Episode 89 Transcription

Welcome to Episode 89 of Behind The Mission, a show that sparks conversation with PsychArmor 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 the show on your podcast player of choice or by going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast. 

Thanks again for joining us on Behind The Mission. Our work and mission are supported by generous partnerships and sponsors who also believe that education changes lives. This show is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. 

On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Kelly Finn Störmer. Kelly is the Executive Director of the Combined Arms Institute, which elevates the military and Veteran serving ecosystem of support to professional development, collaboration and research. Kelly served as a surface warfare officer in the Navy and received her commission through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps. She had two sea assignments in San Diego and served as the white house liaison to the secretary of the Navy and as a white house social aide during the Bush Administration. She has been working in the Veteran nonprofit sector for over 10 years. You can find out more about Kelly by checking out her bio in our show notes. So let's get into my conversation with her and come back afterward to talk about some of the key points. 

DUANE: Kelly, so glad to be able to highlight the work that Combined Arms is doing and how it supports both the military-affiliated population and the organizations that served them. Before we get into that, I'm interested in hearing more about your background and how you got into the work that you're doing.

KELLY: Yeah, thanks so much. I'm thrilled to be here with you to share a little bit about our work that we're doing at Combined Arms, as well as a little bit about me. I'm a Navy Veteran, a Navy spouse, and now I tell people full-time mom to three crazy boys. So a lot of the work that I do each and every day is inspired from my sense of service.

I got into the Navy basically cuz someone told me I couldn't do it. And so as a girl, that's always up for a challenge I said, okay, watch me. And you know, serving our country was one of the greatest experiences of my life and greatest honors. While I eventually decided to separate from the service, after a short foray in consulting, I tell people I'm a recovering consultant for life now.

I realized I wanted to use my background, education and talent to go on to continue serving this community, through the nonprofit realm. So I've spent the last 10 years of my more than 10 years of my career really trying to streamline the answer to the question for Veterans and military families, where do I go for help?

And that's exactly what we do at Combined Arms. And through that, in a lot of ways my why is both for continuing service, continuing to make things easier for my brothers and sisters at arms who are constantly moving around the globe. And then also trying to find my ways to serve the next generation as well. We wanna make the world a better place than where we found it.

DUANE: You know, I like that idea of helping people answer the question of where do I go for help, but there’s really like the third question. First is, do I need help? That second question is, should I reach out for help? And if they answer yes to both of those, then that third question of, now, where do I go? Can really be a bigger stumbling block than the previous two.

KELLY: Absolutely. Well, and then in a lot of ways, that is the fundamental premise behind Combined Arms and why it was, formed and streamlined is just to say, we have all these amazing service providers out there. There is so much support for Veterans and families. Whether it's looking, if you're looking for a job, whether you're looking for support in your VA benefits, whether you're looking, just to connect into the community. You name it,we always joke, like there's pretty much everything except for unicorn riding for Veterans, which one day somebody might try to do that. But there's just a, sea of solutions out there for people and really, you know, deciding you wanna connect is one thing.

Sometimes it's forced. If you've moved into a new community or you're transitioning out of the service or you've just PCSed somewhere. But other times it's really you find yourself in a situation where you're looking for a new job. You want to upscale, you want to do something different or you really just wanna you have some extra time or you decide you really wanna invest in yourself.

And the best way by doing that is giving back to the community. And we know our Veterans are the leaders in their communities. And so sometimes finding a community of Veterans to serve alongside with is absolutely the best way to do it. But allll the service providers are doing amazing work on the ground.

And they're often heads down trying to figure that out. So Combined Arms is really formed to figure out how do we pull these service providers together to collaborate and work together and streamline that connection for the military connected community back to those providers. Which really, you know, reduces fragmentation. It helps to streamline that connection. It creates efficiency.Aand that's exactly what we're doing so that people can easily connect into the communities where they're living.

DUANE: And I think that's a critical piece, is that and I describe it as starving at a feast, right? There is just about every single thing, like you said, that Veterans might need and service members and their families as well. But yet we still have people that are struggling. We still have Veterans that, that are not, accessing these service. Sometimes it is because that can be overwhelming duplication of services and things like that. We've heard the term, the sea of Goodwill, and really it's not so much what's needed as another organization to meet a need. It's somebody to help individuals navigate that sea of Goodwill or pick things off of the menu of the feast.

