Following his retirement from the Army in 2013, Sven Olson spent years as a volunteer with the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), a nonprofit that supports active duty military service members and veterans. But by 2019, he needed to take advantage of their programs himself.
A move from Tucson, Arizona, to nearby Phoenix left Olson searching for work in an unfamiliar city, and he decided to tap into the program he'd long enjoyed supporting as a peer support leader and event organizer. Now, as a participant in WWP's Warriors to Work program, he had access to job-hunting education, counseling, and help overcoming any limitations that may negatively impact his well-being.
"I had no opportunities — nothing was jumping out at me," says Olson, who suffered two brain injuries during his time in the military, one of which left him temporarily blind and paralyzed, and led to lasting memory-related issues he still manages today. "I have a really diverse resume because I was a National Guardsman. I would go on and off active duty and then come home and work for another company. It made finding a job a little harder because of the crazy jumping around."
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Almost half of unemployed Warriors cite mental health or psychological distress as an obstacle to employment, according to the WWP's Annual Warrior Survey. It also found that 64% of said they
"Our mission is to honor and empower Warriors with financial health and wellness, physical health and wellness, mental health and wellness and social connectedness," says Tom Kastner, who served in the military for 30 years and is now Warriors to Work's financial wellness vice president. "We work with warriors to find out where their needs lie, [and] we can connect them with the right program component to relieve the stresses associated with any one of those four main pillars."
Next steps after decades of service
Olson's 27-year experience as an Army National Guardsman was a fulfilling one, he says. He met and married his wife, who is from Ukraine, while on his last assignment at the U.S. embassy there. When they got to Tucson, where Olson had connections and planned to settle, however, she missed the bustling city atmosphere of her native Kyiv.
"She felt like I had moved her to the wild west," he says. "I told her she could move anywhere, and she chose Phoenix, the major city in Arizona. I was a duck out of water, so I set an appointment with Warriors to Work and we spent an hour going through my resume. What I'd done in the military had nothing to do with what I did when I wasn't in the military, which made it really hard to process."
Olson received support and tips on making his resume easier for a civilian recruiter to understand, taking out military acronyms that could be confusing. He was also asked an unexpected question: "What do you want to do?"
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"I said, 'Well, my dad was a college professor. He has Alzheimer's now, but he's still cognizant enough that he might appreciate that I'll be a college professor just like him,'" Olson says. WWP connected him with a contact at Grand Canyon University. Thanks to a recently-completed master's degree in public policy and international relations, as well as the additional skill sets promoted on his resume, a job offer followed the next day.
Olson started teaching the next week as a part time adjunct professor. In 2022, he was a graduation military commission speaker, and this year he was added to the faculty advisory board, mostly because of his military and government experience, he says.
"I just crossed my four-year mark, and I absolutely love it," he says, "I have really settled in and become part of the community. At the time I started, [my dad] was cognizant enough to recognize that in this aspect of my life, I had followed in his footsteps."
Looking beyond the 'standard resume'
Kastner says the Warriors to Work team partners closely with Warriors and employers to make sure that veterans stand the best chance at being happy and
"Veterans are coming from an environment that has a lot of structure," says Kastner. "[They have] a focus on team dynamics and the collective goodness of the whole. All the problem sets that you might think exist with a new employee don't really exist [with] veterans because they are dependable, they are on time, they know they're members of an organization, they have to follow a set of rules — they're used to doing that."
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Kastner reminds hiring managers to look at the skills listed on veteran's resumes instead of just their previous role in the military — this helps avoid preconceived notions. On the flip side, he reminds veterans to format their resumes with language and skills that employers will recognize, which are sometimes different from terms used in the military.
Olson is now onto his next mission: He and his wife started a Ukrainian refugee program, and he decided to look for full-time work in addition to his teaching job. Another WWP connection produced an opportunity, this time for a senior management position with the state of Arizona. He again credits his military experiences that formed his foundational beliefs of encouragement and support, which makes him a
"I've been in combat; there's nothing that's going to happen in an office that's worse than that," he says. "I can go into every conflict with confidence that there's a solution. There are some unique military aspects that we bring to the table, and when I'm on the inside, those are the things I trumpet to the rest of the organization."
