BTM56-Volunteerism and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Welcome to Episode 56 of Behind The Mission, a show that sparks conversations 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. Find the show on all the podcast players by going to ww.psycharmor.org/podcast.

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

On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Navy Veteran, Jerome Tennille. Jerome is the Manager of Social Impact and Volunteerism for Marriott International, and is also an independent consultant and advisor and the subject matter of sustainability and social impact. Prior to that, Jerome held the position of Senior Manager of Impact Analysis and Assessment for Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS). Jerome also serves on the PsychArmor Institute advisory committee for the school of volunteers and nonprofits. You can find out more about Jerome by checking out his bio in 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 you served in the Navy for over seven years, especially during a time in which the military was seeing its highest operational tempo during the height of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. After your military service, you served in a number of different roles, but focused on two important things: benefits of volunteers in the necessity of diversity, equity, inclusion in corporations and community programs. I'm interested in hearing more about your journey from your time in the Navy, to what you're doing now.

JEROME: Yeah, of course. So one of the things that I fundamentally believe is that you don't have to actually wear a uniform to serve your country. I actually believe it was General Stanley McChrystal who believed that a national service program, whether it be AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps, or just serving your community was another fair way to serve your country.

And I believe that, I don't know that I always believed that. But, it was when I was transitioning out of the military in 2012 that I always say that I accidentally got into the work of volunteering engagement. You know, I started working for a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit organization that supported military families, particularly military families that were experiencing grief and loss from their own tragic loss. And it was through that work that I became passionate about volunteer engagement. And I started to really think about volunteer engagement in a way that was, I would say, much more critical thinking rather than just the idea that volunteering is just the thing that you do in the community, right. To me, there are so many different nuances and there are all these different levels of what it really means to serve your community. But it was really through that time, as I was transitioning out of the military service that I was like, okay, I can continue serving my country. And I can still do that by serving my community.

DUANE: You know, that's a really interesting point. A lot of service members, whether they get out after a period of time, like you did, or they retire, like I did. We're all too young to “really retire”, and go sit on the porch somewhere and we want to continue to engage but most people think about jobs, right?

They think about Corporate America, they think about entrepreneurship. But I found myself in the non-profit space. You found yourself in the nonprofit space, which isn't typically something that a lot of Veterans might think of as a post-military career.

JEROME: Yeah, I would say that's correct. I think even, for society broadly because, many people don't really understand what a nonprofit is. They think about it and they're like, well, I can't make a career out of doing that when let's say, “Pre-COVID, there are more than 1.5 million plus registered 5 0 1 C3 tax exempt organizations here in the United States.”And of course that's a pre COVID number. Like the nonprofit sector at large, it is like the third largest sector in terms of economic development. So you can absolutely make a career doing that. And I think the really cool thing, and this is what really, I think I gravitated towards is I'll use my own experience. Feeling the challenge of leaving the military service and then no longer being a part of that community working for a 5 0 1 CO3 nonprofit that supported the military community gave me that immediate connection back to my family, the military family, the community that I loved. It gave me an opportunity to give back to military families that were going through their own crisis , the loss of their own loved one and for me, it gave me that connection back to the military piece. The last thing I'll share on this is, for Veterans who are leaving the military service, I think it's great need for fresh Veterans to get into the nonprofit sector because of the metal and the grit that we bring, our ability to project manage and run operations but then not also, think about how, as veterans or even military service there is that like life after service. And you can do that at a nonprofit that supports your family, the military community, or Veterans.

DUANE: I like how you brought that up. If you're looking for a non-military organization that needs to do a whole lot of stuff with very few resources, it's either the government or even more specifically non-profit and that idea I saw in my nonprofit work was that there wasn't a lot of leadership development necessarily in the nonprofit space.

There were good people doing good things, but they were not necessarily doing them in the most efficient or effective way. And that's one thing that I've always said with service members is you can get involved and you can make a huge impact doing things for other organizations, the same methodical way you did when you're in the military.

JEROME: Oh, a hundred percent. And that's not the discount careers in working for, private businesses, corporations, the for-profit sector. But I think that there's a great need, especially now, you know, I talked about Pre-COVID, how many organizations existed. I was reading a statistic now, and of course the non-profit sector is decimated by COVID-19, funding dried up, volunteers dried up. I read a statistic recently and, “At the height of the pandemic, there were over a million non-profit professionals that were displaced and lost their jobs in the non-profit sector.” That number is still about 500,000 professionals who have been displaced because of COVID-19 and currently don't have a job. This is the reason I'm sharing it, the nonprofit sector, they're always in need of time, talent, treasure, and they need good heads on shoulders who can manage that effectively.

