“Many in Microsoft’s military community are veterans and others still serve today, in reserve corps for their countries. They commit weekends to training. They accept the responsibility of periodic deployments, some weeks and even months in duration. They, along with active-duty peers, are at the ready to be called to serve by their country. They are also outstanding colleagues who have made a choice to apply their well-earned skills and capabilities at Microsoft. We are better as a result.”
Tag: military affairs
Naval Postgraduate School and Microsoft accelerate research and development capabilities
Advanced education and research enables discovery and innovation. The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) recently announced a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Microsoft to help bring the latest in commercial innovations to its campus and from there to the rest of the Navy and Marine Corps. As the nation’s premier defense graduate university, NPS is focused on empowering its operationally experienced students and expert faculty to research and solve operational challenges faced by the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Department of Defense.
NPS developed this strategic collaboration to bring some of the brightest military students and researchers together with technology leaders to accelerate applied research into capability solutions to address several highly complex issues affecting national security.
The CRADA enables a new Cooperative Research Initiative (CRI), where Microsoft experts will collaborate side-by-side with NPS students, faculty and staff to address four major areas:
- Implementing cloud-enhanced network and intelligent edge capabilities – exploring software-defined connections via terrestrial, submarine fiber and satellites, and demonstrating advanced computing capabilities at the tactical edge.
- Developing a campus of the future – integrating the latest technology from our collaboration and productivity tools to help transition NPS into a state-of-the-art learning institution – a campus of the future – to enable virtual classrooms so service members can access real-time education and training resources anywhere in the world.
- Accelerating 21st century Gaming, Exercising, Modeling, & Simulation (GEMS) – collaborating to research and innovate with the latest modeling and simulation capabilities to support enhanced strategic gaming capabilities and mission planning needs.
- Enhancing digital enterprise and field experimentation – testing and integrating the latest developments from a joint innovation lab to the field, accelerating the pace of innovation to deliver emerging capabilities for our war fighters.
One of the first of these priority areas to be delivered and have a strategic impact is an effort known as Project Athena – a key component of the campus of the future initiative. Athena is a collaborative research tool that will significantly improve research and collaboration not just at NPS — but across the entire Department of Defense (DOD). The quick development of Athena showcases the promise of this critical collaboration between Microsoft and a key DOD research and innovation partner like NPS.
Roadblocks to research
NPS is home to many of the nation’s brightest minds working to solve our country’s most complex security and defense challenges. The school has decades’ worth of data stored in its archives, and NPS students and faculty are essentially human databases themselves. To graduate, students are required to complete a thesis or capstone research project, which requires choosing a relevant topic/problem and then conducting research by digging through digital databases and working alongside faculty.
Determining a thesis topic is not something NPS students take lightly. “While research at NPS is technically focused, our students are committed to service. So, when they’re asked to choose areas of research, they all want to work on projects that would have a huge impact for the Navy,” says Marine Corps Col. Randy Pugh, NPS senior Marine and program lead.
But NPS data infrastructure was not conducive to timely research or collaboration. Their databases were siloed and disconnected, making it challenging to discover ongoing or future research initiatives. Just finding what to research — let alone how to research — was equal parts guesswork, crowdsourcing and luck. Todd Lyons, vice president of the NPS Foundation, explains: “You could access the database of record to find research that had already been completed — assuming it was uploaded to NPS Calhoun archive — but there was no way of knowing what was happening today. To know that, you’d have to go out of your way asking faculty and other students what they were working on, hoping it’d be similar to your idea. It really was word of mouth, to be honest.”
Even if you did find a relevant problem to cover, finding relevant answers presented its own set of challenges. “Typically, a sponsor would enter their question into the Naval Research Program portal and it basically disappeared for a year or two,” says Lyons. “There was also no guarantee that the answer — if you received one — was actually what you were looking for.”
NPS needed a better, more organized way of storing information, encouraging collaboration, and connecting students with subject matter experts (SMEs) – and they needed a technology partner to make it happen.
Modernizing and accelerating national security research
Project Athena is a collaborative research tool built on the Azure stack and deployed through Microsoft Teams. Over the last year, the NPS Foundation has supported the development of Project Athena to provide a scalable platform that empowers the NPS community’s innovative academic ecosystem. It provides a comprehensive and inclusive intelligent data store that will support access to all existing DOD research projects, research resources and all current requests for new research.
Integrated into Teams for ease of use and centralization, Athena’s user interface for data discovery and user collaboration is built around six basic features:
- A consistent “workspace” application model for all research endeavors
- The ability to use keyword-prompted searches and full-text searching to find relevant information and resources quickly and efficiently
- A table-defined and easily modified hierarchical subject taxonomy that organizes resource query results into familiar and logical research areas
- Standardized subject-based keywords that are used to tag all Athena resources
- A set of customizable filter menus that disclose the resources available through Athena and the most common properties
- A set of context-specific popup menus that allow users to discover, collect, connect, share and collaborate over Athena’s research resources
Athena allows NPS to standardize data in a way that keeps it orderly and easily searchable. This helps SMEs to easily and securely clean up and merge keywords, customize and tag the taxonomy, modify and extend the filter menus, and clean up the use of standardized search terms within resource records. SMEs can work with source repository owners to prepare their data for Athena ingestion and adapt the taxonomy to best meet the needs of their research area.
