hi, i'm bob iacullo united water believes that all citizens need to be informed about the important issues that effect their daily lives. that's why we're proud to support programming produced by the caucus educational corporation and their partners in public television. from service to civilian. veterans in the work force. next, on caucus, new jersey. funding for this edition of caucus, new jersey has been provided by robert wood johnson university hospital the heart of academic medicine robert wood johnson foundation new jersey natural gas proud to support education in our communities. wells fargo horizon blue cross, blue shield of new jersey. choose: new jersey our mission is attracting companies to the garden state. and by, nj best. new jersey's 529 college savings plan. turn a dream into a degree. promotional support provided by the record north jersey's trusted source

and north jersey.com. and by the new jersey business and industry association. and it's monthly magazine, new jersey business. [music playing] welcome to caucus new jersey i'm steve adubato. you know, over the next few years, we will see thousands of soldiers returning home. one of the biggest challenges a veteran is going to face is findind a job and adjusting to civilian life. here in the studio to discuss the ways that we can help our veterans return successfully home, we have ryan davenport veteran and member of the new jersey army national guard. back with us again is doctor rich robitaille. assistant vice president of the office of military and veterans affairs at berkeley college. jeff klare ceo of an organization called be a hero

hire a hero and finally kim mitchell president and cofounder of the easter seals dixon center for military and veterans services. i want to thank all of you for joining us and throughout this program you're going to see a variety of websites. that are very useful, very valuable in terms of folks that are out there trying to help veterans deal with their variety of issues they face. let me ask you doctor, last time you were with us we were sitting one on one talking about these issues. now, we come together as a group. to what degree do most of us who have never served have any idea what those who have served face when they come home and try to adjust a. in terms of finding a job and b. being a civilian? the challenges are extreme. the economic challenges our veterans face, it's really an age issue. they come home, we dicussed this a little bit before, they're leaving the military after four to six years of service, they're in their mid-twenties, mostly enlisted folks only have a high school degree their entire age group has

passed them by-- they're already out of college they're already in the work force. they're already climbing the coporate ladder. and there they are twenty four to twenty seven years old, with a high school degree military experience and their entire peer group has passed them by. so, they have these great ecomonic challenges of getting into the work force finding a position that they have a skill set for. and then also, they have great difficulties convincing hiring civilians, hiring managers that skill sets they may have learned in the military what that means in the civilian side. such as? well you have-- what skills are we talking about? n my world, i'm an infantry man. so, we have a great deal of soldiers who are very young eighteen to twenty you know, twenty two years old, who have led other soldiers in combat who have a great deal of leadership training, training and development counseling, logistical training but they don't know how to translate that into a civilian terminology that a civilian hiring manager may understand. a great deal of responsibility is poured into very young men

and women in the military. describe your experience. pretty much he hit the nail on the head, i mean when you come back, i was twenty one when i enlisted. i was... my tour was when i was twenty one/twenty two where? i was in camp bucca, iraq. in 2008/2009. and coming back it was a very big issue because, like he said, all my friends were all--had their degrees and stuff like that. i came back and i'm like okay... well where's the teeker day parade for us? oh, well, you got to readjustify you had a plan? when you were coming back and you knew you were coming back, and you didn't know you if you're going to be deployed again but, say you're coming back say "hey, i been thinking about this and three months from now, six months from now i'm going to go back home... i'm going to work on my plan". were you doing that? yeah, but everything like life, things change, you know? i had a plan. i wanted to do something else. i actually took some time off when i came back, i was fortunate enough to have knee surgery. so, that kind of put a... wrench in the plan so to speak because now,

not only was i recuperating from my knee injury i couldn't go to class i couldn't do anything like that so, you're watching people go by and you're like well what do you really want to do? and i had to take time. so, it was a very very hard adjustment period. emotionally and psychologically describe it for you. something you're never going to be the same when you come back from any combat tour. that's what i realized. you're not going to be the same person regardless of what war it is. why not? it takes a piece of you. you have to literally put your life on hold for a year or however long it is. and you're not the same person let's just say if you're married for example, i've had plenty of my battle buddies who are married, now they're married with kids. they're not there with their wives...they missed birthdays, first steps, graduations. my e-7, actually, when we-- what's that? ergeant, first class, i'm sorry. okay. she was actually the day we were deploying, her daughter was graduating high school. she couldn't attend. so that right there, seeing that and just seeing at a young age, you now realize everything's not all fun and games, like everybody thinks it is on t.v.