DUANE: No and I think that there is definitely, Senior NCO, feel great officers, company grade officers, who are getting out. And again, you referred to a little earlier, some people think non-profit is no profit. You can make a career out of this. But you also have the ability, maybe if you have VA disability, I myself, my military retirement enabled me to take a more meaningful, but maybe less lucrative position at the time just because I had other sources of income that enabled me to engage in that.

JEROME: Yeah, and again, the nonprofit sector, it's not without its flaws. You have to be able to make ends meet, to be able to do your job. If you're constantly trying to figure out where to get your next meal, or how are you going to put food on the table or put a shelter roof over your head, then you're not going to be able to do your job, you're going to be a little less effective. And I think we all know that. But there are certainly career paths that you can take within the nonprofit sector, that you can make a great living doing. And there are organizations that are, well-respected and who actually pay like a competitive wage compared to their for-profit counterparts. You just have to be looking.

DUANE: Yeah. and maybe there is that piece where you do have to look a little bit more. And you mentioned it earlier, when some people think of volunteerism, they think of doing something good in the community, serving meals at a local homeless shelter, or picking up donations. Your point of view on volunteerism, however, goes beyond just doing good works occasionally, but instead addressing it in a more widespread sustainable way. In other words, and this is my interpretation, volunteerism should be less of a thing to do and more of a way of life.

JEROME: Yeah. And I would say yes and, which is an approach that I want to take with this. It can be a way of life, but I also want to acknowledge that, in order to just give your time, one of the things that I believe is that the gift of time is one of the greatest gifts that you can ever give to somebody.

It's not like a dollar bill. You're not going to make it up in a day by working more. That's not how time works, it is finite. And, I think most people, especially in the military community, we all know that we're not promised tomorrow. So when you gift your time to me, it's incredibly precious.

I also believe that how you give your time and why you do it, I think are just as important. One of the things that I'll always share with anybody is, there is a spectrum of privilege I would share. And, people who are more privileged are able to give more time. So why am I sharing this?

I'm sharing this because the way that you're showing up to serve a nonprofit or to serve their community I think that is just as important. And what I think is really important to avoid is unintended harm by how you're showing up in the community to volunteer. And I think once you start thinking about service is a lifestyle and when you start to think about serving communities critically, that's when you start to think about intentionality and how that should be injected into how you're serving and why you're serving. And then by doing that with critical thinking as a lens, then I always feel like the amount of impact that we're able to make it's so much more, it's like a tenfold impact.

Because sure, you can just schedule time and go to your local food bank and show up and get the little check in the block. But I think once you start to think about it, as more than just, well, that's just the thing that we're supposed to do then that's when the real magic gets created.

DUANE: Yeah. You have organizations now that are encouraging volunteers and giving time, X amount of hours per week or per month to be able to donate, volunteer, to try to encourage that. But that's really a transactional thing. Somebody is like, well, I'm going to take some of my time and I'm going to move, shift this over here. Whereas, and I'm using the word self-serving you obviously didn't but, there's a measure of self-service goodness to some people when they volunteer. Is that some of the things you're referring to, when you're talking about unintended harm?

JEROME: That's a part of it. So I think if I’m going to dissect this a little bit further, there is a consulting group that I really like, they're called Realized Worth, and I'm sharing their name because of what I'm about to say. I cannot take credit for, but what you alluded to is this transactional idea of volunteerism, right?

You give your time and you get something in return. And sometimes it's really self-serving. It can be. It can be really corrosive in some ways when done, like that to varying degrees. But this idea of transformational volunteer engagement is something that Realized Worth is all about. What is transformational volunteerism? It means volunteering with intention and with so much intention that by consistently volunteering through that intention, you're actually able to change the chemical up in your brain and the way that you're thinking, you're actually able to build empathy as a person by the way that you volunteer and how you show up with these respective organizations and diverse communities. And by doing that, you actually become a better person because you're actually changing the makeup of your brain. You're becoming more empathetic, right which adds to your emotional intelligence as a person.

