The VetsConnection Podcast
Join host Scott McLean, a veteran and also a passionate advocate for veterans' well-being. Each week Scott will bring you an episode that will feature insightful conversations with representatives from non-profit organizations dedicated to supporting veterans, as well as experts discussing programs within the Veterans Affairs (V.A.) aimed at assisting veterans with their needs. From discussing innovative therapies to highlighting community resources, this podcast sheds light on the myriad of ways veterans can find support and healing thru nonprofit organizations and also to connect nonprofits with each other in hopes of creating a network that will be beneficial to all.
The VetsConnection Podcast
Ep. 49 - Finding Your Path: How American Corporate Partners Transforms Veteran And Active Duty Spouses Careers
The journey from military service to civilian career success can be one of the most challenging transitions many veterans and military spouses face. In this enlightening conversation with Victoria Thompson from American Corporate Partners (ACP), we uncover a powerful resource that's transforming thousands of veterans' lives through personalized mentorship.
Victoria shares her own compelling journey – from joining the Army at 17 and serving in Psychological Operations to navigating college as a veteran and building a career while supporting her military spouse lifestyle. Her firsthand experience with the "otherness" many veterans feel when reentering civilian life provides authentic context for the work she now does helping others bridge that gap.
At the heart of this episode is the remarkable story of ACP, a nonprofit founded in 2008 that has grown from serving 300 veterans to maintaining approximately 5,000 mentorship pairs at any given time. The program pairs veterans and military spouses with corporate professionals who guide them through the complexities of career transition – from translating military skills on resumes to navigating salary negotiations and professional networking.
What makes ACP unique? Unlike many resources, they focus on meaningful employment rather than just job placement. Their comprehensive human-driven approach (no AI here!) includes one-on-one mentorship lasting a full year with regular check-ins and personalized support. Perhaps most impressive is their track record: proteges who find jobs during mentorship average starting salaries exceeding $90,000, and remarkably, only about 45% have four-year degrees.
The conversation explores how networking has become increasingly critical in today's job market, where AI screening systems often filter out qualified candidates. Victoria shares practical insights about how veterans can overcome common transition challenges, from imposter syndrome to difficulty articulating military experience in civilian terms.
Ready to transform your own transition or support a veteran in your life? Discover how ACP's free mentorship program is building bridges to meaningful careers and restoring hope for the military community. Visit acp-usa.org to learn more or volunteer as a mentor yourself.
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Scott McLean. My guest today is Victoria Thompson. Victoria is with American Corporate Partners, or ACP. Acp helps veterans and spouses find their next career. How you doing, victoria?
Victoria Thompson:I'm doing really well. How are you?
Scott McLean:I'm doing good. Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Victoria Thompson:Thanks for having me.
Scott McLean:Yeah, so let's get into it. Tell us a little about yourself.
Victoria Thompson:I joined the Army when I was 17. Out of high school I went and did psychological operations. I got to go to airborne seer school, language school, did all the fun stuff. I left the service and I knew I wanted to go to college. I had that GI Bill burning in my pocket so I went ahead and pursued public or public relations was the career that, the degree that I got. So I went to college at the University of Akron and I actually ended up being in a place where no one wants to step up.
Victoria Thompson:I feel like volunteering and it's a very common theme. Everyone wants the services. No one wants to step up and do the stuff. So our veteran service organization for the university, our president, was leaving and no, I wanted to do it. So I did it and I got to do that for a year and I was the speaker at my college graduation. Before leaving that I married my husband, who was also. He was prior service but he went back in. He did the green and gold program. He has a couple years left and he'll be retired. So I've been in around and serving the military space since 2006. It's been a wild ride.
Scott McLean:Wow, jumped in at 17 years old, turned 18 in basic training. Is that what you said?
Victoria Thompson:I did. I am the third generation of airborne in my family.
Scott McLean:Wow, yep, that's pretty cool actually.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah, it was my mom and my grandpa. So it wasn't my dad, it was my mom who was airborne.
Scott McLean:Well, there you go. That's a little twist. I'm sure the average person was thinking oh wow, your mom set that standard for you. Very cool Military intelligence she must have been over the moon with that.
Victoria Thompson:She was excited.
Scott McLean:Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. My husband is still a leg, so I have that over him. American corporate partners. What's the background? What's the history of ACP?
Victoria Thompson:Yeah. So Sid Gottfried is our founder. He was there when the Twin Towers went down and he wanted to find a way to give back. He was too old to go into the service and he was thinking about ways that he someone who was in business, banking could give back to the veteran population. So in 2008, he was looking at what is it that veterans are struggling with the most, and one of the things that he saw was unemployment. So to give back in a more meaningful way, he wanted to help people find meaningful employment. That's the whole program is to help people find meaningful employment, because one of the things we notice a lot when we're looking at the veteran community, it's not that we're not getting jobs.
Victoria Thompson:I have plenty of friends who are getting jobs, but they're bouncing around. How many friends do you have that are just going from one job to the next? It's not the right culture, it's not the right fit, it doesn't meet their needs. So, finding a job where you're appreciated, you enjoy what you're doing, you're paid enough, there's benefits, that work for your family, it's hard right. So we're there to fill that gap and we do it through mentorship. We pair someone with that protege based on what it is they want to achieve. And every time we get a grant and we're able to grow, we grow Because we are a nonprofit. Everything we do is free for our proteges. So we didn't used to offer mentorship for spouses, but because we got a grant we were able to start offering mentorship for active duty spouses. And every time we get a little bit more money, we open it up a little bit more. So we're constantly trying to see how many people we can serve in the population, because the military community really deserves meaningful employment.
