 Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's virtual roundtable, Mission Possible, Getting Veterans Into Your Data Centers, hosted by Salute Mission Critical. I'm Amy Chavanic with JSA, and I'm happy to kick off today's virtual event. For the next hour, this roundtable will uncover how different programs are working to transition and develop veterans to fulfill the talent gap in our industry. We are honored to have a fantastic lineup leading today's conversation. Before getting started, I have a few housekeeping notes to share. If you have any questions throughout the roundtable, feel free to add them to the question box at the right-hand side of your screen. We will do our best to get through them in our allotted time. Or if you have any comments, there is a comment box as well. If we don't have time to get to your questions, we invite you to join us on our LinkedIn page on Salute Mission Critical's LinkedIn page after the event, and we will address any outstanding questions there. I will actually be creating a post that's dedicated to this post-event LinkedIn chat and into the group chat here on the right-hand side of your screen. And so we can continue the conversation there. So be on the lookout for that. And we're happy to get to your questions as they come up. OK, so let's get started. It is my pleasure to introduce the wonderful, fantastic digital sociologist and author Dr. Julie Albright to moderate this discussion for us. Welcome, Julie. Thank you so much for having me. Can you hear me OK? Perfect. Thank you so much for everyone for being here. Such a pleasure. I am Dr. Julie Albright. I'm a digital sociologist at the University of Southern California, where I teach classes on the psychology of interactive media and sustainable infrastructure in the engineering school. I am on the board of Infrastructure Masons. And I am now the freshly minted ambassador for Salute Mission Critical. Thanks, everyone, for being here. I'm going to hand it over to Tim to introduce him. So who's going to? Folks, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you're joining us from. First of all, since this is a focus on veterans, I will say I am a former Navy VP-47 stationed out of Moppet Build for many years, the hangar that Google is currently in the process of doing over. Currently, I am CEO and president of Evoke Data Center Solutions. We are actually the newest global infrastructure company in the sector. We were launched on January 1, 2019, and we're actually carved out from the AT&T data centers with 31 data centers around the world. Personally, I've been in the industry. I probably know many of you that are on the call today. I've been in the industry for well over 20 years and have seen a lot evolve during that period of time. So looking forward to sharing some of my insights with the group today. Thank you. And how about Lee? Do you want to kick off a little intro there? You bet. I'm Lee Kirby. I'm the Chairman of Salute Mission Critical. And I serve on the Infrastructure Mason's Advisory Council and lead the military programs there. So there's a lot of synergy between the two organizations. And I'm excited about this panel today because Salute's been a great success. And I think there's a variety of lessons to learn from that, where we've brought veterans into the workforce and we've developed them and got them onto sites to get experience into the industry. The real key was the workforce development strategy that we adopted. And we started with the end in mind as far as the marketplace goes and then work from there as to what we wanted to deliver with a better model with more efficient services that can reduce costs and risk. And to do that, we had to have an effective workforce development model that from the very beginning of recruiting and transitioning to training from day one to the very last thing that there was. And that ongoing training and I think is key. And I think our panel have some great expert advice on how to set those programs up because they're the key to our success. That's it. Thank you, Lee. Joe, do you want to take it away and give an introduction? No introduction probably needed, but still. Thank you, Julie. Can you hear me OK? Everything all right? Very great. Great. So thank you, everyone. My name is Joe Kava. I lead the data center organization for Google. I've been at Google now 12 years and during the entire time that I've been there, I've made it one of my priorities to reach out to our veterans and to try and hire veterans that are separating from their military duty into our data center program, starting with the head of my global operations team. He is a veteran himself. And many of his direct staff, the leadership team that run all of global operations are veterans. And so it's been kind of near and dear to my heart. My father served in the military. My father-in-law is a retired colonel in the Army. And after three tours through Vietnam, I've learned a lot about leadership and a lot about building team from him and many others in the military. So this is kind of very personal for me. I love it. Thank you so much. David, would you mind introducing yourself briefly? Thanks. Good. Hi, I'm Dave Foss. I'm head of operations for EdgeConnex. So I've run operations globally for us. Been here since about 2013 when we launched our first data center. We currently run about 35 operational data centers around the world and always in need of good talent. I myself came fairly round about from my Marine Corps days all the way through to getting out, getting an engineering degree, working in power systems. And then I moved on to several engineering companies and eventually worked in the operations world at various operations firms and joined, like I said, I joined EdgeConnex in 2013. Since that, we've grown dramatically, always looking for new people to bring into the organization. We've got both employees who are veterans and then we work a lot with Salute and are very supportive of them bringing in veterans into our data centers. We think the kind of qualities that we see in veterans. And again, just personally, my time as a Marine was a very proud episode for me. And I learned a lot of things that are still relevant to the work I do today. And that's why I really encourage my company and other companies to hire veterans. I love it. Well, we're going to hear more about that. And I love that you're a proud Marine. Billy, can you take us into a brief introduction of yourself? Again, thanks for having me and inviting to this forum. My name is Billy Haggard. I'm the Senior Vice President of Operations for Aligned Energy. And we operate data centers throughout the US. And 14 years in the military, who knew that after operating