Brian Thomas, the bank’s president and CEO
Frank Vitale, Vet-Turned-Banker
Profile: Connections Count “We are a virtual-based resource that connects military veterans and their families with employment, education and healthcare services,” says Vitale. “Additionally, we bring a great deal of attention to the needs of veterans as we advocate for them and their needs.” According to Vitale, the impetus for the website came from the military’s top brass. “Admiral Mike Mullen – the 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – visited Morgantown during his 2010 ‘Town Hall’ tour,” he says. “The admiral challenged the community to develop a grassroots effort to support returning veterans and their families, particularly in the areas of education, employment and healthcare.” “Following the historical visit, my three partners -- Delbert Royce, a managing executive at Blaine Turner Advertising, Mark Carter, a vice president at hydraulic equipment manufacturer Swanson Industries, and Ken Busz, president of the Morgantown Area Chamber of Commerce -- visited the Pentagon at the invitation of the Joint Staff and began to develop the plan for what would become VetConnection.” In addition to dozens of education and healthcare connections, the website provides 180 links to employment resources, ranging from direct job offers to resumé-writing tips. Among the employment offers, the oil and gas industry is particularly well-represented. “Oil and gas needs aggressive, hardworking and, particularly, young people. It’s a great match for returning veterans,” says Vitale One reason is that younger veterans are highly motivated to seek employment opportunities after separation from the military. “The quicker they get into the workforce, the more successful they tend to be,” says Vitale. “With jobs, they’re much more likely to assimilate into civilian life and steer clear of alcohol and drug abuse. Jobs mean community. A job provides purpose and keeps vets from becoming too isolated and introspective.”
22 | Veterans Opportunity
Says Vet-Turned-Banker Frank Vitale
“Only 42% of eligible veterans use VA benefits,” claims Vitale. “When veterans separate, they want to be done with the military even though there are benefits to utilize.” Many veterans prefer the local community for jobs and support. “They want to really disconnect from the government,” says Vitale. That makes civilian organizations like Veterans Opportunity Network and VetConnection.org so important. “Vets are more open to seeking our services,” explains Vitale. Response to the VetConnection website, in fact, has been quite positive, according to the bank executive. “Veterans and their families are very appreciative and value the support.” Still, the site’s greatest success might be its ability to ignite the community’s passion and purpose to help veterans integrate into civilian life. Summing up, Vitale says: “We’ve brought a sense of awareness, an urgency to ‘do something big’ and give back to those that have themselves given so much. Our Morgantown community, West Virginia University and our partners have all answered the call to make life better for military veterans and their families.”
Frank Vitale Seven years ago, two century-old West Virginia financial institutions joined forces to become Clear Mountain Bank. The benefit of combined force strength is something Frank Vitale, Clear Mountain’s senior vice president, knows from his 17-year military career. Vitale, together with other Morgantown area business luminaries, recently established VetConnection.org, a website serving West Virginia veterans.
Vets Helping Vets Vets Helping Vets
Supporting those who have served in the Armed Forces of the United States and their families. VetConnection is a West Virginia based, non-profit group whose primary mission is to ensure that returning veterans and their families are treated with respect and assisted in building a new life in our community. Our goal is to connect returning veterans and/or their families with the appropriate resources that are needed to provide continuing healthcare, education and employment opportunities.
VetConnection.org
Find us on:
An Interview with
“the Person Who Regularly Supports Frank Vitale”: Clear Mountain Bank President and CEO, Brian Thomas
V
eterans Opportunity Magazine begins its tour of regions of the country where the development and commercialization of unconventional Oil and Gas sources is a major factor in regional economic development, which include opportunities for the region’s Veteran population to take advantage of career, employment and business opportunities. Leading the way in encouraging Veterans to pursue economic opportunities are Veterans like Frank Vitale, Senior Vice President of Clear Mountain Bank, a North Central West Virginia regional community bank. The bank has its headquarter in Morgantown West Virginia, which is very near South Western Pennsylvania, a major geographic location where Natural Gas reserves are being extracted. More importantly, what has drawn us to Frank Vitale is his commitment to engage the private and public sector in delivering economic improvement opportunities for Veterans who live within the communities served by Clear Mountain Bank. So when Veteran Opportunity Magazine was invited to attend an annual “Hire a Hero” event in Morgantown West Virginia, it was no surprise that Frank Vitale was viewed as the key promoter and person spearheading the event What really impressed us and gave us insight into why Frank has been successful in mobilizing the Public and Private sector to be supportive of the regions Veterans is that he understands the value of “community” – a word that that he uses within the context of all that he is committed to and supports with his time and energy on behalf of Veterans. Everyone needs a partner and an ally - which is akin to mentoring – a key factor in Veterans successfully navigating upward mobility, even a successful private banking executive like Frank Vitale. In our coverage of the event it was clear that Frank is not alone in his efforts on behalf of the region’s Veteran community. Clear Mountain Bank President and CEO, Brian Thomas, is a reliable ally in Frank’s outreach and community service activities. His opening statement at the “Hire a Hero” event held in Morgantown in November 2012, says it all:
