Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now, at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearing houses around the world.
Speaker 1:
And now, welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Today, Intercontinental Exchange was honored to host the Navy SEAL Foundation at 11 Wall Street. The words "Navy SEAL" immediately bring to mind the teams of elite Navy commandos tasked with carrying out the most complex military operations in war zones far away.
Josh King:
We were talking a few weeks ago here in the library with Steven Johnson about the farsighted decision-making that went into the raid on Abbottabad, and we were also here in the library just a few weeks ago with C-SPAN chairman, David Sokol, and talking about how Navy SEALs were deployed to free Captain Richard Phillips held hostage by terrorists aboard the Alabama. But in addition to these real life feats of courage, we come to know SEALS through books and Hollywood movies, works that dramatize the very few missions that have actually been made public.
Josh King:
SEALS, Delta Force, Army Rangers, Air Force Pararescue: heroes all, to be sure, but also real people. Some become known, but most do not.
Josh King:
We learned about hospital Corpsman and SEAL Marcus Luttrell through Lone Survivor, but I bet most haven't heard of his twin brother and fellow SEAL member, Morgan Luttrell. He earned a PhD after his service and is now devoting his life to studying PTSD and brain injuries.
Josh King:
He's now an expert in the field and a regular presenter at the Navy SEAL Foundation Impact Forum, which we'll be discussing in the podcast with our guests, Navy SEAL Foundation CEO, Robin King; and former Navy SEAL, DJ Haley. The Navy SEAL Foundation was established in July, 2000, to serve the US Navy SEALs, Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, Naval Special Warfare support personnel, and their families.
Josh King:
The foundation originally focused on scholarships and educational opportunities but has grown to offer programs in five main areas: warriors and family support, educational opportunities, tragedy assistance and survivor support, warrior transition, and legacy preservation. Our conversation with Robin King and DJ Haley on Navy SEALs and the foundation tasked with supporting our country's most elite warriors and their families, right after this.
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Josh King:
Our guests today are in the building for the Navy SEAL Foundation event being held in the New York Stock Exchange boardroom and fresh off the trading floor where they were on the podium for the closing bell. Robin King has been the CEO of the Navy SEAL Foundation since 2013 and has been with the organization since its founding in 2000.
Josh King:
The foundation has grown under her direction to offer a wide range of programs to support veterans, their families, and the public. Last year, she became the first head of a nonprofit organization to be awarded the United States Special Operations Command's Care Coalition Patriot Award, which recognizes exemplary support of Special Operations wounded warriors, their families, and surviving family members.
Josh King:
Robin is joined in the ICE House today by DJ Haley, who served five years active duty with the United States Navy and is a founding board member of the Navy SEAL Foundation, serving on the governance, risk, and investment committees. He is well suited for those posts as DJ has an accomplished career in finance.
Josh King:
He's currently a partner and the Chief Operating Officer of Durational Capital Management. Welcome to the New York Stock Exchange, and thank you both for everything you've done and will do in the service of the United States and veterans.
DJ Haley:
Thank you.
Robin King:
Thank you.
Josh King:
As civilians, we're conditioned over these 17 years since 9/11, when we see service members in airports and in the course of our everyday lives, like here at the New York Stock Exchange, to say those words, "Thank you for your service." But that practice, courteous as it sounds and is, was remarked on by one of your own members of the SEAL family a few weeks ago, Saturday Night Live, no less. Here's Congressman elect, Dan Crenshaw.
Dan Crenshaw:
Which means that it's a good time for every American to connect with a veteran, maybe say, "Thanks for your service." But I would actually encourage you to say something else.
Dan Crenshaw:
Tell a veteran, "Never forget." When you say "Never forget" to a veteran, you are implying that as an American, you are in it with them, not separated by some imaginary barrier between civilians and veterans but connected together as grateful fellow Americans who will never forget the sacrifices made by veterans past and present, and never forget those we lost on 9/11, heroes like Pete's father. So I'll just say, Pete: never forget.
Pete Davidson:
Never forget.
Josh King:
Never forget. I have a civilian and a veteran in front of me. What's the reaction been among the veteran and active duty community following Dan Crenshaw's appearance alongside Pete Davidson on SNL?
Robin King:
It's been very positive from the Navy SEAL community. Many of the guys have been very uncomfortable with "Thank you for your service" for a long time.
Robin King:
I think "Never forget" really rings true with this community. They so much appreciate people understanding the sacrifices that their families make, and "Never forget" really connects them back to all of those guys they've lost on the battlefield over all those years.
DJ Haley:
Not much more to add along those lines. I didn't know about it until a few people had sent me texts on it, other veterans, some SEALs, some non-SEALs.
