A couple weeks ago WM visited Eric Eversole ’94 in Washington DC to learn about his work as president of Hiring Our Heroes, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce initiative to help veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses find meaningful employment.

The program has hosted nearly 1,000 hiring events in the United States and around the world since its founding. From those hiring events alone, nearly 30,000 military veterans and spouses have been hired by companies of all sizes. And that doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands of jobs that Hiring Our Heroes has found for military veterans and spouses through its various initiatives, programs, and online resources.

Eric is the right man to lead the effort for many reasons, and we’ll have that story in the Spring edition of the magazine.

But when we walked into Eric’s office we were surprised to discover another alumnus was connected to Hiring Our Heroes.  The details of a program assisting vets interested in the trucking industry were drawn up on Eric’s white board. When we asked him about it, he asked if we knew Jim Ray ’95, founder of FASTPORT.

How could we not!

Jim has spoken on campus for Entrepreneurial Summits and at Chapel. He has hosted Wabash student interns at his technology-based trucking recruitment firm.

Eric called the collaboration with FASTPORT—Hiring Our Heroes Trucking Track—one of his organization’s most successful, and the partnership has helped many veterans find work on the road.

This year they’re collaborating to create the Trucking Transition: Driving for Excellence Award, which will provide a fully-loaded Kenworth T680 to a deserving veteran who enters the trucking industry.

One of the most important bits of advice Eric passes on to service members is that “so much of the employment process is about making a relationship with somebody and that person feeling comfortable with you. Making a connection.”

That goes for partnerships between organizations, too. The connection Eric and Jim have as Wabash men has proven a great advantage as they set out to create jobs for those who have served our country.