nuclear reactors and certifying nuclear plant operators and providing quality control around the maintenance programs for submarines and surface ships, I get to spend the next 20 years of my life doing everything in data centers from data center design, construction, security, and facilities and operations and network, and even taking two companies public within the data center field. And I have to say the high point in my career has always been transitioning people out of military as technicians and seeing them grow all the way from directors to BPs and even to sea level positions from other organizations. And hopefully through this discussion, I'll be able to provide some support and insight for those transitioning and anyone who wishes to hire military people to support their own data centers. And thanks again for having me. I love it. This is just so great. Well, behind me, you can see a background, I think, that I just put up. And I come from a proud military family. On this side, this is my dad, Alan. He's a proud Marine. And this is his father, Carson, who is a proud Navy man and his brother as well. My other grandfather was also a Navy guy. So second generation. So super glad to be here with you guys. And it's just wonderful. As I thought about this topic about hiring vets and why you want to do it, it occurs to me there's a lot of skills that are learned in military service, in the training that you all go through that are transferable to the business world, to the data center industry, and all that. I remember my dad used to come over. This is a funny example. But in visit me, he'd stay at my house in LA. He was living back in Hilton Head, South Carolina at the end of his life. And when I would wake up in the morning, he was long gone out to get coffee and the paper. But the bed was perfectly smooth and flat, like the perfectly made bed. And I thought, how does he do that? And I've never mastered that. But for his whole life, these qualities of making that bed, I know where that came from. And not just that little example, but qualities of organization, qualities of critical thinking, qualities of leadership, and thinking through things. All these are skills that you learn through your training and your experience in the military that are directly transferable to the business world and the world of the data center and IT industries. These are skills that last a lifetime, as you can see. So that's what I was hoping we could think through today is what those skills are, how to make that transition into the data center industry. As all of you know, and I'm sure our audience knows as well, we talk about this that I made since all the time, there's a critical talent shortage going on in the industry. And we're looking for ways to get young people, get them aware of this industry, and bring them in and onboard them. And another thing that we were talking about is the growth of the government and using IT, data center resources, and the need for classified security clearances, which some military people have. So that's another bonus there. So I thought we could get started kicking off by looking at talking to Lee real quick about salute and what is this organization and how have you been successful bringing our veterans, our wonderful veterans into this industry? Give us a little overview, Lee. You bet. So when we started this, we wanted to solve an unemployment problem in veterans and solve the shortage in the industry. And it seemed like the right combination, but we had to come up with a service model that would be attractive to the market. And I think we have with our model where we put people on site that got the dedication and the training and the commitment to be able to be there and do what they need to do to follow the procedures. What I wanted to prove, because I think it's a key lesson for the industry is it's not just the veterans with technical skills that are obvious, all veterans have things they do following procedures. An infantryman takes care of his equipment, his vehicle, his weapons systems, his communication gear, and he follows procedures to do that, very similar to a data center technician. So all we have to do is teach them the technology side and our training program starts out where we assess them for what they do know and then inject them into the process at where they're at with everybody going through safety training first and then going through technical training to adapt them to their position. And then the ongoing training to continually develop them as they move through in their career. So we were really leveraging the best of both worlds with military discipline and the technology that we have in the industry to be able to teach people and train them very quickly. And that's worked out real well for us. I know that the scope of what we were doing doing is much smaller than the scope of some of the other companies on the phone. And I'd love to hear from Joe specifically because they dealt with such a wide array of skills that they're looking for. I was looking for E4s and 7s that wanted to work with their hands and turn them into technicians, but they're software developers, they're cyber technologists, there's everything. And some of the least obvious skills that you'll see is being able to turn cooks into project managers. And I think an effective workforce is important to the program and do all of that. So yeah, maybe Joe wants to comment because I kind of set him up there on what they do and this breadth and scope of what they do because I think it's a great program. Sure, thanks, Lee. We found that many of the different skills available from military veterans that are separating from duty are directly applicable. And the problem has really been kind of one of awareness that generally these veterans are not aware of what types of opportunities are available in the data center industry and maybe how their skills are applicable. It's not obvious. So we've been many years working on kind of an awareness program. We go to various different military bases and we have career days and we have career fairs there and we give them examples. So it's not just the hands-on technicians but it's also logistics. Imagine the transferable skills from a forward deployed Marine or Army platoon that is in a foreign, often hostile environment and they have to get the supply chain running to keep the military, the entire unit working, keep them fed, keep them armed, keep them refueled, getting water to places that is often very challenging. So those types of skills come kind of natural because they've dealt with that, their career in the military. And while our challenges are much less, honestly, it's very transferable skills. The