This month, we are proud to present some of the Top Veterans in the Workplace. These veterans not only served their country with pride and dedication, they are now serving local businesses. Their experiences and talents are helping build some of the region’s fastest-growing firms.
These are not your average Vets, they are the best in the region.
Allison Pike | FVetBiz
Title: VBOC (Veteran Business Outreach Center) Program Manager
Industry: Nonprofit
www.vetbiz.com
What was your branch of service?
U.S. Army
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
I learned how to better advocate for myself and others in the service. That advocacy led to the ability to more effectively find the right reference or resources at the right time.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
Ensure your career/company aligns with your values. Have a backup plan and a backup plan to the back up plan. Collect information on resources, options, and military benefits, even if you think you won’t need or use them. You never know what the future holds.
What led you to your industry?
I learned about the Veterans Curation Program through The Vetwork. The Veterans Curation Program is what brought me to VetBiz. I would not be in my position without the support of the Veteran community.
Who is your role model and what have you learned from him or her?
My mom is my role model. She showed us what qualities helped her progress in her career, and she cultivated those qualities in her children. The discipline and lessons I learned from her growing up, along with her unwavering support, pushed me in school, in the Army, and in my professional career after. I would not be where I am, or who I am without my mom.
What’s the best part of your job?
Continuing to serve the military community is the best and most rewarding part of my job.
What has made you successful in your industry?
If I don’t have the answer, then I am going to do my best to find the answer. I can also rely on my team to support. Having a great team that has just as much passion for what we do makes it easy to continue to assist Veterans and their families every day.
David Nagel | Royal Banks of Missouri
Title: SVP of Mortgage Lending, Mortgage Loan Sales Manager
Industry: Mortgage lending
https://www.royalbanksofmo.com
What was your branch of service?
ARNG (Army National Guard)
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
From the moment you join the military, you learn to integrate into a team. Individually, you must be dependable and a resource for the team to rely on. Being a resource means helping others succeed and do their best work, which makes our mortgage team stronger. Every team needs leadership and I do think the military set me up for success by helping me understand how to inspire and foster a healthy team dynamic.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
Set goals for yourself, hold yourself accountable, and check in on your former teammates. Testing your limits and capabilities are just as important in the civilian world as the military. Don’t be afraid to take risks- it’s the spice of life.
What led you to your industry?
I perform best in a job that challenges me, puts me under pressure, and gives me a tangible feeling that I’m helping people. Mortgage lending puts you through the paces. It also has tremendous days where you know you had a positive impact.
Who is your role model and what have you learned from him or her?
I have many, but I’ll go for the pop culture one. Ted Lasso. Fictional characters often speak to our better nature. Ted embodies the ideal coach and mentor. As I’ve gotten a little older and hopefully a little wiser, I strive to leave a positive impact on the people around me.
What’s the best part of your job?
Getting to be part of an often life-changing moment for others. Buying a home is often the biggest purchase a person will ever have. I still have thank-you cards from clients that I’ve kept over the years. There are few things more heartwarming than being there when someone realizes they’ve done it- they’ve won- they’ve accomplished the American Dream and made homeownership a reality.
What has made you successful in your industry?
Teamwork, curiosity, tenacity, and trust. Mortgage lending doesn’t exist without a host of people working toward a common goal and refusing to give up. Knowing loan products and evolving with technology is also critical to making sure I’m providing good service to my clients.
Todd Wallis | INBOUND BLEND
Title: President & Creative Director
Industry: Digital marketing and advertising
inboundblend.com
What was your branch of service?
U.S. Army
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
The Army taught me to stay calm when plans change, work with the people and resources available, and take responsibility for the outcome. It also taught me that strong teams are built before the pressure hits. In digital marketing, priorities can shift quickly, and clients count on us to keep moving. Clear communication, mutual trust and a shared understanding of the goal help our team stay steady and deliver, even when the path forward is not obvious.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
Do not underestimate the value of your military experience. Leadership, discipline, teamwork and problem-solving all translate, but communication can take some adjustment. In the Army, orders and assignments are often given very directly. It is not meant to be rude, it is simply how things get done. In a civilian workplace, that same directness can land differently. Learning to soften the opening or add a little context can make a big difference. I learned that lesson a long time ago, and it has stayed with me.