Scott McLean:So where did the thought process of adding active duty military spouses, because that's a pretty unique niche right there?
Victoria Thompson:It is, and one of the things I'm really proud of is the fact that if you're a military spouses because that's a pretty unique niche right there it is, and one of the things I'm really proud of is the fact that if you're a military spouse, you come to our program. We treat you just like our veterans. You have the same level of service and care. But at the end of the day it was because we're seeing so much the underemployment right of military spouses. So many have degrees, have education, but because of moving all the time and a lot of different constraints with family and deployments, it's really hard for them to get jobs.
Victoria Thompson:And we had a lot of spouse groups come and advocate hey, could ACP look at doing this, because it would be really helpful. Mentorship is transformational for a lot of people. So that was something that we wanted to do. But again, everything we do is grant funded and donation funded. So when we got the donation to do it, it was actually for specifically spouses that grant. That's when we were able to open that piece up and start serving after duty spouses.
Scott McLean:Let me jump back a little bit. How was your transition from the military into?
Victoria Thompson:the civilian life. Because you said transitional and I said I got to know your story behind that.
Victoria Thompson:So I think everyone's transition is different and I was lucky that I knew I wanted to go to college. But a lot of people don't have that. They don't know what they want to do when they get out. Even if they have a GI bill, some people never use it, and for me, college was. It was scary because I feel like I was behind. You know, you have all these young people. You're going through college at the same time as them. You're five years behind what they've already started. Some of them are, you know, 18 in the same class as you.
Scott McLean:And how old were you when you went in, when you went into college?
Victoria Thompson:So I was 20, 21.
Scott McLean:Okay.
Victoria Thompson:Around there 21. Yeah, and it was just, I felt sad, different world, different world.
Scott McLean:So you grew up in that military world where they grew up.
Scott McLean:Just, I'm not going to say you weren't a regular teenager, right or regular, you know, young adult. But that reminds me of a story when I was stationed in the Philippines. I went in when I was 23. I went to college first, then I went into the military and there was this kid from Chicago, 18 years old. He was going home on leave because at mid-tour you could go home Like you're there for two years. And I told him.
Scott McLean:I said, Brian, it's going to be a different world when you go back. You've been hanging around in a different mindset, with different age groups. You could be with an NCO, that's 27, or you're with another kid, that's 18. So you're going to go home and your friends are probably still going to be drinking in the woods and trying to get someone to buy beer for them and so on. I said so just be ready for that. It's not going to be the same as when you left. You've been gone for a year and you don't realize how much you grew up in that one year, considering being halfway across the planet right he goes on his.
Scott McLean:It takes his whole 30 days. He comes back and he's like you were absolutely right, he goes. That's exactly what they were doing. I ended up going to the bars with my father like hanging out with him and his friends.
Scott McLean:Even though he wasn't evasive, like he's in the military, it's like in somewhere in like Illinois, this small town like yeah come on in, kid, we don't care, we know the cops type deal right, and so I can only imagine it was the same, with you going from four years of doing what you did and growing up faster than you probably thought you were, and then you go into that world. Was that something?
Victoria Thompson:So when I was in, that was right after 9-11, well, not right after, but very close to 9-11. So we were on a very high tempo deployment pace. Psyop is underneath the special operations umbrella, so we deploy and they try not to make us deploy for a year because they don't want you to be stabilized, they want you to be able to go back out. So I missed every holiday for the three years. I was shippable and I went to Afghanistan, I went to Qatar, I went to Yemen, I was a program manager. So at 18, I was in Afghanistan running two national programs. Because PSYOP is kind of like marketing, right. So we're doing billboards, advertising, marketing for these different programs and I'm running it. I'm creating the things, I'm working with the graphic designers, I'm working with the publishing and everything, talking to the embassy, working with the FBI guys.
Victoria Thompson:And then I go to college and it's like you know nothing, you start over. And I had some college credit already. I took AP classes in high school and my military background gave me, so I didn't have to take language in college, which was great. So I got those things, but I was still starting over at the same level as teenagers and being treated the same way and their level of experience and understanding of the world was so small and it just gave you that feeling of otherness, you know. So we created some different supports at the college and I was very proud of the supports we were able to set up. We had a veterans lounge so we could get away from it, all you know, and you weren't studying at the library with the kids and stuff. But I think that the people who retired out when I went through college the people that were retired and going through college were the ones that had the biggest transition shock, right, Because they're, you know, 40 something going through college with 18 year olds and it was difficult. So we had a large drop off rate for our veteran population in the college and we were working on ways to fix that and to make it better and let them know what resources they had.
Victoria Thompson:But a lot of people aren't willing to ask for help. You know that mindset that I do it myself, so getting people to accept help was just like pulling teeth. I even offered if you wanted to come to the bar because we're all older you can come and have a free beer on me to sit and help talk about resources and we'll have a good time. But no one wanted to have one person come, so just finding ways to get those resources to them in a way that wasn't, you know, forcing them in a way to do things they weren't comfortable with.