same way in terms of health and safety, many of our EHS technicians and engineers have a military background because this is what they were trained in. And then of course there's the mission critical operations, which is I think pretty obvious. But to me, it really comes down to in data centers and especially in cloud computing, it comes down to a matter of trust. Our users and our customers are counting on us and they're trusting us to be there at utility level availability and performance. So you need people that understand mission. You need people that understand mission critical. You need people that understand procedure and understand the value of teamwork. And you need people that have a sense of service and commitment to something that's bigger than just themselves. And if you take that definition, that is exactly what the military trains and what they develop in people. So what better pool than that to help staff a mission critical operation? I love that show. Let's dive in a little deeper and take a look at some of our great talent that we have here that have risen the ranks and are running the show now. I'm gonna start with Billy. Billy, you mentioned a moment ago, your background with submarines and all that. Can you talk a little bit about how those experience have transferred and helped you in the data center industry? Well, just getting into the data center industry was kind of haphazard for me. 20 years ago, I went to a hiring conference and the job description said data centers and it's like, I don't know anything about data centers, that job description went to the bottom. And an individual got up and started talking about the services that were provided to the data centers, electrical mechanical services and the infrastructure. And after hearing that individual talk, they said, I don't know what that company does, but if I have to sweep floors, I'm gonna go work for that company. And I did. And what I found was the foot in the door is always your technical capabilities, either understanding electrical mechanical systems, but the other things that the intangibles that military people bring to the data center is an eye for the detail, the quality assurance side, being able to do technical writing. You can train somebody how to operate a piece of equipment to start it up and shut it down. But, you know, a situation I was in to where, you know, the piece of equipment catches on fire and you have customers screaming at you at one hand and you have the piece of equipment that has to be operated, the fire department's showing up and military people are very adapted. Taking the situation, assessing what is critical that has to be done as far as immediate actions. You may say, you know what customer, I'm glad you're here, can you step outside and I'll address your concerns as soon as the fire is out. And just having that skill set and the poise, military people are really just great at doing that. So I said I accidentally got into this field and what I found was everything that I worried about getting out of the military was, I didn't want to sit behind a desk 100% of times. And I didn't want to strap on a tool belt 100% of time. How do I engage everything about me, my mental capabilities, being physically worn out at times and even dealing with the psychological and emotional side of running a data center and knowing that every day you come to work and everything you do is critical to the internet, but it's also commerce and the government and the whole economy is centered around what goes on the internet. And individuals that do the wrong thing or operate the wrong breaker or make the wrong decisions can have a huge impact and that weighs with you day in and day out. And it's sort of an excitement that I think military having been in drills and having been in those situations upfront, they thrive on it. I love that idea of grace under pressure, you know? I mean, keeping a cool head, my mentor is the CTO of Chevron. He goes, it's important not to get excited. You know, when everything gets crazy and that's a really great quality. I'm glad you brought that out. Hey, Tim, you're also a Navy fellow. I understand. Can we hear your story about how you got into the industry and the skills and the things that you think are transferable from your experience? Yeah, absolutely. But first off, similar to Billy, I never, you know, I didn't get out of the service and have a desire to go jump into, you know, the data center industry. In fact, similar to Billy, I had never even heard, you know, of the data center industry. You know, I got out of the military in the early, you know, 80s, you know, I was fortunate. I transitioned out into Silicon Valley during the first boom, you know, in the valley, so to speak. And I was able to, you know, quickly, you know, step out of the, I'll have my role in the Navy and, you know, step into, you know, high-tech. And I spent the next, you know, 20 years in, you know, various roles in, you know, in high-tech companies. It spent about 10 years with Digital Equipment Corporation, which was, you know, you know, one of the innovators, you know, at the time. There are many of the folks I'm going to call that. And then I got a call in the late, I think it was about 1999 from a friend of mine who wanted me to join this company called Exodus, which again, was really one of the, one of the first real service providers in the sector. And I'll always remember when, when I had worked for him before, when he asked me to join him, he said, you know, the company right now is growing 20%, you know, quarter over quarter. But he goes, I'm not really sure, you know, what I can tell you that either one or two things are going to happen. Either this is going to be the easiest job you've ever had. And then, you know, 90 days you'll be out playing or, you know, at least one round a golf a week or it's going to be the most, you know, bizarre ride you've ever been in. And anyway, so I went over and I joined him. It seemed like, you know, a good place to be. And, you know, got in about 90 days later, he called me in his office and he said, well, I got good news and I got bad news. And said, okay, well, what's the, what's the good news? He said, well, you sell the job. And I said, okay, well, what's, what's the bad news? He said, well, we're about ready a file for chapter 11. The whole management team is being let go. They're bringing in a new CEO. And he goes, I'm not sure where, you know, where the industry is going to be, you know. And, you know, that's, that was the, again, in early 2000s, you know, it was the dot com bubble, you know, was bursting. And, you know, from a data center perspective, it was still very much the wild west, you know, data