Vets in Silicon Valley  

Vets in Silicon Valley is a collection of stories from military veterans from all four branches who are now working in Silicon Valley. These quick glimpses into daily life are made for current service members researching how they might break into the technology community. Shift is on a mission to build pathways out of the service that didn’t previously exist.

Ann Weeby from Salesforce

I worked in Administration as a 71L (now 42A), with the Michigan Army National Guard. I worked one weekend a month and two weeks a year during the summer through high school and college. The majority of my service was being deployed to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, I had an 18-month deployment at the very end of my service. We were attached to the 101st Airborne as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and we did a lot of building of the infrastructure for safety and in the city of Mosul, Iraq. I got out as an E-4 (Specialist).

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Mark Rodrigo from Microsoft

I graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2009 and spent six years on Active Duty. I was an Air Force Intelligence Officer, so I did Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR). I was leading reconnaissance operations across the world using manned and unmanned assets using things like the U2 spy plane and the predator and reaper drones.

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Timothy Eng, Project manager and Entrepreneur

After I graduated from West Point, I was commissioned as an Engineer Lieutenant and stationed with the 3rd Brigade, 3rd ID out of Fort Benning, Georgia. From 2007 to 2008, I served on an 18-month deployment to Iraq.

Afterwards, I took on an assignment as a Construction Engineer at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I found that job to be the most exciting in my military career, because I worked at the White Sands Missile Range and witnessed the Air Force test their MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) on my targets. I worked there for a couple of years before I transitioned off of active duty in 2011.

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Mary Witkowski from Google

I went to the Naval Academy and then was a Surface Warfare Officer in the Navy. I did two tours on two different ballistic missile defense ships out of Pearl Harbor. On my first tour I was a gunnery officer and the second I was a training officer. After that I completed my shore tour with ONI (Office of Navy Intelligence) as an Intelligence Analyst. I focused on wargaming and strategy at the war college.

Read More (opens to shift.org blog page on medium.com) 

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