DELMARVA VETERAN BUILDERS FOUNDER AND GSC MEMBER CHRIS ECCLESTON SPEAKS AT PENTAGON
SALISBURY, MD – Chris Eccleston, founder and president of the Delmarva Veteran Builders (DVB), was invited to the Pentagon to speak at the 2019 International Conference on Employer Support for the Reserves on April 30.
ICESR is a biennial conference for allied and partner nations to meet and discuss their reserve employer support programs, and to exchange lessons learned and best practices.
Eccleston, along with Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis; Joe Crandall, a partner with Greencastle Consulting in Malvern, Pennsylvania; and Carrol Eggert, Comcast Corp.’s senior vice president for military and veterans affairs, participated in a panel discussion during the conference. The four panelists represented companies that have received the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. The panel members discussed how military service and experience makes guardsmen and reservists excellent employees.
“I have been a big advocate of transitional employment since day one. I understand what it’s like to come back from deployment. So, as an employer, I want to encourage my fellow veterans to follow their dreams. If it’s in the construction business, great, but if it means they can have a place like DVB to come work for a time being while discovering their true passions in life, even better. Sharing some of our company success stories with colleagues from around the globe looking to utilize this same model, was a proud moment for me.”
Kim Joiner, acting principal deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for public affairs, said that the Defense Department is hoping to use panels like this to educate the American public about who their military people are, what they do, why they serve and ways companies can help reservists when they deploy. Today, only about one-half of 1% of Americans are in the military, and therefore, there are fewer veterans around than in earlier generations to tell the military story and what it means to serve.
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