Microsoft Hearts Veterans - "Microsoft focuses on employing and training our nation’s veterans"

Microsoft on the Issues - Microsoft focuses on employing and training our nation’s veterans

How can the private sector best help our nation’s veterans successfully transition from the military to civilian employment? On Tuesday, leading experts and veterans gathered at the Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center in Washington, D.C. to focus on answering these questions and to explore best practices. The engaging and interactive discussion examined how government and industry can work together to help our returning soldiers transition to civilian careers.

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) delivered opening remarks and provided an overview of the challenges facing veterans as they enter the workforce and the importance of bipartisan collaboration with industry to help our nation’s heroes find post-military employment.

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Chairman Miller’s remarks were followed by a lively discussion moderated by former Congressman and MSNBC Host Patrick Murphy, and featured the following panelists: Col. H. Charles Hodges Jr., Commander, Joint Base Lewis-McChord; Sean Kelley, Senior Staffing Director, Cloud + Enterprise, Microsoft; Bernard Bergan, SDET, Developer Division, Microsoft; Rick Nelson, CEO, Direct Technology; and Thomas Dawkins, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Learning.

The conversation focused on new partnerships to help provide opportunities to our veterans, such as our Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA), a 16-week course launched last year to help transitioning service members obtain the skills required for careers such as a developer, applications engineer and IT project manager. Inspired by the 2011 “VOW to Hire Heroes Act,” this program leverages public-private partnerships to create a simplified military-to-employment transition at no cost to the service member. Each panelist provided a unique and personal perspective on his experience with the challenges and opportunities facing veterans as they enter the civilian workforce.

Tuesday’s conversation helped engage the community on ways to best support our veterans’ career transitions. Moving forward, as the pilot program expands to other bases, we look forward to continuing to prepare program graduates with the skills they need to compete in this vibrant, growing sector of the economy.

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To learn more about these issues, please check out Sean Kelley’s recent testimony before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. Additional details on the MSSA program and Microsoft’s veterans’ initiatives can be found on The Official Microsoft Blog. We also encourage you to read about Bernard Bergan’s experience in the MSSA program via his “Combat to Coding” blog post.

As a veteran, a son-in-law in the Navy and my son in the Army Reserves and days away from deploying to Afghanistan, you can say veteran affairs are important to me... Kudo's to those corporations that support our country by supporting our vet's! :)

 

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