Finding Your Path with Nishant Roy

I'm Rob Real, actor, comedian, and former Marine raw In this special series Honoring Veterans Day, I'll be speaking with four incredible veterans as they detail challenges they've faced and how their experiences in military service served them in their everyday civilian lives. I totally treated like it was the military, so I broke it down and end up graduating in just two years, get that four year degree done in two years, thankfully graduated with honors, I think because it

was just so focused. In our final episode of season two, we are speaking with Nishan Roy. Nashan is the first in his family to serve in the U. S. Military. He chose to enlist in the Air Force following high school and followed a career path in the security forces. Following his time in the military, he enrolled in St. John's University and finished a four year degree in two years.

Nashat's varied civilian career includes working for the Clinton Foundation, Goldman Sachs, the U S Department of Agriculture, and the Agency for Internal Development. Deshan currently is the chief of staff for the CEO of Shabani Nashat. Welcome to the show. Tell me where you from, where you grew up, and then tell me how your path crossed with the military. Robbed. First off, thank you for your service, and it's truly an honor to be on the show. I appreciate it.

So I guess taking it back to two thousand, which is when I graduated from high school. I grew up in Long Island, New York, in Great Next So if you're happy to be familiar with the books The Great Gatsby, Uh, it was West Egg and so I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do coming out of high school. I was a little bit of a jackass during high school, didn't really take it as seriously as I should. I think I barely passed to kind of get it through

high school. But ultimately I've come from an Indian family and so my my dad kind of sat me down. He said, well, where'd you get into school? You got into the community college local and you got into Arizona State, and then what are your choices? Like, what are we gonna do here? And so I said, actually, I think I'm not going to do the education piece yet. I

think I want to go serve the country. My dad, who immigrated here in nineteen seventy nine so that he could provide his children a better way of life and not necessarily go through kind of difficult hardships, said well, okay, what part of that equation is you getting an engineering or PhD or mp D? And I said, none of it. You know, I really want to actually go travel the country. I want to pay for college on my own. At that point, it's two thousands, so there's no conflicts going on.

So my dad said, you know what, all right, I'll indulge this. Let's invite all four branch recruiters into our house and let's have a conversation with each one of them. And we met the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force recruiters. I was going in enlisted. So my dad asked really good questions and whatnot. I was gung ho

about actually joining the Marine Corps. Would love that, Rob, I'm sure but my my father said, look, at the end of the day, after having these conversations with these recruiters, I'm actually pretty bullish about either the Navy or the Air Force for you because this focus on education and there's some transferable skill sets that you can kind of apply into the private sector at some point in time,

so you have some additional optionality. Absolutely absolutely. And by the way, just so you know, my father very similar, Uh, we want to to talk to all everybody. Uh, and actually was like, you know, the Air Force a pretty good deal here and no DA and so I understand that as well. But back to your story. So the recruiters come and go, and the best salesman out of

all of them was the Air Force. Yes, I would say, I would say they kind of checked more of the boxes for for for dad, I was really more just kind of bullish about joining the service. And what planted the sea for me was my grandfather, my father's father. He had actually worked for the British Air Force in India because the Brits at colonized India at one point in time, and so I that kind of planted the sea for me about military service and the structure, the discipline,

the ability to travel. Now was my chance to kind of go put this into reality, and so I said, all right, let's do the Air Force. And I started initially coming in to focus on the light, wide band

and telemetory systems. So there I was supposed to be basically setting up communications and remote areas fast forward within my my enlisting time, I basically said, well, I want to do something a little bit more hands on, you know, enter Lackland Air Force based in San Antonio, Texas, and they start introducing us to the pair of rescue team, the combat control team, and so I said, I wanted to do security forces actually, and because it's it's the

basically the infantry of the United States Air Force. And and so that's how I kind of got my entrance into the into the military, and how we got into security forces as a career field. That's fantastic. The security forces in the Air Force are outstanding. They really are very well trained, incredible skill set from a war fighting perspective and security perspective because you're always on the cutting edge of technology and communications and you know, go down

the list of I T possibilities. Air forces always out there in front as they should be. They're the most advanced force we have. So you find yourself in the security force, you find yourself developing really amazing skill sets. As far as I can tell, did you ever have an opportunity to deploy or or go forward with all this? I did, actually, uh, and and it sounds like reading some of your history, Rob, I think we may have actually overlapped in in Afghanistan at at some point in time.