DJ Haley:
But they were really impressed with how Dan addressed what could have been a very offensive... he would've been justified for being highly offended... moment, which I think speaks to a lot of people now, given the sustained level of combat we've been in for so long. And I think Robin hit the nail on the head. It's an appreciated way of, I think, showing that.
Josh King:
We're sitting a few blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center, and people who've been living and working in this neighborhood for a long time think every September 11th about that day. We certainly don't forget it by sitting and working around here.
Josh King:
And I'm sure all around the country and all around the world, people don't forget. But had this been brewing, Robin, sort of this discomfort with the idea that there's this transactional relationship between citizens and the soldiers who protect them and thinking about a different way to acknowledge service?
Robin King:
I think the relationship with New York is much different. The SEALs have an unbreakable bond with New York.
Robin King:
The people of New York have been incredible for this community. But I think around the country, we do find people are just a little bit more disengaged with understanding the sacrifices.
Robin King:
They appreciate them unbelievably, and so those words come very easily and very naturally, and they want to make sure everybody understands how much they appreciate it. But to really understand the sacrifices that these guys and their families make, that takes some effort.
Robin King:
It's an effort that New York gets. They understand because 9/11 was a day that changed your community and our community dramatically.
Josh King:
DJ, before you entered the Navy, what were you doing beforehand? What brought you into the service in the first place?
DJ Haley:
I was in college. I was Navy ROTC-
Josh King:
Where?
DJ Haley:
At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, my hometown. It was interesting, and I think it speaks to the different time that we're in now, both with the sustained period but also with this... I think all the time, and I know we do as a foundation and staff and our resources and how we try to wrap our head around what today's soldier, combat veteran, is going through.
DJ Haley:
And I just had this conversation at a dinner table two nights ago, and the way I explained it to my friend, I said, look, when I was in, we would deploy for six months. This was in '96, '98.
DJ Haley:
We would go away for six months. You'd go into a different head space. You were on the other side of the world.
DJ Haley:
You felt like you were somewhere different, and when you left there, you came home. And you weren't really connected to home other than the occasional letter that would come in by helicopter to an aircraft carrier and get to you two months later.
DJ Haley:
Nowadays, with the connectivity that we have as people, it's not so much that... and this is my view... the guys aren't going home. They never leave home, right?
DJ Haley:
They'll do a back-to-back mission in the time zone in Afghanistan or the Middle East and come back and have to get on a FaceTime with their seven-year-old daughter and read Cinderella. I mean, we're not designed to compartmentalize that way.
DJ Haley:
So they never get to leave home and kind of break away from that space. When I was in college, a friend of mine gave me a book my sophomore year, Men in Green Faces, about Navy SEALs in Vietnam.
DJ Haley:
I started college and took the Navy scholarship without ever having even heard of SEALs. I read that book, and having grown up in Mars, Pennsylvania, and got the shotgun for my 12th Christmas, that kind of thing, I knew exactly that that's what I wanted to do.
DJ Haley:
But at that time, nobody else knew what that even was. My family had no idea what I was doing, getting into. Times have changed a lot.
DJ Haley:
And I think that speaks to the message about the civilian relationship with the today's vets. It's different. It's a much different context, right?
DJ Haley:
It wasn't, you were gone for two years. We all fought the big one. Everybody was part of it.
DJ Haley:
It's, you have a sustained war fighter, combat war fighter, for a decade plus, almost 15 years, beyond 15 years.
Robin King:
17, yeah.
DJ Haley:
Right, so how do you not become desensitized to that unless you're really thoughtful about it?
Josh King:
DJ, the foundation serves not only Navy SEALs but also the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, Naval Special Warfare Support personnel, and their families. It takes a lot of expert players to insert a team into a hot zone and get them safely back to base so they can get back on FaceTime.
DJ Haley:
That's right. By design, we wanted to be there to support the Naval Special Warfare community, which frankly includes all those pieces of the service that you talked about.
Josh King:
Talk about those other pieces that people don't quite appreciate, the people who are flying the Black Hawks, the people who are inserting you in a C-17 in a high drop and other things that they don't look like a SEAL team member.
DJ Haley:
Well, some of them do. When you think about the Combat Crewmen, those are the boats, the littoral boats, high speed boats, that take us in and out of areas, right?
DJ Haley:
They work in and around SEAL team. They're part of the Naval Special Warfare community.
DJ Haley:
The admiral that leads the SEAL community is also their admiral, right? And then all those support techs and other personnel that work at a team. If you think about some of our commands, there's five plus support personnel for every combat SEAL that's at that command.
