NAVAIR, Industry Team Up for Command's First Wounded Warrior Career Day

From Naval Air Systems Command Public Affairs

NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER, Md. (NNS) -- More than 100 wounded warriors and disabled veterans attended NAVAIR's first Wounded Warrior Career Day at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum in Lexington Park, Md., Dec. 6.

"Employing wounded warriors and veterans is one of our highest priorities at NAVAIR. We know full well the value of this effort," said NAVAIR Commander Vice Adm. David Architzel.

The event included a career fair with 38 exhibitors and 30 NAVAIR hiring managers. Guest speaker Edward Crenshaw, author of "The PERCEVD Principles: Preparing Employers to Reintegrate Combat Exposed Veterans with Disabilities," listed strategies on how to support veterans in the civilian workplace, including being flexible and accommodating and acknowledging their achievements.

Mentoring programs and focus groups are part of the infrastructure needed to retain veterans, he said. "Mentoring programs go a long way toward making our veterans feel they are not alone," he said.

Most important, managers need to perform a self-assessment to determine what they are doing right in the recruitment and retaining process and how they can improve.

"I challenge you to evolve, change, restructure, rethink," Crenshaw said.

The event kicked off with a meet-and-greet and informal dinner for the 28 disabled veterans who traveled from Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, to Patuxent River Dec. 5. NAVAIR has formed a strong partnership with the medical center and will serve as the primary hiring funnel for wounded warriors transitioning out of that facility, helping both government and private industry hire and support these veterans. A formal memorandum of agreement will be signed in January 2012.

Natashia Turner, an Army human resources specialist, was injured while stationed in England and is undergoing treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center. She said she is inspired by the many amputees she meets, comparing them to superheroes.

"It teaches you that there is life after your injury and to stay positive and motivated, because attitude is everything," she said.

David Regan, a NAVAIR logistics management specialist, can speak to having a positive attitude. His story is nothing short of a medical miracle.

On his second Iraq tour as an Army sergeant combat engineer, Regan's vehicle was hit by an explosively formed projectile. The projectile burned through the side of the vehicle, hit Regan's head and burned through and exited his skull before blazing through the other side of the vehicle. He was in a coma for nearly three months and was not expected to survive.

Three weeks after he awoke from his coma, he ran a mile on the hospital's treadmill and eventually competed in the 2011 Wounded Warrior Games in Colorado Springs, Colo. That's where he first learned about NAVAIR and applied to its four-year Naval Acquisition Development Program.

Within this program, Regan said he has enjoyed rotating positions and learning about all facets of the business.

He encouraged veterans to initiate conversations and ask employers what they need and what they are looking for.

"NAVAIR can offer this great program, but the transitioning veterans have to really want it and go after it," he said. "This is not a job fair; this is not NAVAIR offering jobs. This is NAVAIR offering careers."

One theme at the event was clear: Veterans offer a wealth of attributes that are transferrable to the civilian work world, including resilience, leadership, love of country, discipline, drive and teamwork.

"I think the best thing that the Army has ever taught me is being able to know how to treat your fellow comrade, co-worker," said job seeker Qwenolyn Kendle. "That's something that has changed my life."

Kendle, who was injured in Afghanistan, advised her fellow wounded warriors to stay proactive. "Just because you're missing a limb, it doesn't mean that you can't do it," she said. "You just have another way of rethinking things. Reinvent yourself."

The mission of NAVAIR's Wounded Warrior Program is to recruit, hire, train and retain wounded warriors from across the United States. In fiscal year 2011, NAVAIR hired 586 veterans, 155 of whom were disabled.

"With a mission to honor and empower wounded warriors and all veterans, NAVAIR is joining the many national programs which encourage warriors to push through their external and internal wounds, to adjust to their new normal and to achieve new triumphs," said NAVAIR Vice Commander Rear Adm. Steve Eastburg.

NAVAIR also works with NAVSEA, SPAWAR and the Director, Naval Acquisition Career Management, as well as private sector organizations, to maximize wounded warrior employment, training and transitioning opportunities nationwide.

"We will do everything we can to hire disabled veterans at NAVAIR, and if we can't, we will help them find work with other employers," Architzel said. "At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who does the hiring. What matters is that these men and women be matched with meaningful employment."

Stanley: Pentagon Must Do Better in Hiring Disabled

By Terri Moon Cronk

American Forces Press Service

BETHESDA, Md., Dec. 8, 2010 – The Defense Department is doing a “pretty good” job at hiring talented disabled people for its civilian work force, but it needs to do much better, the Pentagon’s top personnel official said here yesterday.

“I am somewhat routinely frustrated by a bureaucracy that coins terms like, ‘hiring reform,' to get people into the system faster,” Clifford L. Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said during his keynote remarks at the 30th annual Disability Awards Ceremony and Forum. “I don't even want to tell you what our percentage is of disabled employees at the Defense Department, because I'm not too happy about it.”

Stanley said the department is doing a “pretty good” job in its hiring of talented disabled employees, but it could be doing be a lot better.

“We need to do a better job of finding people,” Stanley said, noting that he goes to sleep “each night thinking about how I can make this day better” in the hiring of disabled civilians and former servicemembers.

Stanley partly blames a bureaucratic system that he believes “doesn’t want to move the way you think it should move.”

