Hiring America’s Heros

Veterans Helping Disabled Veterans Transition to Private Sector

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Laura Pedrick for The New York Times (From left, Eric Eberth, Ben Downing, Cauldon Quinn, Robert Milmore, Tom Richardson and Fred Phelan)

By: Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times (www.nytimes.com)                       Published: June 16, 2012

With unemployment just above 8 percent, it’s clear that finding a job is tough for many Americans. Butfor war veterans, particularly disabled ones, it’s even tougher. Nearly one of every three young male veterans was out of work last year.

By Scott Brinton, LIHerald.com
March 20, 2012
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Michael Steigerwald, right, in the cockpit of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane in 2006, when he was a major in the Air Force Reserve, with Capt. Brady Ohr. Steigerwald was shot down over Iraq in 2007 and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel before he was honorably discharged in 2010. These days he’s a vice president at the investment firm Drexel Hamilton, thanks to the Wall Street War Fighters Foundation.

Michael Steigerwald could have left the Air Force Reserve’s 327th Airlift Squadron after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Having served six years in the reserves, he had fulfilled his obligation to the military.

But Steigerwald, now 49, of Bucks County, Pa., didn’t flinch when his unit was activated in the fight for Afghanistan, which began on Oct. 7, 2001, and continues to this day. Steigerwald heeded the call of duty in 2002.

“It was the right thing to do,” he said.

And so, Steigerwald, who had been an international airline pilot for Trans World Airlines and American Airlines for eight years before he was activated, went to Afghanistan, and later to Iraq. In all, he served six tours of duty from 2002 through 2010, when he was honorably discharged.

Steigerwald flew a C-130 Hercules cargo plane in and out of combat zones, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel and earning the Meritorious Service Medal, the Aerial Achievement Medal, the Air Force Commendation Medal and five Air Medals. In March 2007, he was shot down in a rocket attack outside Baghdad as he ferried vital supplies to U.S. troops, and he broke his leg and dislocated his shoulder in the crash. But he recovered and continued to fly missions.

Cumulative injuries eventually caught up with him, though, and he could no longer fly, ending the career that he had enjoyed as a commercial airline pilot, which he had put on hold to take part in the U.S.’s overseas missions.

Upon leaving the military, Steigerwald, who is married and has two sons, might have had a hard time finding work –– or might have even been jobless –– if he had not heard about the Wall Street War Fighters Foundation from an Air Force friend. The nonprofit organization trained him to work in the financial-services industry. Now Steigerwald is a vice president of sales at Drexel Hamilton, a privately held institutional investment firm.

Disabled Vietnam War veteran Lawrence Doll and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2005 to 2007, started the Wall Street War Fighters Foundation, which trains wounded veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars for careers on Wall Street, either at Drexel Hamilton, which Doll founded in 2008, or at any number of the firm’s competitors.

Enter Merokean William Mingione. He’s a 16-year Wall Street veteran who served at one time as vice president of an equity-trading group at financial titan Fidelity Investments. Mingione, 37, knows a lot of people on “The Street.” He could have worked at most any powerhouse investment firm, but he recently joined Drexel Hamilton, a “boutique” firm with $12 million in annual revenue, because he said he believes in its core mission of helping service-disabled veterans like Steigerwald find gainful employment after the military.

“I thought it was something terribly unique,” said Mingione, who grew up in Island Park and now volunteers for the Merrick Fire Department and his sons’ youth hockey team, the Arrows, in Freeport.

Committed to disabled veterans

Mingione learned about Drexel Hamilton, which has offices in Philadelphia and Manhattan, through his longtime friend James Cahill. Cahill is a legend of Wall Street investing who was once managing director at Salomon Brothers and who lost his son, Thomas, a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald’s World Trade Center office, on Sept. 11. James Cahill now serves as Drexel Hamilton’s president for $1 a year.

Mingione’s job is three-pronged: sell Drexel Hamilton’s financial products, help the firm connect with municipalities that are preparing to float bonds and help train disabled veterans for Wall Street careers.

