No Way Out
Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.
No Way Out
Championing Change: Diversity, Inclusion, and Leadership in the Navy with Theresa Carpenter
Theresa Carpenter joins us to discuss her remarkable journey of advocacy and service, revealing the intricate dance between personal beliefs and military protocols. Theresa’s transparency about her struggles to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Navy, despite clashing with official narratives, offers a poignant look into the complexities of military life. As she prepares for retirement, her reflections on leaving the service to pursue change outside its confines underscore the pressing need for diverse voices in fostering innovation.
The conversation takes a deep dive into the nuanced challenges that military leadership faces in embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion. We explore the tension between DEI initiatives and operational effectiveness alongside the impact of extremism training on military culture. Historical naval incidents and current events, like the Afghanistan pullout, serve as backdrops for examining systemic issues that stifle diverse thought. Through it all, Teresa remains hopeful about the potential for transformative leadership to transcend cultural divides and prioritize authentic service.
Additionally, we tackle the often-overlooked mental health struggles within the military, focusing on the alarming rise in suicide rates among service members. Teresa shares insights on how transparency and genuine leadership can begin to address these critical issues while also highlighting the evolving role of communication and storytelling in bridging gaps between military and civilian life. Her platform, "Stories of Service" (SOS), emerges as a beacon for sharing diverse experiences and fostering meaningful dialogue, inviting listeners to engage with these crucial topics.
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All right.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Commander Carpenter. Welcome to no Way Out. You are a commander on active duty.
Theresa Carpenter:I am and.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:I want to start there, mainly because I know that when you write a book, you come out of the Navy, you write a book, you have to go through a process to make sure what you put in the book is okay. How are you able to do a podcast while on active duty?
Theresa Carpenter:while on active duty, so since 2014, I've had a public presence. So that's back when I was a lieutenant. I started a blog. It was called Teresa's Tapestries. I had just gotten a DUI, I was in a very low place, I wanted to just document my journey and it didn't really go that far beyond my Facebook presence. And so since that time and I actually even back up before then I was always doing advocacy, even in my early, early junior officer days, and I was able to do that online. No one cared. It was for puppy mills and commercial dog breeding operations. So I learned how to be an advocate through the animal protection world. And then I started my blog, which was like insights through storytelling and all along the way. I was just doing this on the side and so everything just kept building and as I got more senior it got a lot harder because a lot of people didn't like sometimes what I had to say. It depended on the person.
Theresa Carpenter:I ensure that I stay within the lines of. Anyone can write an editorial off-duty out of uniform. Anybody can have a personal view off-duty out of uniform. I do not ever make a personal attack against somebody. I never, ever do anything that I feel would violate the UCMJ. And if I'm ever in doubt of anything that I'm doing, I consult JAG and I make sure that my JAG and my chain of command know exactly what I'm doing and I wouldn't say they support it. I would say they tolerate it and at this point I'm retiring in the next year and two months. So it's now to that point where I can't do this and keep doing it and stay on active duty. It's too hard and I just I never know when the next, when the next nasty gram is going to come or the next complaint about my work.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Are you getting those internally from people that are wearing uniform now, or yes? I'm curious. Okay, and is it? Because of what? Can you say what conversations or what topics are triggers right now?
Theresa Carpenter:So just recently my advocacy about Pete Hagseth has been causing certain people to not be too happy with what it is I'm doing and it's like they can't really tell me not to do it. But they can watch me very closely. They can spy on my LinkedIn page. Spy on my LinkedIn page. Before then it was a video that I put out where I said we were lowering the standards to take away the GED and high school diploma to enlist. And I still feel we are, because I believe that having an education is important and just that one small thing that you might have done in high school, even if you had to go back and get your GED.
Theresa Carpenter:I think stance means something, and I was led to believe, allegedly, that I lost my last set of orders over that, and so I ended up in beautiful Gulfport, mississippi, instead, and it was a blessing in disguise, because since then, one of the commands that I would have gone to has been involved in some things that I talk about publicly, and so I'm actually kind of glad that things worked out the way that they did. But I still love the Navy, love serving. I've had a very operational tours. I've done mostly deployments. I've always wanted to be where we're actually doing the business of the Navy. So my decision to get out is sort of bittersweet, because I really probably could have kept going, but it got to a place where I knew that I could tell stories and do what it is that I'm doing in a way that I did not feel the leadership would support.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Curious as your thoughts of looking at the larger Navy. What are they missing out when they do not or they fail to encourage people to have a voice on social media? Now, there is a risk to people, of course, if they do something in uniform and things like that, but what's missing in today's information? Warfare, unrestricted warfare, asymmetric warfare. What are we losing out on by not allowing our people to have these type of conversations?
Theresa Carpenter:Diversity of thought, innovation, ideas, I mean, you name it. We're missing out on it. We only embrace certain influencers. I call them like the military friendly ones, the ones that talk about fitness, or they talk about how much they love the Navy, or they do beauty pageants, and they're all great people. I'm not dissing or downgrading any of those things that those influencers are doing, or they talk about leadership, just very broadly. But I've also noticed that as I've more deepened into the woke space I don't even know what to call it anymore but as I've more deepened into what I feel woke and DEI are about, I'm finding myself even more at odds with the official narrative and at this place in my life I think it is best that I retire. But I still have a heart and a love for service and the Navy and telling these stories and highlighting people who aren't afraid to stand up and stick their neck out there.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Well, I thank you for those insights and, like you, I have a special place in my heart for the Navy. I'd say the last four years have been pretty challenging. I've actually told my four years have been pretty challenging. I've actually told my children, my girls, that I do not want them to serve, and that's a result of the things we saw over the last four years my experience with extremism, training, my experience with the mandate on COVID vaccines, my experience with how I've seen people get promoted within the military and that has really shifted my perspective today. Now, that doesn't mean I don't love the Navy. I mean there's so many great lessons from it and in fact, I think part of the reason Mark and I created this podcast is because we want a stronger military. We want that diversity of thought, we want people to think outside the box.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:We need it, yeah, our strength is in our diversity of thought. We want people to think outside the box. We need it. Yeah, our strength is in our diversity of thought Only if that diversity is allowed to emerge through strong conversations, discourse and things like that. And I want to kick it over to Mark, because I know he's just itching to say a few things here. So, mark, some thoughts.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, I mean.