DJ Haley:
That's how much it takes to get that person trained, equipped, prepared, and also delivered into battle. And so we as a community, and certainly as a foundation, want to recognize that.
DJ Haley:
Don't let your proximity to pulling the trigger dictate your value to this team. You go all the way back to the people who never leave Virginia Beach or San Diego. You're just as much a part of getting that person to that operation, to that trigger pulling site, as that person pulling the trigger.
Josh King:
Robin, you've been with the Navy SEAL Foundation since its inception. Take us back 17 years. How did you become involved, and what was the original mission and scope of the organization?
Robin King:
I became involved with a fraternal organization of Navy SEALs called the UDT-SEAL Association, and they had a scholarship program for members of the community. And it was a great little place to go back to work after having a couple little kids and a SEAL husband.
Robin King:
And we had a donor approach us and wanted to make this a bigger deal. So we said, "Absolutely," and we became a 501(c)(3) and became what's basically now the Navy SEAL Foundation.
Robin King:
But shortly thereafter, 9/11 happened, and in March 2002, the Casualty Assistance Officer for the first SEAL we lost in Afghanistan, Neil Roberts, that Casualty Assistance Officer brought his family members in and looked at us like a deer in the headlights, saying, "Help me help this family."
Robin King:
And we thought, "Okay." I mean, we really didn't have any idea what we were supposed to be doing at that point.
Robin King:
And at the end of that month, we lost our second SEAL in Afghanistan, and we knew things had changed, right? It was time to step up.
Robin King:
There are things that the Navy just isn't equipped to do for these extenuating circumstances. They do a fine job, but they're designed to take care of the entire Navy and not just Special Forces.
Robin King:
And it's special for a reason. There's a lot of things these families endure and things they're not expecting.
Robin King:
Our programs have grown over the last 18 years organically as the needs of the community have changed, and they have changed dramatically. We have developed strength and resiliency programs.
Robin King:
Admiral McRaven had a great quote once saying, "You can't surge resiliency." And based on that concept, we knew we needed to start developing these things so that the families could stay strong all the time, because like DJ mentioned, when your husband calls home every day from Afghanistan and then says, "Hey, I'm not going to be able to talk to you for two weeks," the stress that puts on the family is pretty intense because you know he's going out.
Robin King:
And when he doesn't call you at the end of two weeks, is that just a guy saying two weeks, but I really meant two-and-a-half weeks, or is something big and hairy happening, and are you learning about it on CNN? Is your mom calling you and saying, "Did you see that helicopter that just went down?" and it's making your heart stop?
Robin King:
There's a lot of different programs we've developed based on things like that, and so we're really proud of how we've been able to grow and flex. It has taken us some places that I know 17 years ago, we wouldn't have imagined, but we wouldn't have imagined that we would have an entire generation of children in Naval Special Warfare who know nothing but their dads deploying to a war zone.
Josh King:
So Neil Roberts, it's been 16 years. Who did he leave behind?
Robin King:
He left behind Nathan, who's a junior in high school, looks just like his dad, big redheaded kid, amazingly awesome. And he's participated in our programs for so many years, camps, Alaska, things with his mom.
Robin King:
He's an amazing kid. All the kids are.
Josh King:
What kind of numbers do you put to the larger community that you've been able to help, number of people that have died in combat and quantifying the family members that have received your help?
Robin King:
So we've lost, since 9/11, over 150 to combat and training. Unfortunately, we do lose a number in training all the time, and we support currently over 500 surviving family members, so that's parents, siblings, children, spouses, fiances.
Josh King:
DJ, I read in the Situation Report, which is the monthly newsletter of the foundation, that in 2018 alone, you've put nearly 12 million dollars to work in supporting the foundation's programming. How does the board decide which areas of need might require a new offering from the foundation? How has the programming developed over the last two decades from that first situation with Neil Roberts?
DJ Haley:
I'd say Robin's probably better equipped to answer that question because we do empower Robin and her staff and her people and the resources that the foundation has to make those decisions. There are occasions where we as a board will say, "Hey, we see something big coming," right?
DJ Haley:
"Let's please start doing some work in this area, marshal resources in this area, mental health, transition." But all the leg work, all the deep work, and all the resourcing happens, Robin and the staff, at the management and staff level.
DJ Haley:
The board's role, as Robin said, is to guide, to hold her and her staff accountable for the investors, which we consider our donors... we call them our investors... and being fiduciaries and, again, providing guardrails for their activity but also letting them run and not micromanaging. And one of the greatest things that I think I've experienced in this whole now 15-year exercise for me personally has been watching Rob evolve as a CEO. It's been fantastic, and we're lucky to have her.