Victoria Thompson:So we ended up doing videos and we would record one resource a week and just email it out to them so they could have it and hopefully they would use it, and we had a little bit of a drop in our rate of dropouts. But it was still pretty sad to see the number of veterans who just don't make it in college because they don't feel like they have support and they feel very othered because they're older, because they have that lived experience, and it can be a little bit overwhelming to try and fit in when you already look very different because you're so much older than the average population and there's also the part of that whereas if they were a combat veteran, that's a whole, nother element yeah, add into the equation you know of going back and dealing I'm not saying dealing with, but being around that demographic who has no, I mean zero clue about what you went through.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah.
Scott McLean:And that goes for men and women.
Victoria Thompson:It does.
Scott McLean:And so I could see how that is a a hard transition, but good on you for trying to uh and and somewhat succeeding and knocking down a little bit of that barrier, you know. And so, okay, you graduate, you graduate college, right? Yep, I hope I didn't jump ahead of that. I thought when I said that question I'm like, well, what if she didn't?
Victoria Thompson:I did.
Scott McLean:I got my bachelor's degree there you go I think you would actually mention that yeah, so you get your bachelor's degree and you say, all right, now I'm going out into this world. Right, yeah, and where did that take you?
Victoria Thompson:I'm a military spouse, so wherever my husband goes, so okay. So we went to Korea for a little bit. It was really cool. I got to go on the subway, which is in English and Korean it subway, which is in English and Korean. It was a really neat experience, highly recommended if you ever get a chance to go. It was very cool. I love the food. And then after Korea we went to Germany.
Victoria Thompson:Getting jobs while you're stationed overseas as a spouse is very difficult. I know they just had some different requirements dropped for people. The SOFA agreements were just changed, so hopefully that means more spouses are able to work overseas. But when I was going through and we were living in Germany, we were only in Korea for a year, so it wasn't long enough to really care about getting a job In Germany. We were there for three years and getting a job there was if it was on post I could get it. If it was off post it'd be a nightmare to work on the paperwork just to get a job, and then it wouldn't pay enough for daycare and I ended up having two kids while we were in Germany. I'm like I'm not going to pay more in daycare than I make you know.
Victoria Thompson:So I ended up volunteering, which is my. One of my passions is volunteering, so I did that for the Red Cross. I served as the program director's co-part, so I got to do that. We led a lot of different resource fairs and taught people about emergency messages and the different resources that the Red Cross offers. I still volunteer with them. And then I also volunteered with American Forces Network, so our armed forces- armed forces network.
Victoria Thompson:So I got to volunteer DJ and go on and you know, tell people military Mondays a little bit more military facts and jargon and fun things, which was a really new experience for me. And then I worked with the garrison chaplain to do some suicide prevention because that was something that we were seeing. I think we had four suicides in two months, which was alarming. You know that's a lot, and it was really mostly younger men who were just staying in their barracks room playing video games. So finding ways to get people to be engaged, working with the better opportunities for single soldiers and creating different ways to get people to be engaged, working with the Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers and creating different ways to get people to ask those uncomfortable questions was a big part of my time there. Then we moved. I got a job. I worked for hospice and I was a volunteer coordinator there to help people be comfortable sitting with someone who's passing, and I love that. I actually really enjoyed.
Scott McLean:God bless you for that.
Victoria Thompson:It's a beautiful thing to be able to help someone, because we are all going to be there at some point. But to have your last days with your loved ones is special and not everyone gets that. So I got to do that and I got to stand up a veteran support system within that organization. So Affinist Hospice is now able to put the vets I forget what it's called honoring veterans. We honor veterans, so it's a little logo that you get after you start a veteran recognition program within your hospice. You have to do training on what it is to means to serve veterans. You have to do a different program. So on Veterans Day we'd go and meet with different patients who were veterans in some of the nursing homes not just our patients but all the veterans make sure they got recognized and celebrated. We learned about retiring flags. We created a new program called Retire your Flag with Honor and basically people could bring their flag in because one of the ways you can have your flag get appropriately disposed of is burning it.
Victoria Thompson:So, helping it get cremated with a veteran who's passing was like a last way to honor it right.
Scott McLean:Wow, that's pretty interesting.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah, so people gave their flags to us. We would make sure that the veterans who wanted those that were in the nursing homes we served, would be able to request that flag, and one of my volunteers was a chaplain so he would go and deliver it to the family. So it's a really neat way to kind of touch on a lot of the different points and make the family feel special too.
Scott McLean:What a great idea.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah, so we got to do that, and then we moved, and we moved. I feel like that's a common theme.
Scott McLean:Hence the military spouse. Then we moved.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah. Then we moved and I got to work for the Red Cross as a program manager. So I was the regional program manager for Georgia's Southeast region. I covered four different installations, mostly Fort Stewart. And the Red Cross doesn't just do the emergency messages, we also do crisis help for veterans so you can call in and ask for resources. So I did that. I also led the resiliency program for the Red Cross and that was during COVID. So it was really challenging to find ways to help people without being in person. So we got a lot of people to go through like stress relief classes, understanding and coping with communication issues, and there was a lot of people requesting those services during that time. So we did as much as we could to help the community while they were going through those troubling times.