big adjustment? yeah, very big adjustment. still adjusting? yeah, to this day. it's like, you know. i did it at a young age and now like he said, i'm twenty eight years old and it's like okay...people, if you compare youself side by side to other people, they have their degrees and i'm still working on mine. so, in the work force it's kind of hard to kind of catch up with that. interesting. talk to us about some of the challenges that women in the military face that are comparable to what was just described, but also in addition to those challenges that are others that may be unique to women. well sure. so, women have served side by side men for many, many years. and it's just been recently that the new regulations allowing women into more of a combative role. but, that doesn't mean that they haven't been in combat. being whether they're in transportation or logistics the thing is though is even

though combat maybe the same women...quite often react... differently and perceive things differently. for example? for example, we have two friends of ours. colonel southerland, that deployed with colonel southerland, my cofounder of dixon center. and one was an army soldier and he was shot in the shoulder and his reaction was they messed up a perfectly good tattoo. there was female soldier who was shot in the leg and they had to amputate part of her leg. and her comment was "will my husband still love me? "i'm not the same person." so, the physical, the emotional aspects that, quite often women come back from war or combat, is very different. and one of the issues that we have is that cookie cutter solutions aren't working. women need to have an option

to receive counseling or that is separate from men is it different from the kind of counseling a man would receive coming home? it may be, but it's different. everyone's unique. so... so that's why no cookie cutter approaches? cookie cutter solutions will not work and quite often a lot of women are experiencing, unfortunately, military sexual trauma in addition to... military sexual trauma? in addition to combat experiences. real quick---never say real quick when you talk about that. but i know this is a huge area. we'll deal with this separately with you as well but quickly, what does that mean? it could be sexual harassment or sexual abuse. and so, it's been raising a heightened awareness because commands are taking more of ownership and taking the issue more seriously now. important stuff. and so, women, when brought into a counseling session

if you have, for example, twenty veterans in a counseling session, and if you have fifteen guys and five women, i can guarantee you that quite often the women aren't going to say a thing. because of that make up? because of that make up. it puts women in a very difficult situation. for some men it may be a very difficult situation as well. if they've experienced things. but it's even more challenging for women, in some ways. it's very challenging. let me ask you because again throughout this program our objective is to talk about some of the challenges that veterans face coming back home, particularly when it comes from deployment. but there are a whole range of other issues related to that psychological emotional, physical, others. your organization, describe it. we started the organization for people with disabilities. and right after 9/11 we started to see an influx of young men and women coming back with disabilities. but a marine is a marine and do not want to be

considered a disabled marine. or a disabled sailor. so, we created be a hero-hire a hero. so the stigma and myth that's surrounding people with disabilities. what do you do? i'm sorry? what do you do? we do one thing, and that's finding employment. and so we do everything we can in our power to link them with a corporation or an educational center like berkeley college in order for them to advance their employment. do you help them with their interviewing skills? yes sir. do you help them identify opportunities that may be linked to or correspond to their skill set? yes sir. and we give-- these young men and women have major responsibilities when they're in the military. and they come out and those responsibilites are never measured within the civilian sector as a skill. do most veterans see that what they have done in the military in terms of leadership, team building, motivating, and all kinds of discipline, all range of issuse that you deal with in the military, i imagine. i mean, you run a corporation,