centers were, you know, particularly from a service provider perspective, were still, you know, new. They were built to, you know, a lot of different standards that were out there. You know, the folks that were operating, the data center, the folks that we know as the, you know, the mission critical infrastructure guys, they often were the same people that were operating buildings. And not to take anything away from people who were operating buildings, but it's a very different skill set to, you know, keep a data center up, you know, 24 by seven with a 100% availability, as Joe said, with the utility grade than it is to operate an office building. And let's just say we had our share of challenges at the time. And I had my share of uncomfortable discussions with very large clients in the industry wanting to basically know what I was gonna do to fix it. At the time I was running, you know, all of operations. And, you know, we had to look very critically at our, you know, processing procedures. And, you know, fortunately, you know, I had a really good staff, you know, including, you know, some folks that are in the industry today. Tom Furlough from Facebook, he's on the call. You know, Tom was on our staff we started looking around. And, you know, one of the things that we identified really quickly was that, you know, we had a few folks on the team that were former vets at the time. And those folks were the ones that were doing it right. You know, we didn't have issues with their centers. And we started to look at, you know, basically a lot of the same things, you know, we know about today, the process and the procedures and so forth that folks were operating, whether you were, you know, operating a nuclear power plant on a stub or whether you were operating a checklist for, you know, for flying a plane. And we identified, you know, those attributes and we started hiring quickly those skill sets. And again, some of those folks are still in the industry today and, you know, we really started to use that to build, you know, the foundation of, you know, how we were operating data centers at that time. And for me, it's just continued, you know, from that, you know, point on is, you know, we were able to turn the corner again, that was still early 2000, but, you know, we were able to drive, you know, stability. And, you know, frankly, I probably learned as much from many of those individuals that came in and the attitude and the discipline that they brought to the job, as well as, you know, their expertise. And by the way, their expertise to Lee's point wasn't always the expertise walking in and knowing the equipment and technology on day one. You know, it was their approach to the position and how they were doing the work. And, you know, first off the ability to show up every day with the right attitude and, you know, the attitude to get the job done. And, you know, again, I've been very successful. I have, you know, a number of veterans in my organizations today. We work with salute on a number of projects to augment, you know, the folks in our data centers and, you know, got a lot of really good stories about that, so with the years being part of the team. That's amazing. Yeah, I wrote a big smart grid grant that was funded by the DOE with that Chevron CTO. And he said to me over the course of time, he says, I'll take a great attitude over skills any day, you know, because you can teach the skills, but you can't teach the great attitude. And that's what you're talking about there and the discipline and these qualities. I love that too. Great story. Hey, Dave, our proud Marine. Can you talk about your pathway into this wonderful industry? How did you get here? Oh, sure, yeah. So as I said earlier, you know, I was in the Marines back in the, joined in the ancient days of the 70s, probably not as old as Joe there, but many years ago and got out. I was an enlisted man. I was an infantry man in the Marine Corps. And as we've also discussed, you know, some of the things I learned there, you know, self-discipline, making your bed on time, getting up on time, showing up on time, safety, security, all those kinds of things apply. And I still use those today, as I said. So got out in the mid-80s. I also ended up getting recalled for active duty in the 90s, go for. But I went to Virginia Tech, got engineering degrees, went to work for a couple of power systems. Companies did a lot of work there, design engineering work, project management, stuff. And then later I became a consultant. And actually, though I don't think I know Tim, I worked as a consultant at Exodus back in the early days as well, trying to help them with their customer service process, installing new customers, because they were having that huge growth back then in those early days. So that was kind of my first introduction to the data center world. And then I did a lot of different jobs as a consultant, mostly operations-based and eventually worked for a couple of companies, where I met a lot of great people and again, some veterans as well. And they always, you have the, when you run into veterans, it's always good to share the war stories and fun stories and sad stories that you had back then. And it kind of gives you that camaraderie is what, I think a lot of us miss from being in the military from the early days, but it's good to see that in the business world. And I think sometimes there's too much of trying to compare combat to business and things like that. I don't think that's really appropriate, but some of the things we've spoken about about again, the transferable skills that are more general skills versus having a specific skill. Having a specific skill, you've run fire in the military for communications networks. That's great. That's perfectly applicable to what we're doing if you've run generators. I've got a bunch of ex-generator military folks that they get into it right away, but it's that attitude to have a can-do attitude. I've got a real young Marine down in Miami. He's a reservist with an Anglico company down there. He started out as a security guard and working with, he's a salute guy. So working with Lee's team, we've trained him up and he's taken on more responsibility as we've gone on. And that's a guy, that's a kid that I can trust. He's probably only about 20 years old. We rely on him to do the right thing, follow procedures, be calm in the face of adversity and those kinds of things. So all the things that Joe and Tim and Billy and Lee have talked about, I've seen that on the ground with the folks I have. And not just here in the US as well, we've got several data centers over in Europe and I've got some Dutch Navy, Dutch Army guys that they exhibit the same kinds of things