So eleven happens. I'm actually at M sixty school in San Antonio, Texas, the the goodal M sixty machine gun. We had just completed our full training. We're now deployable, and we got orders to go support an operation in Afghanistan to start to take out some of these camps, the training camps. I believe we got orders around October seven, I want to say, to start engaging in support of

the bombing of some of these things. So our our role in it was to get in secure the airfield within Kandahar and later on make sure the assets our aircraft were secured. And so that's uh, that was our role. And I was on the ground for about three months or so. Oh wow, So this is the fall of two thousand one. Yes, Oh we did. I'm sure we did cross paths then, whether it was going through K two or because I was in the north. I was

in Missouri Sharief. But but there wasn't many. There wasn't a whole lot there in the fall of two thousand one. We were a very small footprint. Yes, as you can. You remember. Uh, now they've got freaking burger kings and stuff at these bases. You know, back then we didn't have porterfar We're still digging our own holes. So so what was your experience like then? I would say, you know,

that deployment first off was eye opening. You know, you train, you train, you train, and then it's a matter of execution. And I remember just almost having a little bit of an outer body experience on that first deployment to kanadaar I took it so personally, right, I'm from New York. Why are we in Afghanistan? It's because we got attacked on nine eleven and couldn't have been more proud to be able to do something. The whole spirit here within the United States was it's a big call to action.

Everybody wants to do something, even if supporting your local firehouse, your local police Department, anything in the community that you could do to bring us all together, and I couldn't. I was so unbelievably proud to just take the fight to the enemy. Having come from New York. Because I just took it, took it that much more personally. It wasn't just our country that was attacked, it was our city. I'm right there with you. I was in New York on not eleven. I took it very personally. Um, I

was in the reserves at the time. I just left active duty and I've only been a resource for a year, uh and volunteer to go back on active duty because of that very same thing. I took it very personally. It felt like a call, and I just felt lucky that I was in uniform and I was in a position that I could go do something about it. The Shot completed his second deployment in two thousand three to

kirk Cook, Iraq. His mission was intelligence gathering and converting an old Iraqi Force space into a US Air Force space. When the Shot returned home, he was met with a new set of challenges and obstacles to overcome, but he also found an appreciation for some of the values instilled in him from his time overseas. Was there a takeaway? Was there something where you went, Wow, that is a lesson I'll never forget. Um. Did you have any moments

like that? Did you have any epiphanies like that? I think the big takeaway was, of course, on teamwork and what it means right. You you say what you're going to do and then you do what you're actually going to say, and you don't actually necessarily see that in the civilian sector, as you were saying, and that's a

point of frustration. But when I came back, I was frustrated the fact that that folks were saying that they were going to do things, they had a more kind of a political lens to why they were doing it. It wasn't necessarily about the mission. It was about self preservation, I think for folks more than anything else. And that was that's been a bit frustrating still to kind of

observe as a behavior. And when I came back, I would say I needed to find that mission again, because I looked at everything that I was doing in my life as if it was a mission, and I had to break it down to its representative objectives. When I did that, it made it made the integration back to

civilian life far more digestible. If you will, Yeah, and you're you're still right too, because I talked to so many veterans and I hear the same thing in different ways, but I hear the same themes and some of those things are you know, they miss having a mission, they missed the purpose, they missed the integrity of the communication. You know, if I say, if I say to you, we're going to do something, you can pretty much count

that we're going to try to do this thing. We understand our roles, we understand our responsibilities, we understand the team, the bigger picture, we understand serving the mission. So we're gonna find ways to make it happen. We're gonna adapt, you know, if that means I got to do something different or that will will find the way, we'll get the mission done. And it was service to this bigger purpose.

You hit on something that reminded me of three things that I just still live by today and it's been ingrained in me since my time in service. Uh, the Air Force has three core values, and I would imagine it's got to be somewhat similar across all the different branches. But it's integrity first, it's service before self, and it's excellence in all we do. It sounds hokey, of course to say those things, but how do you actually live

those values out is a very different story. And you know, coming back into civilian life was initially challenging because of the reasons that we said earlier, and my integration back became frustrated for that very reason. I think I found myself to be pretty angry for no good reason. I was telling this to you know, friends earlier. But something as harmless is like playing video games with my younger brother. He was cheating and or maybe I don't know younger brothers,

there was a way to cheat. They know the coding or something trick. I remember getting so upset with him that I got up, threw the controller down, and I punched a hole in the door and I'm like, whoa, that was not a commenced response to a video game. And I remember at that point I was like, Okay, I need to go start seeking some counseling. I need to start having some conversations with some folks, because that's

that's a flag for sure. So I started to reach out to the v A. I started to reach out to a couple of other like Wounded Warrior Project and a few other folks. I wasn't necessarily taking it seriously in terms of the follow up. And then another day I found myself at a right aid CBS something like that.

