A6 April 2, 2015 www.FortHoodSentinel.comNEWS

She is also the co-chair of the TAP Senior Steering Group, and she has direct contact and collaboration with leaders across the DoD, Veterans Affairs, Labor, Educa-tion, Office of Per-sonnel Management and the Small Busi-ness Administration.

Kelly visited the installation to see how successful Fort Hood is in pushing Soldiers through the transition process, where each and every Soldier is still receiving the right training, tools and information needed to slide into civilian life effectively and efficiently.

Arriving at Fort Hood on the night of March 24, Kelly spent all day March 25 and 26 gaining a big-picture view of Fort Hood’s active and reserve compo-nents before heading back to Washington, D.C., Friday.

Her visit to Fort Hood included a packed itinerary of what makes the Great Place great. March 25 began with an introduc-tion to the installation where Kelly went through briefings with the Fort Hood garrison command team about what Fort Hood does, how Fort Hood fits into the local community and some of the numbers – as far as the combat power, Soldiers and Families – to equate those numbers to Fort Hood and the Central Texas region, specifically. She then went to the SFL-TAP offices to gain an over-view of what Fort Hood’s Director-ate of Human Resources does, and the mobilization and demobilization

for reserve components here.In the afternoon, Kelly toured the

Fort Hood Education Center and spoke with a couple of different classes of transitioning Soldiers. She began with an executive Veterans

Opportunity to Work TAP class, geared toward sergeants major/lieutenant col-onels and above, and moved on to a junior enlisted class, collect-ing feedback from the separating Soldiers about TAP programs.

“Is there anything I don’t know, that I need to know to take back to Washington with me?” Kelly asked them.

She encouraged the classes to keep striv-ing for the best, and she made it clear that TAP wants to help them succeed.

“You all aren’t built to leave your active-duty careers and go home and sit on the couch; you are the less than 1 percent of this nation, you’ll keep contributing to our

nation because you’re built for it,” Kelly said. “We need you.”

She took questions at the end of each class and led discussions about several topics within the SLF-TAP programs, from the Post 9/11 GI Bill and starting a small business, to anonymous instructor evaluations.

“Make sure to utilize the online resources,” she said. “Use your instructors, use the resources, and give us feedback on what can be better.”

After visiting with the classes at the education center, Kelly’s visit continued on to tour the career skills programs – Veterans in Piping, Gen-

eral Motors’s Shifting Gears and the Microsoft Software and Systems Analysis programs.

“(March 26) we spent on the reserve side of the house,” Mar-tin Traylor, Fort Hood Transition Services manager for SFL-TAP explained, after a packed day of active-duty information. “We took her to North Fort Hood and showed her how a reserve unit coming back from (a deployment) returns to Fort Hood and goes through the demo-bilization process … and all of the transition training they go through to prepare them to get a job, if they don’t already have one, going home.

“She really saw 360 degrees of Fort Hood,” he said.

Kelly said she was impressed by the quality of Fort Hood’s TAP. She told the Fort Hood garrison com-mander that she couldn’t get over how Fort Hood runs their Capstone classes.

“Capstone is the final event in TAP. … We’re running four Cap-stone events with 20 clients, and

we do it every single day, five days a week,” Traylor explained, “and she was impressed with how we can push that volume through – almost 100 people per day – and still have the same one-on-one personal touch with over 10,000 Soldiers a year.”

Kelly’s in-person visit to Fort Hood for a look at the TAP program here was important, Traylor said.

“She’s handling Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and the Coast Guard,” he said. “The perspective of the services is so different. Army does transition entirely different from how the Navy does it, how the Marine Corps does it – you have to really see each one individually.

“But,” Traylor continued, “even within the Army, programs at other installations don’t push the volume that Fort Hood is pushing. For her to come here and look at an Army program tailored to the amount of people we have, … this is the only place, the only installation in all of the DoD with a program like ours. There is nothing like it; nowhere else

she could go to gain this perspective. The challenges at Fort Hood are unique to Fort Hood.”

With National Guard, active and Reserve components, Traylor and the Fort Hood SLF-TAP team touch nearly 20,000 transitioning Soldiers yearly, an amount that was shown to Kelly on her visit, furthering her satisfaction with Fort Hood’s effort.

