- In order to build a better industry, you must build a more diverse industry. I am so proud and excited for tonight's first of its kind, veterans and digital advertising camp, which aims to showcase and educate vets on the numerous career opportunities that exist for them within digital advertising. Not only is tonight about showcasing the possibilities that exist, but 212 is committed to taking it a step further and we have developed a resource guide and stocking tool in partnership with credit spa to help vets better how they're skilled. Actually plan roles in digital advocacy. Tonight would not be possible without the support of many partners, including Frank Meneja who is instrumental in spearheading tonight's event, Leslie Laredo from the Academy of Digital Arts, and Casey Cornelias of Credit Spa for powering our assessment tool and contributing to our resource guide, Moore Greenberg from Military Times, Matterkind, the IAP, Media Village, Digiday, SF Big, Love DEMA, The Ad Club, She Runs It and Bunkers Lept. Finally, I want to thank our biggest supporter and gold sponsor, Verizon Media, for their dedication to the veterans community, and also for sponsoring tonight's event and making it possible. And with that, I'd like to introduce army veterans, Tommy Jones, head of military and talent acquisition authorizing.

- Thanks, Sophia. First, I want to say happy veteran's day to everybody out there and thank you all for your service. Really excited for you all to get this great knowledge and we're really really excited to be part of this. So Verizon has a longhand lineage of hiring veterans. We've been ranked the number one military friendly company for three years now in a row and we take a lot of pride in that. We focus on our military mission statement as a military-friendly company. We're committed to hiring and retaining top talent, fostering an employee engagement, and providing a premier customer experience to our military community that should land really, really close to home for you all. As I said, Verizon is really proud of what we do. We have over 10,000 veterans in our company. We have a dedicated military recruitment team that supports and helps translate skills for service members so that they can help figure out what they want to do when they get out of the military. Obviously, things don't always work or there's not equivalent transition skills from each one, but we'll help you get to that point and I think that's the biggest thing that, you know, Verizon offers to everybody. Lastly, we do a lot of work in the military community. We partner with some of the largest organizations out there. We're part of coalitions. So we just like to be as active as possible and making sure that we're putting our best foot forward and taking care of, you know, veterans. So we look forward to you having a good time tonight and learning, and hopefully we'll get some more people into the digital advertising space. So thank you, Sophia, and thank you all again and happy veteran's day.

- That is definitely the goal of tonight's event. So thank you so much, Tommy, for those words. Now, without further ado, I'd like to pass it off to our incredible moderator, Sean Magee. Sean is the co-founder and CEO of Chameleon Collective, and I'm gonna kick it off to him to introduce himself and to keep optimizing.

- Thank you, Sophia. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Verizon, all our sponsors and thank you to our veterans. Yes, thank you for all of our veterans. Happy veterans day. You truly are the heroes and we appreciate all of your service more than you know. So thank you. And also happy birthday to the Marine Corps because we have to say that it's not everybody represented. There you go. There you go. Nyles, you are loan representative here from the Corps, aren't you? All right. You're gonna have to hold your arm. So yeah, this is amazing. An amazing crew here and we're gonna have a really fun frank discussion about military service people in the ad business. It seems, you know, a little bit of our strange collaboration to be honest. But it actually is the farthest from being strange and it makes more sense than I think people realize. And we'd like to uncover a lot of those areas. You guys have some amazing deep insights personally. Collectively, we're gonna have a great conversation on that. And I know that the people watching here, whether you are serving or have served in the military or if you are a part of the ad industry, this is gonna be a good forum and a good fodder and exercise for you to understand a little bit more about this core segment and all the great things that our veterans do. So before we get into some of the details and the nitty gritty, I do want to go around the horn here and have everybody explain who you are and why you're here. So let me call you out. If you could tell us a little bit about yourself, where you are professionally right now, your role, your company, et cetera, and then as we get into the Q&A, we'll get into a little bit more depth on that. So, Melissa, if you could kick us off. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

- Yep. My name is Melissa Merencillo. I know I look 19, but I'm 35. Just gonna get that out there. I'm currently a program manager for Twitter. I work on live brand studio, so helping advertisers and brands livestream their content. I served in the California Army National Guard and the army reserves as a lab tech for a cash combat support hospital. And the way that I got to Twitter, I had the right keywords and everything that I know that I do well on my LinkedIn and a recruiter contacted me and led me here.

- Smart. All right, thank you. Okay, Carey.

- Thanks, everybody. My name is Carey Kight. I'm an integrated producer at Circus Maximus. I served in the Air Force for four years from 2006 to 2010. I deployed twice to Bodrum, Afghanistan, then did NATO operations sort of all over Europe. I was stationed in the UK, which was a unique experience and certainly part of what's allowed me to thrive in this industry, and yeah. I mean, I worked my way up as a freelancer so I hope we get into that a little bit more, Sean, as we dive deeper into these questions. So yeah. Thanks for having me.

- Sean on it. Okay. Thank you, Carey. Kelly.