Mark McGrath:I always have thought too that the beauty of diversity would be that we all bring a different perspective to the table.
Mark McGrath:When, after I was an active duty officer in the Marines for six years and I did almost 20 years on Wall Street and I came to learn that the DEI question was one, well, we all look different and come from different backgrounds, but we all say the same exact thing in a synchronized group thing, and the vulnerabilities that that creates is tremendous, and I think that the value that diverse perspectives that come from all over I think that we're missing out on that.
Mark McGrath:I always thought it was amazing about the Marine Corps is that and I say this all the time about the Marine Corps people come from every station in life, every background, every religion, everything you could think of, and they bring that perspective with them and they intersect at some point, like we intersect on honor, courage and commitment. We agree to these things, yet our perspective that we brought to the table never changed. If anything, it enhanced what it is that we were doing as Marines and, as you know, the Marines will give a very clear intent and you can do anything that you want so long as you don't break the UCMJ or break the law, and those, those diverse perspectives are are worth their weight and beyond gold, you know, and, and, and if we miss out on that and we lose, that that's uh, especially by force and coercion. You know, that's just not, it just not cool. I think the flow of our diversity and the flow of our perspectives is really what makes us who we are.
Theresa Carpenter:Yes, I agree, and I also think that there's a lot of people out there right now that aren't seeing what is going on. They really do believe that these initiatives are helping to include people and have people feel part of the team, and the thing is is that the people that believe in it are very well-intentioned and I was a person who was a big believer in a lot of this as well, and I still do feel we need to recruit from a diverse population, but I also believe that we must make everything based on merit. There can't be anything that is oh well, it's time for us to have a Black CO. So in this pool of people that all have different qualifications, the fact that this person is Black is going to be the reason we pick this battalion commander or this CO. Again, I have no proof one way or another. If that's what's happening, but that's what a lot of people feel is happening, and what has become of the military, and I think that that's unfortunate.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Thanks for bringing this up and this is a tough subject here that I want to spend some time on. So I came into the Navy through a minority recruiting program. I was qualified to be. I met the qualifications. I did all the work. My job that I felt that I needed to do was show or demonstrate to everybody that I'm here based on merit. Right, I did the work, I did all that stuff.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:You go through 26, 28 years in the military service. Not everybody shares that ideal or that idea that you need to have a merit-based approach. What ends up happening over time when people are given reason to doubt you as a minority I'm talking about me that doubt is driven by programs like DEI. All right, this sounds weird. So the unattended consequences of focusing on people like me to get me in the military actually forces me out, and that's kind of what I've been trying to say over the years is hey, it's merit-based, do the work. There's a reason. You have a minimum requirement to run an obstacle course and over time that's kind of been degraded. You know we've kind of lost that ability to stay in shape. Academics, same thing. You have a fitness report that you know it's basically a rubric. It says on the left side is what we see, on the right side is what we see and it should be very objective, but it's not the problem is it's not because of anybody can play underhanded games to not allow you to promote to the next rank.
Theresa Carpenter:One is by keeping you at their average. You can have a glowing report, but what they do is they don't allow you to go beyond their average. So if their average is a 4.3, they'll put you at 4.3. And then a year later they'll put you at that same 4.3. So you've not done anything to get in trouble or do anything wrong and the only thing recourse that you have is you can write.
Theresa Carpenter:At least in the Navy you can write a statement. So if you write a statement and you say, oh, I don't think this is fair, this is all the work that I've done, this is the impact I've made, then your reporting senior gets to have the last word and gets to just negate everything that you just said. So it's not a fair system at all and there's no objective metrics of impact. Like you can check all the blocks in the world, go to all the graduate schools, have all the joint qualifications. But if your reporting senior sticks you at his average or her average and doesn't put you past that, your only recourse is to write a statement. That will get trumped by your reporting senior, who will have the last word, or you can write a letter to the board, which they can or they can't consider that. So it's not a fair system at all. It's based on people who know how to please the boss. That's what it's based on, know how to please the boss.
Mark McGrath:That's what it's based on. I remember on Wall Street talking about things like and I was in asset management but bringing up things because veterans were considered a DEI category. People did not want to hear your perspective, they didn't know that they had veterans, and they could say that they had veterans. But you start talking about hey, we learned this thing about this, or this is called the OODA loop and this is what we you know this book's called war fighting. If we cross out war fighting and put portfolio management, the concepts people don't want to hear it at all, then that's I think that's where it comes down to like the perspectives that people are bringing to the table, whether it's veterans, whether it's, you know, race, religion, creed, whatever it is that stuff gets lost and then that's to the detriment of the greater organization. I think it's to the detriment of the organization.