KELLY: Absolutely. And that's what we do that in many organizations do that a lot of ways. There pure navigators. There are mentors, there are foot soldiers on the ground, right. And everyone has different ways that they're gonna find that connection. Whether it's talking to somebody on the phone or whether it's a self-service technology shopping. We're all used to that. now, and especially now post pandemic, we're used to finding things a little bit more on our own. And in order to have that Combined Arms offers all of those different opportunities. So we are really focused on, we have intake teams. So if you wanna talk to somebody on the phone or support in finding the connection or finding the support for you that you need in that community.

You can just pick up the phone and talk to somebody. And our social workers will make that connection for you to our, we have a network now of over 230 vetted service providers, in Texas and then at 45 nationwide partners. And we're in the process of working with other states and other partners to really expand that local mapping, cuz we know that local resources in the community are really critical to that transition and integration.

But also knowing that there are areas across the nation that may not be served by particular programs. And so making sure that we have programs for everybody, no matter where you live, whether it's in a rural area or in the urban area, we wanna figure out what resources are available and make them easy to find and connect.

But again, it comes back to how do you wanna find those resources? For some people they wanna talk to someone on the phone. For some people they wanna text message and chat with somebody. For other people, they really wanna just go online and create their own, choose your own adventure is what we think about it in terms of the backbone of Combined Arms technology and that allows all of our providers to go on through that and then through there's accountability into the system. So our mantra at the whole, at the very beginning is always that no Veteran or military family falls through the cracks. We really wanna make sure that people are connected to the resources that they are looking for.

And so we hold our partners accountable to a 72 hour connection standard. And we're making sure that people, again, aren't following through the crack. So if you're looking for mental health support, we wanna make sure that service provider's following up with you or else we're gonna make sure that we reassign that case to ensure that people are getting connected to the support they need.

DUANE: And so, as you mentioned, throughout Texas and Texas is where Combined Arms really started Houston specifically, and then broadening to the state. And then from my understanding Combined Arms, you have specific support in particular communities, as well as you have broad national overarching support.  

KELLY: Yeah. So founded in Houston by Veterans for Veterans in 2015. Houston being the second largest city in the nation behind Los Angeles, for the Veteran community. We found that the model worked right. They mapped all the service providers, created collaboration committees and brought people together to ultimately reduce that fragmentation, and make sure that we weren't having like excessive redundancies for this community in terms of the services offered.

Because as you mentioned before, that's can be really confusing for individuals to help to navigate. And when you're, when you finally get to that step that you're looking to reach out for help. All you want is just somebody to help you. And so really trying, we're doing our best to make sure that we're streamlining that for everybody. But really what we are doing is after the model worked in Houston, we partnered with the state of Texas, the Texas Workforce Commission specifically, to build out the Texas Veterans Network. So the Texas Veterans Network we had now have regional managers in El Paso, DFW, Austin. And so we're covering in Southeast, of course.

So we're covering the majority of the state of Texas and through a partnership in San Antonio to again, streamline that connection and map those local resources to date. And we've served over 30,000 unique individuals. So that's connecting 1100 people a month on average to the resources and back into their communities.

We've also since launched partnerships, but we know again that we are not trying to create those redundancies that add confusion into the space. So as we look to expand, we're going into other states, and looking for partners that can help us to map those local resources and then also serve as those intake teams.

We know that, we wanna make sure that we're leveraging the great work that's already happening on the ground and creating as little confusion as possible for people when they're connecting back to the communities where they're living.D

DUANE: And so I think that's really one of the strengths of combined arms is sort of those partnerships with local communities, ultimately with the goal of individuals who are seeking help get the appropriate care that they need as soon as they possibly can. And so I think that's really again, a value of what combined arms is, but it's not just an organizational database as a navigation platform, as you were just talking about. You're the executive director of the Combined Arms Institute, a group to group platform that supports cross organizational collaboration. So it's more organization to organization rather than organization to individual.

KELLY: Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm definitely what we think of in terms of business terms, like more on the B2B side of the house is how do we thinking through how do we bring those partners together to collaborate? So, as I mentioned before, they're really often doing amazing work heads down on the ground, trying to run their businesses, trying to serve people, trying to motivate their teams.

And so it's a lot of work for them to figure out every day and then just take a breath of fresh air and look up and say, who else is doing this work on the ground that we might be able to partner with? So we think of it as our work to make sure that organizations are working together. Sharing resources and understanding each other's missions so that we can,again, not create additional redundancy in the space, but really streamline that connection and let the providers do what they do really well, which is their programming, and then be able to make referrals to other vetted providers that have military competency, into other spaces, whether it's local or whether that's a national provider, but basically leaving that, that part of it up to us. I always, I joke with people and tell them, I'm like, it's my job, essentially, to know who's who in the zoo. I like to, I know all of, not all it's impossible to know all of course. At one point in time we had over 49,000 service providers that we, you had referenced the sea of goodwill earlier, amazing, just compassion and interest from the American population to really come back and serve our Veteran population at the height of, during the surge in Iraq. So in 2008, 2010, we had just a surge of providers, which was an amazing thing to see that support for our military community, but also just in a lot of ways, adds a lot of confusion and chaos, cuz that means more people to understand their mission, more people competing for philanthropic dollars. And so what we really do is lean into how do we bring those providers together and help make them more efficient at what they do Oftentimes too, we think is that there are many amazing community providers that can serve the military community.