Through collaboration with Microsoft, NPS will have the ability to use Azure Cognitive Search translation capabilities in Athena to translate documents written in other languages into English, drastically reducing the time and cost of seeking manual translation.
The future of research
For NPS students and researchers, Athena will be game-changing. With Athena, all they need to do is log into Teams to get the latest information about completed, ongoing and proposed research projects.
Athena will not only improve research, but also collaboration. Through a single tool, students are now able to find advisors, collaborators, sponsors and partners with specific interests and skills to help develop their research. This creates a research environment that encourages experimentation and socialization between like-minded researchers and communities. Most importantly, Athena also allows those who are experiencing problems in the Navy, Marine Corps, or joint force to know their problems are being worked on by these teams, to participate in the development of solutions, and to quickly implement the results of the research when the projects are completed.
It also creates pathways for students to test their research findings out in the real world. “We created Athena to help people identify problems, develop ideas and connect students to the field people actually working on these problems, whether they’re in an IT environment, on an aircraft carrier or on a forward-operating base.” says Rick Hargrove, NPS Foundation member and lead architect of Athena. “If the research could help them with their job, then we want to foster that collaboration.”
A lasting partnership
Microsoft has supported our national security community for more than 40 years, delivering the latest technologies to ensure our women and men have the tools to meet their missions.
Athena serves as an example of the type of the capabilities this collaboration with NPS can enable through the Cooperative Research Initiative. Through continued collaboration, the CRI’s four focus areas will integrate and complement one another to help NPS build a robust campus and institution that will leverage the latest in commercial innovation to advance its mission impact and address current and future challenges.
For Military Appreciation Month, recognizing and supporting those who serve
The U.S. Congress in 1999 officially designated May as National Military Appreciation Month, and at Microsoft we mark this as a time to recognize and celebrate the employee military community globally. In this moment I remember my own grandfathers. My dad’s father served as an infantryman in World War I. The tri-corner folded flag presented to us at his funeral is encased steps away from my desk at home. My mom’s stepfather served as a paratrooper in World War II. The map he carried with him of the 1943 invasion of Sicily, where he jumped behind enemy lines, hangs just a few feet from my desk as well.
Both my grandfathers were enlisted soldiers who volunteered and served with distinction during times of great conflict. Both shaped my views of military service — that it is driven by courage, honor, and love of country and fellow citizens.
It’s why, when I was asked to serve as one of the executive sponsors for Microsoft’s Military Employee Resource Group (ERG), I happily but humbly accepted. I have had the privilege of interacting with many who have given distinguished military service around the world and who are also committed Microsoft employees. Many in Microsoft’s military community are veterans and others still serve today, in reserve corps for their countries. They commit weekends to training. They accept the responsibility of periodic deployments, some weeks and even months in duration. They, along with active-duty peers, are at the ready to be called to serve by their country. They are also outstanding colleagues who have made a choice to apply their well-earned skills and capabilities at Microsoft. We are better as a result.
I aspire to be an ally to Microsoft’s military community. This means committing to learning so I can gain a greater degree of empathy for the experiences and perspectives of those who serve. It means being an advocate for the community and working actively to value veterans’ experiences. And it means doing my part for the community when called upon — following their example of service, even if in very small ways.
Here I offer a few reflections on my own learning journey and the journey we’ve been on at Microsoft, which I hope might provide encouragement to others who strive to be allies to the military community:
Express sincere appreciation for the service and sacrifice of veterans and those serving today. Of course, our gratitude is not what motivates service — the veterans and service members I know are motivated by duty, honor, love of country and fellow citizens. Those who serve know that their responsibility is 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Readiness and preparedness never get to take time off. We can express our gratitude by being willing to listen and learn more about the experiences of the military community, and by remembering and acknowledging their service not only during times of conflict in the world but at all times.
Celebrate and support military community members in their careers after active service. Microsoft employs thousands of veterans and reserve service members in many countries around the world. We strive to be world class in our policies and benefits that support military community employees. For example, during reserve deployments in the U.S., we provide salary continuity by supplementing the difference between military and Microsoft pay, and we continue benefits coverage such as employee and dependent health care. And our benefits programs have supported over 600 employee deployments in 18 countries outside the U.S. in just the past five years. Beyond our company programs, our managers take special care to appreciate and leverage skills and experiences gained in military service, and support team members called to reserve duty. This commitment at an individual and team level gives me immense pride.
Appreciate that the military community can experience world events in significant and distinct ways. The conclusion of the Afghanistan war, for example, had profound meaning for so many who served during that 20-year conflict, and especially so as 13 U.S. service members gave their lives during the final drawdown and exit. It was a privilege at that time for our Military at Microsoft ERG leadership to share a message of acknowledgment and thanks to our community: “To those who have served or are serving, whether with boots on the ground or from afar, to those who have supported family members in service, you have our deepest gratitude. We were tragically reminded in recent days of the great risk taken by those who serve. Like so many before them, we will not forget those who gave their lives. We honor them as heroes.” Along with critical support at key moments, the ERG — which is global and also encompasses active local chapters such as the Australia New Zealand chapter — is there for the Microsoft military community day in and day out, year-round. The military experience continues to evolve, and Military at Microsoft ERG helps employees connect, navigate, and grow.