Service-disabled veterans are the only salaried employees at Drexel Hamilton. All others, including Mingione, work on commission. Of the firm’s 43 employees, seven are disabled veterans and 12 others are veterans.

The Wall Street War Fighters Foundation sponsors an intense, six-month training course designed to prepare service-disabled veterans to pass their Series 7 and Series 66 exams, which are administered by the North American Securities Administrators Association and allow those who successfully complete them to become investment advisers. Enrollees in the foundation’s training course also serve as interns at Drexel Hamilton’s offices and at other investment firms. The cost to train one veteran is $35,000, which is funded by Drexel Hamilton and private contributions.

Steigerwald completed the course and his exams in 2010 and was hired at Drexel Hamilton last year. When interviewing for investing jobs, Steigerwald said he was often asked how he handled pressure. He would note simply that his previous job was flying a $100 million, government-owned airplane through enemy fire. If that’s not pressure, what is?

Finding a new life on ‘The Street’

Steigerwald said he misses flying, but he loves his new work. “It’s busy. It’s a continually changing environment. It’s technical. I’m used to that,” he said, seated at his spartan desk on the 20th floor at 14 Wall St., around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange, with two computer screens flashing numbers and charts before him.

Still, he added, “There’s a steep learning curve. It’s a big change for me.”

Eric Eberth, Drexel Hamilton’s vice president for municipal finance, also came through the Wall Street War Fighters Foundation in 2010. Eberth, an Army Apache helicopter pilot, suffered a traumatic brain injury while deployed in Iraq in 2008. These days he’s stationed at his desk at Drexel Hamilton, just across from Steigerwald.

Though Eberth required two years of rehabilitation to overcome his injuries and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, he said he has no regrets about his service to his country. The military “never teaches you how to feel sorry for yourself,” he said with a smile.

In fact, he said, he had no desire to leave the military. “I was fighting to stay in,” Eberth said. But his injuries precluded him from further service. He might have been unemployed, or working as a trainer at a military base, if not for the Wall Street War Fighters Foundation.

Eberth said he hopes to get the word out about the foundation. “There’s not enough disabled veterans who understand the program exists,” he said.

Cauldon Quinn, a 1997 Naval Academy graduate who served with a special-forces unit in Afghanistan in 2002, required multiple surgeries to repair damage to his knees and back. Now Quinn is Drexel Hamilton’s managing director and chief financial officer.

Quinn noted that the unemployment rate among veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is greater than 20 percent. Among service-disabled veterans, it can be as high as 25 percent. “I want to do anything that I can to help disabled veterans,” Quinn said.

Mingione said that Drexel Hamilton does what it does in the name of aiding the most vulnerable of veterans. “There’s no fat cat getting rich here,” he said.

The Wall Street Warfighters Foundation “was my opportunity to give back to this program, and that helped me so much,” says Eric Eberth.

Service-disabled veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are moving from the battlefront to the front lines of the municipal bond market after enlisting for a new type of boot camp that arms them for yet another challenging “mission” —  returning to the workforce.

A joint mentorship between broker-dealer Drexel Hamilton LLC and the nonprofit Wall Street Warfighters Foundation gives veterans with dreams of a career in the financial industry a chance to reinvent themselves after being injured during active duty.

Veterans suffering with everything from post-traumatic stress disorder to complications from brain injuries can qualify for a six-month, fourphase financial and trading education program, which is fully funded with Drexel’s profits and is conducted at the firm’s three main offices in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago.

Upon completion, the veterans have the opportunity to become fully licensed brokers. Of the 24 trainees that have graduated so far, seven are currently employed by Drexel.

Eric Eberth, a disabled pilot and veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Marines and Navy, was diagnosed with post-traumatic
stress disorder and traumatic brain injury after deployment to Iraq.

