Chase Christiansen: Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Just a quick heads up before we dive back into our story this week, this is the second chapter in a three part series. So if you've not heard episode one, take out your phone, open that podcast app and scroll back. Trust me, it will make a world of difference. All right. That's it for the PSA. Now let's get started.
Chase Christiansen: So this week, let's go back to the world of the US military, and let's pick up on our conversation with our new favorite veteran, Mr. Tom Joyce.
Tom Joyce: My name is Tom Joyce. I'm the assistant city manager in the city of Minot, North Dakota. This is the new Tom. He lives in Minot and takes pride in the cold winters.
Chase Christiansen: He also has a passion for city government, but before he was in public office, Tom had another life. He spent 28 years in the Air force hopping from mission to mission, spanning continents. Tom had an amazing career and the thing he did best everywhere he went, it was taking care of people.
Chase Christiansen: He was the guy who made sure services worked and that civilians and militaries had everything they needed. It's really not too dissimilar to government work, is it? But it took 'em a while to realize that. So today we're gonna find out how Tom made that connection and you'll see the path between service and government work. It's been traveled before.
Michael Brethorst: My background is I am a city county administrator of nearly 20 years, and throughout my experiences I've had the opportunity to participate in the Minnesota National Guard and, and, and doing that for nearly 22 and a half years.
Chase Christiansen: Yep, that's right. In this episode, you're going to hear from a new voice, someone who crossed over from government service to military duty. And then back. So ready to find out what these two have in common?
Tom Joyce: To me, if you're not fully charged by what you're doing, it's okay to look elsewhere.
Michael Brethorst: You know, when you leave the service, you definitely leave something behind, but at the same time, you're gaining a new family
Tom Joyce: The city managers senior fellows program, this is where it really started coming together. It's like, you know, it is crazy. This is exactly what I do every day.
Chase Christiansen: Welcome to Impact in Action. Often when we talk about social change, we think about protests, new laws, people helping people, stories of redemption and justice, but social change, it can start with one person changing their life and getting the support to make that jump. Social change, it's finding hidden talent and giving people an opportunity to do good where they're needed.
On this podcast, we travel around the country to see what social transformation looks like on the ground. We tell the real stories behind every life-changing impact solution. We're MGT, a provider of specialized technology and advisory solutions. Social impact, it's what we do every day. So let's take you to the heart of the action. Today we're back with Tom Joyce and a special guest from MGT our very own Mike Brethorst.
Mike Brethorst: Impact in action means somebody that can translate a problem into a potential solution. When you come from the military, you have a mission and you have an objective. And if it's not right, well we'll back up. We'll pause, we'll think about it. We'll review it and then we'll take another stab at it
Chase Christiansen: I'm Chase Christiansen. You are listening to Impact in Action.
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Chase Christiansen: So where we left off with Tom, he had just left the military and he was trying to find who he could be outside of the Air Force. And remember, he jumped the gun right after retiring. Tom got a corporate job in San Antonio and it just wasn't a fit. He left a year after he started.
Tom Joyce: I just took the wrong job. I don't blame anybody but myself.
Chase Christiansen: Tom had always been a doer, but now it was time for a change. When you've been boots on the ground for so long, you need to give yourself time. So lesson learned there. Patience.
Tom Joyce: I knew over time I had mentors talking to me about this, about being patient. 'Cause sometimes I could kind of get out in front of my headlights. I have this vision and I wanna, you know, I not only want to act fast. What I'm thinking fast and thinking fast is not good. You're not, you're not doing all the thorough planning you really need to do in the next phase.
Chase Christiansen: Tom got to thinking what would get him out of bed in the morning? And to get started, he had to ask himself the right questions.
Tom Joyce: What are the strengths? What are naturally who I am? I read you know, Clifton 2.0 Strength Finders and kind of dug into that and really enjoyed that. And so really it's balancing out your areas for improvement with your strengths to, uh, get the mission done.