“It shouldn’t take as long as it does to hire people,” he said, noting that talent “is not a function of eyesight, walking, hands and arms.”

Stanley has an emotional stake in the disabled. In Wheaton, Md., in April 1975, a gunman shot and killed his uncle and wounded his wife, Rosalyn, leaving her partially paralyzed.

“Talent is a function of what's going on in here,” Stanley said, pointing to his head. “And I want to underscore 'spirit.’ Spirit is the motivation that gets you over the hump each day.”

When people love what they’re doing and love their country, “you’d be surprised at the heights you’d go to, no matter what your disability might be, to make a difference for our nation,” he said.

The undersecretary told the audience he wanted to “plant that seed,” as he introduced Army Capt. Ivan Castro, an active-duty soldier who is blind.

Castro told the audience his story of serving near Baghdad in September 2006 when he had just released two of his men from an observation post. It was minutes later when mortars landed near him.

Castro’s injuries were myriad and severe, he said, and in the end, the doctors could not save his eyesight.

The wounded warrior said he set out on a mission to stop feeling sorry for himself and to learn to walk again and live independently. After intensive physical and occupational therapies, Castro said, he developed many everyday skills, including how to use a computer and send e-mail.

“Because technology changes all the time, I consider myself a work in progress,” he said.

Castro also developed his physical skills, logging four Army 10-milers, five half-marathons, 13 marathons, and several other running, biking and hiking feats.

But the best was yet to come.

Castro connected with the Computer/Electronics Accommodations Program, a federal initiative that equips federal disabled employees and servicemembers – with disabilities ranging from dexterity issues to cognitive difficulties, vision loss, and hearing impairments -- to perform tasks. CAP uses assistive technology devices, equipment and training to help them recover and transition into employment.

Castro was able to return to active-duty with the Army.

“Thanks to a change in military culture and mindset,” he said, “some of us [disabled servicemembers] have been able to sustain life-threatening injuries and deploy back into combat” or serve in other military assignments.

Today, as of one of three active-duty servicemembers who are blind, Castro is an officer in the Special Operations Recruiting Battalion at Fort Bragg, N.C.

“We are honoring, today, our disabled [employees], but there’s more to it than just that,” Stanley said. “My wife reminds me every day that I'm temporarily able. It doesn’t take much -- for any of us here -- for circumstances [to change and] find you in a way you didn't anticipate.”

Department officials awarded 19 civilians and servicemembers with disabilities for their outstanding service, and four agencies for their commitments to “further equality to individuals with mental and physical disabilities.”

The Department of the Navy won the award for best military department for 2010; the National Security Agency took the best intelligence component for the year; the best mid-sized agency went to the Defense Logistics Agency, and the defense office of Inspector General won in the best small agency category for the year.

Defense Civilian Earns Honor for Assisting Disabled Employees

By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service

Sept. 20, 2007 - The director of the Defense Department's Computer/Electronics Accommodations Program is a Service to America award recipient for her efforts on behalf of disabled servicemembers and civilian employees. Dinah F.B. Cohen's award represents "a culmination of a lot of years of work," Cohen said today at an exhibition of assistive technology equipment available through the program.

"I am really, really honored," Cohen said.

The annual awards are presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service to honor significant achievements of federal employees.

Cohen played a key role in convincing Congress to change federal law to enable disabled servicemembers to keep CAPs-issued equipment that helps them do their jobs.

Before the law was changed, disabled servicemembers were required to turn in such equipment as they transitioned to Department of Veterans Affairs-provided care.

Now, "you're not taking it away from someone who is starting to use it and starting to feel engaged and independent," Cohen explained. Upgraded equipment can be provided later by the VA, she added.

The Defense Department established the Computer/Electronics Accommodations Program in 1990. It purchases and delivers hardware, software and services needed by disabled employees to function in the workplace. CAP partners with 64 other federal agencies, including Veterans Affairs.

Since its creation, CAP has furnished more than 60,000 requests for equipment accommodations for disabled employees, said Cohen, who has directed the program since its inception. As of this spring, the program has assisted more than 2,500 wounded servicemembers.

Improved medical technology has reduced U.S. battlefield deaths during the war against terrorism, Cohen said. But some surviving servicemembers "are coming back with massive disabling conditions and functional limitations," she observed.

That's where assistive technology for the workplace comes in, Cohen said.

"Once someone knows that there is an opportunity to continue to work with the use of assistive technology, you give them hope, you give them their independence back," she said.

Mark Rew, who is blind and has worked for CAP for more than three years, appreciates the integrated audio device that tells him what's on his computer screen.

"Without this technology, disabled people would not have jobs," Rew said.

Dr. S. Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, visited the CAP Technology Evaluation Center today to thank Cohen and to observe a demonstration of available technology for disabled federal employees.

"I'm so proud to stand next to Dinah Cohen," Casscells said. Cohen's labors, he said, enable disabled federal civilians and wounded servicemembers to obtain both work and respect.

Cohen is intimately familiar with surmounting adversity. Her parents are Holocaust survivors and she was diagnosed with an inoperable heart ailment when she was a youngster.

"The best part about this job is that I feel that I'm giving back," Cohen said, noting U.S. troops liberated her father from a Nazi concentration camp and nursed him back to health at the end of World War II.

"Nothing made him happier or more proud than when I started this job working for the Department of Defense," Cohen said of her father.