Serve those who have served. This year’s theme for Military Appreciation Month at Microsoft is “Appreciation Beyond Words.” I deeply hope that our military community experiences in tangible ways that their service is recognized. A wonderful example, one of immense pride for so many of our employees, is the Microsoft Software and Systems Academy (MSSA). Established nine years ago, MSSA has provided a practical and intensive training curriculum that has helped prepare over 3,000 transitioning military service members for their next career. Over 400 Microsoft employees have committed their personal time to serving as mentors for MSSA participants, yet another example of serving those who have served.
Military Appreciation Month gives us an opportunity to recognize those who make such significant commitment to their countries and fellow citizens. On behalf of employees at Microsoft and everyone who shares deep appreciation for the courage, commitment and sacrifice of those who serve, thank you.
A duty to protect: How the VA is keeping veterans safe amid the pandemic. Civilians too
One quiet chat in the middle of a war thrust Dr. Jennifer MacDonald’s career into motion.
It took place 10 years ago at a troop clinic on the U.S. military base in Basra, Iraq. That day, a soldier walked in, complaining of joint pain. MacDonald, then a third-year medical student stationed on the base, decided to dig deeper into the soldier’s story. The real problem soon surfaced.
Amid her fourth combat tour, the soldier was merging long duty shifts with grueling gym sessions – all to work through some conflicting emotions. She missed her family, she said, but worried going home might be even harder. That moment marked a mental breakthrough for the soldier and an epiphany for MacDonald.
“It shaped my concept of transition for veterans and my desire to serve,” says MacDonald, who deployed to Iraq as a member of the Minnesota Army National Guard. “From a medical perspective, it shaped my desire to offer physical healing – and healing from a holistic perspective.”
Today, those same commitments still fuel MacDonald, a family medicine physician in Washington, D.C. and an executive at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where she serves as chief consultant to the deputy under secretary for health.
At the VA, MacDonald spends “most of the day, every day,” she says, helping to monitor and manage the agency’s pandemic-era efforts to protect 9 million VA-enrolled veterans. (There are more than 18 million veterans in total in the U.S.) MacDonald also helps to maintain quality health care at 170 VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) and at more than 1,200 VA sites of care.
Early in the pandemic, at the height of uncertainty over COVID-19, MacDonald and other VA leaders, including senior executives at the VA Office of Information and Technology, began collaborating with industry partners to address new and existing challenges highlighted by the national emergency. One of those partners, Microsoft, was called upon to help transform key VA business processes and accelerate modernization efforts already underway across the agency.
Now, to track and react to active COVID-19 cases among veterans, as well as current bed space at VA hospitals, MacDonald and other VA leaders rely on a series of cloud-based dashboards, built with Microsoft’s Power BI, Bing Maps Platform and Azure App Service. The dashboards offer a first-hand view at near real-time data across the largest integrated health care system in America.
An executive-level dashboard provides VA leaders with situational awareness of COVID-19 cases and virus impacts in an aggregate view across the entire department. Another dashboard delivers mission-critical information to health care system leaders who manage the 170 local VAMCs. The final dashboard summarizes what is known about the status of COVID-19 patients who have been tested or treated at VA facilities.
These tools access a single, authoritative VA data source built on Microsoft’s SQL Server technology. The system harmonizes VA data on patient information, system capacity, staffing and inventory.
“It gives us a common operating picture and decisional information in near real time,” MacDonald says. “Our early planning and the early development of tools like these have enabled us to keep veterans safe. Veteran safety has been the true north of our response.”
The pandemic also prompted the department to activate its crucial but little-known “Fourth Mission.” During national emergencies, the VA can be activated to provide support to national, state and local efforts spanning emergency management, public health, safety and homeland security.
“VA is committed to helping the nation in this effort to combat COVID-19,” VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said earlier this year. “Helping veterans is our first mission, but in many locations across the country we’re helping states and local communities. VA is in this fight not only for the millions of veterans we serve each day; we’re in the fight for the people of the United States.”
The executive-level dashboard is a key tool in that fight, MacDonald says. In addition to offering an interactive map of current coronavirus cases at each VA Medical Center, the tool shows supply-chain and hospital-capacity metrics at every facility. Equipped with that data, the VA can shift resources as needed.
“That near-real-time information from the COVID-19 dashboard enables us to make decisions as we look cohesively at the COVID-positive patients we have hospitalized in a specific location, the number of beds there, our staffing and our inventory of ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE),” MacDonald says.
“As we see COVID-19 take root in more areas, we have requests from states to hold open beds for potential civilian cases,” she adds. “As community hospitals reach capacity and need to transition civilian patients to our system to free up more capacity, we have been able to meet those needs.”
In Florida, for example, the VA recently dispatched 15 clinical support teams to assist 82 long-term care facilities with an estimated 8,863 patients.
As of Nov. 5, the VA had provided more than 870,000 pieces of PPE, including gowns, gloves, masks and face shields. It also has supplied respirators to civilian medical facilities. And VA Medical Centers have admitted 345 non-veteran civilians for care.