Victoria Thompson:Then we moved. So after we moved I ended up taking a job as a secretary at what is now the local school for us here, frederick County. So I was working as the executive assistant for two of the different programs diversity, equity and inclusion, and advanced academics and I worked there for a few years before I got the job that I have. Now I'm a senior operations associate for American Corporate Partners. I also work on the outreach team, so I do presentations for ACP. I reach out to set up new partnerships. We work with a lot of different organizations. We don't believe in a this or that. It's very much. Use as many resources as you can. Make sure you know what you have. If there's something you can't use right now, try and remember it for later. So I really like that we're there encouraging you to reach out and have as much support as possible. Not just use us, but use every resource you can, because there's a lot of them out there yes, there is, that's.
Scott McLean:Yeah, I'll tell you what, victoria, I've never said this on my podcast. You make me tired just listening to what you've done in the past. You're a very inspirational person, like you are just into it. I do like helping though yeah, well, evidently, I think now I'm the president of rec, so that's my current volunteerism what's that?
Victoria Thompson:I'm the president of our town's parks and rec committee, again because the president stepped down and no one wanted to do it and I said, all right, I do this because it needs to be done.
Scott McLean:And our mutual friend Mark Flynn was the one that mentioned this. He is another guy, that one of those. It must be a Frederick thing, because he's always busy doing something too.
Victoria Thompson:So I found that people who volunteer consistently are serial volunteers. They're probably volunteering in multiple capacities because there's a need in the community. It's not so much that we love volunteering although I do and I'm very passionate about that and speaking about why you should, it's just that I see things that I want in my community complaining about why don't we do this. I want to be part of hey. Now we do this, so I get to go out there and kind of poke people and say you asked for this, now you have to attend, because if you don't attend, I won't do it again.
Scott McLean:Let's talk a little bit about or you know a lot about American corporate partners. I want to punch out some numbers here for the listeners. So ACP has a mentoring program and these numbers are fascinating. Mentoring program success 37,000 plus veterans and active duty spouses have become ACP alumni since 2010. 37,000 plus 4,606 veterans and active duty spouses became ACP alumni in 2024 alone. 90,000 plus dollars ACP's estimate of the average starting salary for protégés who obtain a job during their mentorship. And 3,085 protégés obtained meaningful employment during the course of their mentorship in 2024 alone. And these are some of the protégés. Well, it says protégés obtained employment at 1,630 or 830 companies, including I'm going to name these off Amazon, bank of America, blackrock, bloomberg, disney, goldman Sachs, johnson Johnson, johnson Controls International Paper, lockheed Martin and controls International paper, lockheed Martin, mckinsey and Company, morgan Stanley, northrop Grumman, pwc, rtx, visa, ubs, usaa and Wells Fargo. That's impressive.
Victoria Thompson:You want to know something even more impressive.
Scott McLean:Yeah.
Victoria Thompson:Only about 45% of our protégés actually have a four-year degree, so that starting salary is not reflected of having higher education necessarily. One of my favorite things to talk about is, at the end of the day, when you're coming through this, you get to talk to your mentor, not just about your resume, not just about your skills and experience, which is very important. You need to make sure you're translating those things appropriately. But you also get to talk about pay negotiation and, for people who are leaving the service and have never had to do that, that's a very hard conversation to have.
Victoria Thompson:So having someone talk to you about, hey, these are the things you need to be asking for, these are the benefits you should be expecting, these are the things to talk about in that conversation and how to approach it helps so much when you're looking at what is my pay going to be right, because they're always going to try and pay you the least possible amount for the job but if you can articulate what it is you did when you were in the service, because translating your military skills is a challenge not only for us but even for the HR people. One of the mentors we had come on board said look, I think this person might be qualified, but I can't read that. I don't know what that is. It doesn't line up with the job description, it's not getting past me. They're not getting an interview because it might work but because of the way it's written, it doesn't work for us right now. So he came on board just to help people translate experience. Because if you have skills and experience, if you've been a first sergeant, if you've been managing operations and program project management and doing all those things, having a degree isn't necessarily important, but you have to be able to market yourself appropriately and demonstrate those skills and that experience. Then have that pay negotiation conversation, because you can get those jobs if you have those things. And the only other thing I'm going to say is networking. At the end of the day, if you are job searching, I don't care if you're a veteran or anyone else networking is one of the most important things you are going to do in this job market.
Victoria Thompson:When you look at what AI has done to the job market, it has done a lot of damage because those HR people are getting over 200 applications each and every time they post a job.
Victoria Thompson:So filtering through that is really difficult. That's why we're seeing jobs get reposted and reposted because people are putting in a application that looks like it lines up because they had AI fix their application, but it doesn't actually mean that they have those qualifications or skills in the interviews, right. So then they have to go back through the interview process and do it all over again with 200 applicants again. So when you see that and you get discouraged, it's not your fault, it's not the HR person's fault, it's AI. So at the end of the day, if you know someone in an organization, your chances of having your resume, looked at by a person and not just filtered, goes up significantly and then you get an interview and then you get to have those conversations right. But networking is the single most important thing you are going to do in a job search today, so highly recommend it. That's how I got this job are going to do in the job search today, so highly recommend it.
Scott McLean:That's how I got this job. Yeah, so that's the thing when you get out, I did 10 years, so I was even more, you know, in a military mindset when I got out than just four years, and four years is still a long time you do get reset you do?