you're a manager of an organization, those are transferrable skills. to what extent do you have to educate veterans to understand that those are valuable skills in the work force? the enlisted man or woman does not understand that. they think it's unique to the military very often? yes, that's correct. t it's not a civilian skill set? that's correct did you think of it that way? i kind of knew that value of it because, fortunate enough for me i had a bunch of people who were in the corporate sector. so, they just kept instealing in us that what you do, what you... what we insteal in you can be also transferrable into the civilian world. so, i kind of, me personally that was my own personal experience. but a lot of my colleagues, they don't. that may not be the norm. no. and berkeley does what in this regard? we help our students understand those traits that they learned are extremely valuable to civilian corporations. the idea, for example, the major one we try and teach them is the idea of teamwork. every branch of the service, regardless of what you do, you're basic training and initial

training, it's really about teaching you the value of the team, cause you only win in the military as part of a team. so, the entire essence of teamwork is beat into you with pushups and you know every other type of activity you can learn. you can learn that you're battle buddy is the most important person. you learn that when you go down range, the only way everyone gets home is by everybody working together. you can take that skill set into the civilian work force and civilian hiring managers like that. they want people who are team players. who can work together as a group. don't they, excuse me for interrupting, don't they also like people who can and will get the job done? get the job done as a team and they also appreciate the skill set that our veterans learned of understanding a hierarchy. they understand authority, they understand a chain of command. they, you know, they work very well with people above them and people below them because they understand the value of that. so, when you teach that to our graduating veterans, that they have skill sets people want, they become valuable. some of the emotional and psychological issues that veterans...face, some more than others obviously

depending upon their experience, what they've seen what they're emotional, psychological, personal personality profiling is going in, who knows. a lot of variables, right? we were just talking about this before we were coming into the studio where our producers are getting ready for the show and i asked this question. you know, metaphorically excuse me, just trying to rhetorically go through this in my head, i thought a lot of veterans have these skills and tools, leadership teamwork, get the job done collaborative, the whole bit. but then you've got these emotional and psychological scars and issues. that you're also bringing back. and we're edvading this and i thought, do you have to hide do you have to hide those? do you have to disguise those? do you have to make sure that no one can see those in the work place? you're shaking you're head no, why? because here's the thing that, there is a desire across the nation to help. our returning veterans-- you feel it? i see it. i've travelled to five hundred and sixty communities over the last four years. okay, describe your organization, what is it? easter seals dixon center

colonel dave southerland and i cofounded easter seals dixon center about two years ago in 2012. the concept actually started when we were both working as active duty officers on the joint staff for admiral mullen. in the office of war and family support. admiral mullen at that time was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. he wanted an office set up because he and his wife recognized that there were challenges of transitioning and reintegrating for our veterans and our military families. and he wanted an office that specifically went out travelled the country and matched the donor to the need. because everybody wanted to do something but he wanted an office that'd be able to focus all of this desire on what is it that our veterans and families need. so, we didn't really, quite frankly, lay out what we saw as a successful model for transitioning or integrate/ reintegration. which was an education, meaningful

employment, and an access to healthcare, which includes information and options. and one of the things that is key to making that work is everyone has to work together. the community has to come together within a community, a collective impact where it's a wrap around approach. educators have to talk to them employers. employers have to talk to-- so, sorry for interrupting we'll come back to the other issue of psychological issues and components here but i'm curious about what you're saying and i want everyone to jump in here. i heard you just say that this cannot simply be done. we cannot succeed in helping our veterans reintegrate back into societies successfully if it's just veterans involved. it takes a community. that schools need to be involved, corporations need to be involved, nonprofits need to be involved, we in the media need to be involved. it is all of our collective responsibility, is that what you're saying? it is. i agree. yes and we agree across the board here? there's no question about it. if we do not break-- the problem is there is so much

out there for these young men and women what do you mean there's so much? there's so many opportunities and resources? organizations. is it confusing sometimes to veterans? very, very confusing like where do they go? well there's so much out there, but where do you go? it's just so confusing for these young men and women to find an organization that truly can assist them. just putting a label on your garage door doesn't make it viable in all cases. sometimes it does work but many it doesn't. and to what degree are corporations, those hiring understanding their role in this? it's one thing to say "yeah we hire veterans. we go out of our way to hire veterans." that's really not simply what we're talking about. well we have a lot of corporations that do that but you have to understand at the college level we have to train the students to understand that yes they're a veteran and there are corporations that want to hire you but you still have to be, you still have to have a degree, you have to be trained in that area, cause you're still competing against people who have college degrees who

