the road truck driver. When that's not the case. The majority of truck drivers are actually home for dinner every night. They're a truck driver for Amazon or FedEx or UPS. or even a big rig, but they're back in time to have dinner with their family. There's a public awareness, public procession campaign, that we launched around America truckers and we're proud about it, and we got a lot more work to do.

DUANE: I appreciate that effort too.  I often tell folks, I have a cousin, he joined UPS working on the dock the day I joined the military. 22 years later, he owns two or three trucks and lives at a house four times as big as mine, so it, and a lot of people think about, as you were talking about, there's certain stereotypes people settle for that job or there's certain judgment they have related to just generally, truck drivers, so to speak, but they don't realize, and not just how lucrative, but how satisfying it can be to be such a critical part of the infrastructure of our country. 

PATRICK: No doubt. And I think as we talk about this, it's not just about truck drivers too, it's about cyber security professionals. And that's why we launched a few months later at the American Legion Conference this past month, we launched Task for Cyber, which is an offshoot of Task Force Movement, but test for cyber saying, hey, we're 40,000 cyber security professionals short in the federal government. And we're gonna be 3.5 million cyber security professionals short globally in the next two years. These are high paying jobs. Veterans are perfect to go into cybersecurity. Why? Because frankly, they already have the skills and training, but they also have their security clearances.

 I listened to your last podcast, of, with the Great Marine. Jason, who's doing great work out there, there's a lot more we need to do because when you look at after Covid and I don't know if a lot of folks know this or not, but, cyber crime has increased 600% in our country. And there's a lot more we gotta to protect not just our military, not just the Pentagon and Department of Defense. American businesses out there, that are being attacked, from foreign adversaries and trying to hurt our own economy here in America.

DUANE: And I think there's this effort, as you were talking about education to help Veterans understand that one, there's these opportunities both in transportation and in cybersecurity, that they may not have been aware of. Truck drivers in the Army, and I know quite a few of them that went on and they became transportation professionals in post-military life and adjacent  professionals, so people that are in those career fields make that shift. But that's not something that, say an infantryman or a medic or a helicopter mechanic may not think that these careers may be for them because they don't have any background in it.

PATRICK: Yeah. And that's why like my day job, frankly, Duane is, I'm a senior managing director at a company called Encore. Encore is a World Class mdr, and MDR is a managed detection and response provider. So, you know, we represent Peloton, Meta and Chick-fil-A, Ford Motor Company. But we also launched things like the Brooklyn Cyber Center, where we're actually educating young Americans most without a college degree on how to get their cybersecurity certifications, how they could join our ranks and be cyber security professionals to protect our companies and protect our nation. 

DUANE: Yeah. And I think that's the critical aspect of a lot of this is the things that you're talking about the shortages both in our cyber professionals and our transportation, and supply chain professionals. People, they hear it, but they don't realize, I don't know if it's just the number's too big or it's not part of their daily life until obviously as you said, things start to impact us. But really the efforts of Task Force Movement,and Task Force Cyber, like you said, it's not just about financing, it's really about education and raising the awareness about these issues. 

PATRICK: Yeah. And that's why, Duane, I appreciate you having us on your podcast and you've been so active and PsychArmor is such an incredible partner. We launched it, in April. We'd be getting after it, American Legion in August. We were at the CCME conference in New York City in Times Square. But last December we were back at the White House again. And, you know, we had your CEO, Tina Atherall there, you were saying, hey, what can I do to roll up my sleeves and be part of this solution here? And so this is a real grassroots effort.

We're really trying to make sure that we can expand programs like Skill Bridge. We have 330 companies in the transportation industry that are now in the Skill Bridge program. The Department of Defense is stepping up there. I told you about the over 9 million in scholarships that are out there, and then really trying to drive the narrative like we know we need to do. 

DUANE: I think that's amazing and we look forward we're gonna be having a couple more representatives from taskforce movement on in a couple, future episodes, and really look to have a series of diving deep into a lot of these issues. So people wanted to find out more about taskforce movement and the work that's being done, taskforce cyber, how can they do that?

PATRICK: Yeah. Well, a couple things people could follow me on social media. I'm always posting all the time. I actively reachable at Patrick Murphy, PA, and whether it's follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram, Twitter. So that's @Patrick Murphy, pa or they can go to our website.The task force movement website is www.taskforcemovement.org and they can get great intel from there.

DUANE: That's excellent, and I will make sure that all of those links are in the show notes. Patrick, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

PATRICK: Thanks, Duane. Appreciate it. Whatever I can do to be helpful, brother. You let me know.