Josh King:
We had the CNO, John Richardson, in here earlier in the summer talking about the opportunities for transition of the training that the Navy puts all of its sailors through, but in particular, Special Warfare. I'm looking at this big article that I read that today from Quartz: "What Silicon Valley wants from Navy SEALs and Army Rangers."
Josh King:
Little quote: "In Silicon Valley, where rapid expansion plans for businesses abound, companies are desperate to hire managers who can lead small teams, make quick decisions, adapt easily to change, and stay calm in the face of stressful situations." Sounds like what you learn at BUD/S.
DJ Haley:
Yeah, I think that's accurate. And I think we've seen, I would say, a sea change in how the professional community looks at our veterans coming out of the SEAL community and our ability to really plug them into the right places, and that comes from a lot of both internal and external resources of the foundation.
Josh King:
Building a sustainable nonprofit, even in support of a worthy cause like the Navy SEAL Foundation, is difficult, requiring leadership, fundraising, and some luck. Looking back, what were some of the watershed moments that helped grow the foundation?
Robin King:
Unfortunately, some of our big moments were big losses. We had a loss of 18 guys back in 2005-
Josh King:
Helicopter?
Robin King:
Right, that was Marcus Luttrell's lone survivor event that the movie was based on. We had tiny toddlers, babies, that were left behind at that point, and America stepped up.
Robin King:
And then unfortunately, again, the same year that the SEALs got bin Laden, we also lost another helicopter, Extortion 17. I think we had 21 children that were left behind, and three of those were unborn when their dads were lost.
Robin King:
Those are moments that make the citizens of this country remember what's going on every day and those young wives and young families sacrificing every day and the parents who really didn't have an understanding of what their sons do. I mean, you hear SEAL; you see the movies; you think it's cool and fun.
Robin King:
But you just don't necessarily understand. And then the support personnel that were with them, there were a number of those guys, and those people's families really didn't have an understanding.
Robin King:
And so it was amazing to watch everybody step up and really support the community, and what we have been able to do as a result of that incredible generosity has helped make this community that much stronger. And we've continued to build on that, so we didn't just take it as, here's the money that we have to support the families.
Robin King:
We have an incredible, incredible survivor programs, but we've used it to look beyond the next ridge line, look to that brain health, and ensure that we are going to be helping those next families with those situations that we can't even necessarily identify yet. We don't know what's causing some of these brain issues.
Robin King:
But we want to make sure we're there for those families in the long haul. And I think we've done a really great job of making that commitment with the generosity that people have given to us.
Josh King:
And we're going to get in more depth into some of the brain issues, but Robin, you recently relocated from North Carolina to California, to a new facility near the Naval Special Warfare headquarters. How has the move into the new space this year allowed the foundation to better complete its mission?
Robin King:
Yeah, so we moved from Virginia Beach... I did... from Virginia Beach to Coronado. It never is bad to move to Coronado, California.
Robin King:
So it's been wonderful. It's been great being that close.
Robin King:
We have always been a national organization or, really, a global organization in that our programs have always gone wherever the community is. But being in San Diego where there are a very large number of our families has really made a difference.
Robin King:
They understand they can walk in. They can talk to us.
Robin King:
Any questions they have, we're there. It's a lot quicker to get over to the commands if they have a question or need additional support.
Robin King:
So I think it's really helped make the West Coast feel that the Navy SEAL Foundation is a part of their family, a part of their everyday life, and it's really been great. We've been opened with welcome arms.
Josh King:
I mean, we mentioned Dan Crenshaw earlier. We mentioned Admiral McRaven, who went on to lead the University of Texas.
Josh King:
The first guy that I worked for in my time in working in the 1988 campaign was for Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, Navy SEAL Medal of Honor recipient, and now not just SEALs but so many other veterans deciding that a new way to serve is running for office and serving their nation in politics. What are your thoughts on that?
Robin King:
I think there are a lot of guys that have a lot to offer.
Josh King:
And women.
Robin King:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it's for everybody.
Robin King:
I think there are those that have a unique skillset. I mean, it takes an incredible person to want to run for office these days.
Robin King:
I mean, it's hard. It's hard, and the microscope that you're put underneath is intense.
Robin King:
I mean, who would've thought Dan Crenshaw would've been made fun of for having lost an eye in battle, right? But he handled it incredibly well.
Josh King:
Incredibly.
Robin King:
The SEAL community has its share of people who would be fabulous at that and its share people who wouldn't, so the guys that want to do that and have the skillset, I think it's fabulous, and I think they offer a perspective that is much needed.