So I'm on my way to check out, and somebody literally comes over from my right side, and for whatever reason not logical at all, ROB like, this person I think of them is trying to go after my pistol that's on I thought, which clearly do not have a pistol in my thought, and I grabbed that person's hand, I put them in an armor and I put them down, and I caused such a scene. I'm like, yep, we're not going to do this anymore. We need to start

taking counseling very very seriously. And so I started to talk to folks through the v A and it's it was. It was a process for a while. I feel so much better for having done it. And thankfully, in the spectrum of you know, what they've diagnosed as post traumatic stress disorder, which is like a big tent of whatever, I would say, that's like the lowest grade, you know, in terms of what other folks may be going through, and so that was a tough part of the integration back.

But then connecting, reconnecting with the folks that I had served with, who came from all over the country, all economic classes, talking about that experience made it actually easier for all of us in terms of our integration back

into society. Um, so that was that was helpful. I'm glad you brought that up though, because it is in critically important and it's it's one of the reasons we're you know, talking today, is because again, the veterans that I've visited with yourself included, you know, when they get home and they are experiencing these things, they don't understand and why am I Why am I willing to get out of my car and punch this guy because I perceived that he cut me off. You know, maybe he

just didn't see me. Maybe I don't know, but there's a rage level that's inexplicable. You just can't understand it. And then then you start to question yourself and you start to panic, and you start to think what's wrong with me? And and then the worst case scenario, you isolate. That's where veterans get into so much trouble is when they isolate and they think I'm the only one with this problem. There's something wrong with me. Why could everybody

else deal with it? And I can't and it's snowballs, uh and it's terrible. So the v A and other organizations great for being able to just go talk to someone and when they when you hear their stories, you're like, oh, I'm not a freak, I'm not weird, I'm not you know, this is happening across the spectrum and talking about it's a good thing and recognizing it like you did. Being able to say that wasn't proportionate. I need to talk

to somebody. You know. I'm proud of you for being able to say I need to talk to some because a lot of people say, oh God, something's wrong with me, and then God forbid, they start self medicating or any of that other garbage. Being able to talk to someone else and realize, oh, no, I'm you know what these it's it's almost like when you learn about the steps

of grieving. You know, there's five steps to the grieving process, and once you learn them, you're like, oh, well that explains this, this and this and and it actually makes sense to you and you're able to deal with it better. And I think that's what you're describing with your outreach

and your connection with these veterans organizations. And that's huge for our audience to hear that, because I that's if nothing else, I hope they take that away that if they are ever feeling this way, if they go talk to someone, they might not be so lonely on this. If there's so many of us that have kind of gone through such traumatic experiences, and you made an even view it to be traumatic because for so much e's

move but there's no harm. And of course talking to somebody that actually could probably understand it better than other folks in the civilian world. I think that was you know, that's part of our frustration obviously, right coming back into civilian life, is how do I articulate this in words that experience. I don't want to talk about feelings. It's not about I. It's about a team. You've always been

serving in a team. It's it's odd to be kind of talking about one individual and and that that yourself, or if you're talking to a wounded service member who's got been you know, drastically wounded catastrophically wounded. You know, you feel like, well, my my experience doesn't rate any attention when I see these catastrophically wounded troops. So then you you tend to clam up and go back in your shell, when the truth is is your experience is

just as valid. You just need to talk about it so you can work the process and get through it. I want to ask you something that you know, maybe different cult, I don't know, but to talk about. But there was a time when you lost your vision. Yes, take me if you would, from the beginning to the end. How did it evolve? I mean, what was the diagnosis, What was going on in your mind as this was unfolding for you. I still get a little bit choked

up about this. But so I had just come back from UH service in Iraq, moved back home to New York, living with my folks. I enrolled at St. John's. I'm taking some classes online and one day I start to see that my vision in my right eye starts to start to go. So I had vision, remarkable vision, And what was happening was that there was it looked like basically whatever was in front of me looked like it

was three houses over or something like that. It looked like pretty far away and it was happening to one eye pretty dramatically, and my dad was like, you're just you know, you're going out to the clubs too much and smoking too much shisha and stuff like that. And I said, no, this is for real, this is something that's going on, and I don't know quite what to do. So I thought rest would make it a little bit better.