Kelly left Fort Hood’s Soldiers with words of encouragement on their journeys transitioning to civil-ian life before heading back to D.C. Friday morning.

“The leadership skills you have gained, the values and morals you live by, those are things this country needs and will continue to need,” she said. “Every single community in the nation needs your leadership.

“There is a void of leadership in our communities; we need people with integrity, values – the very same things that have been bred into you as Soldiers,” she concluded. “Please, we ask you to keep using those skills, keep leading in this country.”

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TVPO: Director looks at transition process at Hood

Dr. Susan Kelly, director of the TVPO, speaks to an executive VOW TAP class March 25 at the Fort Hood Education Center. This class is geared toward transitioning sergeants major/lieutenant colonels and above. Kelly asked the transitioning Sol-diers what she could do to help their transition process and what she could take back to the Pentagon with her to improve the SFL-TAP programs.

Photo by By Erin Rogers, Sentinel Staff

You all aren’t built to leave your active-duty careers and go home and sit on the couch; you are the less than 1 percent of this nation ... We need you.

– Dr. Susan Kelly

continental United States, and it is scheduled to hold the next event at Fort Bragg, North Caro-lina, in April.

The foundation plans to pre-pare the next generation of busi-ness leaders as they transition from Soldier to civilian.

“A lot of people are getting out of the military and they want to get noticed,” Randazzo said. “This helps to provide the tools to point them in the right direc-tion.”

Many of those in attendance are prior service military members who attended the seminar in the past and were impacted by the knowledge received.

“I sat here in the audience a couple of years ago as I was tran-sitioning out of the military and heard a bunch of information that helped me,” said Steve Baldwin, an online business owner. “I took the advice and started my own company, and I am really thank-ful for the opportunity to be able to attend this event again.”

“Each speaker has their own expertise,” said Ryan Holiday, best-selling author, writer and marketer. “So you will walk away with something, which is infor-mation usually only given away in the corporate world.”

Upon arrival, the speakers con-ducted physical training with the 504th Battlefield Surveillance Bri-gade and checked out the Air Assault obstacle course March 26.

“I can barely sit down, let alone stand,” said guest speaker and best-selling author Honoree Cor-den jokingly. “It really gives us insight on exactly what it is that you all do and how disciplined Soldiers are.”

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, veterans are successful small business owners. Nearly one in 10 small businesses

nationwide is veteran-owned. Col-lectively, these 2.4 million small businesses employ almost 6 mil-lion Americans and generate more than $1 trillion in receipts. In the private sector workforce, veterans are 45 percent more likely than those with no active-duty military experience to be self-employed.

“Most of the people that I have worked with in the past while building my business were prior service,” said Alex Charfen, Co-founder and Chief Executive Offi-cer of Charfen Institute. “Think about it, most service members

have had to work under extreme pressure and have been given dif-ficult tasks and have successfully completed the mission.”

That is what sets military mem-bers apart from other people, Charfen said.

The guest speakers all volun-teer to travel and talk to Soldiers, veterans and civilians during the

American Dream U seminars.“It is thanks to our military

that we live in a country where the entrepreneurial dream is pos-sible,” Randazzo said.

“This is just our way of giving back.”

For schedule of upcoming semi-nars visit www.AmericanDreamU.org and register.

Guest speaker Alex Charfen, co-founder and CEO of Charfen Institute, interacts with a crowd of Soldiers, veterans and civil-ians during American Dream U seminar Friday at Palmer Theater.

Guest speaker Alex Charfen, co-founder and CEO of Charfen Institute, takes things to new heights when he challenges a crowd of Soldiers, veterans and civilians to pursue their dreams during the American Dream U seminar Friday at Palmer Theater. American Dream U is a two-day event that provides world-class speakers to talk to Soldiers about business opportunities once they leave the military.

Guest speaker Steve Sims, Visionary Founder of Bluefish, interacts with a crowd of Soldiers, veterans and civilians during the American Dream U seminar Friday at Palmer Theater.

Photos by Sgt. Whitney Woods, 4th PAD

Phil Randazzo, founder of American Dream U, speaks to veterans, Soldiers and civilians Friday at Palmer Theater. American Dream U provides world class speakers to talk to Soldiers about business opportunities once they leave the military.

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Dream U: Seminar prepares business leaders