James Paris | Heritage Research Solutions
Title: President
Industry: Genealogy/military history
www.heritageresearchsolutions.com
What was your branch of service?
United States Marine Corps
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
As a fireteam leader in the Marines, I learned accountability and perseverance. Those lessons have carried into my work as a military historian and genealogist, where details matter, answers aren’t always easy to find, and persistence is often what turns a collection of records into someone’s story .
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
Be open to careers that you hadn’t thought about as your “ideal” post military service. My current path wasn’t my first career, but it helped me build my interpersonal and customer service skills and gave me a better understanding of management that helped me succeed once I started my company.
What led you to your industry?
I always had a love for military history, genealogy and for research. I happened to be fortunate enough to find a way to mold all three passions into a business.
Who is your role model and what have you learned from him or her?
My role model is my wife, Yvette. Watching her take over her company and become a leader gave me the confidence to step away from my previous career and start my own company.
What’s the best part of your job?
Helping family members learn about their loved ones’ military service.
What has made you successful in your industry?
Persistence and a genuine curiosity about the people behind the records. Research rarely follows a straight line, and sometimes the record you’re looking for no longer exists. I’ve learned to look beyond the obvious sources, follow small details and approach a problem from different directions. I think my military background also gives me a different perspective when researching a veteran’s service. At the end of the day, I’m not just collecting dates and documents—I’m trying to understand and preserve someone’s story.
Jim Haftarczyk | Byrne Software
Title: Senior Consultant
Industry: Software Engineering
www.byrnesoftware.com
What was your branch of service:
United States Marine Corps
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
My time in the Marine Corps taught me to remain calm and focused in high-pressure, rapidly changing environments. These experiences have helped me succeed in my current role by enabling me to bring teams together, adapt quickly to evolving situations, and respond effectively to changing requirements. The discipline, leadership, and problem-solving skills I developed in the military help me stay focused on delivering high-quality results, even when priorities shift on short notice.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
Take the time to connect with a recruiter who specializes in the industry you want to enter. They can help you translate your military experience into terms civilian employers understand and tailor your resume accordingly. The technical expertise, leadership, and problem-solving skills you developed during your military service are highly valuable and can give you an advantage over other candidates. However, hiring managers may overlook those strengths if they can’t see how your military experience applies to the corporate world. Learning to communicate your skills effectively is key to a successful transition.
What led you to your industry?
I was drawn to project management because no two days are ever the same. Each day brings new challenges, opportunities, and rewards. Much like military service, project management requires leadership, teamwork, adaptability, and a focus on mission success. While individuals often specialize in a single role, project managers must understand how all roles work together to achieve a common goal. At Byrne Software, I enjoy working with clients across a variety of industries, helping them achieve their goals while collaborating with their leaders to deliver solutions that support their growth and success.
Who is your role model and what have you learned from him or her?
I have been fortunate to have several mentors throughout my career, but Garth Andrews, a VP of PMO at a prior company, had the greatest impact on me. Early in my career, he took a chance on me, brought me to leadership meetings, and told me to listen. He often said, “The primary responsibility of leadership is growing the people you have been given the privilege of leading and helping them evolve into better versions of themselves.” I have modeled my leadership style after those words.
What’s the best part of your job?
The best part of my job is the people and culture at Byrne Software. As an employee-owned company (ESOP), everyone is invested in our collective success. Our President, Jason O’Bryan, leads by example and consistently reminds us that every employee, regardless of title or role, contributes to the company’s achievements and success. He takes the time to recognize accomplishments, celebrate birthdays, and acknowledge work anniversaries. Those gestures may seem small, but they create a culture where employees feel valued, appreciated, and connected, making Byrne Software a truly rewarding place to work.
What has made you successful in your industry?
The Marine Corps has a motto “Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome,” That has been a driving force throughout my career. It has helped me embrace change, continuously learn, and stay current with evolving technologies and industry trends. Successful project managers are not experts in one thing; they understand enough about many disciplines to bring people together and solve complex problems. When others become discouraged by challenges, I enjoy finding creative solutions and leading teams toward a successful outcome. That adaptability, curiosity, and problem-solving mindset have been key factors in my success.