Scott McLean:I got offered my job by customs at the time it was us customs, now it's cbp and they asked me so we're gonna start you off at, I think they said like 30, 34 000 a year. This is back in like 1997, yeah, and I was like, and they asked me is that okay? And I was like, yeah, like not even thinking that that number one is a lot of money compared to what I was making while I was in Right.
Scott McLean:Only to find out it's not a lot of money and I didn't know how to say well, is there a negotiation here?
Victoria Thompson:Yeah.
Scott McLean:You know, is there? Does my experience? Okay, my experience got me this far, but is there another? But is there another thing we could talk about? I had no concept about that, because I think the majority of veterans that get out they I don't know I could be wrong here, but I don't think they take any of those transition courses. I know I didn't.
Victoria Thompson:I did, and I should have.
Scott McLean:You didn't, I did, I did all the classes.
Victoria Thompson:I'm a nerdy person. I got every book, every pamphlet, and the thing that I found frustrating is, even then there was a lot of resources but a lot of it didn't feel applicable Right, so it wasn't something I had used. It wasn't something that really was functional for me. I needed to have specific qualifications for different things and it ended up being stuff I put in my I love me binder and I haven't looked at in a while, you know. So it's great to have those things, but to know when to use them is very much difficult, even when you're in the classes.
Victoria Thompson:So having one of the things that we do that I really like is you have support the whole year. So you get paired up with a mentor. That's in the career area that you're looking at going into, but you have someone like me who's sitting there saying, hey, do you need anything? And it's basically a concierge service in the background of your mentorship. So if you say, hey, I've never written a resume, I don't know where to start. I got you, I'm gonna send you a template, some resources for targeting it. I can even send you stuff for translating your military experience, no-transcript, and hopefully one of those things is helpful sometime. It's a lot more convenient for your actual achievement of goals.
Scott McLean:Or it's better than running it through AI and it feeding a lot of false information or bloated information that you don't really fit into that, but it looks good.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah, it looks good.
Scott McLean:It certainly looks good. So ACP is nationwide.
Victoria Thompson:We are. We even have a couple of proteges that are international, so you can still do that if you're overseas.
Scott McLean:How many states are?
Victoria Thompson:you in Every single state. We have proteges and mentors in every single state. I have several mentors in the Middle East. I have several proteges in Europe. I have a couple that are right now in Korea, so it just depends on where you need us. We will tell you that you have to work on the time zone, so make sure you're lining up your time zone calls when you're reaching out to your mentor, but you can be anywhere in the world.
Scott McLean:Anywhere in the world. So I'm a veteran. I just got out and I hear this interview and like yeah, I'm in, I'm in South Florida. Let's go to the website, right, which?
Victoria Thompson:is acp-usaorg.
Scott McLean:Yep and it gives you all the information you need to know, right there, yep, right, and now. You won't necessarily I wouldn't necessarily be linked up with a mentor in florida per se no okay, all right, so it's it would be virtual. It just depends on where they are and how you work it out yep.
Victoria Thompson:So about 80 of our mentorships are long distance. We're focusing on career fit rather than location, cause if I can find you someone that's local that doesn't have the same career area, it's not going to be helpful. What you can do is take and use our one-time information calls. You can request those anytime after you get a mentor to speak to someone that's local to you to talk about the job market and to do some networking, but they won't necessarily have the same career area. So we can't pair you based on location If it's not going to help you reach the goals. We want you to reach your goal, whatever that is. For some people it's starting a small business, for other people is getting a job and for some of our spouses it's.
Victoria Thompson:I haven't been in the job market for a while. I don't know where to start. I don't know what I want to do. So actually I don't know what I want to do is the most common one we get overall, like military or spouses. I don't know what I want to do is a continuous problem, no matter where you are. Even the people that are out and they've been out for a while are like, hey, I don't. I don't know where I'm going but I have paused here and I'm not growing. So how do I grow? Or pivot from what I'm doing now? So it's common.
Scott McLean:And the process to get into the program. Is there any stipulations other than being a veteran or a spouse of a veteran? Is there any? How's that process?
Victoria Thompson:So in order to be eligible for our program, you have to have 180 days active duty service after 9-11. Again, we're a grant funded organization, so whenever we get more money, we open it up to more organization. So whenever we get more money, we open it up to more people. But that's what we have. For our veterans, you can be active right now in transitioning out. We ask that you be about six months from transition because we want to make sure that mentor can walk with you through your transition, and six months after as well. And then for our spouses, you can be an active duty spouse, the spouse of a disabled veteran or a gold star spouse, and on that application for spouses it's a dropdown menu. They just select what their eligible criteria is and then we don't ask questions after that. We just have to know that you qualify based on one of those things.
Scott McLean:So the six month out program? How would I so? I'm six months out. How would I find out about this? Are you? Do you have any type of relationship with the DOD? Yes, you do, and for the listeners, she's nodding her head big we do so.
Victoria Thompson:We work with the TAP programs, we work with the USO, we reach out to the different FRGs Like we're trying in as many ways as possible. One of the biggest, what's FRGs?
Scott McLean:for the listeners that might not know oh sorry, family readiness groups.