One idea, again I can't take credit for it, but, in doing so with great purpose and intention, you actually, remove things like implicit bias and you prevent microaggressions. You prevent the perpetuation of savior mentality. And so when I say that, you actually reduce the amount of unintended harm that you might cause by volunteering. there is like, when you start to think about these things very critically, then it's like the light bulb goes off and you start to navigate this nuanced, environment of volunteer engagement, in a way that, like I said, the changes are able to make the impact is like so much better, so much more rich.

DUANE: And again, there's that and I really appreciate that nuance. It's not just, again doing things. It's actually changing who we are mainly because obviously, and again, we were talking , before we started recording this, that the military changed us, right? The military was transformational. That's what boot camp and basic training is all about is to not just rely on a system of rewards and punishment, but to actually change the way that we think, behave and feel.

And what you're talking about is some people may unintentionally think, behave and feel in a certain way. That's the implicit biases you're talking about. And when somebody brings it to their attention, oh, I didn't mean that I didn't want that, but it still happened. And that's what you're talking about. Volunteerism is generally a way to, I don't want to say, be a better person, but to be a better you.

DUANE: Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. and I think the way that a lot of people understand volunteer engagement is oftentimes the way that they're taught. Volunteer engagement. It's a societal norm. It's societal behavior.

It's something that we do. It's something that is really rich, especially in, Western Culture. And what I mean by that is that we value volunteer service the way that we look at it through an Americanized Western lens, which is, I think, very different from the rest of the world of volunteer engagement.

But because of the way that we've been taught to think about and value volunteering, we can sometimes, and I'm going to use one idea as an example, the idea about voluntourism. You travel to another continent or another country. And then through a short period of time, you volunteer to maybe develop a well or an irrigation system in a small village. That is very different culturally and geographically than where you're from and voluntourism, has some, bad connotations to it and stigmatized because through voluntourism, sometimes you actually push a value system onto a new community or this community that you're supporting, you're pushing on values of right and wrong onto a community that is different culturally, maybe even religiously. And that can sometimes cause harm.

Now okay, why do I bring up voluntourism? Here in America, we are so diverse as a country that you can actually create that same type of environment of what is similar to voluntourism just by going a few city blocks over into a different community that has got a very different culture, very different values, maybe, values religiously.

And the way that we volunteer can sometimes perpetuate unintended harm that we don't even have the intention of causing, but if we're thinking about volunteer engagement through hyper-focused Americanized Western lens, then , there is that chance that you're pushing your value system onto a whole group of others who might not see or understand it or feel the same way that is intended.

I'll give one more example because I think this is something I could probably talk hours about, but, there are some countries where it's actually stigmatized for men to give their time. So it is actually believed and thought of as the place of a woman to volunteer your time.

If you're a man, you have to be paid for it. It's seen as a thing that men don't do. So the way that people think about gifting time elsewhere, if they still hold on to that culture and that value system here in America, and if you show up in that same community, you have to start to think about what are the unintended consequences of that action as something, as well-intended, as volunteer engagement. I'm thinking about it as through a Western lens. So there is sometimes unintended harm that can be done, through acts of service and gifting one's time. And so for me, it's really important that, as organizations are thinking about the ways during engaging volunteers, and they're thinking about ways that they're volunteering in different communities.

Whether as an individual, whether as a corporate employee volunteer team, there has to be a little bit more critical thinking in how and why you're showing up in a community. And if you're doing it in the most appropriate and culturally sensitive way.

DUANE: And I think that's a really important way to look at it. People want to do these things because they want to help. And as you mentioned, it's not with the intent to harm other people but that goes to a lot of the different conversations that we've been having over the last 50 years.

But especially after the last, two or three years, looking at another significant part of your work. Just increasing diversity equity inclusion for historically underserved and marginalized populations. As our country and our world, we've been having this conversation. I'd like to hear your thoughts about DEI, especially as it relates to the military and Veteran population and organizations that are trying to serve.

JEROME: Yeah. So I think there are two different things here. As the military force gets younger and as the numbers of those who are serving dwindles as there's adaptation of technology that doesn't require so many people on a battlefield or an operating environment.

With all of that happening, our fighting force is becoming more and more diverse. I was actually just looking through LinkedIn today and, just forgive me here for a second if I get choked up. But for the first time I saw a black woman wearing walks in her hair as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Navy. I've never seen that in my military service. And, there is greater representation, but then there's a greater effort to be inclusive of, not just people who look like me as a man of color but all the different nuances that exist. A woman's hairstyle, or, religious and ethnic attire and allowing people to wear a key job or a turbine and greater recognition of that.