So I let a little bit more time elapse. Then I start to losing in my other eye, and I finally tell my dad. I said, either you're gonna take me to the hospital, or I'm gonna call a cabinet, or I'm gonna walk and take myself, but I need to get to the hospital ASA, because something's wrong here. For sure. I get to the hospital, the doctors didn't know how best to diagnose it. They start running all

these different scans. At one point, I think the consensus was that I had multiple sclerosis MS, and at that point I'm just devastated, But you know, keep as much composure as possible because it's just a diagnosis. For now. The more time that's elapsing, the worst my vision is getting. And the next day, I'm lucky enough to get an appointment to go see this retinas specialist in Great Neck. Shout out to Dr Jeffrey Shaken, who's remarkable. It took him some time to to actually figure out what was

going on. He said, this is a rare condition, but it's called void coin Nagi Hurada. It's named after the three scientists that studied it. And I don't think I've seen this since I was in med school. And this, mind you, this guy was like seventy or so. He says, Nishantha, this is if not treated, what ends up happening with this thing, is your retinas detached. Yes, so you go completely blind and your your hair follicles they all turn white, and then you start to lose your hearing. So he said,

it's good you're here. Now. They start to run a vision test and I remember my dad being next to me, and my dad's a pretty stoic guy, and um, he definitely never likes to project any sort of kind of vulnerabilities because we've gone through so much in our childhood. I mean, I didn't even get into the fact that Mom wasn't around and all these other things. But he's a he's a pretty well composed guy, and he I

hear him break down a little bit. He starts to he starts to cry because, Um, they literally put a license plate in front of my face. I couldn't tell you what letters or numbers or anything like that. He's like, my God, what happened? And thankfully they put me on this kind of high dose I think of like prednisone or something like that. And for about two months I didn't have strong vision at all. I think my vision when they did that test was about twenty eight hundreds.

So literally that license plate, I couldn't tell you a single letter or number that was on there. At that point, I kind of took that. I felt like I've taken so much of for granted with my own vision. I think for the first time in my life, I had a panic attack. I don't think I've ever had a panic attack before in my life. Despite all the crazy and fun experiences that I've been through to date, this was the first time where I felt like, oh my gosh,

I need to work on my breathing. I need to get my composure back, get regain that perspective so that I can kind of continue. But that that was a big. That's a big, big moment for me. And and I assume, I don't want to assume anything, but it appears that you have had a full recovery. I have had a full recovery, thankfully. I wanted to, you know, look at this almost from like a military perspective, like, what's my after action here? What what happened? What's the diagnosis, what's

the root cause analysis. I go to the doctor and said, what, you know, what happened here? How do I prevent this from ever happening again? And you know what, what what was the cause of all this? And so he said, look, the only thing I could speculate, because this is a rare eye condition that's if if at all prevalent, it's within the Japanese community. And you know, I haven't done it twenty three in me and I know I don't

have any Japanese ancestry. But he said, the only other thing that could be is that you had to exposure potentially to some sort of kind of chemical warfare or those sort of elements. It makes a ton of sense because you spent a year in theater in you Rock and the hometown of the guy who ran the chemical

warfare program. You know, who knows, who knows. I still don't know to this day exactly what the cause was, but the retina specialist is pretty bullish on the fact that it was something that we were potentially exposed to when we were over there, and my body reacted to it um in some you know, over a period of time. But thankfully thing it's in remission now and I do constantly monitor, um, you know, what's what's going on with the vision. But yeah, one of the scariest moments of

my life. For sure. It had to be. It had to be. I you know, you talk about that fear of that anxiety and that panic attack, and I hate that feeling because I know it and it's a terrible feeling. So I can empathize, especially when you're faced with the possibility of losing your sight out of the blue. You're going through life and then all of a sudden you know you're being threatened with that. That's a tremendous thing to over come. Stay tuned for more of the Shan

story after the break. Welcome back to veterans. You should know you have this diverse background. You worked for domestic policy right as an analyst for Goldman Sachs. You were worked in the US Agency for Internal Development. I gotta know what that is. And you work now currently for Chobani and you're the chief of staff of the CEO, so you're the aide. You're the aide de camp uh, but even higher than your chief of staff. So you're

really getting uh. Probably one of the greatest seats in the world as far as learning and understanding leadership like that is one of the great grooming position is to be in to become a leader. Hello, Mr President. So that's what I keep saying, because you're bound for leadership. So tell us about that. Tell us about your civilian son. So I I come back to civilian life around two thousand five, and I am behind the ball, if you will.