John Weiss | TAG, Inc.
Title: CEO
Industry: Healthcare
www.theauditgroup.com
What was your branch of service?
The real one --- USMC
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
Focus: “Accomplish the Mission”
Just get the job done.
Use your training, equipment, teammates, intelligence, creativity, whatever is needed.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
-Take it easy. Realize you are back in a different environment.
-Your experiences will help you navigate all the landmines in front of you.
-No one can take your integrity from you, but you can lose it. Don’t.
-And Remember: Don’t sweat the small stuff…and most stuff is small.
What led you to your industry?
I needed a job.
Who is your role model and what have you learned from him or her?
I have been fortunate to have several role models over the course of my life. What I learned from them is summed up in the above responses.
What’s the best part of your job?
Being the boss.
What has made you successful in your industry?
I – WE – have done what we said we would do. We did so with Integrity and Expertise which has earned the Trust of our clients.
Derek Hoffman | Ignite Performance & Health
Title: Owner
Industry: Health and wellness — a medical strength, nutrition, and hormone clinic in Chesterfield.
www.ignitepah.com
What was your branch of service?
U.S. Army. I enlisted in 2001, trained in Persian Farsi at the Defense Language Institute, and served as a signals intelligence analyst supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. I later spent three years in Afghanistan as a cultural advisor and senior liaison in an active combat zone.
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
The Army put me in intelligence work at 19 and taught me to read a complicated system fast and act before I had perfect information. Afghanistan taught me the rest — three years negotiating with people who had no reason to trust me, which is most of what business development actually is. Later, running a 180-person office with a $100 million budget at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency taught me that leaders develop on purpose or not at all. Every chapter has been the same job in a different uniform: complex system, high stakes, people who need to move together.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
Stop translating your résumé and start translating your judgment. Nobody out here knows what your MOS meant, and they don’t need to. What transfers is that you made decisions with incomplete information, under pressure, for people counting on you. Say it that way. Second, be patient with the pace — the instinct to fix everything in week one costs you more credibility than it buys. Learn the room first. Third, keep serving something. Get on a board, coach a team, join a nonprofit. The mission is the part you will miss.
What led you to your industry?
I had used this approach on myself for six years before it was ever a business. I came out of 25 years in the intelligence community in reasonable shape, but I knew exactly what the next 30 years looked like if I did not change something. Hormone health, nutrition, and strength training are not three separate products — they work together or they don’t work. Nobody near me was running it as one program under a physician’s direction, so we built it. Nothing changes if nothing changes. That applies to careers too.
What’s the best part of your job?
Watching someone at month six. In the first month people notice a difference. By six months they are a different person to be around — not just how they look, but how they carry themselves at work and at home. I get a front-row seat to that. The other part is the team. I came out of an organization where developing people was the actual job, and it still is. Building a place where a coach or a provider gets better because they work here is the same work, just closer to the ground.
What has made you successful in your industry?
I don’t try to convince people who need convincing. That sounds like bad sales advice and it is the best decision we have made — we qualify people out as often as in, because someone who isn’t ready won’t do the work and won’t get the result. The rest is execution. Plenty of people in this industry have a good plan. Vision without execution is just hallucination. The difference is whether anybody actually does the thing on Tuesday morning when it is inconvenient. We build the program so Tuesday is handled.
Bill Dickherber |
Onsite Computer Consulting Services, Inc./OCCSI
Title: President
Industry: Information Technology and Managed IT Services
https://www.occsi.com
What was your branch of service?
U.S. Navy
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
I installed the very first computer system on an LHA. I learned my love of technology in the Navy and have been learning since.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
Exiting the military can be difficult; routines and expectations can change and feel stressful. Give yourself time to adapt to civilian employment.
What led you to your industry?
My Navy career started my interest in and love of technology.
Who is your role model and what have you learned from him or her?
My wife- there is nothing we can’t do.
What’s the best part of your job?