- All right. Good evening. My name is Kelly Hinderer. I'm a senior program manager for Verizon Federal. I currently lead a team of engineers and project managers in the largest program for Verizon Federal, which is replacing all of the army installations campus networks. In August, 2019, I retired from the Navy after 29 years as a Naval flight officer, but I actually started my career as an enlisted journalist broadcaster which also tapped into the advertising and recruiting field. I did print media as well as ran the TV and radio show on both the USS Eisenhower. In fact, I was one of the first females on that aircraft carrier when the Navy started putting women on combat ships. My last duty station, when I was enlisted on board Naval air station, Jacksonville, Florida, I did the story on the first female flight engineer in a P-3 Orion aircraft, which made me want to fly airplanes. So I quickly put in my officer package and was selected as a Naval flight officer. And now I have over 4,000 hours in the P-3 Orion, most of which are combat hours flying in support of operation enduring freedom, Iraqi freedom, Southern watch and anti-drug operations and anti-submarine warfare. So during my last duty station, I was selected for hiring our heroes corporate fellowship and that's actually how I was able to get this job with Verizon Federal with Tommy Jones. Actually, I know him personally, I met him through that fellowship, which gave me direct access to him as well as direct access to about 10 to 20 different corporations recruiters. So very happy to be here. Thank you.

- Excellent. Thank you, Kelly. Okay, Nyles.

- Hey. How is everyone doing this evening? Again, I'm Nyles Thorne. I'm an associate of addressable strategy at Matterkind. I guess this began obviously, then first and foremost, it was the Marine Corps birthday yesterday, November 10th, 20 to 45 years going strong. I joined the Marine Corps reserves after high school and decided to go to on the trend of becoming an infantry man 0311. About a year after going through those footsteps of Paris Island by myself and in Iraq by the Syrian border, eventually, even at my time in the reserves, it was still transitioning to a bunch of different other trainings in other parts of the world. I got to do a humanitarian effort in Africa and going to different trainings like in Mongolia. With that, my path, I always tell everyone is a little hectic, obviously graduating from high school, going to bootcamp, literally three days after graduation, becoming a United States Marine, and then at the same time, still I was going into becoming an emergency medical technician. I was doing that for a number of years, critical care and transport patients who responded to 911 calls and also at the same time, I started going into Rutgers University and taking my cost courses. Getting into the space has been very unique. I had a very small but great veterans who actually were in this space for a number of years who kind of like enticed me to the idea of digital media. To be honest, I thought it was just like, oh, it's just some simple code or just some simple little thing you put in Excel and there's your ad or something. But for some reason when explaining it to me, it just caught my interest and I wanted to go up for it even on time as an EMT. So I just started finding books and courses online, trying to just find anything, any resources possible so I could just educate myself, and eventually it came up to when Matterkind was cadre on at the moment. I was able to apply for a position. I have some very great people there that saw the potential in me and I started off. With that, it's been a great, unique experience and I eventually, I guess, we'll be able to introduce the frontline initiative that we are highly emoticon as a Val, but we want to be able to pay it forward and bring more veterans into this space.

- Excellent. Thanks, Nyles. Okay, Javier.

- Good evening all and I'm really like honored and just kinda like overwhelmed a little bit. I've never actually been on a panel with other veterans speaking about my experience and then kind of like being able to relate to a lot of you. So this is a first for me and it's really exciting and I promise I'm not drunk or otherwise out of sorts of if I seem a little nervous or it's just kind of like, it's this really great experience. This is the very first time since I left the military that I've had the opportunity to kind of sit as peers on a panel discussion, just talking about my experiences and then relating those to what other veterans have done. So it's just really like, this is a really great experience and I'm thankful for the opportunity and I'm really like just insanely proud to be here with you guys tonight. It's really great. Just kind of want to give you, I had a really non-traditional path to the military and I've taken a very non-traditional path since I've left. Like a couple of the others here on the panel, I joined right out of high school. I did something was called a delayed entry program which I joined up in my senior year. I was 17 at the time. I turned 18 in basic training. I went in initially wanting to be a military journalist but that was closed at the time and instead, what ended up happening was I went into being a legal clerk or a paralegal at the time it was classified. We have military occupational specialties. First of all, I'm always in the army. Sorry, I forgot to mention that, something called 71 Delta. So that was legal clerk. It re-involved a kind of a lot of writing, which was more or less my thing. That's what I like to do more than anything else. I was stationed. My very first military assignment was in Southern Germany. During there, I did a very short stint there like three years but in fact, I did a tour of duty in the gulf right around the time where the end of the Persian Gulf war was declared. This was '91, '92. So did a brief stint in Saudi Arabia, came back. So on paper, even though I was there after the hostilities took place, I am considered a Gulf War veteran. So I'm dating myself but it's fine. All of that said, I came out of the military while I was into classes on the side, then went straight into college full time, finished my degree in a couple of years, went right to graduate school. In college, I studied economics and politics. My graduate degree is in public policy. Once I graduated from grad school, I had a friend who worked for Reuters, which is basically digital media, financial media. I applied there just kind of like, okay, this is something to do. I probably may or may not get it, but I got it and that was my very first start in working in digital media. So right now, I work for Yahoo Finance and I'm an editor there and a lot of what I've done here and a lot of what I've done a career has been largely informed by all of the things that I've been able to pick up since leaving the military.

- Awesome. Thank you, Javier. I appreciate that. Okay, let's go to the other Sean.