DJ Haley:
In general, I've seen a statistic recently that plotted a correlation between number of Congress that had served and polarization within Congress. And it was a pretty much direct line in the direction that you would think is obvious.
DJ Haley:
And to see more and more career veterans wanting to answer that calling to politics, I think, is a great potential change. I think if that correlation is true and there's causation there that we will be headed to a better place, and the reason for that is I believe veterans are used to fighting for one team, right?
DJ Haley:
We're all fighting for the same flag. We may have different viewpoints or different perspective or different political persuasions, but we're still on the same team.
DJ Haley:
It doesn't feel like Congress of late has been fighting as if they're on the same team, right? So hopefully that will change in a way that we expect it to.
Josh King:
DJ, after your service, you did not decide to go into politics. Instead, you went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School. Why was that your path?
DJ Haley:
That was my own self-selected way of transitioning because I had no idea what I wanted to do when I got out. I thought about going back to engineering, even medical school at the time, and decided that I went an MBA route, again, had to educate myself on what an MBA was, didn't really know at the time.
DJ Haley:
But it seemed like it had a lot of interesting optionality. And I would spend in two years trying to figure out what I wanted to do with life.
Josh King:
Who do you credit giving you a decent steer to head in that direction, or is that just like it came in a dream?
DJ Haley:
I'll tell you what, I credit it to being on deployment at unit 10 in Germany and finding a U.S. News World Report magazine on MBAs, and that's when I figured out what an MBA was, and I applied to several schools while I was finishing up my deployment.
Josh King:
You then began your career working for Prudential Equity and then Ziff Brothers Investments. How did your time in the service influence the path that you took?
DJ Haley:
I think knowing what life I was trying to live, what I was trying to accomplish professionally and personally, and how I wanted to express my own character, that's always led me to make my various career decisions. And so by that nature, and I've said this before, I've gone back to my alma mater to speak to the student athlete dinners. And I always point out...
DJ Haley:
Well, first of all, I always think, why am I here, right? Why they want me to talk to these kids?
DJ Haley:
And then you take a step back, and you're like, if you plot the resume, it does look cool, but that's not what I planned, right? It's all been one step at a time, circumstantial, and I wish I could say I had this big design in mind, but I don't.
Josh King:
After the break, Robin, DJ, and I will talk about some recent activities of the Navy SEAL Foundation, including the launch of Honor Code, a new program in partnership with the digital learning technology startup EVERFI. We'll be right back.
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Josh King:
Welcome back. Our guests in the ICE House today are Robin King, CEO of the Navy SEAL Foundation; and DJ Haley, partner and COO of Durational Capital Management and Navy SEAL Foundation board member.
Josh King:
Before the break, we were discussing the founding and development of the foundation. Robin, last month, the Navy SEAL Foundation hosted its third annual Impact Forum. This year's focus was on battling bad science, the placebo effect, complex brain health challenges, child/adult relationship, and this.
James Kelly:
So in my world of care, when I'm looking at memory problems, difficulty with concentration, mood disruption, irritability, that can be just from sleep disturbance, or it could be from concussion. And if you have both, you've got a serious problem.
James Kelly:
And the treatment is sleep. Sometimes, just sleep by itself, deep restful sleep, can actually remove a lot of those persistent concussion symptoms.
Josh King:
Robin, the clip we heard was of James Kelly. He's the executive director of the Marcus Institute for Brain Health.
Josh King:
But the speakers at the forum also came from Naval Special Warfare. Why is it important that civilian and military medical communities come together at events like the Impact Forum?
Robin King:
Well, the military community does some incredible work with our Special Forces when you talk about trauma. Everybody will say that Navy trauma surgeons are some of the best in the world, but they don't necessarily get a lot of exposure to things like sleep therapy.
Robin King:
The speaker that we heard on sleep talked about it always being treated as a symptom and not as a problem. And when he actually reversed it and looked at it as that is the problem that's causing the other issues, it was pretty eyeopening.
Robin King:
The Naval Special Warfare doctors and psychologists and the clinical social workers weren't trained on cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, which is one of the leading treatments for insomnia. If you talk to a SEAL wife, I don't know one that will tell you her husband sleeps.
Robin King:
They get up in the middle of the night, 2:00 in the morning; take their blanket; go out; watch TV. They're up for several hours.
Robin King:
They fall back asleep. Everybody, everybody, has a sleep issue, whether it's the... We call them vampire hours they work overseas because they're working all night and sleeping all day.
