Making a difference for veterans

Aaron Shaw’s second combat tour of Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps was spent along the Syrian border, in an area that had not yet seen coalition forces.  

“Our unit went out there to train the Iraqi border patrol force, make connections with community leaders and build rapport,” says Shaw, who now serves as assistant director of recruitment in the Graduate Programs Office in the School of Management. “We also ended up re-engineering the entire port of entry to and from Syria while we were there.

“We were a 25-person, hand-picked team — Regional Border Team North — led by a full-bird colonel and seconded by two lieutenant colonels. The unit was created especially for that mission,” he explains.

“After I completed my first tour in 2007 — it being the Marines and knowing there was more to be done over there, I decided to go back in mid-2008. This was a very unique opportunity.”

Shaw’s second tour, a full year, ended in June 2009. After he returned home, he completed his commitment to the Marines as a recruiter, working out of the Rochester area.

In 2014, after landing a job with a logistics company, Ahold USA Inc., Shaw tore the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in his right knee and needed surgery. While recuperating the following January and February, he began seeing media coverage of the UB Bulls possibly making a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

“Having a degree in sports management, I wondered what else was going on at UB,” Shaw says. “As I was going through the website, I noticed a position listed for a recruiter for the School of Management. With three years of recruiting for the Marines under my belt, I decided to give it a shot.”

He landed the job, and since arriving at UB in May 2015, he’s worked with Erin O’ Brien, assistant dean and director of graduate programs at the School of Management, to increase the number of veterans who enroll in the school’s full-time MBA and four specialty master’s programs.

“My time here has been incredible,” Shaw says. “One of our goals here each year is to bring veterans into our programs. There were zero vets in the full-time MBA program when Erin arrived. By last year, applications stood at 3 percent and it jumped to 8 to 10 percent this year as word has spread throughout the community.”

In recruiting for the management school’s graduate programs, Shaw meets veterans in Buffalo and Western New York, New York City, Washington, D.C., and at SUNY campuses across the state.

“We are targeting the highest-quality students we can find,” he says. “Veterans I speak to who are close to completing an undergraduate degree — especially those within the SUNY system — realize the value in UB’s MBA programs in terms of return on investment.

“Making the transition from military service to civilian life is not easy, and there are a lot of misconceptions, a lot of assumptions that can make doing that more difficult,” Shaw says. “Employment training, career guidance or educational opportunities can make all the difference for a veteran who is preparing for his or her next step in life.  

“That’s why I’ve tried as much as possible to be an active member within the veterans’ support community, which I view as separate from what I’m doing here at UB.”

After being invited last summer to speak to a group of veterans who were close to leaving military service, Shaw realized that veterans who had some college or who were commissioned officers are more likely to succeed in readjusting to their post-military life than those who are high school graduates.

“It was a transition summit up at Fort Drum. That was when the lightbulb went off for me,” Shaw recalls.

“There is opportunity to use not only the platform that I’m in in terms of our master’s-level programs to help set up veterans for success, but vice versa, to provide much-needed general assistance in basic resume-building, interview skills and everything that’s necessary to go from the service to civilian.”

Shaw notes most veterans do not know where to turn for assistance.

“So I spoke with representatives of Soldier for Life, the organization sponsoring the summit. I now go up to Fort Drum on a quarterly basis as a volunteer to speak to groups of soon-to-be-veterans and tell them ‘this is what I went through; this is how I got to where I am now.’”

Shaw says that at each of these summits, a panel of veterans — all representing companies that are military-friendly — is asked questions about what they do: When did they serve, what did each person do in the service and how did they make the transition?

“There was a huge gap between the time they left the service and where they are today,” Shaw says of the panel members. “Not a single one of them left the military and walked into the positions that they now hold. And each branch of the service was represented — male, female, different levels of management. There was somebody for everybody in the room.

“I bring my resume — each copy of my resume; in fact, each version that I’ve created — and I show the soldiers in the transition group how I have changed it. I tell them that my first stab at it was absolutely horrible, littered with military jargon, and I explain that I wasn’t any different than any of them in that I didn’t have a clue what it needed to look like.”

Shaw tells those who are about to leave the service that they have made significant accomplishments in their military careers, and at young ages. The key, he adds, is translating that into something that someone outside of the military is going to understand.

“I make the point that anyone who has left the service and is looking to enter the workforce needs to answer the employer’s question: ‘What can this person do for me?’”

Shaw views his meetings and conversations with soldiers in the Fort Drum transition summits as an opportunity to be an active participant in assisting the veterans’ community. Soldier for Life is one of a number of organizations whose purpose is to help veterans and their families make the transition from military service to civilian life.

“I made the connection to work with them through my position at UB, but it is separate from my work here. If the individual is interested in business management education, then I have a separate conversation with them about the management school and the different programs that we offer.

“Everybody says they are military-friendly these days. Companies want to help, but they also are interested in hiring the best of the best. I tell my groups each time that you can’t just put ‘I’m a veteran’ and expect people to come knocking. There has to be the quality factor as well.”

Shaw also advises new veterans to persevere. “You may wonder what you are going to do with this new phase of your life, or whether you will be able to find a job. You may think about going back to school, but not know where to start.

“Seek out help when you need it. Be persistent and take advantage of opportunities. Eventually it will pay off.”