Victoria Thompson:So we reached out to the family readiness groups. We're trying to be in as many places as possible. It's just difficult because we are a smaller nonprofit. That being said, our larger partners, like Wounded Warrior Project, knows about us and refers people. Uso, like I said, refers people to us. Onward Opportunity lets me do a presentation for all their classes so they get to learn about us too. We're also working with some of the skill bridges, so whenever they go, their cohorts come in and do presentations. We do presentations for them. I get to do presentations for a lot of that, which is really fun. I love the questions. They always come with some interesting questions depending on who we're working with, but at the end of the day, I think the majority of people hear about us word of mouth. My friend went through it and now I'm telling you and that's great because it means people like what we do. But it's also great that we're able to grow organically in that way.
Scott McLean:What's the growth been like? Is it consistently or does it level off? Is there an ebb and flow?
Victoria Thompson:We have been consistently growing since we started in 2008. The first year, I think, we had 300 participants in 2008. And this year we keep around 5,000 pairs at any given point in time and we've been growing like overall end to end. We are constantly hiring to make sure we can meet the needs of our participants.
Scott McLean:And what was the first year?
Victoria Thompson:300 participants.
Scott McLean:And what year was that?
Victoria Thompson:2008.
Scott McLean:That's amazing. Up to 5,000 plus.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah, 5,000 plus, at any time, pairs that we're working with and then people that we're trying to pair is on top of that number. So I think there's about 7,000 proteges that we're actively either trying to pair or working with within a pair right now.
Scott McLean:How many people, for lack of a better term, volunteer slash work for ACP?
Victoria Thompson:So we have paid staff that's your operations associates that are doing that concierge service in the back, that's needed. Yep, they make everything keep on track. You're kind of like your accountability buddies there. So those, we have about 75 personnel right now, but for mentors who are volunteers right now I can give you the number it's over 500. 5,000.
Scott McLean:You just broke up over how long, I didn't know.
Victoria Thompson:So we have over 5,000 mentors right now. So paired mentors we've got 4,790, and unpaired mentors we've got 1,082. Wow, so those are all volunteers. And when you think about it, and what you get out of mentors is not just having that career conversation. A lot of them stay in touch afterwards. A lot of our pairs keep that friendship. You know, once our service ends and that's the goal is to pair you up with someone that has so much in common with you or that can help you so much that after you leave our program you still have some support.
Scott McLean:Well, a good mentor. Once that relationship is established, that's an investment of their time and their knowledge, and I think it only makes sense that if I'm mentoring somebody and they get to where they want it to be like, I'd really want to know how you doing Like let's stay in touch, Keep me posted, and if there's anything else, I can do because that's the relationship.
Scott McLean:And if there's anything else I can do because that's the relationship. Look, I'm sure that is not like, hey, we talked for a week and I got him a job and I'm on to the next person or her a job. It's not that simple. This is an investment in both of them in their time, and it becomes a relationship inevitably. Now what happens if that scenario of this isn't working? Like I'm not feeling this person.
Victoria Thompson:It person.
Scott McLean:Yeah, I'm sure it does.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah, and it's totally normal. We completely understand. We are here to make sure things go smoothly, so we do mediation. If it's something where it's like I'm just not feeling it, I need a little more than that, cause I'm trying to get you to the goal that you listed. So call me your goals to get a job doing this and I pair you with someone that's doing that, then I need to know what specifically isn't working. So either we can fix it or we can find something else. Most of our pairs is just well, I didn't quite hit it off and I don't know how to go from here. Right, and that's fine. I will send you some discussion topics, some activities to work on to get you guys to talk to each other, so you have a little bit more of that personal connection and you can move on. If it's not that simple and everyone's well, it's not then we can work on repairing you. But we have to try to do mediation to make sure it's not that. And then we're going to switch the topic and ask what is more important career fit Cause this was a perfect career fit or personality people?
Victoria Thompson:For some people, personality is more important. I've had that happen. I had a protege that started off and it was something very specific. It was like human sciences, and I only had one mentor that matched up and I was so excited because sometimes we don't have a mentor. That's a perfect match, you know. So I'm like this is a perfect match. This is wonderful.
Victoria Thompson:But the personalities were clashing really hard and we weren't able to mediate the conversation so that they were talking in a way that the protege could reach a goal right. So we said, all right, this isn't working, that's fine. Now what is more important to you? Because this clearly is the right fit based on what you want to achieve but would it be better to have someone that can be more like a cheerleader accountability buddy as opposed to someone in that career? And she said, yes, that that was a better fit for her and she had a really great mentorship. We actually found someone who was a career coach to work with her. That was just. I know we have some mentors that are career coaches and this was a great fit because it was more personality based and that's what she needed was someone to really just cheer her on while she did it.
Scott McLean:So what if I come in and I'm like, okay, I have a degree in canine science and I want to work with dogs, which is a very and I do, and a degree in canine science and I want to work with dogs, which is a very and I do, and and I did, fortunately, but that's kind of a unique trade or or or field of employment or however you look. So I'm sure you don't have, or maybe you do, maybe I'm, I'm guessing here somebody that would fit that type of career.
Victoria Thompson:So you have a zoologist. I'm just saying.
Scott McLean:Okay, so no, let's go with that. So you would say well, we have asked you some questions.