From my peers. They had each gone off to college and now they're in the workforce in New York City and they're earning. And so I said, Okay, I need to catch up, and I need to catch up fast because I need to make some money. Uh, I need to get my degree. Uh. So I go off to I enroll at St. John's University. Thank god, they are so thoughtful about supporting folks that are returning from service, I ended up going there for free. Basically they their

their remarkable institution. At the same time, I said, I'm still missing this kind of mission aspect of things, and I still want to break it down to its representative parts again. And so I hear President Clinton speak and he's talking about setting up this foundation and it's focused on international as well as domestic and those sorts of things, and so I was like, wow, this is this is pretty remarkable stuff this guy is doing, and it's here in New York and I happen to be available on

nights and weekends. I want to enroll and as many classes as possible so I can catch up to my peers and at the same time work for this guy and whatever capacity I can work in and keep that mission going. So I end up working on looking at

gentrification issues actually within New York City. One of the things I think that President Clinton and others have gotten flak four is like, hey, he set up his office in Harlem, and folks said, hey, that's the reason that gentrification happened in uh in Harlem, when in reality, like economic livelihoods were actually just increasing and all across the country, and folks were moving up to the places like Harlem

and unfortunately pushing out exist sting businesses. So what I got to do was actually sit in on some of these smaller businesses understand their baseline metrics. I got to work with a couple of consulting firms and we started to put together some plans to support those local and small businesses. So that's how I got to start to get this flavor of domestic policy and what it means

to support businesses and whatnot. With President Clinton. In parallel, going to college, end up graduating in just two years, get that four year degree done in two years. Fantastic. I totally treated like like it was the military. So I broke it down and thankfully graduated with honors, I think because it was just so focused. And I got to travel a ton with President Clinton in the process too, which was which was awesome because whatever your political leanings are,

the guys brilliant, I mean just brilliant. He he can have a full conversation with you, be fully engaged while kind of quickly looking over his notes, and deliver enough to deliver a two hour long speech about being a farmer, which you know he's never been, but he can he can talk about being a farmer as if he's been a farmer's entire life while still having a full fledged

conversation with you. And so working with him was pretty remarkable because he's like, I see, Nishan, that you are pretty motivated to want to go off and do big things. I would love for you to do it with the within the foundation. And now that you've graduated from college, you know, what are what are you thinking? You know, post graduation? And I said, well, I'm thinking about just

taking that job at the foundation. He said, why don't you forget the job at the foundation or forget anything else? Why don't you think about going into engineering school or to law school? I said, President Clinton, I've just worked my tail off to get my four year degree done in just two years. With all due respect, I have no desire to go work on another degree. My peers are earning money, everyone's living a good life. I don't

know if I want to go do this. Had you been talking to your dad or something like how did this?

I think they may have been who knows, so he says, He says, he goes, Nishan, you have far more life experience than your peers do I think getting a degree like an engineering degree or a law degree, it forces you to think outside the box in terms of problem solving, and that's what you need in leadership, and that's what you need when you reach the highest ranks of government or highest ranks of of the not for profit sector

or even business. I was like, look, I hear you, lad and clear, but I want to just go and make some money. So he brought in this guy, Bob Harrison. Bob used to run the Clinton Global Initiative, and Bob used to be a partner at Goldman Sachs. He's like, you've got to think about what does the public sector actually need. It needs to understand how to create sustainable programming and understand what a bottom line actually looks like. And so these are all fungible skills you need to

learn that in the private sector. What better training ground than Goldman Sacks. And you can transition off into the public sector at some point in time if you decide to in the future, what was the time frame was this two thousand eight or two thousand seven, two thousand seven, and so write about the time the ship was hitting the fans, so to speak. Financially exactly exactly. I'm now thinking about whether or not this Goldman Sax move is

the right one. And then finally, I think the main key thing that kind of drove it home for me was President Clinton and Bob both say, look, if if not for nothing, you make some money, you learn something. And the beautiful thing is that they work in small groups. And so just like in the military, you're working in small teams and you're working on execution, and that's what

these guys are highly focused on. But yeah, financial crisis comes two eight and every bank across Wall Street starts laying off a bunch of folks to deal with that crisis. I'm low on the totem pole, and they said, well, guess what, you're responsibly just increased by three x because we're we gotten rid of a couple of folks. Uh. And thankfully, you know, affirmed like Coleman, they have remarkable training, remarkable leaders and folks that have gone on to become