- I'm Sean Magee. I'm the CEO and founder of Anchor Trading. I'm US Navy vet. I served a long aside there with Javier back in the day, you know different brands, but nonetheless, a very similar path right out of high school, blade entry program, and really, you know, I just always wanted to serve. I was fascinated by the military. So when joined, not really, no one at fair remembers back in the day, there wasn't a lot. If you were to pay attention to current affairs either watching, you know, channel 245 or seven or reading a newspaper. So there was no internet. So when I told my father, I joined the Navy, he goes, "You're gonna end up in Iraq." And I said I'm not gonna end up in Iraq. And he was wrong right away because I ended up in Gitmo and then I ended up in the Red Seat. So, you know, it went from there to there, but I was stationed on a spruce glass destroyer that did support operations post for desert storm doing their tiny exception force. I went from chipping paint all the way to boarding ships. I experienced that, you know, one spectrum to the other. I came off active duty in late, early '93 and I transitioned, I was now to go to college. I did my first year at Rockin Community College and then transferred to Portland state, finished my undergrad and got a job in Manpower temp services, which led me to a job in the mail room of a media company. And that company called Active International is where I started in their mail room. I spent 14 years there. When I left there, I was the vice president of Enterprise Sales, started another company Shover Trading and then in 2015, working with various charities such as Tire Load and the USO, I decided I wanted to go and branch off of my own to give veterans an opportunity in an industry. You typically don't go into booza. Probably like many of you, you know, my father was a civil service. I came from a civil service background. My father was a map stoller transit authority MTA bus driver. So I was geared to the do that cop or fireman, but apparently when your hearing and your eyesight are compromised from your time in, you don't qualify for those jobs anymore. So the points on the civil service test didn't matter. So I was fortunate enough to get into this industry and it's been 25 years with amazing opportunities going from print media buying to spot TV to enterprise sales to account management to leading my own company which is a lot of veterans. I got some Marines. I got a lot of army. Javier, as I said, the last time the army guys love to work for the Navy guy. That's just the way it is. So I'd say it's an awesome culture. We have an anchor, we do a lot of great things and, you know, like, I think I've said in a previous discussion with the group is, you know, couple transitioning is an interesting thing coming off especially if you're enlisted and you don't have a college degree. So you're kind of like, you feel like you're behind the eight ball but there's always that great hope. If you look at many of us on the screen, 25 years later, it's still going. And thank you for everyone having me and also happy veterans day to everyone on the panel and everyone out there that's watching.

- Thank you, Sean. Okay. And last but not least, Mr. Deierlein.

- Hi, everybody. My name is Tom Deierline. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Thundercat Technology. We resell data center technology. So I've gone from somebody in the media business as someone that actually plans and executes media campaigns for my company. My background in digital media goes back to the .com era right in 96. I worked for a company called Net Gravity, selling some of the very first ad servers. And most recently working with Simon Media which is a company that uses set top box data to target TV ads. In terms of the military, my first stint was in from 89 to 93. I was an infantry officer stationed with the Berlin brigade. I was there right after the wall came down. I wasn't there when the wall came down. I got out in '93 and was out for 12 years. And then six months after Millward Brown and WPP purchased Dynamic Logic, I was called back in and I served in Baghdad. So I was in again from '05 to '07. In September of '06, I was shot by a sniper. I'm looking forward to sharing any insights I can about the military. I credit a West Point, Ranger School and my experiences in the military to all of my business success.

- Awesome. Thanks, Tom. So if you guys ever watched Saturday night live and yet, you certainly remember that bit when Chris Farley was interviewing Paul McCartney. That's pretty much what I feel like here. I'm not worthy and I will ask probably questions like, you know, do you remember whatnot? It'll hopefully be a little bit more coherent than that. But you know, let's get into it, guys. Let's talk a little bit about the year all. Thank you for your backgrounds and I think talking from that perspective, you know, I am a layman, I'm a civilian and haven't served and certainly somebody that after 25 years in the business still have questions about the military's presence within our business and some curiosities and et cetera. So I'd love for us to talk a little bit about matters of skills, translatable skills, and maybe some of the perceptions related to... Carey, let me start with you. You know, what first drew you to the world of advertising? You know, what was attractive about it? And then what did you find instantly that based on your training was naturally applicable and then maybe what were some areas that you found difficult?

- Yeah, great question. Thanks, Sean. So one of the reasons that I joined the military, patriotism was certainly a part of it but the other being, I definitely was not ready for college and I was not ready to go through, you know, discovering what I wanted to do in that environment. So I chose the Air Force as an opportunity to both kind of further develop some life skills that I knew that I needed. I was at least mature enough to know I needed them even though I didn't have them. And I wanted to gain some independence financially in order to sort of make some college decisions for myself. And so film school was always a dream of mine. I didn't want to work necessarily advertising side but on the entertainment side. So I joined for four years, chose four instead of six, knowing that I wanted to serve and then use the GI Bill and go to college and get out and do what I wanted to do. So I served for four years and then went and used the GI Bill and studied at film school and then moved straight from Los Angeles or straight from college to Los Angeles to just start working on set. I had, you know, I had no network, no networking, no connections, just sort of a scrappy desire to get out there in the field and do the work. So what drew me to advertising was the practicality of it and I sort of hone these skills in film school and then hone them on set, working in an unpaid capacity as a, you know, a production assistant and then assistant director and producing short films and doing all that on the sort of artsy fartsy independent film side and it was great. And what I did was I developed skills to actually produce. And so when I met someone through a friend who needed somebody to produce some small piece of branded content, it was like 500 bucks for like five days work or something like that and I was like, sure, I'll do that. And so that producer and I had, you know, wrapped beers after we had finished that and he was like, hey, so, you know, you can actually make money doing this instead of waiting tables and tending bar and trying to make it an independent film. And so then I shifted my focus from sort of pursuing the dream to finding the practical routes through which I could make money, make a living, and then keep doing the work and keep finding opportunities to get myself onto sets and onto projects that people would actually see and then that would actually accomplish something. So for me, it was a bunch of scrappy skills that I sort of developed in indie film and then found advertising to be an extremely practical way for me to do my job on a daily basis. And that was something I did without any sort of networking. I got very lucky.

- Awesome. Melisa, how about you? What was your impact? What was the feeling when you broke into the business and what was translatable, maybe what were some gaps that you had to had to fill when he got into the ad space?