Meanwhile, the VA also is working to help individual veterans and their families remain healthy and to provide them timely information.
“At the end of the day, it’s about enabling processes and allowing VA to provide benefits to veterans,” James Gfrerer, the VA’s assistant secretary for information and technology, and chief information officer (CIO), recently told MeriTalk. “I have the benefit of being a veteran myself … and really know what the challenges are.”
As part of that effort, the agency launched a public-facing coronavirus chatbot that offers a symptom checker and gives around-the-clock responses to questions like, “If I need to leave my house, how do I stay safe?”
The chatbot was built in less than a month by leveraging the Microsoft Healthcare Bot service on Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud computing service. The chatbot also answers queries about COVID-19 testing, stimulus payments and how to get a prescription refill.
These tools serve as a first-line safety valve for patients, providing them with a sense of security – a critical value to health providers, says Dr. Michael Uohara, who advises Microsoft’s federal health care initiatives.
“Early in the pandemic response, the provider community was challenged to uncover approaches that provided support and care, while keeping patients socially distanced,” says Uohara, who previously worked in general surgery and clinical research.
“The adoption of the coronavirus chatbot by the VA was one of the techniques that served this purpose. To that effect, the VA, and a few early adopters like the CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), foreshadowed the use of these technologies. The Microsoft Healthcare Bot has now been embraced by dozens of large provider organizations, and there are now over 2,000 healthcare bots with tens of millions of users,” Uohara adds.
From an employee perspective, the most pivotal piece of all social-distancing efforts involves the ability to work from home. To help enable that shift within the department, the VA deployed Microsoft Teams and Windows Virtual Desktop.
Before the pandemic, on any given workday, about 60,000 VA employees performed their jobs remotely, according to Gfrerer.
During one spring weekend, the VA launched “the largest single-day deployment of Microsoft Teams,” bringing about 400,000 users onto the platform, Gfrerer has said.
The number of Teams users within the VA now exceeds 500,000 users, who hold video conferences, share documents and collaborate from the safety of their homes.
“When it comes to telework and our business model,” Gfrerer told the Federal News Network in September, “the theme is very similar to what you hear across (the) commercial sector and certainly around the rest of the federal government … it’s a new day, we’re not going back.”
Top photo: A veteran speaks with his doctors from home via a telemedicine call. (Photo by adamkaz/Getty Images)
US Air Force and Microsoft partner to empower airmen with modern IT
The U.S. Air Force is breaking the glass as a leader in harnessing the power of cloud, rapidly rolling out modern services to enable airmen to advance the mission through more effective collaboration. As part of their digital transformation journey to achieve global access, persistence, and awareness for the 21st century, the U.S. Air Force is deploying targeted workloads that allow airmen to focus on their missions rather than spending time managing IT infrastructure.
Mission focus and efficiency
A key part of their digital transformation strategy is leveraging the technology industry’s capabilities for cloud infrastructure, allowing the U.S. Air Force to re-tool and refocus their resources. As part of our collaboration with the U.S. Air Force, we’re deeply aligned on a joint mission to drive IT enhancements that enable airmen to be more efficient and effective. Building out the capabilities for this targeted mission focus started with planning for how the organization will manage their data in the future, deploying core functions such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive and other capabilities delivered through the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications.
Improved total cost of ownership
The rapid deployment of cloud tools at this scale is made possible by the U.S. Air Force’s leadership in building the multi-cloud factory Cloud One, a migration center of excellence designed as a foundation for future innovation. Leapfrogging more traditional cloud migration strategies with a Platform as a service (PaaS)-first approach and secure systems boundary, Cloud One enables the U.S. Air Force to rapidly transform legacy systems into modern apps and exploit the agility, scale and global presence afforded by the cloud.
William Marion, U.S. Air Force Deputy Chief Information Officer, says that Cloud One is the U.S. Air Force’s “path to the cloud, but further it is fundamental to the Digital Air Force and the future of Multi-Domain Operations. It enables our teams to achieve unprecedented cost efficiencies and productivity through automation, agile software development at scale, and a streamlined process for moving applications to production.”
Cloud One has recalibrated what internal teams expect from a cloud migration, providing all the foundational cloud capabilities including networking, monitoring, access control and identity. In addition, apps deployed to Azure Government inherit the platform’s security controls by design, further reducing operational costs and freeing up resources to focus on the mission.
Focus on security and compliance
The U.S. Air Force understands the importance of a dynamic, foundational risk management framework that can react quickly to cyber-attacks and changes in the threat landscape. With Microsoft 365 Government and Azure Government, they can obtain the scale and performance of modern cloud tools while maintaining compliance with the strict compliance requirements of the Department of Defense (DoD), including DoD Impact Level 5.
Next-generation collaboration
One of the primary goals of the U.S. Air Force is to empower airmen to collaborate and execute their missions with modern technology best practices. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Enterprise IT and Cyber Infrastructure Division (AFLCMC/HNI) at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts has planned, tested and started deployment of Microsoft Teams to improve project management and teamwork. With geographically separated organizations, Teams will streamline collaboration and communication between airmen across the globe.