They also serve what I think of as normal humans, right? So we are also normal humans but we are just often have special pathways to benefits or just understanding kind of the nuance behind our backgrounds. And so empowering what we think of is Veteran serving organizations, but regular community providers that may have a specific program for the military community.

Also with those pathways to help us navigate the benefits and the culture that we might be coming from. So the work that we do every day is really bringing those providers together to provide professional development opportunities, to learn collectively, just create awareness about each other's mission.

Again, so that they can trust the system and ultimately like the large network so that when they say I'm, I, you as a mental health provider, if I'm talking to someone and they say to me, my family's also really struggling with something my partner needs a is looking for employment.

Or I need, I'm looking for some after school resources for my children. We have organizations that do all of those things and that provider might not know the names of each one of those organizations, but all of those services exist within the system. And all of those providers are working together under the Combined Arms Institute, collaboration umbrella. So it's a pretty powerful, network and example of how we can work together, to trust that there are other people out there doing great work and have services available to serve this community.

DUANE: And I think, and you describe it as a network, but really it's a network of networks. Like each organization has its own network. Even if we think about sort of the buckets of organizations. So like homeless service providers, they're probably closely tied to local individuals that provide substance abuse treatment and probably employment because those are two things that are critical to, but they're probably not connected to people that are supporting entrepreneurship or student Veterans, which is in the network of the employment folks. Right? So those are like two adjacent, but disconnected networks, combined arms creates a network of those networks.

KELLY: Absolutely. We think of them as verticals, right? We have professional growth collaboration committee. We have education, we have a family committee. We have a wellness committee and we have an essential services committee. And then on top of that, of course we find ways for those there even internal to an organization there's interdependencies between marketing and fundraising and, leadership and all the different verticals are program development programming. And so we have to figure out how to integrate those, just internal two teams. On top of that, as external organizations, we have to figure out and map our partners to understand where we might be able to collectively serve, serve each other, but also learn from each other to really help alleviate those missions. At the end of the day, we as non-profit organizations and even as state agencies have an obligation to figure out how we can make the best use of the philanthropic or government dollars that we've been allocated to ensure that we're efficiently using those funds. And that's what we think about it in the Institute we were trying to create efficiency and effectiveness of the organizations that they serve so that no matter what door a Veteran or military family walks through in order, when they finally go to seek out help, getting connected to a high quality service and have an experience that can holistically serve their needs.

And then we're, as we look to the future at combined arms, we're really excited about where we maybe be heading is cuz we wanna think about, how do we leverage the expertise of the technology sphere out there to say if I go looking at something, whether it's on a social media feed or something, how do they know that I might want this next pair of shoes that's being coming to me on, on, in an ad?

How do I know if I have an individual who served in the United States Navy as a woman Veteran with two degrees, what might my next life need be when I go in looking for support? And so we wanna really, we're trying to think about how we can create partnerships and really leverage what we think of as predictive analytics so that we can anticipate your next need and get a little bit further ahead. Instead of having someone always needing to ask for help, how can we anticipate those needs and get people connected to the services they need as they transition throughout their life cycle.

DUANE: No. Absolutely. If Amazon knows what to show me going up to mother's day, then, uh, I'm quite certain that we should be able to figure that out as far as when anticipating needs. Wven if even perhaps, helping some of those earlier questions of, do I need help or should I reach out for help?

Yes. I think that there's some opportunities there to be able to, I didn't know that I needed this thing, but now that I need it, I want it. And now there's an easy way to connect to it. I really think that there's a lot of opportunities in the future. And so if there are people out here who are listening, either they know Veterans who could benefit from the services of combined arms or they there're an organization that wants to be part of the combined arms network. How can they do that?

KELLY Absolutely. So we encourage any Veteran, combined arms was really, you know, initially focused on that transition out of military service, back into the community, but we've expanded that significantly, cuz we know that there are a lot of people going through transitions in life. And so we would like people to go to www.combinedarms.us. We have to make our website unique URL and create a profile and see what the services are that are available for you. We do ask for a lot of information upfront, but that's only because you're a unique individual with, unique background and unique needs or interests.