“This was my opportunity to give back to this program, and that helped me so much,” said Eberth, who graduated
from the Warfighters program last year and is currently a vice president at the firm. He is getting on-the-job training
from long-time municipal and fixed-income market veterans like Tom Mead and Jim Cahill, who left paying careers
to help prepare the veterans for “combat” in the financial industry. They joined Drexel in 2010.

Eberth, who is also currently a graduate student working toward a master’s of business administration, is learning
the ropes — from building relationships with issuers and structuring deals to supporting the syndicate desk and sales and trading operations.

On Monday, Eberth got a glimpse at the primary market in action when he visited Ramirez & Co.’s Wall Street office for the first day of a retail order period for the firm’s $400 million New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority deal. Drexel is financial advisor for the transaction.

Mead, managing director of Drexel’s muni operations, and Cahill, president of the firm, both previously worked at
the former Salomon Brothers. Mead was the managing director of municipal sales, trading and underwriting, and Cahill was managing director of fixed income. They are now non-salaried employees of Drexel.

“We have learned from some of the best and we import that to these people,” Cahill said. “While we were sleeping they were protecting us and making a sacrifice…we owe them something.”

Goldman, Sachs & Co. is one of the corporate mentors of the program, providing financial support and training opportunities. It also clears all of Drexel’s transactions and backs all legally executed trades, with no financial limit.

According to Mead, the firm’s footprint in the municipal market has grown in the last 12 months since first becoming active in muni sales, trading and underwriting in December 2010. Drexel co-managed six deals last year and was credited with $306.3
million, ranking 72nd, according to Thomson Reuters. It was the financial advisor on 10 issues and credited with $1.58 billion last year, ranking it 22nd.

“The firm has been profitable every quarter for the last year, the client base is growing, and the firm is adding value”
to the recent syndicate deals in which it has served as selling group member and co-manager, according to Mead. One of the largest it participated as a comanager was a $1.31 billion New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Authority offering in Nov. 2011.

Mead said Drexel is “looking forward” to its first senior-managed issue in the Texas market in about six underwriting presence from its mostly Northeast-focused banking, and is planning to open branch offices in Florida, Texas and California.

Back at the Wall Street Warfighters Foundation, the newest class of eight trainees reports for duty in early February. Phase one “Basic Training” provides career guidance and introduction to the financial industry, while “Building Blocks” offers training programs and short-term internships with corporate partners.

“Advanced Training” prepares veterans to pass the FINRA Series 7 and 63 licensing exams, while the final “Deployment” phase provides corporate internships lasting four to six months, culminating with an opportunity for full-time employment.

Successful job placement gives veterans a renewed sense of pride and integrity, according to Cauldon “Cal” Quinn, Drexel’s chief financial officer and a former Marine who served in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For some it helps overcome the stigma of having been rejected by potential employers because of their debilitating injuries, he said.

Both Drexel and the nonprofit foundation were co-founded in late 2007 by Larry Doll, a disabled Marine Corp. veteran and dual Purple Heart recipient who served in Vietnam, and his former commanding officer, Peter Pace, a retired four-star general and the 16th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose career in the Marines spanned 40 years.

Doll, Drexel’s chairman and chief executive officer, wanted to help his unemployed comrades around the country. Pace agreed, and became the chairman of the foundation.

“To be in this industry is a challenge,” Doll explained. “Wall Street is unbelievably competitive…it’s an Ivy League street.”

“These veterans are not looking for a handout, they are looking for an opportunity and a chance,” he added.

Like Drexel, Wall Street Warfighters is also marked for growth. Doll said the program is thriving and he hopes it will be profitable enough to generate the $1.2 million necessary to train as many as 24 veterans each year. Drexel is currently 40% owned and operated by veterans, but Doll anticipates the firm being fully owned and operated by veterans and disabled veterans one day.

“It’s a real mission to help these people and basically change their lives,” the CEO said.

To be eligible for the program, applicants must have a disability rating of 30%, among other requirements. For more information on the program, or to become a corporate sponsor, visit www.wallstreetwarfighters.org.