that I get out of the US military folks as well. I love that. That's a great story, Dave. Well, I think the audience can see why you wanna hire great guys like these. You were getting a lot of sense of the qualities, the grace under pressure, the focus and discipline and that the skills can be more trained. Joe, I was wondering if you could talk about with your experience for the audience here, now we know how great these guys are and gals and we wanna know how do we do this now? What are the planning steps and what are some of the sort of unexpected things that you've learned for the audience that wants to bring these great veterans on board? Can you talk about the planning for that and what the audience needs to be thinking about? In other words, how do we do this? Sure, thanks Julie. I think that some of this was maybe kind of obvious to us at the start about life in the military is gonna be quite different than life at Google. And so the first thing we did is as I mentioned, my leader of global operations is an ex-Navy nuclear submariner himself. And I asked him, I said, could you write like a couple page, like how to on what it was like for you transitioning out of the military into the civilian world and then moving into the data center industry. So he did that and that's the first thing that is required reading because there's a lot of insight there, a lot of things that are normal, like the part and parcel of daily military life are very different than life at Google. Depending on the role that you have at Google, you're expected to take a lot more initiative and not wait to be told what to do, but to look around and see a problem and figure out how you can make it better. And so helping to bring that culture and bring that freedom and frankly give them the empowerment and permission to do things without being, without waiting for their commanding officer to tell them what to do. And so a lot of that was kind of easily trainable. A lot of it was just cultural things that are maybe Google specific, but the big aha moment for us was frankly had nothing to do with the employee, but had to do with their family and had to do with their spouses in particular because the military has a great support network. When a person is moved to a different assignment and maybe the family is living on base somewhere, the spouses have a built in network of all the other military spouses and all of the other people that can help them get integrated into the community, learn where to, you know, where's the best place to, you know, get your, you know, I don't know if you need some clothing repaired, you know, where should we go to get a seamstress? Where should we, you know, do that? And imagine now that you're a, you know, a person transitioning from the military, your spouse is coming with you to take a new job like Google somewhere in the world you've never been, maybe where your first language, maybe English is not the language spoken in that country and there is no support network for the spouses. And we learned kind of through some hard knocks along the way that that makes for a very unhappy situation when the spouse's experience is poor, then it reflects on the employee's experience at work as well. And so we built a program that kind of brings the spouses into the local support network of that data center, you know, our data centers are often in rural communities and but there's a lot of other Googlers there and there's a lot of other Google spouses there as well. And so we've got this Google, you know, kind of network that helps bring the man, helps indoctrinate them, helps take them like on grocery shopping trips. When you're in a store where all the products in the grocery store in a different language that you have no idea how to read or speak, it's just tough. So having that built-in support network really helps them get kind of stuck in and feeling much more comfortable. And then that makes for an overall better experience for the Google employee as well. So that wasn't entirely obvious at the start. And like I said, you know, we kind of learned through some hard knocks, but that's now part of, you know, the indoctrination and the support that we give to military veterans. I love that idea. And to take what we call a systems approach, you know, to see the person in their context. And as you said, if the context is unhappy, you're gonna have an unhappy employee. As you and I have been in some conversations about young employees coming in and they want from my university's point of view, they want a little bit more structure than maybe prior generations in terms of integrating. So what you're talking about here with the spouse and also with the young employees, they want a little bit more of a roadmap or how to integrate better instead of just sort of go-getters on their own. So that's really good. Lee, can you kind of, thank you so much, Joe. That's so insightful. And I'm sure the audience may have some more questions as we go. Lee, can you kind of follow up on that with your workforce development strategy at Salute and how you're helping the companies to sort of on board and the thoughts you have about that? You bet. We intentionally built Salute to be able to have about a 30% attrition rate, which is counterintuitive to most companies. But what we hope to do is engage with our customers and have our workforce there that we've trained and they're getting the experience grow. And at some point, they'll outgrow us and there'll be opportunities within the customer. We do this with a lot. We've got a great example that Dave brought up about Miami and had a guy that rose through our ranks was with us for three or four years. There was an opportunity for him at Edge Connects. He got hired on and we back-filled him. To us, that's success. So building our company to have that kind of attrition is just a successful model for how we engage with our customers to help solve the personnel shortage problem. We can be that farm league and drive people up through the development process to a point that then they take over and everybody wins from it. The other thing kind of capitalizing on Joe's mentioning of military spouses is it's a very disadvantaged group of people. When you look at active duty and how often they move that military spouses find themselves without jobs. And with some of the silly things in the systems where they have to recertify or get rewarded on different things. If there's military spouses out there that like to do data center work we've started hiring military spouses as well because we're across the US now and if their service member gets transferred to the other coast, there'll be opportunities for them to pick up and continue their employment