Top 10 Reasons to Hire Veterans as Multilevel Managers

By Melissa l. barlet, Pens4Swords’ Executive Director, November 11, 2022

Less than one-half of one percent of Americans choose to serve in the U.S. Military. Employers with no military ties are less familiar with the potential value of Servicemembers in transition to the civilian workforce, Veterans, and military family member professionals as future employees. Here are some facts about the U.S. Military community.

10. Research by RAND shows nearly every training module for the All-Volunteer Force includes leadership, and service life offers ample opportunities to lead a multiple levels. Servicemembers transition to the civilian workforce as some of the most trained and experienced leader-managers in the nation.

9. The U.S. Military accepts those who test in the nation’s top 27% for intellect, physicality, integrity, personality, and score high marks in math and verbal aptitudes. The military community is highly educated, and since 2009, two million Veterans returned to college to educate themselves in a chosen career field, civilianize their resume, reboot or reinvent their careers, and help skirt military hiring bias.

8. Service life familiarizes most military community members with international best practices and imbues them with broad skills, multicultural appreciation, and global vision.

7. Veterans and military family member professionals have strong interpersonal skills and are hardworking, high functioning, and strategic and critical thinkers, adept at making rapid and accurate evaluations in fluid situations to advance the company’s mission.

6. U.S. Veterans and military family member professionals are social, we-centric assets who personalize their company’s mission and are often linchpins to thriving businesses.

5. They are confident, direct, hardworking, often multilingual, and view diverse, inclusive talent as a strength.

4. They seek training to develop their company’s talent pools, galvanize collaboration, improve production, streamline practices, help eliminate the need for overtime, and strengthen the company’s ability to weather emergencies and market irregularities and anomalies.

3. As managers, they think on their feet, lead with calm (especially in high-stress situations), and excel at problem solving and team building—the opposite of a corporate cut-throat and the military stereotypes popularized by entertainment.

2. While confident in follower billets and willing to work for less for a reason or a season, they languish in career potholes without avenues for rapid advancement, and gravitate to chances to make a difference in their companies and society.

1. If you are an employer in search of highly skilled, undiscovered, global talent, look to transitioning Servicemembers, Veterans, and military family member professionals. Interview them in person. Give them a chance to prove their considerable worth. Military community members are value added to the civilian workforce.

Why You Should Donate to Pens4Swords

By Melissa l. barlet, Pens4Swords’ Executive Director, March 23, 2022

My husband David and I modeled P4S’ Media Management and Grant Programs on the business and philanthropy visions of U.S. Army National Guard Veteran Warren Buffett and Susan Thompson Buffett.

When we designed our media production training program and a production slate capable of ethically mass-producing mobile-remote jobs for the military community, we studied:

• Authors like Michael Crichton and WWI Veteran J.R.R. Tolkien who inspired multimedia franchises

• Star Trek universe created by U.S. Army Air Corps Veteran Gene Roddenberry with screenwriters like D.C. Fontana

• U.S. Navy Veteran Harry Belafonte’s legacy

• Dolly Parton—Veteran’s spouse and a living tutorial on giving and creative employment

• Producers U.S. Army Veteran Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and U.S. Army Air Corps Veteran Norman Lear

We modified the Army’s Battle Buddy system and studied the creative partnerships of military brat Elton John and Bernie Taupin and WWII Veterans Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf to create P4S’ Career Peers.

David and I co-founded P4S in 2019 after 20 years of development.

Data from the U.S. Census and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show Information/media production employs 3M professionals, but only 0.1% are U.S. Veterans. From 2010-2020, U.S. Veteran employment in Information fell to half, despite a 6.3% increase in jobs. [Census.gov 2020; BLS 2021]

The lack of U.S. Veteran media producers is a cyclic Military-Civilian Gap multiplier. Production companies that hire increasingly fewer Veterans produce fewer accurate depictions of the military community in multimedia and fewer accurately informed Americans. Each cycle results in more military stereotypes in multimedia, more inaccurately informed imbibers, and less gainfully employed military community members in vocations nationwide.