Theresa Carpenter:Absolutely and I'm not saying that I don't think it's good that we go to historically Black colleges or we'll go into like a Latino trade organization and recruit people. Absolutely, we should be doing that From a recruitment standpoint. We should be taking from as many people as we can and putting our message in as many diverse places as possible.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, because that's America. I guess what?
Theresa Carpenter:I'm talking about yeah, exactly yeah, we need to do that. I'm more or less talking about whether or not we are and again, I don't have proof of this one way or the other. If we are doing it, there are people who think we are, there are people who don't think we are, and that's why it's such a contentious issue is because it really hasn't been studied and nobody really knows if it's been happening. We just know from the messaging. The messaging is very DEI focused this past four years and what I think is that if we had been succeeding in some of these other arenas that people are unhappy with, the DEI issue would have been non-existent. People would have seen the DEI messaging or they would have seen that we're promoting diversity and they would have been like that's great.
Theresa Carpenter:But it was the fact that there were other things, like the IG system or the pullout from Afghanistan or the lack of transparency around, like the Bradley Geary case, for an example, with the Navy SEALs. We see those things and then we say, well, wait a minute, what's going on with the military? Why aren't we being transparent, especially when it comes to the justice system? Or why did the fall out in Afghanistan have to go down the way that it did, and there's no answers, there's no explanation. So people just get frustrated with some of those things and they want change and they're just not seeing it.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:And the most recent event or incident is the shoot down of an F-18 this past weekend. Right, we lost.
Theresa Carpenter:I didn't hear about that.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Yeah, so we said the USS Gettysburg shut down. That's what's being reported right now.
Mark McGrath:That's the story, anyway, yeah.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Sure, that's a story that we're being told, story that we're being told and it may be true, but you go back in the late 80s and you have the USS Stark, you have the USS Vincennes. We learned some amazing lessons from them and the surface community doesn't adopt those lessons, and actually naval aviation does, and this whole thing emerges in the team science now on the outside. And then in 2017, we have MISAPS at sea at least some sailors, I think it was 17.
Theresa Carpenter:Fitzgerald and McCain.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:And then we, you know. So those things happen. You know over and over again. And those are the. You know, why did those happen?
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Well, my view is we didn't take the lessons from the Vincennes and the Stark and everything else and apply them. You know, they were well-written. In fact, people like Admiral Stavridis, when he was a junior officer, wrote about the things that need to be done, including behavioral markers applied to the surface warfare community, which is very much aligned to team science, and these things just don't get picked up. And then my experience in 2017, after the MISAPS at sea, was we had an admiral go out there and chase down a organization that he wanted to bring into the US Navy because he would later be part of the board and part of the leadership team there that was building a lot of lessons around aviation crew resource. Yeah, it was crushing Taking a lot of these lessons from the military and bringing them back and sharing them back with military leaders.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:And my take on it was hey, you can go down to the Naval Safety Center right now Naval Safety Command and learn these lessons from them. They know how to do this, but that's not how this works. There's just too much corruption in the system. I agree with you that, and I don't know if I necessarily agree with you. I'm not sure of your whole point here as far as where you sit on DEI, but my view of it is it got in the way of getting things done All right. Same with the extremism. You know when we had to go through extremism training. Basically the lesson I took away from that was you can't speak up here, you can't have a diverse thought here.
Theresa Carpenter:It was an interesting time for me personally because I got put in charge of having to conduct that training and I read the training materials and I just felt like they were shit.
Theresa Carpenter:And so I ended up inviting an NCIS agent and a agent from Norfolk Police Department to just talk about hate crimes because I thought that was a little bit more valuable than this idea.
Theresa Carpenter:The problem is toxic work environments, and that can happen based on race, not race. It's not even based on that a lot of times. It's based on personality, it's based on dynamics of power, and those things play out regardless of skin color, regardless of gender, regardless of cultural affinity. It's not to say that those things don't play a factor. I mean, we all know that certain cultures stick together on a ship, certain races sometimes stick together, so I know there are those forces at play, but I think that having a strong leader that unites people around a shared mission and a shared love of service can trump a lot of those issues. An involved leader, somebody that cares more about their people and about the cause than they do about their own personal personal promotion opportunities and unfortunately, I think the people that are making it to the GEO and the FO ranks not all of them, but a lot of them are, yes, men and women that have abandoned diversity of thought for protecting the institution at the expense of the Constitution.
Mark McGrath:Yeah that's a very good way to phrase it and it's not new. You know the work that we do and the theorists that we follow was fighting this head-on firsthand and the names change, but the themes and the players really, really, really don't.
Theresa Carpenter:It's unfortunate because but I'm hopeful yeah.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, it's unfortunate. Well, you want, I mean, you hear a lot of talk, like a lot of the the talk is we've, we've, we've been. I've been talking about some subtext that we've seen from veteran officers about everybody's made this to do, about China, this perceived naval showdown we're going to have with China and the South China Sea, and whether that's true or not. I mean, I don't necessarily think that it is, but whether it's true or not, you start to wonder. If they're so mighty and scary, what's their DEI program like? Is it making them stronger? How do they deal with this in HR? What's their DEI program like? What are they? Are they? Is it making them stronger? Like, how do they deal with this in HR? You know, are they approaching warfighting?
Theresa Carpenter:in a completely different way.