And so we wanna make sure that we're curating the best resources for you and not just again, showing you the laundry list of everything that's available, because that's the overwhelming experience. So we're very intentional in how we're thinking about that. And that's why we ask for the kinda a lot of background information is just to figure out how we can connect you with the best services for you as an individual. Through also through our website, combinedarms.us, there's the link to the Institute page. If you go on and fill out the interest form on that page, then you'll be connected to all of our resources that are publicly available, but also we, as we share upcoming opportunities, professional development opportunities, whether it's or upcoming events, we're sharing thought leadership pieces.

We know that through the information that we have in our system, we can see real time data and trends on the needs for Veterans and military families. So as that expands and grows, we know that there's an opportunity to just really shed some light into the community at large as to what is really happening.

And we're trying to use data for good to ensure that we are informing policy makers, philanthropy, state partners, what are the needs of Veterans and military families on the ground?  But like I said, anyone across the nation, we have, partnerships that you can get connected to mental health providers in all 50 states across the nation.

We have national partners that can help with employment support or education counseling. Really you name it there service for you. If you're in transition or considering something else, we can get you connected. And then of course, in the, through the Texas Veterans Network, we have all the local service providers mapped and ready to connect to people on the ground. So we just recommend that people come in and create a profile or share your interest. And we'd love to get you connected into that sea of support.

DUANE: That's great. Now make sure that links to all of that is in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

[00:18:29] kelly-finn-st-rmer--she-her-_1_09-22-2022_082246: Thank you, Duane. 

Once again, we would like to thank this week’s sponsor, PsychArmor. PsychArmor is the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that is free individual learners, as well as custom trading options for organizations. 

I'm grateful that I was able to have Kelly come on the show to talk about combined arms. As I've mentioned a number of different times related to Veteran support organizations, it would be surprising to me if listeners hadn't heard about the work that combined arms is doing. Their work in Texas has been ongoing for a number of years and is widely respected. And their expansion to new communities is also been happening for awhile. 

There's as an attempt to answer like Kelly said, where do I go for help for the military affiliated population? I really liked that question for all of its appearance, simplicity, but we all know that that question is surrounded by other questions, like I mentioned in the conversation, should I reach out for help? What will change in my life If I do? 

And will reaching out  for help even make a difference? How do I want the help? That's a big one. And it may not always be the same answer. I might want face-to-face individual support from someone who is helping me with a resume and LinkedIn profile, but prefer chat, text, or messaging with somebody who's helping me through a crisis or vice versa. Every question adds a layer of complexity that is ever changing. So you have a Rubik's cube. 

Which can also be a Rubik's pyramid or a sphere depending on the need. And that can be daunting for the service member or Veteran, trying to figure things out or the family member trying to support them. And that's where organizations like combined arms comes in. 

The other point that I'd like to bring up is how combined arms and other organizations are applying concepts that work in the business and corporate sector to solve problems in the nonprofit and social support sector. You heard of the little bit, when Kelly was talking about how the combined arms Institute is really the B2B or the business to business aspect, to combine arms, organization to organization, rather than B to C business to customer. 

Combined Arms certainly has that aspect to it as well. But she also talked about predictive analytics, using data and machine learning to identify the likelihood of a future event. Like someone who is browsing employment opportunities on LinkedIn, who is also indicated that they're a Veteran and how they might need assistance, translating their military service onto a resume. And then providing a potential solution to that need. Or market segmentation and tailoring an outreach message to a particular population. The business sector has been doing that for as long as advertising has existed. 

That's even something that the military does. When I was a recruiter what I would talk about with the high school student who scored high on the ASVAB and is considering military service as an alternative to college was very different rhan the conversation I had with the guy or gal three years out of high school sleeping in their parents' basement, which was me incidentally. But there's a growing recognition that we can move beyond our traditional way of reaching people. A single message for a single group everywhere repeated, constantly to using more of an entrepreneurial mindset and communicating in a new way. Just some food for thought. So hopefully you found this conversation beneficial. If you enjoyed it, let us know. Leave a review in your podcast player of choice, or send us an email at info@psycharmor.org. We would appreciate knowing that you're listening, what you think and what you'd like to hear about in future episodes. 

For this week PsychArmor resource of the week, I'd like to share the link to the PsychArmor course, Making Connections and Networking. Regardless of your military background or previous work experience this course helps service members, Veterans, and their families learn how to network in their communities. And it can be valuable to organizations who are supporting Veterans as well.You can find a link to the resource in our shownotes.