- Oh, was that question for me?

- Yeah, Melissa. Yep.

- Okay, sorry. I just heard the issa part. I'd say I still remember like my first week at Twitter and I had to attend a meeting and I was worried that I was gonna be late because I was not there at the meeting 10 minutes prior and it was on the other side of the building. I actually started running with my laptop. So this is my first week. I can't be late to this meeting. I need to be there 10 minutes prior. By the time I got there my manager's like, "Why are you running, and also everyone gets there usually one to two minutes late?" So for me, trying to take the urgency out of like the day, day to day, I need to remember like these aren't medical urgency is not life and death. But I still keep the same urgencies when it comes to my work. But I just remind myself, like it's not the same type of urgency I had before. So I think I'm a little bit more relaxed, but the one thing that did translate over is, you know, when they ask what's my level of attention to detail as a lab tech, I was looking for cryptosporidium in stool samples for six soldiers that didn't know why they were sick. So I could find that and it's like, okay, how am I gonna bring this over into the civilian work field? But I realized when it comes to my actual work, there are so many variables and so many little things that can go wrong with live streaming and advertising campaigns, that my ability to find like the littlest thing when nobody knows what's wrong is what makes me like a good person on the team.

- Right. Perfect, perfect. You know, Nyles, in our prep, we had a good conversation about, I believe that this was your point where, you know, some of the skills that are learned in the military, there's a perception that they're a little bit more project management oriented but the truth is, you know, you guys are working on these multi-million dollar systems. You're having to, you know, lead and command groups, et cetera. So tell us a little bit about your entry into the ad base.

- Thank you for that, Sean. Yeah. So getting into the ad base was and first and foremost, I guess I'm gonna thank the people who actually led me to that path. My mom and dad, you know, without them, I actually wouldn't be here. But there's also was a great connection of friends who've been in the industry who were kind of like enticing me during my time when I was working as an EMT. Now, I loved my career path at the moment and I love what I did, but everything else, it was very, very exhausting. You are dealing with a lot of traumatic experiences too, responding to 911 calls, you're seeing the peak, you see in a person who is at their most sick or injured, and I was doing that for a number of years and I guess, I was finding like, you know, like, you know what? I don't know if I can really continue to do this for, you know, another five, 10, 15 years. But as I was doing this, I had friends who were already were inside the industry and they were just talking to me and was like, "Hey man, do you ever thought about like digital media?" And I was just kind of like, what are you talking about? They're just like, "Hey, you know what? Let's just meet up and I'll give you an explanation." I was like, oh man, I hope he's not explaining some type of pyramid scheme to me or something. And with that, some of these guys who were in the industry are veterans too. So I was kinda like connected with them already, but I was like a little maybe or maybe not. But he's like, "Hey, I'm gonna show you what we do." He slapped out an IO in front of me and I was like, what is this? I see all these numbers, all this forms like, you know, 320 by 50 or a 720 by nine IO or was this a placement? Like, what does this even mean? And for some reason though, I was kind of like connected with it. I don't know how to explain it. It's just like, I'm interested in it. And I was like, explain how ads work. And I'm like, oh, you just take this and put it into a code or into a computer and you just send it off. He's like, "No, that's not how it works. So there's a lot of processes." So when he explained it to me, it was like he was making a resemblance to like what we were doing in the military. You know, I guess what we do and when people think in the military, there's like, oh, you just make a phone call in the military to stay at like. No, there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of logistics, a lot of training and things that have to happen before before the first boots he could sit on the ground. So with that was that caught my interest and I guess he also knows like my work ethic is I'm willing to dig deep and just put the unknown amount of hours into something until it's completed. For anyone that knows me at Matterkind or anywhere, if that's 16, 24 hours, that's cool. Just give me a Red Bull and I will keep going. And some of the explanation, and some of what you said is that yes. If you look at us and we're in the military 18th, you know, 20 something year old, we were in charge of inspecting 30, $40 million aircraft. We were in charge of these complex systems designed to provide support for hundreds of thousands of troops overseas. We were responsible for moving troops and equipment from the United States all the way overseas by ship, by aircraft, you're talking about communicating on devices that you can talk to someone halfway around the world in a matter of seconds. And to go from that type of responsibility, and then all of a sudden, translate it into civilian side, it's kind of like, it's very different or it's not applicable. As I say, is that, okay. I was in charge of 10, 20 guys for inspecting aircraft, but now in the civilian world, like, hey, we're not even gonna trust you to, you know, we can't trust you with an inventory, let's say a closet of whatever materials. And so it almost seems like to a veteran, it's sort of like degrading in a sense and kind of like we missed that sort of a command and responsibility.

- Right.

- So it was like, I guess it's being able to translate is like, since that system of the military of moving materials and operations, how can we apply instead of digital media and just learning the different aspects of it and maybe figure out different processes? I guess I'm coming from all of us is that we know for a fact that if one way doesn't work, we'll figure out another way. Something is never ever completely 100% guaranteed to work. There's always mistakes. There's always problems that can happen. It's like, okay, we can get angry, we get frustrated, that's just being a human side of things. What can we do to move forward and just keep pressing on no matter what.

- So, you know, building off of Nyle's conversation, Tom, I mean, frankly, is there a stigma in our business with the military? I guess I have a whole bunch of different questions related to even the promotion and awareness of military within the business. You're a pretty well-known guy in the sales world and in technology. You know, give us a sense of, you know, is there a stigma and what are some of the perceptions and misperceptions that you would help educate us to get get around and some to embrace?