Mark McGrath:You talk about differentiated thinking Are they approaching warfighting in a completely different way. Yeah Well, of course we know this Right.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:You know they're talking about Chapter 6 and unrestricted warfare and things that we're trying to get our heads wrapped around and very few military officers in our military actually understand what. Chapter 6 is about no yeah.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, and this article that Ponch and I have just been talking about. It's a former Marine officer and he was writing about how the commandant of the Marine Corps was recently making some comments about how our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is going to make us better versus the Chinese. And we're like which part? The part where we left and we handed it back? I don't understand. And it's not to undermine the valor of the people that we all know. We all know people that are phenomenal leaders. We also know a lot of people that are suffering from that. We know a lot of people that continue to suffer and have taken their own lives, and it's serious stuff. And it just seemed like a very out of touch comment. If the reality that's facing us is X, well, how are we approaching diversity of thinking to best handle X? Or are we doing something completely different? You know, ineffective?
Theresa Carpenter:Well, I think that on a tactical level or on a local level, there was probably some short-term gains in Iraq and Afghanistan, from what I've read, and there are people that can feel very proud on a person-to-person or a small group level of what they accomplished. But I think that when you look at where those two countries lie now, I don't really sense that they're any better off because of our involvement. Maybe certain people are better off, maybe certain translators and people came into our country are better off, but I don't believe that because we went over there we're better off. And you could make that same argument for what's going on in Ukraine. Like, is Ukraine better off?
Mark McGrath:Hundreds of thousands. What is it?
Theresa Carpenter:three years later.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, yeah.
Theresa Carpenter:Are they better off because of all this money that NATO is pumping into them? I don't know. Is because I do see that with this new administration and with more and more people understanding that maybe this whole woke ideology is not healthy and is not proper, that enough people will band together as citizens, like people like Scott Mann or even Pete Hagseth I mean, you watch interviews with him and you see that there are people, really smart people, out there that are looking at these issues and going going.
Mark McGrath:no, this isn't the military we want anymore do you think like I mean, is the logic such that and people believe the logic such that someone could sit down and counsel, like chinese admirals, and say, if you started doing this, you know it'd actually make you better, like you'd actually make your your, uh, you'd be an even scarier opponent, you know? If I mean, is that the logic doesn't carry, or no? I mean, it seems like if you apply that logic, that's what you, that's what you would do.
Theresa Carpenter:I think that a lot of this is just a pull to keep the present forces in power. That's all this is about. It has nothing to do with war fighting. It has nothing to do with war fighting. It has to do with making sure that they can continue to make the decisions and that the people who have other ideas and who have other ways of doing things that could be better are not able to be heard. And that's how. That's why they just get canceled.
Mark McGrath:Is that because that's the easiest way to?
Theresa Carpenter:I was going to say. Is that why a lot of people in power put a put a try to put a cap on the Internet, just because so many perspectives that not normally would be heard can be heard absolutely? I mean, like, look at what's happened with, like all the big tech companies and and how youtube censored any kind of diversity of thought when it came to covid, for an example. There's a reason for that. I truly do believe that, but, like I said, I I think that you know this past election was sent a message that there are a lot of people out there that are seeing what's going on and they want something new. And that's what makes me hopeful about the military, because we really still have really good people that want to serve and want to do a good job, and I think that they ought to be given the chance to do that and be free of this mindset, this ideology, because it's not serving them.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:You get the opportunity to speak to a lot of folks that have a military background. On your podcast I do. One of the most challenging issues that I see right now is suicide, PTSD, TBI, active duty and, of course, veteran community. I know you're an advocate for mental health inside the DOD. I am. Let me just kind of set the conditions or give us some context as to what's going on inside the DOD as far as suicide rates and then what's going on in the veteran community.
Theresa Carpenter:So I don't know the exact suicide numbers because they are always changing. I know that I want to say that this year they went up, but then the messaging was that it wasn't statistically significant how much they went up. But I don't think that they've gone down at all. I think that with mental health we've gotten to a place where it's okay to ask for help, it's okay to go to therapy. None of that stuff was a thing when I first joined the Navy in 1996. And now you can do those things. So that makes me feel a lot better about where the DOD stands, because we are able to talk about it.
Theresa Carpenter:What's missing is our leadership doesn't talk about it. Still, like you don't hear a flag officer or a general officer talking about their mental health problems. We don't hear that authenticity or that vulnerability that I think is so important for people to understand that they're not alone. And then the other issue is that people, when they're overworked, under-resourced, undermanned, no amount of talk therapy is going to fix those problems. And so I do have a friend who did a years-long effort to try to find the suicide rate by job code. His name is Chris McGee.
Theresa Carpenter:He's a lawyer. He used to be an aviation maintainer in the Air Force and the DOD blew him off for two or three years until he finally got a senator involved, released the numbers. They categorized it by very broad brush job ratings so that you really couldn't drill down and see which jobs or which career fields had the highest suicide rate. But his whole argument was that there are certain jobs that are just burning people out like burning the candle at both ends, and we need to get after that and find out why we've got these spikes in certain job positions. And the DOD doesn't want to have that conversation. So I think what I see in the DOD is a lack of transparency. There's a reason why you never see a flag officer or a general officer who's currently serving on a podcast. I mean, can you name one? Can you name?
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:any yes we can.
Mark McGrath:Yes, we can. Yes, we can yes we can.
Mark McGrath:Yes, can you name any? Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we love yours.
Mark McGrath:This is episode eight of our show. We had a major general, brooke Leonard, us Air Force callsign Tank Good. He's a very close personal friend and a warfighter extraordinaire that came to talk about John Boyd, and I still believe to this day that Ponch and I are the only people ever in the history of anything to get an active duty Air Force general to say wonderful things about John Boyd and, by the way, they're all authentic. I mean, he really is a wonderful leader. He retired last year, but yeah, he did, and we've invited others on A lot of times.