P4S will train and employ talented U.S. Veterans and military family members to produce ethical written, filmed, and digital media to help heal the Military-Civilian Gap, eliminate military hiring barriers, and produce mobile-remote jobs for U.S. Veterans and military family members in a variety of vocations without eliminating existing vocations in the U.S. economy.

We are currently unfunded. We would appreciate corporate and individual production team sponsors.

Gene Roddenberry:

Pilot, Policeman, Star Trek Creator, US Veteran

By Melissa l. barlet, Pens4Swords’ Executive Director, September 8, 2020

WWII Service: Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal. Gene Roddenberry was a native of El Paso. He volunteered for service in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942 following the attack on Pearl Harbor. After completing military training at Kelly Field (formerly Kelly Air Force Base) in Texas, he deployed to the South Pacific Theater as a newly commissioned second lieutenant. His first duty station was Guadalcanal. Roddenberry flew 89 combat missions in his B-17E Flying Fortress, Yankee Doodle, as part of the 394th Bomb Squadron. Like most writers during war, he found his voice, passion, and comfort in words. He composed stories for flight magazines and wrote articles and poetry for publications like the New York Times. Back in the U.S., he worked with the Air Force to analyze plane crashes. Roddenberry served honorably, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal before transitioning to civilian life in 1945. Over the years, he stayed loyal to the military community and participated in meetups with fellow Veterans at the Monterey Peninsula Airport in California.

Pan Am Pilot: Saved 22 Lives. For the next 11 years, Roddenberry’s day job had little to do with writing. He donned his second uniform in 1945 and became a pilot for Pan American World Airways. On June 18, 1947, aboard Pan Am Flight 121 (New York to Calcutta), one of the engines caught fire and forced the plane down. The flames spread quickly. Roddenberry and a handful of survivors saved the lives of 22 passengers before the plane became completely engulfed, preventing further rescues (14 persons died).

“The seat belt of the Majarani of Pheleton would not release, trapping her in the burning wreckage. Gene forced the belt open and rescued the Indian royal. She and her son, the prince, were put with the others on the sand, away from the plane and the fire. Gene pulled out several people who were themselves on fire and used a pillow he found on the ground to smother the flames. On board, the flames were growing in intensity, so he could only make a couple of trips into the passenger compartment. The last passenger he pulled out died in his arms. The wind changed, blowing the burning gasoline directly over the wreckage. They ran around the burning fuselage and wings to the front of the plane. Looking in the cockpit windows, they could see the flight crew sitting at their stations, slumped over their seats, dead or unconscious. Frantically pounding on the windows, Volpe, Bray, and Roddenberry tried to rouse their friends until the flames drove them back. Roddenberry earned the Civil Aeronautics Commendation for his efforts during and after the crash.” - Dan Evon, Snopes.com, Star Wreck, Nov. 11, 2015.

Honorable Police Officer. Roddenberry continued to fly until he experienced television for the first time. Correctly estimating there would be a great need for television writers, he relocated to Hollywood, Unfortunately, the television industry was just getting started and opportunities for inexperienced screenwriters were fewer than he anticipated. To gain experience, he took a page from his father and stepped into his third uniform. As a Los Angeles Police Officer, Roddenberry did what all writers do when they find themselves in an occupation that is completely devoid of writing opportunities. He made writing part of his job as the speech writer for Los Angeles Police Chief William H. Parker, who Roddenberry later said was the basis for his most popular character, Mr. Spock.

Professional Screenwriter. Roddenberry relinquished his badge in 1956 to pursue writing full time. In 1960, he began to mull over the idea of a science fiction TV series centered on adventures in outer space. On March 11, 1964, he formalized his thoughts in a document known today as, “Star Trek Is.” He shopped his idea to studios during production of his first TV series, The Lieutenant (1964). The U.S. Marine Corps was the backdrop for The Lieutenant, which aired 29 episodes in it’s first and only season.