Victoria Thompson:If I don't feel like I've got a good fit for you and that happens. I had one person who wanted to be a pilot and also own a salon and I said I am not going to be able to find that combination. So we're going to ask you to prioritize some things right, like what do you really want to see? If I can't find you a mentor that is in this exact job, because it happens then what do you want to get? What is your main goal for this mentorship? Is it getting a job? Is it finding a way to market yourself better and then finding a mentor that can do those things with you, even if they aren't in the same exact career field? And that is the. The ticket is finding the personality and the person that can still help you achieve that goal. I did a pair today. The protege really didn't know what he wanted to do. He was saying that was my next question.
Scott McLean:That was my next question, so let's go with that, yeah.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah, and he wanted to work with his hands. I'm like I don't have that many mentors that work with their hands. But, okay, tell me what you want, what you're looking at, what you're thinking about. And at the end of the conversation I said I hear what you're saying and what I'm really hearing is you don't know what you want, but you want to do something where you can be more physically active and more involved in your work and potentially do something in logistics or warehousing or what have you. Does that sound fair? He said, yeah, that sounds fair, cause I really don't know. But I just need help, I need to make a path, I need a direction. I'm like, okay.
Victoria Thompson:So I read him a description of a mentor that I have who is not in any of the career fields that he had selected. But this mentor has a very niche ability to sit there and listen when you have problems, right. So he's someone that not only listens but will go out of his way to find resources to work with you to get some clarity, because not every mentor has the time, willingness or ability to sit with you and do that right. So it was a more personality match, but at the end of the day. I knew they'd be a great fit, because this protege needs someone to really talk to and this mentor is going to be willing to listen and then we can do information calls once he has a path, so he can at least get that information out there, do those networking pieces and ask the questions once he has a direction to move in.
Scott McLean:Makes sense. So I read off about 18, I think give or take one or two big companies at the beginning of the podcast. I know there's a lot more. How do you go about? How does American Corporate Partners go about reaching out to these big players, that it's hard to get through some of those walls to get to the right people. So how do you chip away at the stone? Do you guys have a great reputation in that world? How does it happen?
Victoria Thompson:So we have a pretty good reputation. I'm very proud of the work that we do, but at the end of the day, sid came to this and created this and founded this when he already had a network of connections on Wall Street. So between his already connections and then the continuous reaching out to other people that he knows and networking, we've been able to grow. Because those are all corporate partners, so they make what we do possible between them and small donations. Everything is free because of that and they get something out of it too, because a lot of them are actually trying to hire veterans. So Tuesdays and Thursdays ACP goes live on LinkedIn with our different corporate partners and they get to talk about initiatives they have at their organization. It's usually veterans that work there that are talking about the organization, their experiences, their transition and then what the company is looking for or what the company is doing in the veteran space, so that people can see that and have a little bit more understanding of what they're looking for and they can ask questions.
Scott McLean:You go live on LinkedIn. You said on what days.
Victoria Thompson:Tuesdays and Thursdays at one.
Scott McLean:All right, I'll have to dig that up.
Victoria Thompson:I'll send you the link.
Scott McLean:Yes, send me the link. I'm on LinkedIn and I'll be more than glad to share it. Plus, you're going to go on my website, which has become is a very good resource page in itself from nonprofits and now this all over the country. So I'd be glad to have that and I'd be glad to push the cause. So let's let's talk about money. That's the one always, and the listeners know I know here we go, I'm going to say the words give them your money. So give me a reason to give my listeners the, the words give them money.
Victoria Thompson:I would say, yeah, so we do actually do a fundraiser. The Navy army game is our biggest fundraiser and that is you can pay to. You know, kind of like March Madness, which one do you think will win? You pay for your team and then at the end of the day we see which one wins and then we see which one wins our fundraiser. So that's a fun way to do your giving, because it's definitely important.
Victoria Thompson:But one of the things that I know that our program does really well is give people hope, because when we're looking at the job search, it can be so disheartening, it can feel so demoralizing. You see so many people on LinkedIn saying I've been searching for six months and nothing. I've been searching for a year and nothing. People are transitioning out, even if they have a degree, experience and everything else, and they're still struggling in that job search. So having hope is a huge part of this whole process giving people courage to move forward, giving them a little bit of support in a time when they are really struggling and helping them fight imposter syndrome, because we have a lot of people coming through that have that feeling like, well, I know the military, but I don't know outside. I don't know that I can make it. So having that hope is a huge part of what we do and for our spouses it's even more important.
Victoria Thompson:I went to an event I got to speak at, amplify, which is a hiring our heroes event, and it was for spouses to get them moving in the right direction with their career goals. And one of the things that really disheartened me the most was I asked everyone to do an activity and they had a paper. It was doing a SWOT assessment and then a career plan and they were working with the people around them to fill that in. What is my career plan? What are my strengths, my weaknesses, my opportunities? And this lady was so upset she said I have no skills, I have no value, I have no experience. I've been a homemaker. I don't know where to start. She had a degree and she had been volunteering. She had experiences and it was watching the people around her lift her up, give her that hope back, help her understand and see herself in a different light. That was so transformational. And that's just peer to peer mentorship. Right, do that today.
Victoria Thompson:Go talk to a friend, look at your resume with someone you know and get a little bit of feedback. But when you're talking to someone who's in that career industry that can tell you this is what I'm expecting to see out of a resume, this is what I'm expecting you to understand in an interview so that when you have that and you don't mess up those things and you can get the job is huge. Having that is a big part of moving forward and finding that meaningful employment. And we actually check in on our protégés, so we're not just giving you numbers and saying this is correct. We're actually checking in on these people every two years to see are you still there? Is this still a job that you like? Because, at the end of the day, it's meaningful employment, not just employment meaningful employment that we want you to get.