Secretaries of Treasury and masters and so forth. So I felt like I was well equipped, well, you know, trained to kind of go execute in the midst of what was you know, what do they call it? The greatest recession since the depression. Later in the Shot would go on to earn his MBA degree. One day, he received a call from his friend with a job offer. Come

work at the U. S Department of Agriculture. Without any background in agriculture, but plenty of applicable life experience, the Shot joined the U S D as Chief Scientist and the Division of Research, Education and Economics. His Balls was then nominated to run the US Agency for Internal Development. It's the arm of the government that focuses on humanitarian assistance around the world. The Shot followed his ball loss

into this new agency. His first week on the job, the earthquake in Haiti happened, and the Shan found himself boots on the ground helping organize the relief response. The Shan's resume is a list of fearless career moves. Today, he is the chief of staff to the Chief executive Officer of Chobani. If you were to look at my resume, it's like a hodgepodge of things and you're like, what

is the how do I threat this all together? And I would say this experience working with the founder and CEO of Chobani is a kind of a culmination of it all in in some thoughtful kind of packaged role. What I really identified, you know, with Handy, who's the founder of the business, is that he's a small business guy. You know, he came from Turkey, immigrated here in he

came here just to learn English. He ends up getting a small business administration loan and only has about three thousand dollars or so in his pocket, starts learning English a little bit, arts creating this cheese business, turns it into something that we all you know, enjoy today, which

is Chabanni. It's a it's a remarkable brand. I saw so many elements of my own family and him, So if he were to actually come in here right now, he'd probably call me brother before he says anything, because we actually truly treat each other like we're a family.

That's fantastic. More than anything outside of just the phenomenal products and so forth, what Hammy kind of stands for, outside of his origin story and how he got here to the States and and built the brand, what he stands for today is he's the antithesis of a lot of the CEOs that he saw growing up. He said, look, business should be a force for good it should be

a force for change, positive change in communities. We want to do what's good for the customer, and then we also want to do what's good for the communities in which we operate. You seem to find purpose and mission and everything you do. Tell us about your mission. Uh with Chabanni, tell us about why that's important to you. Uh. Tavani is pretty unique place it Uh. You know, we don't have a corporate social responsibility type of department within

the company itself. The whole company, from the lowest levels to the highest levels, they kind of always want to do what's right for the community. And so the mission for us is always delivering delicious, nutritious, natural and accessible food. So we follow this acronym using our military world d n n A, and the accessibility part of it became front and center for me, you know, particularly during the pandemic,

we turned our cafe into a food bank. We structured different partnerships to kind of get our products into food banks across the country. A lot of great companies came across and decided to go support delivering food. There was so much food and security actually, which was so surprising to see during the pandemic so it was pretty awesome to be a part of a company that thinks about food not only for just like our specific customers, but

for the entire country. So it's that acronym of delicious, nutritious, natural, accessible, is like kind of like, what's the mission and delivering getting that food out there. That's a really great mission. I can see why you wanted to get on board with it. I would say one other thing though, that Hampty is very much focused on is refugees, and so of our work force Sierra at Chabani is composed of

immigrants and refugees. In fact, I think at one point in time we had maybe like nineteen translators in the plant helping refugees kind of get integrated into supporting the mission of developing our our yogurt products up in upstate New York. Because we had totally employed everybody in one town, we said, what's the next town over? They said it's Utica. Utica has got this big refugee population. Uh. And they said, but hobdy, they don't really speak English that well. He's like, great,

I don't speak English that well either. Will bust them over and we'll get translators and we'll train them how to do the job. So where I get to kind of come full circle now is this country is a wonderful place for opportunity, and you have the refue g cap that's now since risen, and we're now also supporting folks that served in uniform with US in Afghanistan. So the special immigrant folks that came over are coming over to this country with a special immigrant visa. They're looking

for opportunities, they're looking for jobs. And so Hamdi's got a foundation called the Tent Foundation. Uh and Chibani is one of the anchor kind of businesses that's supporting the Tent Foundation in terms of employing those refugees in uh Chibani and other businesses across the country. I love that, I really really love that that that to me is fulfilling promises of keeping our word as a nation. So your commitment to veterans is pretty clear. Your your commitment

to this country is obvious. What are some ways that you stay connected to the ventry community. The military is such a big part of my life in terms of shaping who I was and creating that structure. I wanted to figure out what's the best way to kind of engage and help some of these veteran service to organizations give back to the community. And so I said, well, how how can I be a thought partner for them?