24 | Veterans Opportunity
“We all have someone to answer to. We all have someone, more importantly, that we need their support in order to do what we do. And the person that I need support from, and he lends it regularly, and that’s our President of Clear Mountain Bank - our President, and CEO - and I’m also proud to call him our leaderand that’s Brian Thomas. Thank you. Thank you, Brian.” Soon afterward, Frank made a point of introducing me to his mentor and underscored his earlier comments, “… we wouldn’t be able to do these sort of events.” And then typically of Frank’s ability to connect people with shared interests (after all he is a founding member of the regionally focused website, VetConnection.org) Brian and I (Veterans Opportunity Magazine) were encouraged to explore the significance of the Bank’s role in being supportive of Veterans gaining the information and access that they need to derive benefit from public / private partnerships. What follows is an edited transcript of my interview with Clear Mountain Bank President and CEO, Brian Thomas: Thomas: I think Frank is the person who deserves the credit for really creating awareness for our bank. Frank served in the military and is very involved and really passionate about helping veterans. After he talked to me, we thought, that as a bank this is a perfect opportunity - it’s exactly who we are. We are a community-bank and we have a lot of veterans in the community that we can support - we can help. They’ve done a lot to help us, not only by fighting and serving our nation, but they’re also our customers. So, we need to give back too - and that’s essentially how we got involved, is through Frank - but it really made a lot of sense for our company. Richardson: Where’s the opportunity in this market right now? Thomas: Well, I think that one of the opportunities is the Marcellus Shale. Of course, as we’re talking right now, the price for natural gas has fallen substantially. So I think there’s a reduced amount of drilling activity. But America needs energy. The prices will probably go back up. As drilling starts, there are a lot of different things that drilling companies need - They need people who can operate heavy equipment to excavate sites, build
Vets Helping Vets Vets Helping Vets
roads. So there’s room for people who are excavators. Maybe they have an excavating company. There’s room for people who own trucks or maybe a small trucking company because they have to haul gravel - stone to help build those roads. A lot of farms are involved locally, so a small company that builds fences - to fence in sites - there’s opportunity there. I know one local company, the gentleman is a diesel mechanic, and he started just himself - going out and servicing diesel engines on these sites. Generators - they have a lot of diesel equipment. He’s now grown his business into one that employs about fifteen people doing that. So, if someone had experience, in say the Army, or the Navy, or one of the many armed services working on diesel engines, or mechanics, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for them to start their own business - to be of some service. Technology is also a big area. Not only in Morgantown - because you have the university - but as you go down to Fairmont (WV), you have the high tech consortium. So if someone had skills in software programing or hardware - lots of opportunities there. I think there’re many opportunities in government contracting, especially locally. There’s a lot of government agencies here. We have the National Energy Technology Lab, we have FBI centers in Bridgeport, NASA. There are a lot of Federal agencies here that need small businesses to provide certain services. Anywhere from just simple cleaning, to planning events, to servicing hardware. Maybe it’s computers, things like that. We have a couple of businesses locally where people have done just what we’re talking about. They’ve started small, got a government contract, and then grew their business from there. Being a veteran would afford them some additional opportunities in that contracting field. Again, I think that government contracting could provide opportunities because veterans have skills they can develop, put them to work, and then start a business and get out in the market and seek contracts. And there are many organizations locally, maybe not a lot, but there’s some accessible small business development organizations locally that will help people learn how to get involved with government contracting how to navigate all the different things they have to do in order to get from start to obtaining an actual contract. I’m sure there are people locally who would help mentor those folks as well. Richardson: Oh, I’m sure of it. Like Frank and Clear Mountain Bank. Richardson: So what’s your outlook on the small business opportunities for veterans? Thomas: Locally, here in the Morgantown area, I think there are a lot of opportunities for veterans. This is a growing area. It’s probably one of the fastest growing areas in West Virginia. Small businesses are what we focus on because we are a communitybank. We’re also one of the smaller banks, so the kind-of businesses that we help are the small businesses, the one person, two employee, and fifty employee type enterprises. So small businesses are really the drivers of job creation. They drive job growth. So if we can help a veteran start a new business or grow a business area, we think that’s a win-win for each job - helps a veteran and so many spinoffs come from that too.
