Kandi Tillman, Managing Co-Founder
What keeps me up at night: "How can we enable employers at scale as they seek to open & share strong pathways for the military community?"
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I had a front-row seat to my then fiancé's transition into civilian life. Strong employment played a pivotal role.
My background includes ~20 years in Fortune 500 companies (Procter & Gamble, Henkel, SAP and Oracle) across strategic planning, business development, eCommerce, branding, solution selling, partnerships & organizational readiness and several years in tech consulting.
In 2018, and with an intense need to understand the gap given the massive landscape of veteran service organizations. Our of sheer curiosity and in an effort to learn, I left my corporate work and joined a Congressional office leading veteran outreach in Arizona.
Subsequently, I consulted for Arizona State University (+9k military-connected students), providing strategic recommendations and initial activation for overall advancement of research, community veteran engagement and student support services. In both of those roles, strategic workforce development continued to be a primary opportunity area.
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Kevin Tillman, Co-Founder
Prior to entering the civilian industry I was a college student, Minor League baseball player (Cleveland), and an enlisted soldier in the U.S. Army with 2/75 Ranger Battalion. When my enlistment was up I thought I could find a good (career type) job and transition without issue. Instead I quickly became overwhelmed, frustrated, and paralyzed. I simply didn't have exposure to the civilian market and how to go about getting "a regular job".
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Fortunately, my then-fiancé (now my wife) Kandi was able to help me with my resume, understanding the hiring process for the various companies and industries, and pushed me to be proactive with direct referrals from my network. Eventually I applied for open role at Lockheed Martin based on a direct referral. I interviewed for & accepted an entry-level role at Lockheed Martin as a customer training. After 5+ years at Lockheed, I accepted a Project Manager role at Dell on their Enterprise Deployment team. In 2016, after working for 8 years with two major employers, I turned my focus full-time toward a small sports technology company that I co-founded.
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For Kandi and I, our goal is help veterans transition as smoothly and quickly as possible into a job that a veteran can start their career with.
With 50strong we hope to provide an ecosystem that helps provide direct connection & exposure between service members, veterans and spouses and national employers
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