Veterans get help in breaching corporate world
Former banker establishes group to find mentors
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NEW YORK - Ed Pulido joined the Army at 18 and spent 19 years in uniform. He lost his left leg four years after being wounded by a roadside bomb in Baqubah, Iraq. And when he was discharged in 2005, with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, he decided to devote the rest of his life to work with a foundation helping the families of veterans who have been wounded or killed.
But he had one problem, he said: "How to initiate the contacts with corporate leaders, to be able to fund-raise and to network."
That's where Sidney E. Goodfriend came in.
Goodfriend spent 25 years as a banker on Wall Street, mostly at Merrill Lynch. But, he said, he had made enough money, he was looking for a career change, and he wanted to make a contribution through public service.
With his own money, and using his Wall Street connections, Goodfriend, 48, founded a group called American Corporate Partners, which pairs returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan with mentors from the corporate world. He has enlisted six companies - Campbell's,
The mentors pledge to spend four hours each month for a year meeting with their assigned veteran, and the meetings could take most any form: lunch, a fishing trip, a golf outing.
"These folks come back, and in their first year, they don't know anybody, and they especially don't know anybody in the corporate sector," Goodfriend said. "There is no way for them to transition easily into corporate America."
Goodfriend said the priority is helping disabled or severely wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, or the spouses or relatives of soldiers killed in action. "If you had to give preference, you'd probably give preference to those who sacrificed more," he said.
Pulido, who lives in Oklahoma City, said he will be driving once a month to Dallas to meet with his mentor, from Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo. "The transition from military to civilian, it's a very hard transition if you don't have the skills and the education," Pulido said by telephone. "I'm going to be driving down to Dallas to be part of that program because I think it's important for my future."
Another veteran, retired Captain Sara Skinner, 31, spent 12 years in the Army, including four at West Point, and did two tours in Baghdad - the second time replacing a platoon leader who had been killed. She was injured and received a Purple Heart. The married mother of three is now working as an operations manager for SunGard Availability Services, an Internet company in Atlanta.
Skinner, who is waiting to be matched with a mentor, is looking for advice on how to leverage her military skills in the private sector. She heard about American Corporate Partners in an e-mail from a West Point alumni site.
"I've been out of the Army for a year," she said. "There's just not a clear path, I guess, to success in corporate America."
"I know from the Army the value of mentoring," she added. "What are the logical career paths? And specifically for me - I'm a woman; I have children." She said she is looking for a female mentor "who is successful also with children and a family."
Goodfriend said the idea is to match mentors with veterans as closely as possible without pigeonholing. "It may be better to have a woman with a woman," he said, "or an African-American with an African-American mentor."
He has assembled a high-level bipartisan advisory board, including former Secretary of State George P. Shultz; former Senate majority leaders Bob Dole and George Mitchell; former deputy defense secretary and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers; and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace.
When the program officially opened two weeks ago with 300 slots, Goodfriend said, it received 800 applications, though it had no publicity. Most heard about it by word of mouth.
Goodfriend said he launched the project because he recognized the importance of mentoring in his own Wall Street success. He is also a mentor to at-risk children from poor neighborhoods in New York. "Mentoring can make a vast, vast difference," he said.