Richardson: Absolutely. Thomas: So if they create one job, it probably creates three or four other jobs in the community as spinoffs. So we really like having that opportunity to work with veterans and all kinds of business owners to try to grow their business. Richardson: Do you have partnerships with the SBA, smaller funding corps that you mentor, that you do business with? Thomas: Yeah, we have a lot of partners that we work with. We work with the Small Business Administration. We work with the USDA. The USDA has several initiatives for rural small business people that veterans can obviously take advantage of. We work with people that are partners of the SBA, capital corporations - those organizations that help inject some capital into a small business that may not have enough cash of their own to get to where they need to be. There’s just a whole plethora of places that people can get help, veterans can get help financing their business. I think the important step is just for them to take the first step and come talk to us - or really most banks in town are all familiar with the programs, but veterans just need to come talk to us. I mean we don’t require a fancy business plan, they just need to have an idea, come talk to us and we can help point them in the right direction. The university locally has a small business development center that will sit down with someone and help them take an idea, put it on paper, create a plan, teach them how to go to a bank, and where to raise capital. West Virginia has a development office that will help small business, veterans… Richardson: With small business development? Thomas: Absolutely. So there are dozens of organizations that will help, but one of the problems that I think I see is there are so many that may not work with each other. Veterans need to have somebody they can go to, who say, “Here are the programs that are available to you” so that they can pick and choose or maybe combine them. So I think we need to do a better job as a banking industry maybe, or economic development groups, getting all that information in one place so we can hand it somebody and say, “Here’s all your options.” For example, Frank and the bank, or other people we know that have been successful in getting a government contract. We would love to help put someone trying to do that together with one of our customers who’s doing it successfully and say, “Here, can you guys talk? Teach the person trying to get into it, what to do.”
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Veterans Opportunity | 25
Curtis L. Coy
Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity Mr. Curtis (Curt) L. Coy is the Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity, Veterans Benefits Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs. In this role, Mr. Coy oversees all education benefits (GI Bill), loan guaranty service (VA loans), and vocational rehabilitation and employment services for America’s veterans. Mr. Coy was a career Naval Officer retiring in 1994 from the Navy as a Commander in the Supply Corps. Mr. Coy began his military career as an enlisted service member in the Air Force and a member of the 1975 graduating class at the U.S. Naval Academy. Mr. Coy attended the Naval Postgraduate School where he attained his masters´ degrees in Acquisition/Contracting Management and Materiel Logistics Support, has served as an Adjunct Associate Professor for the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) Graduate School of Management and Technology and also been a guest lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Brad Zigler
Dave Greenawalt
Brad Zigler brings his experience as the head of marketing, research and education for a derivatives exchange and an investment fund manager to the field of financial journalism. Brad’s feature articles have appeared in numerous financial publications over the past twenty years. In addition to his regular columns and articles, Brad’s also been named an editor and financial correspondent for the European Press Network and National Public Radio.
Retired Marine Veteran Dave Greenawalt with 20+ years of service as a mechanic, service manager, training instructor and recruiter, now a employment specialist with Cleveland Brothers Equipment company. “
“Our People Make the Difference”
Deborah Cottrell
of our broadcast, and bring together our print and digital network to best serve the economic interest of “new millennium When Veterans Opportunity Network Veterans. (VON) first launched as a radio show in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Marine Veteran, Deborah Cottrell is a Veteran of the U.S. Deborah Cottrell, was asked to join our Marine Corps; she served as a Primary broadcast team because of a unique video Marksmanship Instructor for the M-16 demo tape she submitted that revealed a and 9MM weapons. Her military career natural talent for communicating using included stations in Camp Pendleton, the visual media. What VON producers CA; Okinawa, Japan; Fort Lee, VA; recognized, immediately, was that there and Paris Island, SC. After her tour-ofwas also more to Ms. Cottrell’s visual duty, she served with the Pennsylvania presentation – there was actually a very National Guard in the Military Police. disciplined worker and journalist under Her motivation is helping Veterans the surface of her on camera presence. through the transition from active duty Now that the Veterans Opportunity to civilian life, job placement programs, Network has transitioned from radio with and by helping to our homeless Veterans. a new regionally distributed television Through her volunteer work with local show, “Veterans Opportunity Magazine – and National veterans organizations. TV, Veteran Deborah Cottrell is an integral Moreover, her commitment to educating part of this successful move to broadcast the public on Veteran Awareness includes television programming. According to being a supporter and advocate of the VA Executive Producer, Stanley J. Richardson, healthcare system. Needless to say we are “Deborah represents the changing face of excited to have Marine Veteran, Deborah the Military Veteran population and often Cottrell as a Veterans Opportunity offers a fresh perspective on the content Network and Magazine correspondent. Marine Veteran
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Cleveland Brothers has known that for it to be successful, its customers must succeed.
to be continued on page 33 Veterans Opportunity | 23
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