The massive scale of this U.S. Air Force organization – wide rollout requires massive change management – so we’ve developed a joint plan with focused training, deployment and service adoption to drive mission-focused use cases. The plan includes learning events with modern modalities, creating consumable resources to enable airmen to learn more about how Teams can work for their unit. This includes product immersion events, ask-me-anything events, and video content so airmen can learn efficiently from wherever they are in the world.
These advances in productivity, cloud acceleration, and collaboration are a result of ongoing teamwork across the 16th Air Force, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, and the Defense Information Systems Agency. As thought leaders and innovators, these organization have planned, built and deployed modern IT experiences at massive scale using Microsoft 365 Government and Azure Government, enabling airmen to continue to fly, fight and win in air, space and cyberspace.
Military Spouse Technology Academy to be offered in San Antonio
May 8, 2019
Today we’re announcing the second phase of the Military Spouse Technology Academy (MSTA), which trains military spouses in technical and soft skills that equip them for careers in the technology industry. Following the successful completion of the pilot cohort on March 1 — which graduated 100% of its 19 participants in the Tacoma, Wash., area — the academy will also be offered at a new location in San Antonio, Texas, beginning this fall.
MSTA is the latest program to demonstrate Microsoft’s dedication to supporting the military community. It was built atop the success of the Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA), which launched in 2013 with the mission of providing important technical skills to transitioning service members and veterans.
Military spouses make up a highly educated, talented and hard-working group. Forty-five percent have a four-year degree or higher, but the demands of being a military spouse — frequent relocations, their spouse’s unexpected deployments and the challenge of sometimes living in remote areas — mean that they face high under- and unemployment rates.
At the same time, the technology industry continues to face a talent shortage.
For these reasons and more, Microsoft introduced MSTA, a 22-week onsite program that offers the opportunity for well-paying, long-term and meaningful careers in tech.
“We’re proud that the first Military Spouse Technology Academy graduates have accomplished their training goals,” said U.S. Marine Corps Major General (Ret.) Chris Cortez, vice president of Microsoft Military Affairs. “Now, we’re taking MSTA to San Antonio, based on its large military community, the city’s support for military spouses, and the many companies in the area that have committed to considering employment opportunities to hire these resilient and industrious graduates. Military spouses have a lot of potential. They’re going to be great employees.”
From MSSA, which has helped more than a thousand transitioning service members garner well-paid careers in the technology industry; to YouthSpark4MilKids, which provides immersive STEM workshops specifically for middle school children of military families; to MSTA, which is specifically tailored for military spouses, Microsoft endeavors to empower every person on the planet to achieve more.
MSTA empowers military families and the regions and industries that support them
Reflecting Microsoft’s ever-broadening commitment to this community, the new San Antonio location will offer the Texas-based military spouse community a chance to develop technology skills necessary for today’s digital economy. MSTA will also give local organizations a chance to hire motivated and skilled tech talent.
Microsoft works closely with Hiring Our Heroes — a nonprofit initiative of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that connects service members, spouses and veterans to meaningful employment — to support the military community through MSTA and MSSA. San Antonio is one of Hiring Our Heroes’ Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zones, which boost prospects for military spouses through a vibrant and robust network of employers.
“MSTA is the first of its kind for military spouses,” said Elizabeth O’Brien, senior director of the Military Spouse Program at Hiring Our Heroes. “Military spouses face unique challenges, but I will tell you we are masters of solutions as well. The program that Microsoft created is a perfect example of how companies can partner for innovative change to support military spouse employment.”
Jacqueline Widdis, an MSTA graduate and a program manager at Microsoft, had a 19-and-a-half-year full-time employment gap before starting the program. “MSTA has, quite frankly, changed my life,” Widdis said. “I knew what I had to offer a company, but I couldn’t get past that portal to show or even interview with a company to say, ‘This is what I’m capable of.’ Now, I feel empowered to take control of my own career, find out what my next steps are and walk in that direction.”
MSTA graduates benefit the companies that hire them
Jessica Jacobs, an MSTA graduate who now works at Boeing, found MSTA’s sense of community to be very valuable. “The most challenging thing about being a military spouse is juggling your household and your own personal aspirations,” Jacobs said. “MSTA can benefit organizations by teaching military spouses the fundamentals for IT. MSTA has empowered me to go after my dreams at all costs.”
MSSA and MSTA play a key role in funneling a unique pipeline of savvy and skilled talent from the veteran and military community into roles at some of the world’s most prominent companies. Our hiring-partner program is a group of more than 450 companies committed to hiring these graduates, who are often mission-oriented, adaptable and instilled with a sense of teamwork aimed at problem-solving. As a hiring partner, companies gain access to candidates with the drive, discipline, training and capabilities to succeed in a fast-paced and increasingly digital world.
Learn more about our upcoming cohorts in Tacoma and San Antonio, and see how to become a hiring partner to take advantage of the unique mix of skills cohort graduates have to offer.
VA and Microsoft partner to enhance care, rehabilitation and recreation for Veterans with limited mobility
Xbox Adaptive Controllers will be distributed across facilities within nation’s largest integrated health-care system
WASHINGTON — April 30, 2019 — Today, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Microsoft Corp. announced a new collaboration to enhance opportunities for education, recreation and therapy for Veterans with mobility limitations by introducing the Xbox Adaptive Controller — a video game controller designed for people with limited mobility — in select VA rehabilitation centers around the country.