Creator of the Star Trek Universe. It is impossible to discuss Star Trek or Gene Roddenberry’s success without mentioning Lucille Ball. According to a 1998 documentary, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, the world owes also a debt of gratitude to a support organization for the U.S. Military, without which Star Trek might never have received a green light.

In May 1964, Herb Solow pitched Roddenberry’s science fiction treatment, Star Trek, to Desilu executives in early May 1964 as “Wagon Train to the stars” in reference to the long-running television series, Wagon Train (1957-65). Lucille Ball, Desilu’s co-founder, was already a beloved TV icon, visionary, comedy genius, and trailblazing entertainment leader. Ball listened to Solow’s pitch and indicated her approval with a silent nod. In the following days, it became clear that Ball assumed Star Trek was about a star-studded United Service Organizations (USO) troupe that trekked to various troop encampments in the South Pacific Theater during wartime. Solow silently retraced his words: “A military-esque organization, a ‘Wagon Train’ sort of trek, and there were some stars.” It was an honest mistake.

Thus, Roddenberry’s fourth and final uniform became the iconic Star Trek costume, recognized worldwide.

Star Trek’s Legacy: 8 Ways the Original Star Trek Made History. It is far too depressing a scenario to picture an alternate timeline with no Star Trek. The franchise gave us the basis for countless inventions. (The device you’re using to read this blog is a Trek-envisioned technology.) Even more Trek-inspired tech is in the works. Star Trek impacted U.S. society with it’s stance on civil rights, equality, education, science, and space exploration. It continues to influence countless STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers. Perhaps Star Trek’s greatest gift is Roddenberry’s vision for the future, which he touched upon in a 1990 interview with Los Angeles Times writer Daniel Cerone. Roddenberry said, “We take humanity a century into the future. Our people do not lie, cheat or steal. They are the best of the best. When you watch the show, you say to yourself, 'My God, that’s the way life should be.’”

An imperfect human with an extraordinary vision, Roddenberry created an unknowable number of jobs and a seemingly endless stream of revenue using his imagination, with a little help from everyone’s favorite redhead. Along with the cast, crew, and fans, Roddenberry made Star Trek the most successful science fiction franchise in history.

“Based on revenue estimates, the Star Trek franchise, created by Eugene Wesley ‘Gene’ Roddenberry (USA, 1921–1991), is the most successful science-fiction brand originating on TV, worth in excess of $6 billion. This figure comprises revenue from syndication and DVD/home-video sales from 726 TV episodes, a worldwide movie gross of $1.73 billion from 13 films, an estimated 70 million books in print, 88 video game titles with sales of more than 1.6 million units from the top 10 titles alone, and numerous toy and game licenses.” - Guinness World Records.com

One Geek Inspired and United Generations of Geeks and Dreamers. Trekkers and Trekkies conducted two of the first successful crowdsourced reversals of fortune two decades before the internet existed and three decades before the online social media community became a reality.

“By late 1967, the original Star Trek series was struggling, and NBC was planning to cancel after only two seasons. More than 100,000 fans wrote letters in support of the show. NBC acknowledged the success of the fans’ campaign, announcing the show would return. …In 1976, hundreds of thousands of Trekkies [and Trekkers] wrote impassioned letters to NASA, arguing the first space shuttle orbiter should be named after the starship Enterprise. [NASA] officials ended up dropping their original choice.” – Sarah Pruitt, History.com, April 1, 2019

Recently, the Trek community organized via social media under the banner, #TrekkiesTogether, to address racial and social justice.

Remembering Gene Roddenberry. Gene Roddenberry passed on October 24, 1991 (United Nations Day). He was 70. He was a decorated U.S. Veteran, a pilot, a hero who helped save 22 lives, a police officer, a writer who created countless opportunities for employment, an icon, a husband, a father, an imperfect human being, and an extraordinary visionary. His words mattered.

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