have experience. so, while coporations want to hire you, you still have to do what like ryan is doing get into college, use the g.i. bill, get that college degree, so now you become more marketable. but is there any difference, you think, for a corporation working with someone who's a veteran? you treat them differently? act differently towards them? or is it hey come on. you're all in this together. yes, you were a veteran, you didn't serve doesn't really matter. or does it have to be some sort of understanding and training on the part of those who are employers? for me, i would actually say to speak of that same point you have to know a little bit about your veterans as a whole. what should they need to know? it's like, she said earlier, cookie cutter approach doesn't deal with everything. for example-- but 274 takes a piece out of you how is an employer, respectfully, how is an employer supposed to even begin to understand what that means? i mean, just doing your knowledge, you know? like, just doing your research knowing your community knowing your surrounding

areas. knowing your personnel, for example. like he said. but we can, respectfully. here's the thing i'm trying to get at. can an employer who really wants to do the right thing, who really wants to be supportive of this effort, can he or she really ever understand and truly empathize with what you're talking about, when you say something like "it takes a piece out of you. you can never get back." and i'm sitting there thinking, i understand intellectually what you said. but again you see at the same time, the veterans come in and that's what we try to teach them at the college. and they walk in that room to interview, well there may be things you learned when you were travelling the world and going on all these deployments and missions, you brought away with that experience. you brought the skills of team work. you brought confidence. you're saying, it accuentuates the positive. right, you know you can deal with stress. you have been through situations. real stress. ell, it's easy to talk about the negatives, but you also walk in that door with a great deal of positives that other people don't have.

you can handle a crisis potentially differently than someone who handles something that's a lot less of a crisis, as if it's the worse thing in the world. correct. i've seen people in college, in our classroom. other students would be you know, stressed out about finals or something like that. our veterans will be like i used to get shot at everday. taking a final exam is not stressful to me, at all. you know, that kind of thing. they walk in with skill sets and experiences that do make them marketable. do you think employers actually do need to... i'm not going to say be trained because i'm not sure what that means, but-- you're saying yes. yes. well and one of the things that we're doing is we're working with the hr manager. so, for example the society for human resource management. which is the national organization of human resource professionals. yes sir. and so, we're actually working and training them to help them understand not only a veteran's resume but how veterans think and helping them translate their skills. i was a service warfare officer in the navy. what does that mean?

i drove ships. so if i translated my skills, i'd be a tugboat captain right now. [laughing] not interested in being a tugboat captain. but, taking a lot at the management and leadership skills and the skills and values and competences of all of our military service members, that's what we want hr managers in a positive way. but jeff, talk about training corporations. go ahead. see, we've come up with these software programs that take a person's mos, military occupation. right. and convert it into a civilian job. so if you drove an eighteen wheeler in iraq, you're now an eighteen wheeler on the new jersey turnpike. that doesn't work! what if you want to be a chef? yeah,it doesn't work! so that's what you mean by cookie cutter? that's correct. what does work? speaking to the veteran. seeing what their heart wants to do with their future. and there is goals that these young men and women have that aren't necessarily military. and we need to be able to help them. send them to a

university, to a college if that's that case, i'm now working with the new york shipping association for long sherman. we want to recruit women to offload the cruise ships. there's so many opportunities out there that are nontraditional employment. corporations, it's easy, it's sexy to say "we're going hire ten thousand veterans". sounds great, right? it's beautiful. but, do you really want to be a greeter in a department store? or serve somebody coffee? that's not what you went into the military for training. do you have a sense of what you want to do longer term? in the beginning when i came back from iraq, no. i did not. it took a couple years to be honest with you because, like i said to touch on everybody's point, when i came back, i didn't know which way to go. there was this organization, that organization, kind of just get a whirl wind. everybody wants to help but, what? but nobody understood. it's hard, like they said. look, he could approach us and it doesn't work. my mos on my eighty eight, i'm a truck driver.