The partnership, which was formalized April 18, will provide controllers and services to Veterans as part of therapeutic and rehabilitative activities aimed at challenging muscle activation and hand-eye coordination, and greater participation in social and recreational activities.
“This partnership is another step toward achieving VA’s strategic goals of providing excellent customer experiences and business transformation,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “VA remains committed to offering solutions for Veterans’ daily life challenges.”
Together, VA and Microsoft identified an opportunity to introduce or reintroduce gaming to Veterans with spinal cord injuries, amputations, and neurological or other injuries at 22 VA medical centers across the United States. Microsoft is donating its Xbox Adaptive Controller, game consoles, games and other adaptive gaming equipment as part of the collaboration.
Designated VA staff will engage with Veterans using the equipment and share feedback with Microsoft on therapeutic utility and the Veteran experience.
“We owe so much to the service and sacrifice of our Veterans, and as a company, we are committed to supporting them,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Our Xbox Adaptive Controller was designed to make gaming more accessible to millions of people worldwide, and we’re partnering with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to bring the device to Veterans with limited mobility, connecting them to the games they love and the people they want to play with.”
Microsoft and VA have a long-standing strategic partnership, working together for more than 20 years to provide the best possible care and service to Veterans. Gaming is a popular pastime of military personnel, and access to the Xbox Adaptive Controller in VA rehabilitation centers provides the opportunity for Veterans to experience gaming’s various benefits, including staying connected with friends and family across the world, building esprit de corps through competitive or cooperative gameplay, and providing stress relief.
Microsoft’s initial contributions will be allocated across 22 VA facilities. In addition, the controllers and other equipment will be available for Veterans to use at events hosted by VA’s Office of National Veterans Sports Programs and Special Events, such as the National Veterans Wheelchair Games.
The following 16 centers have confirmed participation to date, with at least six additional centers to come: Augusta VA Medical Center (VAMC), Central Alabama VA Health Care System (HCS), Central Texas Veterans HCS, Chillicothe VAMC, Dayton VAMC, Memphis VAMC, Minneapolis VA HCS, Richmond VAMC, VA St. Louis HCS, South Texas Veterans HCS (Audie L. Murphy VA Hospital), South Texas Veterans HCS (Kerrville Division), James A Haley Veterans Hospital – Tampa, VA Eastern Colorado HCS, VA New York Harbor HCS, VA Palo Alto HCS, and VA Puget Sound HCS.
More information on partnering with VA can be found at https://www.va.gov/HEALTHPARTNERSHIPS/index.asp.
Media assets can be found here.
About the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Health Administration
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated health care system in the United States, providing care at 1,250 healthcare facilities, including 172 VA Medical Centers and 1,069 outpatient sites of care of varying complexity (VHA outpatient clinics) to over 9 million Veterans enrolled in the VA health care program.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Assembly for Xbox, (206) 223-1606, [email protected]
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Public Affairs Media Relations, (202) 461-7600, [email protected]
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
The first graduates of Microsoft’s Military Spouse Technology Academy are ready for work
Mar 1, 2019
Today, Microsoft hosted a recognition ceremony to celebrate the 19 graduates of its pilot Military Spouse Technology Academy (MSTA) program in Tacoma, Washington. This 22-week program helps military spouses prepare for and find long-term and meaningful careers in server and cloud administration.
“We’re thrilled that the graduates of the Military Spouse Technology Academy pilot program now have a brand-new opportunity to enter the technology sector,” said U.S. Marine Corps Major General (Ret.) Chris Cortez, vice president of Microsoft Military Affairs. “MSTA is part of our continued commitment to the military and veteran community. Military spouses are a flexible, responsive and well-educated group, and we’re eager to do our part in helping them find fulfilling and long-lasting careers.”
Behind the Military Spouse Technology Academy Program
MSTA’s goal is to empower this community with relevant training for meaningful careers in technology. The program was singularly constructed with spouses’ needs in mind.
“Military spouses are the backbone of support upon which members of the military accomplish their daily mission, whether here in the states or in foreign countries,” said Danny Chung, chief of staff at Microsoft Military Affairs and MSTA program director. “The MSTA program affords military spouses an on-ramp into meaningful careers in tech, increased quality of life for the military family, and fantastic talent for companies like Microsoft and our partners.”
Military spouses face unique challenges to finding purposeful work—including frequent moves, unpredictable schedules and ongoing child-care responsibilities. Although 56 percent of military spouses have an associate’s degree or higher, they face an unemployment rate of 16 percent, four times the national 4 percent average. In addition, 38 percent of military spouses are underemployed, earning less than nonmilitary spouses with equivalent experience, education level or both.
At Microsoft, we feel this is something we can help change.
About the First MSTA Cohort
This first MSTA cohort displays a breadth of backgrounds, experience and knowledge typical of what military spouses have to offer. The 19 members hold 35 college degrees and over 40 certifications. Graduates hail from more than eight countries and collectively speak 20 languages, including Portuguese, Spanish and Mandarin.