rather than be disrupted. So I think it's a hidden jewel that a lot of people overlook the military spouse. Any spouse that can take over while their better half is deployed for a year and do all of the responsibilities of both parents and typically have another job. That's a great multi-tasking project manager to me that can be adapted to our industry. So there's a lot of kind of hidden benefits to focusing on workforce development because if you have the ability to plug them into a training process to assess them, plug them where they belong and then grow them from there. I think it's a key to success. I like that. And as you bring that up it occurs to me, I work in the university system and that's how we attract talent is we give a job to the spouse. So it's kind of a proven way to get that top talent and universities have been doing that for years. So I think that's very smart. Tim, I wondered if I might come back to you for a moment. You have another perspective that I'd love to bring in for our audience to hear about and that is to do with vendors and working with veterans and vendors and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. One of the things, and I guess maybe for all the veterans on the call today to think about is, I think you've heard certainly from an evoked standpoint and actually through my career, how supportive I have been about identifying and bringing military folks into the fold, if you will. What I haven't spoke about though is basically the challenge of finding those people and attracting them to the company because often there's a gap between the company wanting the hire and the veterans knowing that they should apply and get connected with the company. And even, I'll go back a few years ago, I recently relocated from San Diego to Dallas, but you would think in San Diego, one of the largest military communities in the US, that it would be very easy to plug in to candidates coming out of the military, whether it was Navy or Marines or any of the other services and get connected with them and get them plugged in. And there were certainly groups to do so, even in a city like that that's so focused on the military, that was difficult to do. But I think one of the things that we have been successful with and we've partnered with Salute, I'll usually in Salute as an example, as Salute has been a good partner in helping us to identify the veteran talent that we need. So we've been successful in sitting down and saying, okay, this is what we need in the organization. These are the skills that we're trying to fill. This is where the company is going long term and then partnering with Salute as a both a vendor in the near term, as well as a sourcing provider, similar to what it sounds like they've done with David Edge Connect, to bring that talent into the organization. So it's really become the pipeline for us, if you will. So I guess what I would encourage to any of the veterans on the phone is to seek out whether it's companies like Salute, infrastructure maitans or other organizations that can be that conduit into the industry. Because often, you would think in today's day and age that that gulf would be easy to close, but it's not, that gap still exists. But being able to work with groups like Salute to be able to do that makes my job, as a service provider, a lot easier. I think that's a great point. Hey, Dave, can you speak to that point as well about the idea of sort of identifying, transitioning veterans and training veterans of the chief experience? Is that for me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, so we're also working with, I work with Lee on infrastructure maitans in the veterans community and we're trying to, and I gotta say my day job is interfering with my effectiveness and this, but they've created liaisons for major military bases. So I'm here in Denver, Colorado and we've got a bunch of bases down my Colorado Springs and we're working on making contact with the transitional offices there at those bases and kind of getting the word out because as a lot of people have pointed out, data center, it may be more top of mind than the public right now, but there's a lot of people that really don't know what goes on in a data center, how big it is, industry it is, how much it's growing, that kind of thing. So getting them to understand that and then also understanding, you may not have the exact skillset needed to be, a power, a UPS engineer or a computer installer or a rack installer or something like that, but there's programs out there for training and we're looking for the people that have kind of that background discipline, self-discipline that we talked about that will kind of make the transition into this industry a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable and a lot more effective. So. I think that's great Dave. I love this idea of the transition offices and maybe that's something that with iMasons we can coordinate more outreach to those and maybe some data center tours and things to boost awareness, because I think it's a win-win again, it's a matter like you said of closing, you guys are talking about closing that gap between the awareness gap if you will between the military and the data center industry. So that's a really great point there that those are available. Let's see if we have some questions from the audience. I think Amy, do you wanna take that? Yeah, absolutely. I've actually been overwhelmed with the questions that we've had via email or in the question box or the chat box. So there has been a lot that are coming in. So I know we have a short time here for these questions, but again, I did share the LinkedIn chat or the LinkedIn link for the post event chat into the chat window here. So we're happy to get to all of those questions in that, but in the meantime, let's get to these questions. So the first one I have is, how are the veterans made aware of the opportunities in mission critical careers data center? So this is a three-part question. Is this before or after they transition out of the military and what can we do to increase this awareness? Well, if you don't mind, I'll jump in on that one because I've got a million dollar question. With infrastructure masons, like Dave mentioned, we've got the military liaison program that we're staffing. We've got about 25% of the transition assistance program sites mapped to an infrastructure masons member. And what they do is engage with those transition points and make them aware of our industry. We've run almost 2,000 folks into the industry through Salud. We've got 350 full-time people, but I could probably count on both hands how many people knew about the data center industry before they met us. So we're an