Scott McLean:Well, this is a cause well worth donating to, so is there a donation button on your site?
Victoria Thompson:There is a donation link on our website. We always appreciate anything people give us. I think every mentorship is about $1,000. So, like right now, we have 5,000 and 10 mentorships going, but every time we add enough money to grow and expand again, we open it up to more people, because that's what we want to do is serve as many people as possible. And even if you apply for the program and you're not eligible, we'll still reach out to you to try and see what resources might be available for you, based on where you're at.
Scott McLean:So you don't just say ah, you know good, we can't help you.
Victoria Thompson:Good, say ah, you know good, but we can't help you. Good luck. No, we want to make sure everyone gets some help.
Scott McLean:There you go. That's, that's beautiful. And, as I always say, money is the gasoline, it's the fuel that runs the nonprofit machine. It's the thing that no one ever talks about in the nonprofits. We just want to look virtuous, but it's the money. The money makes the machine move and the machine does really good work.
Victoria Thompson:So and if you want to volunteer, we would love to have you volunteer. We always need more people, especially in niche areas like dog training and everything else.
Scott McLean:You can talk to Mark Flynn about that.
Victoria Thompson:Because we have people that are interested in doing those things. We started recruiting for farming because a lot more people were coming and they were interested in small business. So we started doing active recruiting for mentors that could speak about small farms and family farms, and we have several of them now because that was an interest. So when we get feedback, we go and take that feedback and use it to grow in intentional ways. Ventures was created last year, which is a program within what we do, and it's in conjunction with the mentorship. So it's not this or that.
Victoria Thompson:You get your mentorship, but you also get to have access to the Village, which is an online forum which has our small business mentors. There's about a thousand mentors in there that are answering questions and it's all our mentors. So it's not like LinkedIn, where you ask a question and get spammed with a bunch of stuff. You actually get responses that make sense and sometimes they set up a call with you to talk about whatever question it is you have. So it's a really great resource. But it also has all of those big businesses, so IBM, usaa, wwe they're all in there offering classes on planning your business, marketing your business, financing your business, growing your business. So, whatever it is, wherever you're at with that, you can start a small business with those classes. You can go to the webinars and ask questions. It's a really great support system and that doesn't stop after a year. So if you join that community, you have access to that for as long as you'd like.
Scott McLean:Wow, the endless aftercare.
Scott McLean:Endless aftercare and aftercare is important and that is a form of aftercare for somebody, a veteran, even though they don't have any PTSD or TBIs or any type of you know, va rating. There's still the transition and once they get past that transition, it's always good to know that there's something still there to go back to. You know, and I think that's great. This program is great. I will have no problem pushing it and selling it and posting it and talking about it, because I just learned something today. This is a valuable, valuable asset that ACP is doing for veterans. So well, anything else. Did I miss anything? Did we miss anything? Is there anything you want to talk about?
Victoria Thompson:One of the things I will say that makes us unique is also we don't use AI. Everything is human driven. So from the time you do your application, someone will give you a phone call All the way through your year. You have someone reaching out to you every month making sure you're doing okay, asking if you need anything. So you have a level of support that you really don't get anywhere else and, regardless of what life throws at you, we're there to help support you through it, and that's something that is unique in the resource world, cause a lot of times, it's well, this is one thing and now you can go to that organization and they'll have another thing. You get all of that support in one place, which is, I feel, important, because a lot of times it's difficult, like I said before, to know which resources make sense and to reach out to the ones that'll be helpful when you need something.
Scott McLean:It's a beautiful thing and if you're a veteran or spouse of a veteran, don't don't do your resume through AI. You just go to acpusaorg and see if they can help you out. I think that was a great point that you made, that people just go in now and they're like oh, I just got a resume and they don't really check it and they send it off and it's not what they really are and that's like you said. It creates that backlog, that cycle of get rid of all these. Let's start over again.
Victoria Thompson:Yeah, and the HR managers can see it, because then it's the same responses in every single resume. So it's important to make sure that you're going through, even if you're using something to help with your word targeting and making it fit, you Don't just use whatever chat GP spits out.
Scott McLean:There you go, there you go. Well, Victoria, this was an amazing interview. I love learning about these programs that I never knew about and there's a lot of them out there and my job is to find every one of them, and I'm glad that Mark Flynn mentioned the Vets Connection podcast that you reached out. This is a very informative episode and I definitely will, even in the South Florida area I will. I talked to a lot of veterans and I have a. I'm building a good network, networking, as you said, and I think this is something that they're probably all going to want to know about.
Scott McLean:So, if they didn't already, if they didn't already, but I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for what you do. I want to thank you for what you did in the hospice world. I have a personal kind of connection to that and I know what you did and how you did and I always appreciated that and I appreciate you for doing that. That's a different kind of person that does that and I appreciate you for that. And well, we built another bridge today. I'm going to do my outro, so just stick around. We built another bridge today. This was a very informative bridge. They all are. But if you are a veteran or a spouse of a veteran and you're looking for your next career, go to ACPUSAorg and see. Well, I'm sure they can help you either way. And well, as I always say, you will hear me next week with a new episode.