i didn't want to be a tractor trailer-- i didn't want to be truck driver when i came out of the military. and also, to touch on is points, my skills coming out, my confidence level has soared because of certain things that i went through. for example, speaking in public i used to be terrified of it before now, well i've been, to use the phrase, i've been to war before what's the worse that can happen? you know? hold on, back up. so all the folks that deal with both here in the studio and at my other work, training people in public speaking who freak out as if they perventilate. can't do it, cant. i'm sorry, i can't do it. and their careers get stunted because of that. they literally can't speak in public. you say what to that? and you were freaked out by it before. you say what now? you just got to do what you got to do. if you want something bad enough, you'll do it. when you're forced to do something, or you're-- i look at it like this my life was on the line three hundred sixty five days a year. i didn't want to go out there. but i chose to go out there. so now i look at things and i take it as that was the worse

thing that could ever happen to me, this is nothing. so therefore you look at public speaking now as? i don't want to say a joke but it's not that big of a deal. 's not that big of a deal to me. and you tie that directly to your military experience. one hundred percent. what do you want to be? i heard it has something to do with fashion? help me. my actual degree is in fashion and marketing and a minor in international business. so, i'll probably go marketing for fortune five hundred companies, stuff like that. being behind the scenes, but need be. why behind the scenes? why not out front? where ever my career takes me. hatever it lands, i'm not trying to pigeonhole myself. whatever it takes is whatever it takes. you have confidence now. one hundred percent. more confidence then when you went in? you were how old when you went in? twenty. and i was twenty one when i was overseas. how old are you now? twenty eight. much more confident. oh yeah...without a doubt. use i learned it in the military ithout the military, in my eyes, without the military, for me, i wouldn't understand who i was. it took me, to be a man, so to speak, the military

whips you into shape. when you have someone screaming down your throat every single day, you have to do push ups, two mile runs, waking up at zero four hundred, four o'clock in the morning, that wears out of you so if you had a boss who raised his voice or her voice in a work place, you'd be what? you'd laugh at it? i wouldn't laugh at it. i would respect them. not in a person's face but you wouldn't be thrown off by that. not necessarily. no, because i dealt with it for so long, it's like okay. you understand their objective and you understand yours. when you hear him, what do you think? he got a bright future? absolutely. it's what the veteran base is. they come home it's not the initial training and everything that goes with that, but once you deploy, once you serve a number of years, once you go overseas and serve your country, you got to understand there's a great deal of pride. it's an all volunteer force. everyone walks in that recruiting station of their own free will. when they sign that paperwork and raise their hand and almost to a person you never say a hundred percent but it's nearly a hundred percent

when they come home whether the make a career out of it or just do one tour duty and come home, every single one of them is just proud that they served. they're proud to come home, show pictures to their family. they're proud to go up to their father or their uncle, or their mother who served maybe in vietnam maybe even older and they have that pride of when their grandfather comes and hugs them who fought it world war two that kind of thing. and then they go on with their lives, but it's that point of pride and confidence that they went and helped america. can not thank you all for your service to this country and we wish you nothing but the best. thank you. the proceeding program has been a production of the caucus educational corporation. celebrating over twenty five years of broadcast excellence. n thirteen for wnet njtv and wwhy funding for this edition of caucus new jersey has been provided by robert wood johnson university hospital robert wood johnson foundation new jersey natural gas wells fargo horizon blue cross blue shield of new jersey

choose new jersey and by nj best new jerseys five twenty nine college savings plan transportation provided by air brook limousine serving the metropolitan new york, new jersey area caucus new jersey has been produced in partnership with tristar studios this program has been made possible in part by kessler foundation [music playing]

captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> ifill: president obama meets with congressional leaders to discuss his strategy to battle islamic state militants. good evening, i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. also ahead this tuesday: the u.s. increases aid to west africa to treat and contain ebola as the disease claims nearly 2,300 lives and conditions on the ground unravel. >> ifill: plus, how drones can save farmers money and limit fertilizer runoff from polluting the great lakes. >> and this planet continues to have more people on it, so we have to do a better job and get more out of the land we have to