invisible industry and infrastructure masons is looking to change that and this military liaison program is going forward with that. We're partnering with different people from 724 and their membership to not get announced but Orion and their contacts that they have at the base is trying to get the widest net possible to distribute information about our industry. So the veterans know that there's an option they can choose from where there's thousands of jobs available for every specialty. So we're trying to raise that awareness and making proactive pushes. I know that folks like Google and different companies are reaching out to those tap sites as well to have extensive programs. So little by little, I think we're gonna raise the awareness over the next year to where we'll start seeing veterans that are intentionally making a choice to come to an industry that I think is perfect for their skill sets. Yeah, thank you so much, Lee. And actually to piggyback off of that because another question that we received and I know you kind of talked about infrastructure masons here. So one of the questions is what is the relationship between SLU and infrastructure masons? We established a strategic partnership with IEM about a year and a half ago and that's when I joined the advisory council and started running their military program and that's worked real well. We've been able to get people joining IEM and getting out engaged with the military sites. And so our relationship is kind of symbiotic. SLU delivers services. We are a commercial company and we have to compete on commercial basis. But the more projects we win, the more veterans we get to work and the more chance they'll be hired at your company. Infrastructure masons is a non-profit and we work just as diligently with them but it's focused on raising awareness in the military of our industry. So I think we're hitting both the supply and the demand side of the equation and going to start seeing the impact of that over the next year or two in a very positive way. Awesome. Nicely said Lee. Great, thank you so much. Another question is getting veterans into data centers is one thing, but how much focus is placed on helping them with the transition from military to civilian life? I would jump in on that but maybe I should yield the floor to somebody else I know Billy had the exact experience of walking across and having the transition but also does that today with a lot of his training programs. Yeah, you wanna take that one, Billy? Well, I will say how I got into the field initially kind of shaped how I treat veterans now. I started at a service company in 2000 and my day two job, my day two on the job I was flown to Atlanta to sit with the owner of the construction project and people were saying RPPs and PDUs and UPSs and it was only my second day on the job and I had no clue on what they were talking about but what they told me was in a lot of the civilian industry there is no training program, there's no development. You're hitting the road running and being part of the data center before you even figure out what a data center is. So since then I would say day one, assessing the individual, making sure what skills and talents they have. Something as simple as correlating the military jargon that has a lot of acronyms throughout the military with acronyms that run very deep in the data center world and showing them how their skills that they currently have correlates to data center skills and then giving them a program such as the qualification program that strengthens those skills plus everything else we expect them to know. So we hire somebody that's mechanically trained and we expect them to know process and procedures, electrical, building management systems, casualty control, everything about a data center and day one we're hiring them to be a mechanic. So it's putting those programs in place to make sure we guide them along their careers and I would like to kind of piggyback a little bit on what I think Tim was talking about. There's a high turnover rate in the data center industry and if it takes you two years to get a data center technician up to the minimum capability of really being a great data center operator and you lose them at year three, you've invested quite heavily in that person only to have them leave. So getting a really good training program up initially where you can qualify individuals when six to nine months and then have the continuous training program, you really speed up the capabilities of everyone transitioning from the military into the data center. So hopefully that answered your question. Yeah, I'm gonna piggyback on that just real quickly. Another binding from a lot of the surveys of young people and young employees is they wanna see a road or pathway up, a quick pathway up. So that idea of like saying, hey, we're gonna have these programs if you wanna continue up with your career, that's a retention strategy that's gonna really appeal to young, particularly millennial and following workers coming in. You know, if I can add on a little bit, Julie, in that regard, one of the things that was kind of a happy coincidence is when we were establishing our overall operations program, I think partly because it was built by people that had a military background, a lot of our standards are very similar to what the military does in terms of our operations qualification standards, in terms of our operational assessments, which look very much like anyone that is in the nuclear submarine force when the oars board comes on and does a kind of an operational assessment of your boat, it looks very much like that. So a lot of these things are very familiar to our military veterans that have transitioned into our program and so it makes it comfortable and they're like, okay, if I wanna go from this qualification to this qualification, here are the standards and here are the testing that I have to do and the on-the-job learning that I have to do to get there. And so they can see a little bit of that progression that you were just mentioning, Julie, about what is my career path? Where can I go? And eventually if they wanna transition more into a leadership role, we have an associate facility manager in training program where our senior technicians can apply for that program, join the program, there's an 18 month, on-the-job training program and as they graduate from that, they are now in the facility manager candidate pool and the next critical facility manager role that comes open, they are tapped for those roles or they can apply to them. So it's a pretty clear progression of where they can go if that's what they want to do. And many other types of, it's not just on the operation side, but also