Robin King:
There are just a lot of different things that we need to be attacking. And so if we can help Naval Special Warfare's medical and psychologists get exposure to these incredible experts and give them an opportunity to start looking at something a different way, we're not telling them, "That's the way it is."
Robin King:
We're just saying, "Hey, let us bring you some incredible information," and then they choose what they want to do with it. And it's become a really great partnership.
Robin King:
They'll come to us and say, "Hey, we really want to learn some more about X subject for next year." And we are certainly going to incorporate that into our Impact Forum.
Josh King:
DJ, you're on a seat pallet on a C-17 for 15 hours flying into a war zone. Are you thinking about your need to get some sleep and the practical inability to do that on one of these rigid seats?
DJ Haley:
Depends on when the last time I slept was. I might be trying to get some Zs there, but that's a tough place that you described to relax.
Josh King:
How do people in those situations... What are the methods of relaxing and trying to get the sleep you need to be able to do your job?
DJ Haley:
Meditation, that's a big one. I didn't have language for this at that time when I was in in the 90s, but the words that come to mind now would be transcendental meditation.
DJ Haley:
And I think that's something that more and more of our vets are adopting and seeing results from, which is great. I think that we've definitely included a lot more Eastern and alternative healing, medicine, coping mechanisms, in our language now, and the stigma of that seems to be removed, which has been quite helpful.
Josh King:
Sleep is not something that immediately comes to mind when thinking about the impact of military service on veterans, their brain, and conversely, their families. How does a session like you held, Robin, bring to light an issue and lead to actionable goals?
Robin King:
So this was our third Impact Forum that we held, and each year, we try to introduce some new topics. Dr. Pearl, who was on 60 Minutes to talk about astroglial scarring, we worked closely with him ensuring that in suicide cases, brains have been donated there.
Robin King:
Along with that, Naval Special Warfare has adopted brain baselining, so every guy that now comes out of BUD/S training is getting his brain baselined so that when he comes back from deployment, we can see the impact of what he has just been through. So hopefully, while right now we don't know what to do with that going forward, the more data we gather, the better we're going to be able to treat these people as we learn more information about the brain.
Robin King:
So we're really excited to be able to introduce some really interesting concepts and see what Naval Special Warfare does with that. And they have really come at all of these things with open arms, and it's been the admiral's... Admiral Shelanski... his passion to ensure that he's doing everything he can to care for the mental and brain health of the Naval Special Warfare community.
DJ Haley:
Like a lot of the newer program areas, we've seen and identified several treatment centers or paths that these guys in Texas do this. They hear about it.
DJ Haley:
They talk to their friends. The guys in California are doing this one, and they all want foundation to pay for it.
DJ Haley:
And we have to do this, so we started with that. Over the course of, I would say, two years, as Robin brought more resources to the staff, professional resources, clinical resources, realized that there was not a lot of medical validation to what was being offered out there, potentially causing damage to some of our vets in active duty, also that there was a lack of understanding across East Coast, West Coast, big Navy, small Navy, Naval Special Warfare.
DJ Haley:
Nobody had language for this. And Robin's idea to say, "Nobody knows what to do right now. How can we add value to this?
DJ Haley:
"We know something has to happen. Let's bring the Tower of Babel, try to collapse it down to a couple floors, and at least get people talking and introduce people to others," that's been the magic of this Impact Forum.
DJ Haley:
And so there are valuable clinical outcomes that will come from this, but there was no, "This is the long-term view of the foundation," right? There was no immediate, "We're going to get a spike from doing this, and it's a camp." We weren't sure how this was going to... We just knew it would be valuable to the community.
Josh King:
You're talking about different sort of geographical pockets of community members that may not be knitted closely enough together to sort of see the consistent needs that people have. What does a typical support request look like, and how is the organization set up to respond to them?
Robin King:
Well, I don't think that there is anything typical. Yeah, I don't think there is anything typical about the support requests we get.
Robin King:
I mean, two weeks ago, and I don't know that I put this out to the board yet, we had a guy attacked by a bear, because we have people stationed in Alaska. So it could be from a guy getting mauled by a bear.
Robin King:
It could be a brain health issue; someone having severe, severe sleep issues that we have to get under control. It could be chronic pain.
Robin King:
You think about these guys with long careers: a couple shoulder surgeries, back surgeries, spinal fusions, knee problems. We owe it to them to get them as healthy as they can be.
Robin King:
It could be something for their family. We have guys who are deployed whose wives come down with cancer, and believe it or not, that family wants that guy to keep doing his job.
Josh King:
How do they know to find you? How do they get to you?