Mark McGrath:It's a struggle with the PAO or the JAG, as you mentioned, but you know, we had the PAO and the JAG look at it and everything was fine, and then we published it, and it was a really good thing for Ponch and I, because, as we're talking about these types of concepts, you know and we're laying a really good foundation about the thinking of John Boyd there was nobody better than Tank Leonard to have on, and yeah, it's been a great thing, but yeah, it can be done if they want to. To your point, though and it's something that does consume a fair bit of podcasts. I can't think of any. I could think of retired generals, but I cannot think of active duty.
Theresa Carpenter:No, I mean I think that's going to change. Like I say, I think this is the new way that people communicate and they get information. I mean people at Trump going on Rogan and, by the way, guys like, even when RFK was running for president as an independent, I mean he was going to left wing, right wing, middle extreme.
Mark McGrath:I mean he didn't back down at all, he was going everywhere but the mainstream media and look what happened. I mean, you saw, at the National Press Club I guess it was last week or two weeks ago, I forget what his title was, but he was basically trashing all of that Like it's not supposed to work this way. You know, you're not supposed to be able to communicate ideas on podcasts or X or or Instagram or whatever the heck people are doing. That we're supposed to tell you what to think.
Theresa Carpenter:Check that out.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, I was at the press club. That's interesting. I was embarrassed for him giving that talk. Yeah, it sounded like just completely tone deaf and out of touch.
Theresa Carpenter:Wow, well, and I think that-.
Mark McGrath:That's like saying in the old days, like, well, we're not going to embrace television, why? Well, because we're radio people and this is, radio is the way to go and we're not. This television it's. You know, it's going to be no one's going to use television.
Theresa Carpenter:And we had a saying in the Navy that we have these conversations and we and we talk about them in a way that's more nuanced and long form, the more you get a sense for people. I think one of the things that we got from trump was and I forget who the podcaster was, but it's that guy with, like the mullet and he's sort of a charismatic.
Mark McGrath:Theo Vaughn.
Theresa Carpenter:That was the best interview because then you just saw, like Trump being himself, and you saw him talking about his brother, fred, who had alcoholism, and that's why you know Trump doesn't drink or do drugs, and it was just such a beautiful way to really understand the human behind the political machine, and I think that that's what we need. We need to have more of these conversations.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, and he took, like you know, you can't fake it. When you ask Theo Vaughn, you're the president and he's asking him about his own experience with addiction and drugs and stuff like that. I mean, you're right, it was a genuine conversation and that's what I think that's what Rogan was saying was like I'm not going to do a canned thing where they fly in and they censor what I write. We want to see the real person and that's the, that's the this medium. And yeah, you start to wonder too.
Mark McGrath:I haven't looked at recruiting numbers lately, but I know that they're not great. And you think about all the people that are not going to the military that would have otherwise, because they feel completely ignored or it's out of touch. I'm hearing a lot of like say, if I go on listening to podcasts, I'm listening to a lot of former military tell me about what used to be, but I'm not really hearing anybody tell me anything that would motivate me to go, because, even to Ponch's point, my four children none of them they've all told me like dad, there's no way I'm going to the military at all.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:You know, and I think it's because they feel as a disconnect. Yeah, there was a time here in Virginia Beach, so I'm not too far. I live in Natoville, if you will, teresa, so where a lot of Nato families live here in.
Theresa Carpenter:Virginia Beach. Okay, Are you near ACT? No.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:I'm in Virginia Beach by Great Neck Cox High School. Oh, I see, Okay, so you got a lot of NATO families here and we have a lot of retirees and a lot of senior officers in the area. There was a time about a year or two ago where not a single one of us veteran active duty reserve wanted our children to serve. And I let my chain of command know that at the highest level, sent him a note, said, hey, here's what I know, here's what people are saying. And the response I got was not everybody needs to serve. And I'm like, oh my God, man, you are so fucking out of touch, dude, you need to go away. And unfortunately he went away now.
Theresa Carpenter:Well, and I think it's just sad because the military has given me everything that I have. I mean, you really can't beat number one. The benefits, like the GI Bill, the pay and allowances I mean where else is one going to have everything covered, whether it be the housing, the food, the home loan, like just things like that. They're just incredible. And then the opportunities to serve with people from all walks of life, to travel to all these different countries, experience these different ways of living. It's just incredible. And the skills that you can pick up, that they'll teach you, and so that's the part that just makes me sad. And it's such an important mission to defend our country and to protect. To protect, I would say. One of the biggest reasons why I wouldn't if I had children, I wouldn't recommend them is because I just don't know if they'd be psychologically safe in the military, because we don't have proper investigative procedures to properly adjudicate when a crime or even something lower like an administration violation has has occurred. It's so biased.
Mark McGrath:So you're saying I was going to say you think it would benefit from an independent if the JAG Corps was more of an independent judiciary within the yes. That'd be interesting.
