The head of diversity at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) said today that part of the VA’s mission is to ensure that its workforce looks like the veteran population.
Nathan Maenle, the VA’s acting chief diversity officer, said the agency works hard to hire diverse talent at the entry level, but is failing to keep up at the leadership level. Maenle explained during the ServiceNow Federal Forum – powered by MeriTalk – in National Harbor, Md., today that the VA is currently taking actions to rectify this problem.
“Part of our mission within VA is to ensure that we are reaching every veteran – is to ensure our workforce looks like the veteran population,” Maenle said during the event’s opening panel. “We had a lot of focus on many years of ensuring we have a good representation of veterans working in VA so that veterans can provide service to other veterans.”
“When you just look across the VA and the demographics of our workforce, at the entry level … we’re doing a really good job actually of matching the veteran population to our own population so that when the veteran walks in they’re seeing people that look like them and they have similar backgrounds,” Maenle explained.
“Where we’re focused now is on leadership development,” the diversity lead said, “so, on our pipeline of getting our workforce from the frontline up to leadership. At the leadership levels, when you look across, we’re not quite matching the veteran population, and we’re strongly focused on that.”
Maenle said that the VA currently has an action plan in place. In June 2023, the VA established an I*DEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, and access) Council, which Maenle said “brings a leadership team together across VA on a monthly basis to look at how we’re doing, hold ourselves accountable to ensure that we’re taking action on all the different things we need to do to ensure that our workforce is providing all the services that veterans need and deserve.”
In fiscal year 2023, nearly 63 percent of the VA workforce was made up of non-veterans and over half of the agency’s workforce was white.
Herb Thompson, ServiceNow’s principal program manager for veteran programs, said that the software company has made a pledge to hire more veterans this year. Thompson – who moderated the “Building an Inclusive Workforce through Veteran Support and Reskilling” panel – noted that artificial intelligence will be a key tool in hiring and reskilling the nation’s veterans.
The Chief of Staff of ServiceNow’s Global Public Sector, Kevin Brooks, said that AI will be useful in helping transitioning veterans translate what they did in the military to skillsets in the civilian market.
“Skills mapping is important,” Brooks said. “As vets, one of the difficult things is converting your skills and your experiences to the civilian world. AI can help with that.”
He added, “People shouldn’t be afraid to allow AI to help them navigate that initial transition period because it really can be palpable.”
Sarah Moffat, chief operating officer within the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer, noted that cybersecurity can be a good career path for veterans because it has the similar mission-focus of protection.
“When you’re in fields like cyber, there’s that protect mentality that’s so prevalent from former service members, and so I feel like that’s a really good match there,” Moffat said.
Rob Lancon, the government and community relations manager at Hire Heroes USA, offered a similar sentiment, noting that transitioning veterans feel called to mission.
“We’ve learned that it’s not just about translating the skills, but it’s also about translating that mission,” Lancon said. “A lot of these servicemembers joined the military for a call service and when they’re looking for employment, to find employment, we have to be able to match up with that same culture, that same call to service.”