So diversity is incredibly important, especially as we become more diversified, as a fighting force. and I think that's one of the staples that make us the strong fighting force that we are.

DUANE: I absolutely recognize that we have not in any way arrived, we're really just beginning these conversations, but there's more of these conversations about intersectionality. The whole thing about what we all bleed green, or we all bleed blue or whatever that is, is we're starting to recognize that well, my experiences as a Caucasian male in the United States Army, is nowhere near the same as a Caucasian female or a woman of color in the same service, even in the same unit that understanding these aspects of intersectionality when it comes to military service, that two people could be serving right alongside each other and have vastly different experience.

JEROME: Yeah. And one of the things that I always say about the military is that the military does such a great job at pulling people together from all different walks of life, all different cultures, faiths, creeds, and putting them on a path of having uniformity. But I think what I'm seeing now is that there's also in doing that, in pulling everybody together and galvanizing them towards the same mission, the same cause now there's greater recognition that we all do have very unique experiences, because of how unique our upbringing is or our makeup, our physical makeup, our, inherent diversity I'll call it. and there's a greater recognition of that I've seen over the last several years. And, and I think that makes the military absolutely a hundred percent stronger.

DUANE: And then there is , when we leave the military, because none of us serve in the military, only the most senior of individuals serve longer than 25, 30 years. And so there's a point in time in which we are very diverse. maybe even in close culture, and then we leave the military and we emerge into a different culture.

One of the examples I often use is some female Veterans say in the military, they are very visible when they're in the military, but when they become Veterans, they become invisible because now they're a small percentage of the overall Veterans throughout ages. And so that idea of a current, more diverse military force, but then transitioning to a force that historically has been less diverse that can be a challenge for some veterans.

JEROME: Yeah, I think so. And honestly, it's still a challenge for me too. I've transitioned 10 years ago. It's been a full decade and, and it's still a challenge. I always tell people that I will never be done transitioning and I believe that's the truth.

That's been my experience. and I think what makes that partly difficult is that with fewer and fewer people serving in the military, there are fewer Veterans who are transitioning out. So by default, younger generations are getting less exposure to people who have served in the military. And let's be clear, right.There is a different culture in the military. There is military cultural competency training. That's how unique serving in the military is. And, and it's something that's really, I think it's hard for a lot of places of work to get, right. Because, in, in one vein, their experience of the military, is not even being adjusted to it.

It's not actually serving in the military. It's whatever they see on CNN or any of your news outlets to have these massive headlines for something or another. It's usually really good or it's incredibly horrible. or it's the movies that are coming out from Hollywood and glamorizing it or showcasing military service in just like one dimension way that is incredibly inaccurate.

And then to like add on top of that, as Veterans are entering the workforce as post-military career let’s say. There are all those different nuances, right. Those are all the different things that people understand as well.

That must that's what your military service was like, is what I saw on CNN. It's what, and then there are these ideas that are created that are so inaccurate about who Veterans are, what is it they care about, so on and so forth. and I think because of that lack of military cultural understanding, then you have a whole host of other problems that can come on top of your normal, like diversity and inclusion issues, then you add on that whole other layer of Veterans in the workforce. For places to work that are ill-equipped, it makes the transition for Veterans going into that environment, like so much more tricky and a little bit harder.

DUANE: Yeah. And, even as you, that vertical culture of occupation, which is what, in teachers, let's say of course, first responders, you do have different occupations that have unique cultures, but the military is very much one of those. And then you cross section that with what you call your intrinsic culture of your lived experience, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual preference, and all of those, that intersectionality can make things more difficult.

JEROME:Oh a hundred percent. And it makes it so much more nuanced and it makes it elaborate to navigate. And I think that is, that's and you alluded to this earlier, but this is in part why it's so important for organizations to think about diversity and inclusion, through that, that matrix lens, if you will because it's not easy to navigate.

Especially if you're ill-equipped and if you don't have the experience. Then that can be incredibly difficult. Which is why it makes it incredibly important to really start thinking about these things, especially as an organization, that might be engaging Veterans either as a talent pipeline or as the volunteers themselves, understanding that we're very duty and purpose oriented as Veterans.That's a big part of, I think. What makes I'll speak for myself, but I think that's what makes me drive as a professional is I'm duty and purpose oriented. And I suspect many Veterans are.