Chase Christiansen: In case you don't know the Clifton Strengths Finder, it's a kind of personality assessment. It was created by Gallup Education, and the goal is to help you identify your core skills, the things you're really good at. It could be strategic thinking, adaptability, self-assurance, things like that. These skills, they don't depend on the job you're doing. They're a part of who you are. The question is, what do you do with them? After he left his job with USAA, Tom needed to find an answer to that question. So he bought himself some time. Yeah. For his next move. Tom went back to something he knew, something that would afford him a few years to test out new opportunities. Yeah, he went back to the military. But on the civil side, this time.
Tom Joyce: I never had being a civil servant on my mind. I'd worked for civil servants and with civil servants, you know, for my whole Air Force career. But that was the next opportunity that really came about for me. And I joined the United States Army as a civilian working for the Installation Management Command in San Antonio.
Chase Christiansen: Tom joined the US Army as a civilian right where he was in San Antonio for the next few years. Tom would assist colonels in their operations. He took on the same role that he'd always known, but this time he was not in command.
Tom Joyce: What I was doing for the Army and with the Army, what I did over the next eight and a half years was, is supporting soldiers and civilians and other service members and their families was really the same thing I was doing in uniform for the Air Force. So looking ahead strategically and, and what do we need to do to improve this service or this operation or this facility over the next five 10. In 20 years. The transition was not difficult. It was just that I'm no longer the colonel, I'm, I'm Tom, or I'm Mr. Joyce. And you know, you get over that quick and you're still providing that same service. And with my boss who was, uh, a colonel, a career army colonel and here I am who grew up in the Air Force as a colonel, you know, we could kind of divide and conquer. And then there were times where we really, literally made a decision. Is it better to have the leader that's wearing a uniform at this meeting or the leader that's wearing a, a suit or coat and tie at this meeting.
Chase Christiansen: Tom was relaying the flag. He was the middleman. But see, the thing that he said before. How his job was to think about the next five to 10 years that also applied to his life. Tom was getting ready for the bigger change. He was just waiting for a good opportunity.
Tom Joyce: To me, if you're not fully charged about what you're doing, it's okay to look elsewhere at USAA, there was a term people would use. I didn't know what they were talking about, and they'd call it poco. I go, what's poco? They'd say, you know, John's Poco or Sarah's Poco. What's that? And they go pursuing other career opportunities. And that didn't mean it was bad. That didn't mean you're giving up necessarily, but you thought that you could be more value added somewhere else. So again, I had looked into city and county management and I just kind of felt that I had hit a, uh, plateau and where I was with the United States Army, you know, I, I just thought I could do a little bit more and I had more in my tank. But, you know, if I don't feel value added and if I'm not contributing and if I don't feel what I'm doing is significant with these vast number of hours, waking hours spent on the job every day, then maybe it's time to look somewhere else, and I'm okay with that.
Chase Christiansen: So how do you make that transition? Well, to answer that question, I want to take a little detour. The thing is, we're not just going to tell you Tom's story. I. What we want is to gain some perspective, understand what government and military life really have in common. And at MGT, we've got someone who can get us those insights. Someone who's made that jump. We had to get this guy on the mic. And- get this, his name is actually Mike. It's Mike on the mic. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Mike Brethorst: My name is Mike Brethorst. I've been with MGT since June of 2024, so I'm a relatively new hire.
Chase Christiansen: Mike has only been with us for a few months, but before that he was in city administration and the Army for more than two decades.
Mike Brethorst: Starting right ahead of, uh, college and working my way professionally through the career field and the ranks, and it gave me leadership experience. It gave me real world practical transferable skills that I'm able to use at MGT.
Chase Christiansen: Just so you know, on the side, he also teaches and as a board member for the city of Detroit's Lake Authority. Yep. The guy wears quite a few hats at MGT. He uses his wealth of experience to support recruitment initiatives. Basically, his job is to spot talent and match them with the right organization.