on the engineering side, we've spent time building a learning and development data center academy. So depending on which track you are and where you are in your career, there's a different learning and development progression for that. So I think to your point, exactly you want to give people that, where can I go and what does it take to get their type of a view? Yeah, early on as opposed to later. I mean, these kids, because they live in this digital environment, they want things to happen really quickly. I mean, almost ridiculously quickly, but just to be aware of that, they think that they're gonna move up within one year. That's the expectation now. So what are the steps? Hey, if you wanna go through this training program, we have this and the other, that's gonna help with retention. So that's perfect, Joe. Great. Okay, so another question is, as companies slash clients are operating, growing globally, how do you standardize the human supply chain for delivery? On a massive scale, Joe could probably talk to that, but with salute, we always focus on the end. And we do look at, we've got veterans from nine different countries working with us. And we look at the resource pools that you can tap into in the US, there's the unemployment offices, there's the tap stations. In other countries, there's different ways to get at those personnel, but you do need to look at your supply chain and how you're gonna resource that, what type of special training you may need, also the language and cultural requirements of that spot. But we've been able to do that by working in partnership with Edge. And as we move into different countries, understanding what it is we need to provide and what role we're gonna fulfill, then we work backwards from there and make sure we have the processes in place to not just train them, but operate effectively as well. Was the question more focused on the personnel supply chain, or was it on kind of the rest of the technology supply chain? Well, it says human supply chain as a part of the question here, so. Yeah, then I would echo a lot of what Lee said. We've done, like when we are starting a new data center somewhere in the world, one of the first things we do is try and reach out to the local schools, community colleges, technical colleges, universities, and try and let them know about what types of opportunities we have. We will generally hold career fairs or kind of a mobile route well back in the days when we used to be able to go out into public. Hopefully we can get there again soon, one of these days. But we would go in and literally have kind of a rolling classroom to bring to the middle of whatever the town square is and have people come in and see with and talk to different people from the data center, what their jobs are, what is day-to-day life in a data center look like. And then frankly, a lot of it is just even on our website. I think that if a person that is considering a new career, or especially a person that is transitioning from military to civilian life, if they can look at some information, whether it's a website or go to one of these rolling kind of a career fair days and see people that look like themselves and have similar backgrounds and can explain what it was like transitioning into civilian life, I think it really helps give them a comfort and a confidence level that they can do that as well. The biggest comment I get when I visit is many of our data centers is from new people coming in, it's oftentimes it's like, I had no idea that a person like me could get a job at Google. Because they think frankly that if you need to work, if you wanna work at Google, you have to be a computer scientist. And we have a lot of those. We have a lot of software engineers, but we have tons of other jobs that people are like, wow, I'm a wireman electrician and have been for 20 years as a journeyman. I had no idea that you hired people like that. I'm like, yeah, every day we hire people like that. I love that. And that idea, Joe, that you said to highlight, seeing people like myself, having diversity, different kind of faces, different kind of men and women, my students say they will look on the websites and see if they see faces like theirs. And if they don't see faces like theirs, they don't even apply. So that idea is very important for young people coming up because there's a heightened awareness around that. Well, Amy, I think we just about ran out of time here. Are you able to drop the link again to everybody into the chat? And... We didn't get to your questions. We definitely hope that you join us on our LinkedIn chat. I just hit send again on that. First of all, I wanna thank you so much, Dr. Julie Albright for leading this conversation. And thank you panelists for your insights. There was a lot of positive feedback that we received from the viewers today. Really happy about this panel and really the different perspectives that you all provided today. So thank you so much for your time and contributing to this. And before we wrap things up, I'm gonna pass it over to Lee to close us out today. Well, I just wanted to thank the panelists for participating and those that are listening in. And the lesson I'd like to take away from this is it takes a workforce development strategy that spans from the very beginning of a person's career to the end to change your HR processes, your training process, and your operational procedures to really effectively capitalize on new resource pools like veterans. If you put that in place, it goes beyond veterans and you can expand it to military spouses or any demographic group that you see value in bringing into the workforce. But my passion is veterans and I think veterans are a perfect fit for our industry. And that if you need help getting that workforce development strategy together, I'd be happy to talk with you. There's no one size fits all. It's based on your business requirements. What do you need and adapt it to that and work backwards? So I appreciate everybody's participation today on this. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to all our veterans, Joe. Everyone gave some really amazing on the ground experience that I hope our listeners and our watchers can take away and apply in their companies. And I hope it's answered the question of mission possible today, why we wanna bring veterans in. It's a great mission. I, Mason's is supportive. Salute is supportive. All of us are supportive. So hopefully you'll join us in this as well. Thank you so much, everyone, for participating into our wonderful panelists. Really, thank you both for organizing and moderating today. Great job. Thank you guys so much. Take care. Take care. All right, bye everyone. Thanks, everybody.