Theresa Carpenter:Well, the JAG works for the commander. I mean, how is that unbiased? It's not, and it's a very hard problem to solve because a lot of these infractions occur at a much lower level, and so where does the line get drawn about what has to go outside the chain and then what can be handled down to a lower level? But it's not working when you can pick and cherry pick witnesses, when the commanding officer can override the investigating officer, and people just aren't feeling like they're getting the justice that they deserve, and so I wouldn't recommend it because I'd be too afraid that they might get hosed up in something. They either get falsely accused or they become a victim and they don't have any way to seek justice.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:So, teresa, I learned something very valuable in the last several years working with PTSD, tbi and the psychedelicist therapy community Men who lead the military may be traumatized, and I'm talking SEALs and aviators and warfighters may be traumatized by combat. Aviators and warfighters may be traumatized by combat something or injury, moral injury from an accident or something like that. I projected that onto our sisters in the military, right. I mean, that was my assumption that, hey, we had conversations, open conversations, and I learned from the women that we served with that, even though they've seen combat or been part of an accident or whatever, their trauma is not from that, it's from sexual assault, and that blew my mind. I didn't know when I was wearing a uniform that was happening at scale.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:And then this goes back to the point I made about my. I have two girls. One of the reasons I don't want them to serve is for that. Right Now that I. You know what I learned over the last several years is is is mind-blowing, and you know I have to ask for forgiveness for everybody around me who you know I walked around just assuming it was the same for everybody. It's not. And I know you're having discussions with folks and since we're talking about that. The system drives behaviors. We just talked about the judiciary system within the military, how they work for the commander. That's probably not the right system, as Mark pointed out, but that system is going to drive behaviors and these behaviors are to suppress that information, that flow of information. Are you hearing the same thing or can you elaborate more on the subject of?
Theresa Carpenter:made good strides. They've taken the prosecution for sexual assault and I think it's domestic violence and a couple others outside the chain of command, and I think that's a really great first step. I don't know how effective those independent duty prosecutors have been yet. This was the first year that they have instituted that process, so I think it remains to be seen how impactful it is. But, to your point, sexual assault is incredibly hard to prove and I think that's the crux of the issue is that it relies on witness testimony. A lot of times there's no hardcore proof, so it becomes a he said, she said game.
Theresa Carpenter:And if the person who's been accused of the crime has the proper lawyer and knows how to navigate the justice system they're oftentimes going to hire, can get an attorney out in town who might have been a colonel as a as 06 retired JAG has maybe even had trial and courtroom experience now goes up against an 03, a person who's been at the job maybe you know, five, five years, something like that, and it's it's just. It's a. It's a, it's a shit show. I mean, I had a whole interview with Tim Parlatore. He represented Eddie Gallagher. He's represented a multitude of people who've been impacted by this system and he really broke down all the problems with this system the way it is now.
Theresa Carpenter:Walk the Talk Foundation is another organization that's really trying to get to some of the truth on some of these issues and how to resolve them. They want to start off by training investigators, and I think that's a really great step. Yeah, when you become an IO, they just kind of hand you a bunch of instructions and say go forth and interview witnesses, and you're like what experience do I have as a trained investigator? You don't.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, and some of these things can be as we were talking before we started recording. You listened to our podcast with Tom Wright about the Fat Leonard case. I mean, some people for years could be saying something, reporting something, identifying weak signals or anomalies that shouldn't be happening and everybody brushes it aside.
Theresa Carpenter:Yeah yeah, it turns a blind eye because the person's getting work done and that's going to happen if there isn't a strong system in place to ensure that those kinds of things don't happen, and I don't think we have that at the moment. But, like I said, there are so many people who are seeing these things and they're talking about them and I think we're moving in a good direction and I am hopeful. I do hope that the prospective SecDef gets nominated. I'll be watching very closely on January 14th what happens at the Senate confirmation hearings and I am encouraged that Trump picked such a strong person, who may not have all the experience that others might have had, but I think that he has the intellect and I think he understands problems in a way that I haven't heard anyone else articulate.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, he's been there too. He knows what it's like. He can relate to what people are actually going through and the need to be a warfighting institution and not a policy social experiment, I guess.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:So we've kind of focused on the negative side of things. I want to kind of flip it around and go to the positive side. So veterans are coming out, they're doing great Entrepreneurs. They're on your podcast. They're talking about how they can take lessons from the military and apply them. I want to hear some of the key winning stories that you've had on your podcast that you wouldn't mind sharing with us here.
Theresa Carpenter:I'm trying to think off the top of my head, I would say the people who come on my show and talk a lot about the transition community. So on LinkedIn there is an entire community that is dedicated to ensuring that people have a smooth transition, to ensuring that people have a smooth transition, and it's just been really interesting to hear some of the people like my guest last week who he's getting out in about a year, year and a half and he went from having a tumultuous childhood to surviving the attack on the USS Cole and having to pull some of his shipmates out and really dealing with that, to going through his life and trying to figure out of his shipmates out and really dealing with that. To going through his life and trying to figure out what his place was, while all at the same time inspiring his sailors being the example. I mean, everybody who has heard that show really got a lot out of it and he's just a great leader, like you can just tell he's the kind of person that will get in there and do the work and I think those are the kind of stories that I just I love to hear on my show.
Theresa Carpenter:I had Suzanne, I want to say Huffman, I've had some a few foreign area officers and they're some of my favorites to have on because they've got the policy experience with the US State Department and then they can incorporate that into some of the military stuff. So I learned about foreign military sales. I learned about all the language skills that they have Did you know I'm a FAO.
Theresa Carpenter:No, yeah, I did not know that.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:I left active duty as an FAO. I couldn't join the reserve because they didn't have an FAO community Right, so I reverted back to 1325. And then they, a year later they created an FAO community and said hey, would you like to not be part of the community but apply for it? I'm like you want me to apply for a community that I just came from and that's where I realized the reserve is broken, just like anything else. But yeah, I agree with you. Fms, foreign military sales, work at a state department A lot of things in the news right now. Money going to the Taliban there's all.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:That flow of money isn't always coming from the DOD, it comes from state A lot of times we work on those cases and examples sending a brand new twin engine aircraft to some place in the world. Why does that matter? Because some senator somewhere wants that aircraft built. Not that the people in the area know how to fly an airplane or have the technology to maintain it, but it's driven by the system again right. So you get to learn a lot about what's going on in the world, including things going on in Ukraine, from the foreign area officer community, and the Navy created that community in response to the lessons that we learned from 9-11. And then we saw the Army have that community and it was pretty amazing that we did that. But I'm glad you brought that up because not a lot of people understand that that community is pretty special.