Mike Brethorst: My primary focus is the executive recruitment efforts, trying to find the best fit for an organization that's going through a cultural change or an organizational change.
Chase Christiansen: Needless to say, Mike knows what a core skill looks like in practice. He recognizes potential when he sees it, so he's going to help us see where military service skills fit into other professions. But first, let's get to know him a little bit.
Chase Christiansen: Mike's interest in government and public service dates back to his childhood. When he was a kid. Mike's dream was to be a city administrator,
Mike Brethorst: and it's like, really? How does a 18-year-old kid know that they want to be a city administrator?
Chase Christiansen: I mean, honestly, yeah. This was my question, but in Mike's case, where he grew up was a big factor.
Mike Brethorst: My hometown was 441 people, and back in the pre-World War ii, it was an absolute small rural community that didn't have a lot of many resources. And so our community was partnering with the WPA that works progress at administration to actually construct a city hall. And part of that process, they built this beautiful stone city hall in our small town and it had a little basketball court inside it. And a little work area for the city council. And then next to that was the fire department. And then the upstairs was kind of a little gathering area. They could have do like a little movie theater. I mean we even had our high school dances in this auditorium
Chase Christiansen: In Mike's hometown, life revolved around the town hall. Everything happened there. So Mike paid attention to how his community was organized and he noticed how everyone got involved. Then as a teenager, Mike got to visit the Minnesota State Capitol. He was a high school page on student councils. His passion for the governmental process just kept growing.
Mike Brethorst: I did not want to be a politician. I wanted to be the guy that wrote the speeches for the politician, you know, and the guy that was in the back that can help the organization be successful, to be part of a process that gets things done.
Chase Christiansen: That's it. That was the dream. So Mike went to college, determined to make it happen. And that's when his path crossed with the US Army.
Mike Brethorst: I went to a university where I got a degree in public administration and an emphasis in economic development right down the path to become a city clerk or a city administrator, community development director. And after my internships and consulting with some mentors of mine, it's like, Mike, you need to get a master's degree. Well, I wasn't able to afford it on my own at that time, and so what I had to do is I had to go to the military to receive some help, and the military gave me the dedication and the commitment and the training I needed to be successful through that, get that graduate degree.
Chase Christiansen: So that was the deal. Mike enrolled in the Minnesota Army National Guard. He got into his post grad. Then after five years of college, he walked out with his master's degree in Public Human Services and Health Administration, ready to serve. Sound familiar? Well get used to it. There's a long list of things Tom and Mike have in common. For Mike, though, I have to say his experience in the Army is textbook.
Mike Brethorst: In the Military Army National Guard, we have the maneuver assets, we have the tanks, we have the, you know, full metal jacket type thing, and having the people, you know, yell at your face and the shark attacks. And it was my job as an intelligence officer to predict what the bad guys were gonna be doing. And to advise the command structure in regards to- hey, uh, I anticipate there's gonna be this type of threat in these locations. Uh, we should consider other alternative routes or counter battery efforts to, uh, secure that area and to make it more secure beyond combat forces.
Chase Christiansen: when he set foot in the military, Mike started learning a whole new set of skills. That's really what we want to talk about today by the way. We want to ask Mike, what are the things you learn in the military that you don't get anywhere else, and how can you put these talents to use after you leave? Basically, what would Mike say to someone like Tom? Well, the first thing Mike wants you to remember is diversity has made you adaptable.
Mike Brethorst: So in the Minnesota Army National Guard, there's over 10,500 soldiers. And so I had the opportunity to work with people of all different, uh, cultures and backgrounds and ethnicities, which was really eye-opening for me and really gave me a perspective on what the world truly is.
Chase Christiansen: Yeah, Tom went through it too, the culture shock. The connections made from mission to mission, learning on the fly to be flexible and adapt to new environments. Not everyone gets to experience that in their professional life. I mean, how many of us can get out there and start fresh every couple of years or live abroad for a job? Getting that experience is incredible.