Annie Pineda, a member of the MSTA pilot cohort, struggled to complete her bachelor’s degree as a young military spouse. “I think I went to a total of three different universities to finish my degree,” she explained. A strong determination to succeed carried her through her educational journey, but since graduating, she’s struggled. “It’s really easy to just stop looking once you don’t find a great job the third, fourth, fifth time,” Annie said. “It’s tempting to just give up, but I think I’m here celebrating today because I didn’t give in. I kept looking and I kept wanting to learn and I kept persisting.”
That persistence led her to the pilot program. “MSTA gives me hope not only for myself, but also for other spouses,” she said. “Programs like this — especially MSTA — recognize that it’s hard to find a job, it’s hard to just graduate from undergrad. I feel MSTA levels our playing field with civilian spouses, or other spouses who don’t face some of those challenges.”
In the program’s final weeks, each participant interviewed for a position with Microsoft or one of MSTA’s hiring partners. They will hear about job offers in the next few weeks. It’s an important step toward the next phase of their careers.
Microsoft’s Commitment to the Military Community
At Microsoft, our dedication to the military community is holistic, empowering transitioning service members, veterans, spouses and children with skills for the workforce of tomorrow. Last November, Hiring Our Heroes Awarded Microsoft the USAA Military Spouse Employment and Mentoring Award for the company’s work supporting military spouses.
Our wraparound support for the military is also evident in Military Affairs’ cornerstone program, the Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA). It provides transitioning service members and veterans with essential technology and soft skills required for today’s digital economy. In addition, Microsoft’s YouthSpark brings STEM education to children of military families.
Check back to this site for updates on Microsoft’s support for the military community.
Meeting the tech demand for security-cleared veteran talent
This post was originally published on LinkedIn and written by U.S. Marine Corps Major General (Ret.) Chris Cortez, vice president of Microsoft Military Affairs, on November 15, 2018.
Today the United States government faces an unprecedented range of threats—from both traditional foes to modern menaces in the digital realm. And as our country faces these new challenges, it is also in the midst of a digital transformation of its services and operations. Equipping people on the front lines of national security with modern skills and technological awareness is paramount, and we’re committed as industry partners to helping along that journey.
Yet, the work of modernizing and protecting the US government is not just a technology story, it is a people story. Our ability to safeguard our people and institutions relies on a highly specialized and skilled workforce to build, code, and innovate for the future. What we’re seeing now though is a gap between the demand for capabilities and the supply of this much-needed talent.
Many of us have heard about the technology skills gap. We know that technology jobs are growing at a faster rate than the average for all other occupations, and that the demand greatly outpaces the supply. The Brookings Institution suggested last year that digitization of the US economy will require significant investment in education and training both to broaden the pipeline of talent and also to ensure that underrepresented groups aren’t left behind in the new digital economy.
In government though, there is an even more specific gap—that of “cleared talent”—those with security clearances that can be applied to tackle problems that require access to highly sensitive information. And within this pool of talent, there is a very small population of cleared talent with the background in technology that is required to help our government modernize at levels needed. Despite the need to expand this workforce, we’ve seen the population of cleared talent decrease by 30 percent since 2013, with wait times for security clearance approvals now at their highest level ever. Last year, the US was sitting on a security clearance backlog of more than 700,000 applicants.
New data we obtained in partnership with LinkedIn shows the demand for cleared software engineers is very high—with the Washington, D.C., area as the highest demand in the country—and that only 5 percent of professionals with a security clearance hold a degree in computer science. The top two industries hiring cleared talent are also expected to grow even more in the next year: The defense and space industry by 53 percent, and the information technology industry by 49 percent.
The stunted pipeline for cleared talent is not just an HR problem. It is a matter of national security and a threat to progress and innovation.
One population that is critical to help close this gap is our country’s talented veteran workforce. We know that 200,000 military members transition out of the service every year, and, of those with security clearances, many are active duty military, according to a 2018 ClearanceJobs.com report.
At Microsoft, we pioneered Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA), which trains transitioning service members and veterans over the course of an 18-week program for careers in the IT industry. Since MSSA started five years ago, nearly 400 companies and organizations have hired our graduates. For us, it’s proof not only that veterans are an incredible talent pool, but that programs like MSSA are essential to addressing critical skills gaps in the tech industry outside the traditional four-year degree. Companies like Microsoft are better for having these phenomenal veterans working for us and helping advance our mission.
That’s why I am excited to announce that Microsoft will launch a new, dedicated MSSA-cleared talent cohort at Washington state’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord this spring. The program will cater to service members and veterans with active clearances who are interested in learning cloud application development, which is in high demand in the technology industry. As with every MSSA cohort, these students will be mentored by current Microsoft employees and upon completion of the course will be guaranteed an interview with Microsoft or one of our hiring partners, including the US government.
National security depends on private and public institutions working together to prevent and address emerging threats. And being a trusted partner for government transformation means that we are just as committed to investing in our own talent pipeline as we are in theirs. Innovative training programs like MSSA, which benefit both veterans and the industry as a whole, are critical.