- I mean, I think a couple of the two biggest ones out there right now are, you know, they're very classic and this one's been going on for, you know, 50+ years. You're only good at taking orders, right? And I guess the second one that's out there is the PTSD. There's a couple more but let's start with those two. I mean, the first one is, I want like, like Hollywood didn't do us any favors, right? Like there's a general and like a thousand privates all taking orders and that's just not the way the military works. And in fact most companies find that the reason they enjoy working with the military is the leadership skills that they come with, right? Unlike other organizations, you can't say, oh, here's this hot shot major in the German army. Let's recruit her and have her run this brigade. That's like, you have to build your leaders from day one. And if there's two privates raking leaves, one of them was in charge of the raking leaves. Two private scrubbing toilets, one of them is in charges of scrubbing those toilets. And throughout your career, you get more and more responsibility. The second thing in terms of the order-taking thing that I see is again, everyone's like, oh, they think that there's one person directing like a battle of thousands. But that's not the way it works. You're given a commander's intent and the what, right? The what and the when. But the how and the adjusting and the adapting is all done at the lowest levels, right? If you talk to any military person to like adapt, improvise, overcome, that's not what followers do, right? Like that's what leaders do. The second one in terms of the PTSD, you know, again, it is there. I'm not gonna suggest it's not and studies show that about, you know, 10% of veterans do have PTSD. But 8% of Americans do as well and it can be from a car accident, a natural disaster, an assault, maybe they grew up in a traumatic environment. So there's only a one in 10 chance that if you're talking to a veteran, they have some type of PTSD and then we can get into what the severity looks like. But it's something you're probably already working with someone that has some type of PTSD given the raw numbers. And if they were in the military, they've probably gotten some counseling to understand and manage the triggers and appropriate responses. But I don't want to suggest it's not out, it's not there, but like again, Hollywood, or, you know if you turn on any TV show, they got the veteran and they're always banged up in some way and there's usually some type of PTSD. Why? Because that's what tells a good story and has drama but I don't think it's reflected in real life and I don't think it's something you have to be concerned about when looking for and interviewing.

- All right, Deierlein.

- Sorry.

- Thanks. Thanks, Tom. You know, Sean related to this, you're known as somebody who has done a pretty good job of building out a business with vets. And so give us, I'm very curious on how you've been able to message not only externally for recruitment for vets, but then even internally on your businesses, amongst civilians, the benefit of veterans and you know, how they can collaborate. Because frankly, one of my curiosities in this whole conversation is you all are incredibly disciplined and you have this background and how it merges with the civilian millennial world of a very different approach. What do you think about that, Sean?

- Well, I think our marketing to find the veterans and both internally and externally, it wasn't something that we designed. I think it was more along the lines of what I kind of knew. So, you know, back to kind of what Melissa had said earlier about attention in detail, I knew, you know, the Navy, that's the first thing they teach you about in boot camp is attention in detail. And from there, you know, I kind of knew that was a trait that most people in the military had and place where I was working, it was very, you know, entrepreneurial and kind of loosey goosey, which is where I came from, it was like, not enough detail. So there were some traits I was looking for as I went through, you know, I found myself to be a much greater risk-taker, right? And I'm gonna start kind of tell you like what I found out about myself and how that translates into what we look for and what we see and so I felt like I looked back and like risk-taker, you know, I started looking back after I'm now 40 years old going back almost 30 years, I'm like when I left high school and I joined the service, I enlisted. You know, and I told my father, you know, I joined the Navy. He goes, "You better have told me, you got to do Annapolis." You know, and I said no and then that went to a whole different direction because he put me to a, you know, my father was a bus driver, three boys all through Catholic school and I played hockey up until, you know, high school, a private school and you're not supposed to join the service. He was like, "You were supposed to go to college." So I took that risk and I want to do that. When I came home, you know, it wasn't by design. I was taking those risks, right? So what I did find was, you know, we're much more entrepreneurial, we're bigger risk takers and that's what we look for. We look for that. We look for the people that are willing to step outside the box, right? And I can't recall who said it earlier, but it was something about, you know, it was kind of like the resume that they, you know, I look back and I put a resume together and I was like, okay, I went to college and here's what and I remember I gave him my resume when I was interviewing for a full-time position at the company I started at. And I didn't say there was not, and still, to this day, I would do it but, you know, I didn't list the, you know, the Southwest Asia, my national defense medal or my citations, anything for the, you know, the 96 boardings we did in the Persian Gulf. I didn't do any of that, you know? And that was a big portion. When I look back on that, I'm like, you know, that would have shown an employer that at the age of 18, 19 and 20 years old, you did more in a two and a two and a half to three year active duty period than people do in their entire lives. But we become so humbled and so in many ways, embarrassed. And, you know, Tom, to your point about Hollywood, you know, everyone thinks that everyone thinks that jumping out of planes were seals in the middle of a, then, you know, going after bin Laden and that, you know, it's kind of crazy and they forget that, you know, there's a lot of young seamen out there that are on more ships and there's privates out there that are taking us on the front lines of, you know, convoys in the middle of Iraq and Afghanistan every single night. You know, they forget about those things. And those things don't make Hollywood because they're not sexy, right? So, you know, we look for those, you know, those young, you know, right out of the service. Not that I don't like the officers but I love the young enlisted, you know, grunts, if you will, you know, that they've been through the suck and because they've been through things that most people, if they've been through that, they can get through anything because especially in the advertising world, it's a mental game. It's not a physical game. It's a complete mental game. You know, especially we're dealing with the platform change of digital advertising, we're talking about digital advertising, right? Look what happened in COVID. We saw our customers shift from traditional forms of media into e-comm platforms in a switch. So we had to shift gears. I got one of my greatest employees. We just promote him as director digital. His name was Hunter Rocks. I know, probably you're saying the wrong industry but nonetheless, he rocks. This kid, he's a four year. He was in fact, I think, I want to say fast company out of Fort hood, he came, went to high school, same thing. This kid is a smartest kid and it's because he's not scared to do anything. He's also intellectually very, very smart. But he is a whiz kid, and he's not scared about stepping outside the box and taking risks and doing things. So those are the things we look for. We look for, you know, you don't put yourself and think you're, you know, you come out of the service and, you know, they told me I gotta be, you know, both be a laborer or a fireman or a cop. This is an industry that I can tell you, it's the worldwide open for it and especially with the digital growth. I mean, there's so much opportunity, excitement, and we're building this today. Thank you, Sean and Sophia and Tom from Verizon to do this and to start to build what Nyles is building at Matterkind for us to play a role in helping build a veteran group within a very large industry. The industry will benefit greatly as well the veteran community.