Robin King:
We are so ingrained in the community now, it's pretty easy. We work closely with the warrior family support coordinators, who are employees of Naval Special Warfare; ombudsmen; word-of-mouth.
Robin King:
We have an all office in Virginia Beach. We have an office in Coronado.
Robin King:
We travel to all the locations. We get out to Guam and Germany and Kodiak, Alaska and all of those places.
Robin King:
So our combination of strength and resiliency programs help introduce us to the community on a regular basis so that you're at a fun event, but later, you think, "Oh, yeah, I need something. And I should call the Navy SEAL Foundation."
Robin King:
It's really frustrating to think somebody didn't ask because they didn't know to ask, so we really are constantly trying to communicate with the community so that they know, please always ask. You can always ask.
Robin King:
We have a no-wrong-door policy. So if you come to us, and it's not something we cover, which would be rare, we're going to make sure we connect you with somebody who does cover that.
Josh King:
Earlier this month was Veteran's Day, which the Navy Foundation marked with its first ever day of giving. How has social media changed how the foundation interacts with the SEAL community and the general public?
Robin King:
It's been interesting because this is a community that likes to be private. If you're trying to raise money to support the community, you have to be public.
Robin King:
So we really try to balance out how we share stories with still respecting a family's privacy. So we don't get into a lot of detail if we can help it, or we always ask families what we can share.
Robin King:
We want to respect that, and I think that's one of the reasons that the foundation has become so important to the community, because they know they can trust us. They respect us.
Robin King:
They know we respect their personal lives and their privacy, and there's not a case of a family member's individual information getting out because of the support the foundation has provided to them.
Robin King:
So it's challenging. But we've got a great director of communications who's up to the challenge, and she's pretty creative.
Josh King:
Social media, not the only way the foundation has gone high tech to get its story out. Here's Brian Cooley of EVERFI.
Brian Cooley:
Honor Code is a collaboration with the Navy SEAL Foundation, and I think it's one of the most important things that we'll launch as a company. It takes on bullying in schools, and bullying, as we know, has such a dramatic impact on young students today in terms of inhibiting what they can become.
Tony Lena:
When I look at the Navy SEAL ethos, it says two things to me: Do something greater than yourself, and do the right thing when no one's looking.
Josh King:
The voice explaining the Navy SEAL ethos was Navy SEAL Tony Lena. Honor Code launched in October in partnership with EVERFI and monetary support from Goldman Sachs. How does the program work, and who does it target?
Robin King:
So it's an anti-bullying program that is in schools on the computer, and kids go through the different modules. We were lucky enough to sit down at Goldman Sachs with a couple of classes of eighth graders from the New York area and talk to them about what they learned and what it means to them.
Robin King:
And it was just such an incredible opportunity. When we first were introduced to the EVERFI people and the Honor Code concept, for the SEAL community to embrace anti-bullying just seemed like such a natural fit, and these kids really seem to enjoy and love the program.
Josh King:
The foundation is first and foremost focused on Naval Special Warfare community members. There are currently 146 people in the Navy SEAL Foundation's SEAL/SWCC Egress Training Transition Pipeline program.
Josh King:
We know it as SET. What is SET, and how does it ensure a successful transition into civilian life?
Robin King:
SET is the title of the Navy SEAL Foundation's transition program. It has three elements: a human performance element, a family spiritual element, and then the actual career element.
Robin King:
So we really want to make sure when a guy gets ready to transition that he first looks at himself and says, "How am I? Am I suffering from chronic pain?
Robin King:
"Do I have sleep issues? Do I have things that I really need to get under control before I can start this in the right way?"
Robin King:
And second, he needs to talk to his family. This is probably the first time the entire family gets to decide about transition.
Robin King:
Where are we going to go? What do we want to do?
Robin King:
Because when the Navy's sending you around, your wife doesn't get to usually say, "Yeah, I do or don't want to go to Kodiak, Alaska." And then finally, it's the career section.
Robin King:
And as DJ mentioned before, we work with the best of the best, right? These guys all come in for different reasons.
Robin King:
I mean, we have an incredible array of people who want to be SEALs. We've got guys that have their PhDs that come and enlist because they just want to do this job.
Robin King:
It's a calling. They all come in for different reasons, and they exit for different reasons.
Robin King:
Maybe their family said, "That's enough." Maybe they have a medical issue.
Robin King:
Maybe they were injured overseas, or they always planned on doing a few years or their entire career. So we want to ensure that when they're ready to look for that job, they are put together with an organization that is going to work for them best.
Robin King:
And that may be multiple organizations until they find the best job for them. But I'll tell you, they've been hugely successful. They're doing very, very well in their career transition.