Theresa Carpenter:It really is yeah, I've had two FAOs on my show, one from the Air Force, one from the Navy and I love hearing their stories. I love hearing about how they integrate within that country. I've actually worked in an FAO office in El Salvador. I worked there for three months and it was a great experience. I mean, it's half civilians from the area, the other half is military members, and just the breadth of the portfolio that they have to handle to do all the things that they're doing, from training to medical and dental and some of the other lower level projects to some of, like you said, the bigger projects with, like selling of the military hardware it's just a fascinating deep dive.
Theresa Carpenter:So I would say those are some of my favorite stories. I recently had a commanding officer of USF Eisenhower who came on. He was great and he just loves his job. He's encouraged by the strength of his sailors. He, to me, is like when I see guys like him I go oh gosh, I'm still really excited about the military Because if people like that make it up to the three, four star level, they're going to make change and they're going to not be afraid to speak up. So I am encouraged by some of those stories.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Yeah, chow has a great social media presence too, unlike, I think, a lot of other officers, and so he's taking a big risk with that, but I'm thankful that he's on LinkedIn and Facebook and where else have I seen him?
Theresa Carpenter:Instagram.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Yeah, yeah, he's put himself out there, which I think is the right thing to do, for anybody in command right now is be vulnerable yeah.
Theresa Carpenter:Javier Lata is another one. He's another 06 that's been doing it. He was on the USS Martha, but he does a lot of motivational stuff. The sailors love him. So there are a few out there that are just really doing good stuff in the Navy and also across the DoD. There's other ones I'm just more obviously because I'm Navy, I'm more familiar with that.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:I saw that you spent time at the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command. Is that correct?
Mark McGrath:Yes.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Okay. So for those of you that don't know, I thought that was one of the most advanced courses I ever went through. It's much like JPME-2. I went through it as a foreign area officer and we spent a lot of time. The things that happened in Libya, things that happened in Somalia, things that happened all over Africa, if you will. I spent a lot of time on those as a foreign area officer doing the planning. So we take our tactical background, mix it with our intelligence background and now we're planners in this Joint Enabling Capabilities Command. So do you have any comments on JEC and what you learned from being up here in.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Norfolk.
Theresa Carpenter:I enjoyed that tour quite a bit. I went there and served at El Salvador in the, like I said, in the military office of defense cooperation I think is what it's called ODC office, and that was an incredible experience. We were there for a political reason. We were there because at the time we were having a very open border and they wanted to have an operation called Operation Enhanced Stability where we were going to publicize more of what we were doing in Guatemala and El Salvador and other places, I think, to distract from what was going on at the border. And it didn't really kick off the way we thought it would and, as these things do, we have these great ideas and then sometimes they don't get executed completely. But I did get a chance to stay there and stay on as a PAO to help for those three, four months and that was incredible. That's what I loved about the JEC is that you could go and work for any COCOM, so anytime a COCOM needed an augment, they just basically have this whole package of different kind of planners that would go, whether it be public affairs, intel, n3, logistics, and so we also went to that was in Southcom. But then I also went to a 6th Fleet, ucom.
Theresa Carpenter:I went to UCOM and I was there at the start of the war in Ukraine. So when we went in there we didn't know at first how much of the DoD resources were going to be used. We were being told that we might actually go into Ukraine. I mean there wasn't really this fully formed plan at the beginning, and so they brought a team of planners to go to UCOM and just assist with what we would do if we were to go in there.
Theresa Carpenter:Now, as it turns out, we ended up setting up a security operation group I want to forget what it was called Basically a logistical arm that would coordinate the logistics of supplies and other hardware to go into Ukraine. But I was there for another four months doing that. So most of my time at JEC was being deployed. I mean that was the whole. Purpose of that unit was to send people out for deployment. So it was just an interesting command. It's one of those jobs that, like one of those weird jobs in the Navy I mean military that a lot of people just don't really understand what they think about.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:So shifting gears a little bit on the PR side information, warfare, information operations, taking these skills that you have from the military and bring them to the private sector. What exactly can you? What can a PR? What do you call it PRist or what's what's? What do you?
Theresa Carpenter:I would say a public relations, I would say, or a PR executive, or a public relations practitioner. What can they bring to the table from being in the military? Yeah, yeah, I would say it's quite similar to what I do in the military. You're the person who's coordinating to get either owned or earned media placement. So, whether that be your content creators that work for you, so whether it be your graphic designers or your webmasters, all those people form your team, right. And then, on the flip side, you're also thinking about earned placement. So the owned versus earned. So owned is the people that work for you, that put out product and put out content. But then you also have earned placement. So earned placement is where I pitch a podcast, or I pitch a media outlet and or I do an event, right, and they publish whatever it is. You know it's not I don't control that content, I don't weigh in on it. It's what? How they want to publish that story.
Theresa Carpenter:So I think that out in the civilian sector, we have the same people who do those jobs.