Learning new tech and the issues created by tech- solving problems.
What has made you successful in your industry?
Taking time to listen and learn from every new customer and situation.
Vivial Lopez | Northside Economic Empowerment Center powered by St. Louis Development Corporation
Title: Business Services Specialist
Industry: Economic Development, Business Support, Non-profit
https://www.developstlouis.org/neec
What was your branch of service? United States Marine Corps
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company? I can adapt to different situations and people, work as a team player, and I have leadership skills and leadership development experience. I am community-minded, I overcome obstacles, and I conduct ongoing self-assessment for continual growth. I also work well with processes and procedures.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers? Be prepared to be uncomfortable. Coming back to civilian work and life is stepping outside of your comfort zone. Be open to learning new things, interacting with different people and having new experiences. Also, be mindful of the “us” and “them” mentality that can often stem from military life. Confidently share your assets and be intentional about recognizing the value in your coworkers.
What led you to your industry? Ultimately, my passion and commitment to people and education led me here. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to have mentors, friends and loved ones who recognized my potential, helped me cultivate my skills and afforded me opportunities to explore coaching, teaching, facilitating and curriculum development. The industries may seem different but my work, passion and commitment are the same.
Who is your role model and what have you learned from him or her? In this season of life, my role models are 3 of my sons; Kane, Kaleb and Kyle. I have learned from them how to face my fears, be more resilient, take risks, stay truer to who I am, own my talent and believe in myself more than ever before. I believe there’s more learning to be had from these young men and I look forward to continuing this journey of growth.
What’s the best part of your job? The best part of my job is to celebrate a business owner’s success! To witness a business owner achieve a goal and gain confidence in their ability to run a business, gives me so much joy!!
What has made you successful in your industry? What I believe has made me successful is the ability to learn from my own mistakes, being transparent about my journey and intentionally creating a psychologically safe environment to help people feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable, learn, and grow.
Karen D. Cross, Ph.D. |
Miriam School and Learning Center
Title: Transition Coordinator
Industry: Education
https://www.miriamstl.org/
What was your branch of service?
Navy
What skills/experiences in your service career have helped you become a better employee at your company?
Being in the military in general creates a more organized individual than the average civilian. I was a Yeoman, an admin position, in which organization is key. Organization promotes efficiency. Being in the military also teaches patience and flexibility. There are day to day moments when things don’t go as planned and moments when ‘building the plane as we fly’ are necessary components. My military experience sharpened those skills.
What advice would you give to service members just starting their civilian careers?
For those service members who went into the military right out of high school, I highly encourage them to summon their skills of patience and flexibility when working with civilian personnel regardless of the industry. The civilian industry does not operate on ‘cut and dry’ rules. Newly discharged service members may want to adopt a ‘Please forgive them for they know not what they do’ attitude, adjust to the new normal, attempt to make changes where they are absolutely necessary, and move on.
What led you to your industry?
To make a very, very long story short, let’s just say, ‘Devine intervention’. Education was not in my purview when I graduated from high school. But, as fate would have it, I developed into being an outstanding educator. I have a knack of being able to break down complex information so others can understand.
Who is your role model and what have you learned from him or her?
I have several role models in my life. But if I am limited to speaking about only one of them, I would say my mother. How she lived her life, her actions, her demeanor, she taught me that titles, money, and superficial societal positions, don’t make you any better than anyone else. Every person, every ‘being’ should be treated with respect regardless of the manmade social economic status’ we humans have bestowed upon ourselves.
What’s the best part of your job?
The best part is when I see a student get that ‘light bulb’ in the head feeling, when everything just seems to click! And they understand. They finally get it. In my position as a Transition Coordinator, I feel ‘my job is done’ (for the moment) when a student, filled with anxiety, finds self-worth and peace after completing an internship and/or completing a task that took them out of their comfort zone.
What has made you successful in your industry?
A combination of factors have made me successful. I have learned valuable skills and insights from others inside and outside of education. I am always eager to learn new concepts, therefore adopting the attitude of education as being a lifelong process is a reality for me. I look forward to attending workshops and seminars and talking with colleagues who provide me with new perspectives.