Josh King:
This tension between maintaining your privacy, keeping a low profile, and doing the work of the foundation, which involves storytelling and making people understand the work and the sacrifice that goes on, early next year, the Navy SEAL Foundation will be back in New York to honor New England Patriots owner, Robert Craft, sort of a-
DJ Haley:
Don't start.
Josh King:
... scourge in Pittsburgh, who has hosted Navy SEAL training at Gillette Stadium and organizing other fundraisers. What is the event, and what are some of the other events the foundation holds across the country?
DJ Haley:
So the New York event, that was our kickoff as a fundraising organization. May of 2005 was our first one, or spring of 2005, on the Intrepid.
DJ Haley:
The six or seven of us original board members at the time ponied up to put the event on, and we were hoping to at least break even. We raised 1.4 million dollars that year, and that told us something: that there was an interest in supporting this community.
DJ Haley:
We have grown nationally across various cities. Our largest events are San Francisco; LA, obviously; New York; Chicago.
DJ Haley:
Those are the big ones. We have other ones in Palm Beach, Denver, Boston-
Robin King:
Houston coming up.
DJ Haley:
Houston coming up for the first time. But the New York event is always about... What is it, a third, a half?
Robin King:
Yeah.
Josh King:
Always on Intrepid or different locations?
DJ Haley:
No, no, we outgrow the Intrepid 10 years ago. We can't fit everybody on there, but it's a third to half of the overall fundraising that we'll do as a community happened in New York, so that is our big event coming up in March of next year.
DJ Haley:
But to your point, it's a paradox that we've always had to navigate as the benevolent arm of a private community, and it may look simple and easy now, but it was a fight those first five, 10 years. It was hard.
DJ Haley:
It was hard to get the community to allow us to even do the event and use the word SEAL in the event. We had to fight to bring active duty to the event.
DJ Haley:
We still did up until a couple years ago. Every year, we'd have to get re-underwritten to be able to have SEALs there.
DJ Haley:
I think due to Robin and the staff's success in really integrating the mission of the foundation to the active duty community and the leadership within the active duty community speaks to how accepted we are now as a voice for the community that can hold a public event and attract interests, donors, supporters, to the community.
Josh King:
You mentioned at the beginning of our conversation the book that you read that inspired you to pursue this path, even after you got out of Carnegie Mellon. So Men in Green Faces... I don't know if it's in its fifth reprint or if it's still available... but there's been so much printed, published, produced, broadcast, about the Special Warfare community.
Josh King:
If people want to get the right education and understanding without the noise that goes around it, what are the things you would direct a young man or woman to read or consume to better understand where the community is today?
Robin King:
I think Lone Survivor. That was reviewed by the community.
Robin King:
While the community is very private, there are definitely ways to write books, and it just has to go through the right process so that they ensure that anything classified, any tactics, aren't being revealed. Admiral McRaven spoke once for us at an event.
Robin King:
He said he went in the Navy because of books, just like DJ, so they're important. These books and movies are incredibly important to recruiting and retention.
Josh King:
If our listeners want to know more about the Navy SEAL Foundation and the New York City benefit dinner and be more closely tied into specifically what you're doing, what are the best ways to follow you?
Robin King:
Navysealfoundation.org is our website. It's really detailed.
Robin King:
It's great for both the community members and the veterans who need assistance or someone who's interested in getting more involved, whether that's just making a donation or putting on an event. There are a lot of different ways people can get involved.
Robin King:
Our event in March here in New York is on March 7th. It's going to be incredible.
Robin King:
It always sells out. It is getting a little harder, I would say, for the foundation to continue to raise money as people don't think that SEALs are taking the fight to the enemy every night, but they are.
Josh King:
They are.
Robin King:
They absolutely are. It may be a different fight. As I heard one of the guys recently say, before, it was like you were shooting steel every night.
Robin King:
You got immediate feedback. Now you're going out; you're doing your mission; and you may not know the results of that for a couple months.
Josh King:
Thanks so much Robin, DJ, for joining us Inside the ICE House.
DJ Haley:
Thank you.
Josh King:
Thank you.
DJ Haley:
This was great.
Josh King:
And never forget.
Robin King:
Thank you.
DJ Haley:
Never forget.
Robin King:
Never forget.
DJ Haley:
Thank you.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guests were Robin King, CEO of the Navy SEAL Foundation; and DJ Haley, former Navy SEAL and now partner and Chief Operating Officer of Durational Capital Management.
Josh King:
Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purposes of length or clarity. Our show is produced by Pete Ash and Ian Wolf with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner.
Josh King:
I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. (silence.)