Once again, we would like to thank this week's Sponsor Comcast. Comcast creates incredible technology and entertainment that connects millions of people to the moments and experiences that matter most. Find out more about how they support The military affiliated population by going to corporate.com/impact/military. 

I've said it before, but Patrick highlighted it in this conversation. I truly believe that this current generation of Veterans has the potential to impact this century the way the post World War II generation impacted the last century. Post 9/11 Veterans are a fraction of the number of service members from that conflict. But we have the technology that can amplify our voice and our impact. Consider this, the next commander in chief with military service will likely come from the post 9/11 generation. The next Supreme court justice with military experience will likely come from this generation. More and more Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are serving in public office everywhere from local communities to governor's offices and the halls of Congress. You'll start to see the CEOs of fortune 500 companies come from this generation. 

You'll start to see the next group of CEOs of fortune 500 companies with military background come from this generation. And again, as Patrick mentioned, some of the most iconic brands that will be developed in the next 30 years will be the result of the hard work of post 9/11 veterans. 

At the same time Veterans of this generation have the potential to be drivers of civic engagement in the national economy. My grandfathers didn't come back from World War II and become doctors and win Nobel prizes. They went to work, to build solid lives for their families through consistent effort. Patrick talked about the honor of being a professor of constitutional law at West Point, coming from his blue collar, Pennsylvania upbringing. I'm the son of a seamstress and a security guard with a family full of tradespeople, teachers, and farmers. Like Patrick, the military gave me opportunities beyond anything that I might've imagined growing up. Post 9/11 veterans have the potential to have significant impact much for the better and not just because of the experiences of serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. But for the diversity and breadth of this group of Veteran. The oldest Veterans of the global war on terror, the senior leaders on 9/11 were from the Vietnam generation and are in their late sixties, or early seventies. The youngest Veterans of the global war on terror were born after 9/11 and are likely approaching their mid twenties at this point. That's a 40 year span of combat Veterans and ones that saw consecutive multi theater conflict on a scale not known since World War II. 

This is a more diverse group of Veterans. When it comes to gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic, in just about every category you can think of. Over 70% of women veterans are under the age of 55 and likely not only Veterans themselves, but caregivers for other Veterans or caregivers for older parents who are also caring for their children. This is the generation that finally saw the repeal of don't ask. Don't tell. Which Secretary Murphy had a significant part to play in and combat specialties are now open to all sure. I'm from that generation. And so is Patrick. So maybe we're biased, but this can be a rallying cry, a projection of hope that this generation can engage in their communities and serve the way the post World War II generation did. And that together we can grow. 

The other point that I'd like to make is that with Task Force Movement, and Task Force Cyber. There are a lot of great opportunities out there for military and veteran spouses. But opportunities are only beneficial if people are aware of them. Again, as Patrick said in the conversation, much of what taskforce movement and taskforce cyber are doing is educating people about the situation. The shortage of transportation workers and the shortage of cybersecurity professionals. But it's also educating them about how personally beneficial these jobs can be both in terms of career security, as well as pay and benefits and about how beneficial these jobs can be to our community and yes, to our economy. Awareness is key, but a path forward is also critical. When I was in high school. The idea of college after high school was always a thing I was aware that that was a pathway, but no one in my family had ever graduated college before. And I didn't really have a way forward. And I realized fairly quickly that I had no way to pay for it. Then when the military came to my awareness as an option, you better believe that folks helped show me the path forward from the recruiters to the drill sergeants and beyond. What I'm saying here is that gold is only valuable if it's discovered. Until it's uncovered, it's just a hunk of metal in the ground somewhere. The true value in the opportunities being provided by taskforce movement and taskforce cyber is in their usage. 

So, if you're listening to this and you're in a position where you engage with Veterans frequently, you might consider sharing these opportunities with them so they can find the value in them. As I mentioned, this is the first and a series of episodes that we're gonna be having featuring the work of taskforce movement. So stay tuned to hear more about this great work. 

Hopefully you appreciated my conversation with Patrick. If you did, we would appreciate hearing from you. So if you do have some feedback, let us know. Drop a review in your podcast player a choice, or send us an email at info@psycharmor.org. We're always glad to hear from listeners, both feedback on the show and suggestions for future guests. 

For this week's PsychArmor resource of the week, I'd like to share the PsychArmor’s course Becoming Job Ready. Part of the Comcast internet essentials course series with the widespread use of the internet, the job market has changed drastically. What used to be pounding the pavement to look for a job has now become pounding the keyboard. You can find a link to the course in our show notes.