- No, I think, and I think you brought up a great point, Sean, which is another misperception thinks that, you know, all the veterans have been in combat or in these combat positions that kicking down doors and doors and chasing bad guys. 80% of the occupations in the military are non-combat, right? Logisticians, engineers, technology, finance, healthcare, and yeah, some are doing marketing and sales, like the recruitment command. Sorry, Sean. Back to you.

- You're spot on. I was pretty much done, but you're right and it's funny 'cause like, I would call a group of guys I grew up with, we're still best friends, 14 of us, and if you saw some of the happy veterans day joke done from serve. So you sort of some of the jokes and I was a Navy guy. So I was in the Navy, had gotten early 90s. So a lot of jokes went with that, right? So we'll leave it at that. But you know, I was everything from the YMCA guy to, you know, there's a whole bunch of, you know, Papa, you name it. Everything out to see, you know, someone was like, all right, well, we'll laugh, it's funny but it is that that's a stereotype in certain branches, you know, and it's like, there is that perception. Again, I think a Hollywood and the internet puts a different picture on it. You know, I was in combat zone for two years, I never saw combat, and I have all the metal for it, right? But that's a technicality that we all know what that means because it's just your time and you know, your place or time, right? We all raised our hands and we'd go and just no one signs up said, oh, I'm gonna get that mission. Right? So, you know, people coming out of the service, you know, have to recognize, hey, be proud of who you are. Stand up. You've been through a hell of a lot. Even if you haven't been through combat, you've been through a hell of a lot more than the average person coming out of high school and transitioning out or gone to college and then did the military and now transitioning out.

- Let me ask Kelly about speaking of the industry. You know, the advertising industry unfortunately has a DNI problem in terms of attraction and recruitment and, you know, it's very much in my mind analogous to, you know, the population of military serving in the ad business, et cetera. If you could for us, you know, you noted a bunch of amazing accomplishments even in your own profile and then in Verizon and maybe in the ad space. Tell us a little bit about what the ad business can learn based on diversity that the military represents. 'Cause my perception, right or wrong, probably wrong, but is that there's more equal representation. There's more of a, you know, democratic egalitarian society within the military that there is the ad space which seems to be more predominantly one way or the other. So how would you compare and contrast and any tips for the ad business on diversity?

- I think it's pretty even across the board. I think the military is a direct representation of society and it just depends on, I mean, being in the Navy and especial aviation, 5% of aviation is women. And I mean, that to me is still kind of a crazy number, you know, and I, throughout my career, part of my career not only was obviously my core competency but I always tried to be a mentor. That was just part of who I was and I try to also be a mentee. I was always in the mentality of, I'm never stopping myself from learning and I'm never stopping myself from learning from anyone at any level. Even when I was a commanding officer of 300 people, I learned from every single level on a daily basis. And I think that's important no matter what company you're with is to go in with that mentality from a learning perspective and also being a mentor perspective. So coming into Verizon, I can tell you that, you know, coming straight out of the military after 29 years, it was a very difficult transition. It was a lonely transition for the first couple of months because we're all used to having that very close comradery, very close friendships and even if you're changing duty stations, going even across the world, you're still going into an organization that welcomes you with open arms. And so, you know, immediately reaching out to those folks in Verizon who had shared my same experiences in the military, like Tommy said, Verizon is very fortunate and I think many of the other companies out there now have stepped up and have very robust military programs to welcome veterans and to also educate the entire company on what veterans bring to the table. You know, there's diversity obviously in gender and backgrounds, but there's also diversity in skills, but this panel's already mentioned the things that we bring to the table that are consistent across the board, that leadership, that adaptability, that flexibility, that attention to detail, and no matter what your diverse background is, we all bring that to the table whether you're in a senior program manager role, or an advertising role. No matter what role you are, those are critical skills that any company to me would welcome having.

- Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of skills, Javier, you know, obviously this has been a not-a-fun year and I think that, you know, whether began with the pandemic and then the civil unrest over the summer and now with the election right now and the word is that the aliens are coming in December, we're gonna have to deal with that. So how have you guys, based on your training, how are you frankly fairing better than the civilians are? And how are you translating that also in the workplace? How are you keeping, you know, guys like me calm and focused?

