MasterMinds: The Value of Veterans

**Editor’s Note: MasterMinds is a biweekly feature in which we invite leading master agents to share information, insights and expert opinions about what’s going on in their agencies, the IT/telecom channel or the business community in general.**

In March 2016, Michael Goodenough, a member of the Channel Partners Editorial Advisory Board, invited two military veteran job seekers to shadow him at the spring Channel Partners Conference & Expo and learn about the tech industry and the channel. The following August, two more veterans were invited to Channel Partners Evolution in Washington, D.C.

By the time of the spring 2017 Channel Partners Conference & Expo, the initiative to invite veterans had a name — [email protected] Partners — and had grown to facilitate invitations to 11 veterans.

Channel Partners supplied a dedicated meeting room and full Expo passes. Granite Telecommunications stepped up to underwrite travel, hotel and incidental expenses. Cloud Girls and Women in the Channel (WiC) provided mentors for some of the veterans, and WiC also hosted female veterans at its colocated networking event.

The veterans were referred by Hire Heroes USA, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and firms providing mentors included Carrier Access, Cellular Optimization, CenturyLink, Clarify360. EffortlessOffice, Nuvalo, Platte River Networks. Richardson Communications, TelecomQuotes and WTG.

And for Channel Partners Evolution, Sept. 25-25 in Austin, Texas, the program has gained even more momentum.

We have partnered with TrainOurTroops, an Austin-based 501(c)(3) veteran non-profit organization that provides U.S. veterans and their spouses with free advanced online training and certification solutions to give them a competitive advantage in the civilian job market and ignite their careers. And Granite has again stepped forward and agreed to help underwrite costs.

Organizations across the country support TrainOurTroops to drive various veteran scholarship programs while also allowing the marketing aspect of TrainOurTroops to drive veteran-branded initiatives for those organizations to obtain global exposure and awareness.

TrainOurTroops provides courses that are driven by the needs of organizations. Once finished with a given road map of courses, veterans receive online testing, templates and deliverables, certification, and visibility to organizations that want their newly acquired skill sets. They also find a community of other veterans to network with. TrainOurTroops allows veterans and their spouses to start new careers or simply add additional advanced skill sets in order to become more valuable to their current employers.

According to Glen Brynteson, founder and president of TrainOurTroops, courses are created around six critical organizational disciplines: customer experience (CX) solutions, competitive intelligence (CI) solutions, strategic modeling (SX) solutions, product design and launch intelligence (PX) solutions, win/loss analysis (WL) solutions and emotional intelligence and thought leadership (EX & TL) solutions.

TrainOurTroops focuses on getting veterans assessed, trained, prepared and engaged in the marketplace to obtain…