Mike Brethorst: It really made me a better leader and a better person, understanding that people are different than where I grew up. And so bringing that back into the organizations which I was a part of, give me chances to grow and to have lifelong partnerships and friendships that I would not have had otherwise.
Chase Christiansen: But another key skill Mike got through the Army is strategy.
Mike Brethorst: Some of the other specialized training that I was able to receive is I received a counterintelligence training. So what that means is I receive specific training on how to do the military decision making process. So it's a process on developing a plan to present to the commander to make a decision or how to articulate and represent yourself in the organizations in your civil affairs or your information operations campaigns. But the reason that's important. Is that you can directly turn that back into experiences for working for an MGT or working for any organization, a school board, a, a city council.
Chase Christiansen: Mike's right. Strategy is something that is needed everywhere all of the time. Whether you're in business or in government, you'll have to make decisions, implement ideas with a real plan, and put the right people in the right seats on the bus. While not everyone can do that big picture thinking. A lot of veterans have that skill. You can tell from the moment they walk into the room. I'll let Mike explain.
Mike Brethorst: When you hire a veteran or you hire an individual with exposure to being a, a volunteer, a fireman, uh, a local police officer, these are the individuals that are going to, more often than not volunteer to be part of a program to be a leader, but in a particular group or to say, Hey, yeah, I'll pick that project up, boss. I'll be happy to take on that extra recruitment right now. That's just what I'm here to do. I'm part of the team, and so the ability to represent yourself is a wonderful skill that's transferrable from being in the military and being able to represent your organization.
Chase Christiansen: How you carry yourself speaks for itself; people will see your natural ability to lead. And now I know what you think: "Chase, I can't put down charisma as a skill on my resume. That would be crazy." Uh, that's fair. But two things. One, looking for the next opportunity is not just about writing a resume, and if you have a strong presence in the room, that will help at the interview stage. So really you can take confidence in that. This is Mike saying it. He's been in that place and his job at MGT is literally to find talent, so let's take his word for it.
Mike Brethorst: As a veteran, you bring a unique voice to the table. You find individuals that have a perspective that others don't necessarily have when you're reviewing these resumes or reviewing somebody's experience saying: "Hey, I was a commodore on a naval basis." Like you were a what? A commodore, that's a big deal. You know, so you're the base commander, you're a garrison command, and that's one of the things that I've taken away from that. So whenever I see a resume come through or somebody who references that experiences I pause and I listen to that and make sure that it's just not "oh, well, you're just saying that".
Chase Christiansen: Having spent years in the service is not a common experience. That means it's probably the most interesting part of your resume. Use that to your advantage.
Mike Brethorst: I think the realities is that in the service, there's all types of jobs out there. There's jobs from being a cook to being the J two for the state of Minnesota's National Guard being in charge of all intelligence collection operations. So you have a wide spectrum of skill sets that individuals can bring to you The table. And that's the nice thing about it, is that they have real world experience. If somebody's applying to be a HR director, well, I was a personnel officer, or I was a personnel enlisted soldier, and I processed mult hundreds, literally hundreds of performance reviews, and I checked them for accuracy. And you have those experiences and being able to translate that
Chase Christiansen: Tom's experience in the Air Force was like that. He didn't do the obvious military job, but that gave him experience that was really well suited for another career leadership administration, community development. Looking at it from the outside, when you add it all up, it's pretty clear where that leads, and that's what's interesting, right? Mike and Tom's stories are pretty similar. The only difference is that Mike walked into the army knowing exactly what he was passionate about and what he would do once he left. Tom didn't. In other words, while they were going up the same road with the same toolkit, Mike knew he'd eventually cross a bridge. Tom, on the other hand, he was looking at every fork in the road thinking, is that my route? Still, even when you know where you're headed, retiring feels odd. Changes like that.