There is much more that can be done to address both the technology skills gap and the cleared talent gap, but we must seek new and innovative ways to both build our pipeline of workers and support those who are being left out of the digital economy. Empowering active duty service members and veterans to transition to careers in technology is a win-win for helping to sustain a vital population of our workforce while building a critical, diverse pipeline for in-demand talent. By prioritizing IT and technology training for veterans to operate in the private sector, we can transform our collective capabilities to keep our country safe and moving forward.
Visit military.microsoft.com/MSSA to learn more.
The Navy helped her find her voice; Microsoft helped her transform her career
For U.S. Navy veteran and Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA) graduate Jessica Helmer, building a career wasn’t an easy journey. Her road was fraught with setbacks, but she paved it with a determination to always learn and a refusal to ever settle.
Now, as a program manager with the Shared Services Engineering team at Microsoft, she can’t imagine a more rewarding career — or a more welcoming home.
Growing up in Point Blank, Texas, was challenging for Jessica. Her dad died when she was young. At times afterward, she, her mother and older brother had to skip meals. When they were “between homes,” they couch-surfed with family and friends. Even when her mom enrolled in college and they moved into campus housing during the school year, things never felt steady for Jessica. She was extremely shy and performed inconsistently at school. Through years of moving around, she tried to stay on track but eventually found herself failing out of college.
When Jessica did find a way to start attending classes regularly in her early 20s and earn decent grades, struggles at home once again threatened to throw her goals off course. So she made a plan: She would see her classes through finals. Then, she would enlist in the military.
During the semester, Jessica had connected with her stepdad’s secretary, who was married to an Air Force veteran. Their conversations inspired her, and she determined that military service could give her the stability she’d long craved — and more important, a sense of belonging.
To put her plan into action, Jessica returned to Point Blank to visit the military recruiting centers. Within just three weeks, she had completed her paperwork, aptitude test and physical exam, and was headed off to Naval Station Great Lakes for boot camp.
To this day, Jessica recalls boot camp as the biggest mental and physical challenge she’s endured. Yet, it was a mostly positive experience because of the people looking out for her.
“Our Recruit Division Commander was like a father or a big brother to me — he wanted to make sure all the females were set up for success,” she recalls. “He gave us an idea of what to look out for in our male-dominant environment, and how to handle ourselves.”
As an electronic technician charged with maintaining communication and navigation systems, and the only female in her division of 35 people — and still extremely shy — success meant figuring out how to establish herself and prove she deserved to be there. It wasn’t easy.
“Some people doubted what I was doing or assumed I wasn’t smart enough, especially since it was technical stuff,” she says. “There was this mentality that women don’t do tech, they do nursing.”
The more she strived to do her best work and learn as much as she could, attitudes shifted. Still, Jessica felt continual pressure to prove herself. Doing so took a mix of figuring things out on her own and embracing guidance from de facto mentors. They pushed her when she wanted to settle. They encouraged her when she felt out of her element.
For instance, when she was in charge of systems during a power loss on the USS Boxer, tasked with keeping the ship afloat and in readiness, she successfully stood her watch.
“It was frankly terrifying,” she says. “But it was also a huge source of pride because I was young in terms of how long I’d been serving, and I was the only female that had done it.”
Her willingness to jump in and learn as she went served Jessica well throughout her 10 years of naval service. It’s how she turned a misassignment at the Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center into a career opportunity, even though it meant learning a completely new set of skills, shifting from administering systems and networks to coding software.
“The captain straight-up told me, ‘Yeah, we messed up, you’re not the type of technician we need. But you’ve got this, you’ll figure it out,’” she says.
After being trained on the basics, she did figure it out. And she enjoyed it. Along the way, she gained another mentor: a senior systems engineer who regularly came out to help her with repairs.
So when the time neared to consider re-entering civilian life and Jessica discovered MSSA, she felt the program, designed for military veterans and transitioning service members, was a natural next step.
Jessica attended the 18-week MSSA Cloud Application Development course in San Diego, where she learned database programming and other skills for building and maintaining modern applications. As a graduate, she was also guaranteed an interview for a full-time job at Microsoft or one of more than 360 hiring partners.
When her official transition date neared while she was still in the interview process, Jessica went into hyper-drive. She split her days between applying to jobs and taking online courses to deepen her technical knowledge, all the while remaining hopeful and determined that her efforts would pay off. They did.
After several rounds of interviews, including one in which she had follow-up meetings with two separate groups at Microsoft, Jessica accepted an offer from the team that had been urged to consider her for the role by her MSSA mentor.
“I think the interview process speaks to Microsoft’s desire to find the right fit,” Jessica says. “For both the hiring team and the person they’re bringing in.”
Now, she’s a program manager working on the back end of the systems that enable Microsoft to build its products. Her team is “the backbone of the company,” as she puts it. And she’s proud to be right in the mix of it all, coordinating and translating information between nontechnical customers and highly technical engineering teams.
It’s still mind-blowing to this Navy veteran that she has a successful career in tech, working for a company she admires. She credits her success to the military and MSSA, and especially the support network she’s developed.
“I’m so impressed that the military and Microsoft teamed up,” she says. “To me, growing up, the idea of being a software developer was like this magical thing that only the most special people could do. But here I am. It’s obvious that my Microsoft team wants to help me to be the best that I can be, and therefore make our team the best it can be. It’s been a fantastic transition process for me.”