So I took a few approaches. One was I had this transition out of the military to go into the private sector, and I had my learning experience when I was looking at those different bios and so forth, and so I said, I could be a mentor to folks. And so I started serving as a mentor to veterans that were leaving the service to help them figure out how they can come up with their game plan to go join the private sector. The other way that I

did it was actually with Shabani itself. One day I was sitting down with our founder and CEO and said, hey, this is been a big part of my life. I would love more than anything to kind of give back. And he said, well what are you thinking. I said, well, why don't we use the power of the brand to go support other NGOs that are supporting veterans. And so the other piece of it was on housing. So there's a beauty of wonderful NGO called the Operation home Front.

We ended up structuring a partnership with them at Chabani and we created a red, white and blue yogurt. Actually, so every dollar that you buy of the Operation Homefront SKEW goes to go support veterans getting homes. So that was another way in which to kind of stay engaged and support the veteran community. And then finally I looked at I A v a UM, and I said, well,

how can how can I help those? One of one of their commercials that they had was super powerful, and I don't know if you remember this one, Rob, but it was a veteran that's in the middle of I want to say, Madison Square Park, he's walking, he's alone, and then he goes to shake another veteran's hand, and all of a sudden everything kind of comes to life.

And I said, well, I can continue to also serve as an advocate, a mentor for folks that are kind of coming out of military service and help them also with their jobs. So I looked at two different vsos to go help them with the job Integration vis IS For those listening at Home Veteran Service Organization Veterans, Okay, thank you very much our acronyms. You know, I don't want to lose anybody, I want them to stay with this something because that's amazing. That's the kind of work

that I don't know, I love hearing about it. I think there's probably I think the last I heard there was something crazy like fifty registered veterans organizations, and I think I've met with all of them, um for one reason or another. You know, they want me to be a spokesperson or do something. And I listened to their

missions and they're they're always amazing. But to hear when these organizations are supported by Corporate America or supported by other resources that can make their missions come true, help them fulfill what they set out to do, to me, is one of the most honorable things in the world. So thank you, Thank you so much for continuing to keep that bridge open between the civilian and the veteran community. I will just add one thing though to it, Rob, is a lot of a lot of us that you

have served in uniform. Nobody wants to hand out. And I would say a lot of these veteran service organizations are structured in such a way that they're just providing you the tools, They're not necessarily handing everything you onto you with a silver platter, so you're not being spoon fed. These are great institutions that are out there, and I'm so happy that it's grown to be. You know over,

I love that too, and I'm with you. I think most of the least of the organizations I work with are designed to give you tools and skills so that you can be a self sustaining individual, so that you can go out there and succeed exactly. So thank you so much for spending time with us and talking to us and telling us your story. Uh, it's a remarkable one.

I can't wait to hear what you're gonna do next as far as whether you're going to continue to develop in the private sector or if you're gonna become president of United States. It's whatever you want. Although right now being PRESIDENTE say, it's a tough job, real, real tough job. Nobody there's nobody. Nobody's winning that one right now. So but whatever you do, just keep being a leader because that's what this country needs. So thank you very much

for your time. It was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you, Rob. I really appreciate being on the program, and thank you for doing what you've done in terms of your service of the country my pleasure. I want to thank the Sean Roy again for joining me on today's podcast. I am beyond and pressed with his drive and his career, and I cannot wait to see what new role in industry he decides to tackle next. Who knows, maybe we'll be a run for the Oval Office. Thanks for listening

to Veterans you Should Know. To hear more inspiring stories of perseverance and camaraderie, check out all our episodes, including those from season one, featuring veterans who have overcome incredible obstacles and found renewed purpose in their civilian lives. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast. We would love to hear from you. You can listen to the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,

or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Veterans you Should Know as a special four parts series from I Heart Radio and hosted by me Rob Wriggle. Our show is written and produced by Molly Sosia, Nikkia Swinton, and Jackie Perez, with assistance from Quincy Fuller. The show is edited, sound designed and mixed by James Foster and Matt Stilla.