Theresa Carpenter:Now I will say, in the civilian sector, it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody who's a trained PAO that has been through all this graduate school. I mean, this is very interesting right now with Pete Hagseth, the only spokesperson I've seen is his lawyer who's talking on his behalf. So that just shows you that public relations is not in my opinion, and I know that there'll be PAOs that just get very upset with me about this but I think it's a job that you have to be a trained communicator to do, but I don't think you necessarily have to go through all this college and have all this education. I just think that you have to be a good storyteller, you have to understand how to frame, you have to be able to manage expectations with a lot of different parties and you have to be able to know when to say no, because there's just constant, constant churn of things that you are probably should be putting out or people want you to put out pao.
Theresa Carpenter:Sometimes the chief spokesman, the chief communicator should be the last person to leave the boardroom with this I agree, and I think that the PAO should be the person that's right side by side with the commander, and that doesn't always happen. There are commands where the PAO is brought in at the last minute and it's to their detriment, because then we don't understand how this plan even got started. Consideration was taken about what that media coverage was going to be on this operation and then, the next thing, you know, the operation can't go down the way it was supposed to be planned out because of the fact that nobody took into account the audience or what the media, how the media was going to frame this event.
Mark McGrath:Internally and externally, and I learned that from a retired army PAO that also had a 20 year corporate career after his 20 some year military career in communications and he taught me that. He said that you know the communicator, the chief communicator, should be the last person to leave the leader, because the leader is the chief communicator of the whole entire organization. It has to communicate effectively internal, external and I do have to credit that PAO Sometimes I call him dad, so I'm the son of a retired PAO. That's one of his big things about communicating is the communicator should always be the last one.
Theresa Carpenter:So your father was a public affairs officer.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, my dad. He was a West Pointer mech infantry officer and then he had a secondary MOS as the PAO, and then he was the public affairs officer for an army training command in Germany, and then he was the PAO for the chief of staff of the army, for General Vono, and then for General Gordon Sullivan, and then his last retirement job before he went into a civilian career he was the PAO at West Point, his alma mater. That was his retirement job.
Theresa Carpenter:That's so cool.
Mark McGrath:Yeah, he had been historic and then he retired as the. He was the Global Communications Chief of a major corporation and he was PRSA and Arthur Page and all those sorts of things. Very, very involved in all that stuff. Yeah, so APR like you.
Theresa Carpenter:I mean it's a wonderful field.
Theresa Carpenter:Yeah yeah. I love my trade organization. I've met some amazing people in it, and it's always wonderful when I have PA hosts on my show, because it's just like we can kind of nerd out. I'm sure you're like that with the FAO community bunch. It's like you just you know your people or your tribe, and so whenever we get together we can talk about certain things, and I love being a watcher of media.
Theresa Carpenter:So it's been really interesting to me to watch the differences and how how much the media has the mass media has. Media has become so divided, like the NBC and the CNN that we're watching today is not the NBC and CNN from 15 years ago, and now you really need something that can put people a little bit more in the middle, because all we have is the people on the right who have their right-wing media and the people on the left who have their left-wing media, and the only people that are really giving you something in between is if you happen to know a pod or you like an interviewer and you kind of can trust that they'll try to see both sides, but otherwise you're just going to get one side.
Mark McGrath:We talk a lot about how hey.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Teresa, we're kind of wrapping up on time, Sorry sorry. Say we're wrapping up on time here. Go ahead, Moose.
Mark McGrath:No, I was just going to close and say that it's important in a lot of the stuff that we've talked about with guests that we've had, that follow certain theorists like John Boyd and Marshall McLuhan. It's important to follow their example that when you knew something was not accurate or correct or aligned with reality, to let go of it and reorient and figure out what actually is the truth and pursue it, versus the sort of the canned handed down. This is what everybody is supposed to think and then enforce that, because that's not how complexity works. It doesn't work like that.
Theresa Carpenter:Absolutely no, I agree, and I think that being able to correct the record, admit when you're wrong. You guys don't know how many times I've taken a post down, like probably. Well, maybe not a lot, but like maybe at least three or four times, or I've edited a post based on something that my audience has said, because I'm not always right and I don't always get it 100% of the time. I try to do my best with information, but because of just the nature of how dynamic information is, or my own bias sometimes.
Theresa Carpenter:Oh yeah, the other day I called CBS a left-leaning propaganda machine because they stuck a microphone in Pete Hanks' face in a very rude way and it triggered me. It really did, and I got a call from Chimpo about it, which, as I should, I totally owned that I shouldn't have said that and I owned it. I said, yep, that that was my bias coming through, because I've kind of sort of categorized a lot of legacy media as being left leaning. Well, you weren't wrong. Ok, I'll say that because they've got to work with those guys every day and so they ended up getting a, which I mean it was really kind of amazing to me that a reporter would take the time to write the news desk and say something. But I'm glad that she did or he did, because I should be held accountable to that and I shouldn't be name calling and things like that. So it was good.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Oh, that's great. Hey, we appreciate you coming on today. I Want to turn it back over to you to see if you have any questions about what we do here and then to let our listeners know what's next for you and how they can connect with you.
Theresa Carpenter:O-O-D-A I think it is cycle. I know it, I don't remember all the ones decide act. We'll work on it with you, but I've been taught it many, many times in my JPME and other things. But I do like that. I really like the fact that you guys took a war-fighting philosophical framework and you're applying it in this very methodical way in which you're doing these shows. So thank you so much for that and thank you for the opportunity to be on the show. And if anyone would like to check out what I do, I'm on all the different social media sites. You can just Google Teresa Carpenter, stories of Service, sos for short, and it comes right up. I air every Thursday at 7 pm CST live.
Brian “Ponch” Rivera:Perfect. Again, thanks for being here today. We'll try to get this airborne soon and please stick around for a moment after we cut recording.