- Well, first we're trying to keep ourselves calm but I think it's a great question in all seriousness because it speaks to one of what I think is probably one of the most key factors that any military person has is which we're trained or hardwired to really kind of respond and adjust to circumstances that are less than ideal. So even when you're not necessarily in a combat and you made the point about 80% of military occupational specialties being non-combat, we are accustomed to working and thriving in environments that are chaotic. And some of them are more orderly than others but quite frankly, they are not ideal that we are in a lot of ways called upon to adjust to the circumstances around us and kinda attain that chaos. So that I think is a key factor or a real key skillset in working in any environment but especially in an environment that is, you know, I guess, characterized by upheaval and turmoil as we've seen this year. One of the other things that I think has been very useful to me in my career throughout even before to 2020 is I'm accustomed to getting up really early. So in a lot of the roles that I've had professionally, I've been the early bird guy. At some points, I've had to be on at 7:00 or 6:00 and in my current role, sometimes I have a colleague who gets up at 4:00 a.m. and she's like plugging away doing things for the Yahoo Finance website. And as I tip my hats on 'cause I'm usually the first person up on any team that I'm usually in but she's up even earlier than me. But I think the idea of like functioning, being a morning person, being able to get up early and then actually working long hours, I think is really critical. I think that to me, it suggests a discipline and be a way that you can like, I think Nyles was the one who was talking about like being kind of the Energizer Bunny and drinking Red Bulls and what have you. In a lot of ways, that's how the average military person functions. We can be in these environments where there's a lot going on, working long hours. The stress levels are very, very high, and we, I think in a lot of ways, are conditioned to not only, like I said, tame the chaos around us, but also be the more grounded level-headed person because we know like we've been in tougher scrapes and every person here on this panel has been in an environment where it's like, wow, there's a lot going on and you had to adjust and you had to. So when a lot of ways, a lot of us have been in tougher scrapes and we've been able to adjust that we've been able to tamp down on a lot of the things that would make a normal person just kind of like be really discomforting and they can't do it or they can't function, but a lot of that is like for us and it rolls off our back and I think that that speaks to a level of it's not about necessarily having been under fire in really chaotic environments like Iraq and Afghanistan, which, you know, the bloodshed and these are grinding bloody conflicts, but a lot of us have even like my position. When I was in the most story, I worked a lot in office environments and that's a lot more stressful than some people might think and I could tell you stories that we don't have time to go through here but I think that usually like we have a knack of being able to adjust and I think that that to me is kind of the thread of commonality that connects all of our experiences. Everyone on this panel has been in these really strange, tough situations and we've adjusted and we've been able to be, for lack of a better term, kind of a beacon of stability and support for those of us that we work with.

- Thank you, Javier. You know, let me go to, whether you can see them or not, you got to be pretty big crowd watching you and listening to you and all your insights, and we have some questions and I've been scanning them and there seems to be a pretty interesting theme that I'll throw to you guys in a jump ball capacity which is twofold, which is, you know, how did you find out about these roles within advertising? What were some of the general and vertical resources that you went to? And then also in reverse, how can they find you? How can these companies source veterans for their roles? So anybody have any insights on what you did to come in and what better resources companies can access to find you?

- I guess I'll just take a little bit of that forefront as you know, where he is first, if I.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Same with this is and it's bring point to, I guess, what my path was getting into the digital media industry was that, yes, I did mention before that I had friends who were describing a topic and like trying to like educate me, but really, from what I noticed, there was is no segment or pathway. And again, good examples to a lot of veterans and friends is imagine when you gonna be a doctor or some type of a banker, a lawyer, you can go online and they're like, oh, go to this school, take these courses, do the certification and boom you're there. Within our realm of digital media programmatic, I really didn't see like an actual guide or like pathway. And for me, I had to figure it out myself. It was just going online and googling digital media, marketing, programmatic, like just certain key terms, and then even when I was still my role as being an EMT, I would actually go online and go to Amazon and just like, oh, let me just type up this subject and see what happens and I came across a couple of like programmatic books, I came across some data analysis, where I was like, okay, you know what? I'm gonna spend a 10, 15, 20 or a hundred bucks and let me buy and read it. And that was actually just reading on my off days or on my time in between work, in between saving lives, and after doing my reporting and make sure everything was right, I'll try to read five or 10 minutes. Go online, I then was trying to go look at Facebook, that's social media, but like understand like the Facebook and analytics behind that, I went to at the time it was called Google a digital, was it called Academy for Ads? I obviously everyone had Gmail. You can listen to that, trying to take some courses from there. I was just going out there trying to find it. So it was this dig deep and you have to discover yourself. To say if you really want something, you're going to do whatever you can to just make it happen. So and part of that was especially as being a veteran, I'm like, well, this industry is not really out there to be broadcasted. Well, why not? Why aren't some of these big industries like putting out there, like, hey, let's just put a guide to help other people come in because not even just veterans, I think anyone really, 'cause you don't hear digital media in college or courses or high school anywhere. And maybe again, I can mention this later on, if need be, coming in with Matterkind and starting up an initiative we call Frontline as a grassroots organization. We're trying to build like an actual, they call it a base to where, if you're a veteran and you're actually in the space and you want to know other vets are out there, hey, we're here. Or if you're a veteran who wants to get into this space, we're gonna provide you an actual like pathway. And that means, hey, if you want to help out with your resumes, hey, send it to us, we're gonna help out. We want to review your cover letter. We want to review the skills that you have. We want to see how we can translate that. We want to be able to provide your resource guide in which that will be, we'll talk about that and show that later on. But you know, with online courses, books, you also want to be a mentor. In the military coming from us, there's no such thing as just you by yourself. It's a team effort, right? We were all given chances by someone, whether if we're on a down of our luck and running out of money, and we asked someone for 50 bucks to help us out, hey, guess what? That person helps you to achieve your goal. If someone says, hey, you know what? I'm tired, but I'm gonna help this person and teach him for 15, 20 or 30 minutes or an hour, that person helped you. So just as we're in our position right now, we need to help out veterans who actually want to be able to come into this industry and show them that there's actually a very, very good pathway and very good roles that can help out with your career and life.

