How PreVeteran Began
Our founder Jason retired in 2014 as a U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel after 20 years of service. Upon retirement, he and his family moved back to his home state of Wyoming where he was hired into a remote, entry-level business development role within Rockwell Collins—an Aerospace & Defense company then headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Within 14 months, he was named the head of business for Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
While the quick ascension within the company was personally exhilarating and exciting, Jason was also struck with another sobering reality—he was not equipped business-wise to flourish in either of these roles. These gaps were obvious with both roles but were much more pronounced in his executive role.
It was during that three year period as Managing Director for N. Asia that Jason endeavored to never let a service member or military spouse lack preparation for the private sector again. In retrospect, that was the day PreVeteran was born!
Heavily influenced by his own accelerated journey to get oriented within the business world, Jason began using business tools to research the military transition market and outcomes to make an assessment. After two years of exhaustive research, the conclusion was obvious—although he had never heard it before—transitioning military members are underperforming in multiple domains in the first two years following military transition.
In other words, the sobering reality that he was not equipped for private sector employment didn’t impact just him, it impacted everyone leaving the military.
In other words, the current Military Transition 1.0 model is not preparing military members for private sector employment success. This reality negatively impacts the individual service member, their family, and organizations downstream from transition, including employers and higher education institutions.
Highly motivated by the poor outcomes on the service member and the impact on military families, in the 2017-2019 time period, Jason set about on a journey to create a better system. Influenced by his father, Jim, who always said, “Want a better life, make better decisions,” Jason intuitively knew he wanted to create a highly individual program where military members are aware of this less-than-optimal Military Transition 1.0 environment and have a better choice to help set themselves and their families up for success.
Our Service Members & Their Families Deserve Better
Our nation’s all-voluntary military is filled with the very best young Americans this country has to offer. Instead of just “providing them resources” Jason wants them to regain their thinking and decision making autonomy before they take off the uniform.
“When we join the military, part of the intentional training process is to remove of portion of our individuality and supplant a group ethos of Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard, or Guardian. We carry that group ethos throughout our career but have to eventually return back to being an individual in order to be successful. This means we need to regain your autonomy…and that’s what we do in PreVeteran.” — Jason Anderson
Our service members don’t want a handout and they don’t want pity. They want the tools to understand how to think about and contextualize the private sector so they can be comfident, competent and self-regulating in the very different private sector environment.
“This is how we get the individual to flourish for themselves, their families, and the national workforce.” — Jason Anderson
PreVeteran is Scaling Individual Training & Has New Corporate and Higher Ed Training Offers
Now that PreVeteran has proven the efficacy of individual training, starting in the Fall of 2023 we’re scaling our operations to positively impact more individual military members and military spouses.
In addition, with the unique insights gained from running our individual training pilot for the past two years, we’re aware of how non-PreVeteran trained military members entering the employment and higher education environments may exhibit behaviors that are not optimized for either themselves, the employer or higher education institution.
Starting in the summer of 2023, PreVeteran now offers corporate and higher education training to help optimize the veteran and the organizations who seek their many talents.