DUANE: Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. Like you mentioned, I think we really could talk about these topics all day. If people wanted to find out more about the work that you do, in, and maybe engage in either or both of these topics, how could they do that?

JEROME: They can go to my website. It's https://www.jerometennille.com/.

DUANE: That's great. I will make sure that the link to that's in the show notes. Thanks for coming on the show today.

JEROME:It's such a pleasure.

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's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations. And you can find more about PsychArmor at www.psycharmor.org.

If you've been listening for a while, you know that we have a wide range of guests on the show. And one of the things that I enjoy about this is that I get to have great conversations with each and every one of them. And this one with Jerome is no exception.

There was so much good stuff in my conversation with him that I was at a bit of a loss at which two points to pull out for this reflection portion. I'm very passionate about Veterans exploring careers in nonprofit or social support organizations. And we talked about that. Like Jerome. I think time is more valuable than money because you can make more money, but you can't make more time. As a mental health professional, I'm fascinated by the way that our brains adapt to different situations and the idea of volunteerism increasing emotional intelligence is intriguing to me. And of course the ever important conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion. You actually only got a portion of my conversation with your Jerome as we talked for a bit, before we started recording about how his experience as an Intelligence Analyst in the Navy impacts how he navigates new environments in his post-military career.

And we talked for an additional 20 minutes after we stopped recording about how words matter when we're talking about how people learn about military culture and the possible difference between military cultural competence and military cultural responsibility.

And maybe that's my first point. You're listening to these podcast episodes, which are usually about 30 minutes long, but our guests bring so many rich thoughts and ideas to the conversation. Any of those four topics, nonprofit careers, volunteerism, the value of time,DEI.

Any one of those could have been a show in and of itself. Jerome probably could have talked for hours on each of them. That's not to say that I think we did a disservice to either him or these topics by just briefly touching on them. But each of you listening is going to come away from this conversation with a different nugget to ponder.

And there's no telling where that might take you. It might lead you to have a different conversation with somebody that you might previously not have had. Or something that you heard here may cause you to share this episode with someone and they might get something totally different out of this than you did. A friend and colleague of mine often says, what if one conversation can change the world. And I think this is an example of a great conversation among many that might possibly do that.

Of course as a retired army noncommissioned officer, a lack of consistency is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. So I do have a second point that I'd like to bring out. And it's something that Jerome had said that I didn't necessarily pick up on until I went back and listened to my conversation with him again, which by the way, demonstrates the value of relistening to these conversations. cause you might pick up something different each time like I do.

But in that last portion of our conversations, Jerome mentioned twice about increasing diversity and ensuring that we're creating an equitable and inclusive environment that makes the organizations that we are in that much better. One of the challenges that I think may come with conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion, is that some people may see it as a zero sum game. That in order for someone else to get something, I have to lose something or in order for me to get something, someone else has to lose something.

That for someone to get more, someone else has to get less. That’s if we're looking at this from a finite resources mindset, rather than from an abundance mindset. But there's a lot of research that indicates that diverse teams are more innovative, better at problem solving, have higher employee engagement, are more creative, more successful, produce better outcomes and overall outperform groups that are not diverse. Ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to succeed, regardless of race, ethnicity, faith, background, sexual preference, or expression, age, or even occupational background doesn't mean that we're going to lose something. It means that we're all going to gain something.

And we're going to be able to achieve the goals that we all want together rather than separately. Some of what we might lose is the stuff we need to lose anyways. Lose the ego attached to a sense of superiority or lose the judgmentalness that's developed through a lack of understanding of other cultures or groups.

But we're going to gain so much more individually and organizationally than we're ever going to lose. The lack of DEI holds us back. Incorporating DEI principles will take all of us farther than we ever thought possible.

If you appreciated my conversation with Jerome and would like to hear more about the importance of DEI for organizations that support the military and Veteran population, you might appreciate this week's PsychArmor resource of the week, a previous episode of the podcast featuring Kathy Roth Douquet and Sinclair Harris as we discussed the racial equity initiative of Blue Star Families. In this episode, we talk about the importance of DEI for military families and how to apply these principles to your organization. You can check out the episode through a link in the show notes.