- Yeah. I get that sentiment is that, you know, everyone on this panel are post Vietnam era, right? So you volunteered, you raised your hand. So you have just, you're ingrained, it's in your DNA of service to others. So what I'll put out to the people on the panel that are watching us, at least for myself, I am an open book and I would love nothing more to help out another lending hand. So you connect through LinkedIn. The group has, you know, Sean and Sophia have all my direct contact information and what, you know, that, you know, speaking really latching onto a veteran who could be anyone and just getting some firsthand experience, you know, understanding what programmatic is from people in this space versus what creative is or what is media planning versus out of home media and all these different avenues or how big the industry really is and it's really that. So at least for me, if there's anyone out there looking for, you know, just someone to pick their brain, I'm open for coffee drink, email, talk, Zoom, then that's what we're here for. We're here to, you know, that's the whole purpose of today is to open up a forum to help other vets coming out of off transitioning off active duty into this industry. So you're looking at a panel of, you know, nine of us who are just here to help in any shape or form.

- I think this industry is just like everyone else, right? You might know somebody that knows somebody. So step one, get your LinkedIn app and connect with everyone you can. And then LinkedIn is gonna start suggesting other people you should know. So expand your digital network. Second, as Nyles point out, do your own research, Google, right? Google top 20 media companies, top 20 advertising agencies, top 20 advertisers, top 100 advertisers, then go to those sites. They all have career sites and you may find a lot of them have it. Military Times publishes military friendly. But the one that I, Hire Our Heroes, Hire Our Heroes, but there's one that many on this webinar might not be aware of. It's called Code of Support. Code of Support has built a platform, a tool that has curated veterans-focused organizations and by some that need immediate care, some that need financial, some that need education, and they will know who the best veterans and transition organizations are and they can do it down to the local level. Sorry, I'll turn it over to someone else.

- I think it's important that, you know, there's a horrible stigma of the one week forced upon you, transitions assistance class that you have to go through before you're allowed to get out of the military. And I think that stigma should go away because that one week is so valuable now and they've really stepped up their game in terms of they walk you through how to set up a LinkedIn profile. You get the automatic gold profile for a one-year free when you get out of the military. They walk you through how to set up all of your social media for you to transition out of the military. They give you access to a lot of different programs once you get out of the military, all for free. They even bring in people to dress you for business success and teach you the things to wear for interviews. They take you through how to interview. And so if you really pay attention to that class during the week and you just really take advantage of every single day, the different things that they're offering you through that class and get over that, it's going to be a waste of your time that is very valuable.

- I'm sorry. I just want to make one thing clear. Like I think a lot of companies over the last several years have become really, really invested in the idea of hiring and putting together job, like career fairs specifically off the top of my head, JP Morgan brings together over 200 different companies that are looking explicitly to hire veterans across industry. So it's not even just through the media. It's literally in banking and finance and various technology, various sectors of the economy. Walmart does a lot with veterans-hiring as does Starbucks. I think if I'm not mistaken, they even have certain stores that are dedicated specifically just to hiring veterans and are run explicitly by veterans. So I think in corporate America, they've gotten a lot more aggressive and I think they really see the value in hiring folks like us from all different walks of life and all different specialties where we whatever we're doing in the military. And again, that speaks a lot to a lot of what we've discussed on this panel tonight which is there are certain set of skills like the movie, like, you know, very specific set of skills by Niamh, the British actor with "Taken". But basically, folks like us in the most early have certain advantages, and I think that those play out really well when we put ourselves in front of companies that are really specifically looking for those sets of skills.

- Now, thank you, Javier. And that's a great segue to conclude. Listen. You guys have been great. We could talk for hours and I think that this is just a baby step towards many miles that we need to walk as an ad industry to better embrace the military sector for employees and adopt more of your measures internally. Honestly, within the ad industry that we need to do a better job of knowing that you're there and to leverage your skills and also work with you on recruiting more people from the military as well. So I thank you all for your time here. I'm gonna dish it back over to Sophia to close us out. We had a lot of questions on there. You guys answered a lot of them independently, and you know, by the way that everyone looks at militaries types as a silent types is that you guys are, you know, very communicative and we went over. So it was awesome. Thanks for your time and all your input. So Sophia, I'll give it over to you.

- So to everyone tuning in tonight, this is a first of its kind veterans and digital advertising panel. Our goal was to showcase the numerous career opportunities that exist for vets within digital advertising. We hope we did exactly that. We stay committed to supporting this community. So please take advantage of the resource guide that will exist on the 212 website. Please reach out if you have questions. The panelists have offered their help. Thank you so much to our gold sponsor's horizon, also for your commitment to the veterans community and thank you, Sean, for doing a fantastic job moderating. Thank you so much to our panelists. Thank you for your service. Thank you for risking your lives to protect our freedoms. I am forever ever grateful and I am just so in awe of not only your commitment to the military and to helping each other, but your willingness to pull others up with you. This has been such an incredible event. And again to everybody tuning in, this is the first of many. 212 is committed to supporting this community. We are committed to building a diverse advertising industry. So we look forward to 2021. If there are recommendations, feel free to send it our way. And thank you again all so much and happy veteran's day.

- Thanks guys.

- Take care, everyone.

- Have a good day.

- Take it easy, everyone.

- Thank you.