Mike Brethorst: You know, when you leave the service, you definitely leave, uh, something behind. I did 22.5 years of service, and when you do that for so long, it was ingrained into me the weekends, the nights that you have to coordinate and facilitate these meetings and transfers and, and conversations calling your soldiers just to check in on them to make sure that they're outta drills and and so on. I mean, when you walk away from that, you're leaving a family. You really are. There was truly a void there for me when I left, and I still struggle with that void, but at the same time, you're gaining a new family. When you start participating in your local American Legions, your vets program, VFWs, your American Veterans programs, you name it, there's opportunities to participate. The US military knows that this is a challenge for veterans, so they're growing their services to help people transition back into the workplace. There's skill sets, there's trainings through the Department of Veterans Affairs. You also have your local veterans organizations, and they're always looking at ways to provide resourcing for those soldiers.
Chase Christiansen: These programs are both for veterans and civilians, because often one category bleeds into the other. That's Tom's story. Remember the whole reason that Tom got into government work? It's because he used the Army's programs.
Tom Joyce: I had an opportunity to, uh, go to a leadership program that the Army offered. So I was selected to do what they call the city managers, uh, senior Fellows program.
Chase Christiansen: This training, it was going to change everything. Now, the city manager's senior fellows program sends civilians to a different city for a week to shadow a government executive in their job. So Tom signed up for that. He was curious.
Tom Joyce: You just go, spent a week with another city manager. Deputy city manager, assistant city manager at a city in the United States that wants to sponsor you. I eventually got around to going in the spring of 2023. Right, so isn't that interesting? About four months before I decided to jump ship, I went to Chesapeake and uh, I. Their deputy city manager, Bob Geis, who's a retired Navy Captain Aviator. I was my host for the week and they were awesome hosts and I got a bout and met many of their folks and, and this is where it really started coming together. It's like, you know, it is crazy. This is exactly what I do every day.
Chase Christiansen: Suddenly something clicked. Seeing the projects that city administrators were taking on, it was all so familiar.
Tom Joyce: That kind of opened up my eyes that, hey, maybe I really could dip my toes in this local government thing that I had talked about 10 years ago.
Chase Christiansen: So, you know, Tom, he's not one to waste time. Right after his placement, he got in touch with the ICMA, the leading association for local government professions, and they directed him to us. Yep. That's when MGT comes in. One of our branches is specialized in recruitment. So with Tom, they knew exactly where to start.
Tom Joyce: I mean, within a week, set up a Zoom call with me, open frank conversation, you know, what the struggles could be with my background, the differences between local elected officials and national elected officials, and what the transition could be like, et cetera. And then, I mean, within a week, I got a, I got a message from, uh, Charlene Stevens, and then Charlene, uh, talked to me about this current position that I'm in.
Chase Christiansen: Just like that, Tom was about to set foot on that bridge and cross to the government side. Turns out sometimes you just need someone to show you the way. So how Tom got the gig and why he was such a good fit for the city of Minot. That's next week on Impact in Action. And to keep you waiting, one final word of advice from our very own, Mike Brethorst.
Mike Brethorst: Be open to other opportunities. You may not have direct experience as a city county manager or a superintendent at a school district, but don't immediately eliminate a potential solution and make sure that you explore the various options, just give it a try. No harm, no foul in throwing an application out there and to seeing what happens. Who knows? It just might land at MGT like I did.
Chase Christiansen: Just food for thought, you know? Tune in next week to get to the finish line and wrap Tom's inspiring veteran story. Thank you to Tom Joyce and Mike Brethorst for sharing their stories and their insights with us. It was a pleasure to have them. This was Impact in Action, a podcast from MGT, a provider of technological and social impact solutions. If you enjoy this podcast, show it some love, a five star rating or a review. Give us what you got.
For this episode, our production coordinator was Sarah Balli. Supervision from Tiffanie Reynolds. And as always, we make this podcast with the team at Lower Street. Writing in production from Lise Lovati; sound design by Ben Crannell. I'm your host, Chase Christiansen.
See you again soon on Impact in Action.
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