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Quarterly Newsletter, Issue 8
October, November, December 2016
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Workshops for Warriors is always busy the last quarter of the year. Between Veteran's Day, a Graduation Ceremony, multiple holidays, and more, we have a lot of great things happening for us here in San Diego as well as in the advanced manufacturing industry. We continue to be humbled by so many of you who support our cause!
Check us out by clicking any of the links to your right, and if you like what you're reading, connect with us on
social media
or consider donating in order to help give those who served our country a clearer path to success upon leaving the Military. Our Veteran's Salute You!
The mission of Workshops for Warriors, a 501(c)3 nonprofit school, is to provide a nationally scalable and repeatable platform to provide quality training, educational programs, and opportunities to earn third-party nationally recognized credentials to enable Veterans, Transitioning Service Members, and other students to be successfully trained and placed in their chosen advanced manufacturing career field. More information is available at www.wfwusa.org.
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FABTECH 2016 Was a Huge Success!
We had an amazing time at FABTECH 2016! Amada's generosity helped us create countless new connections, find new marketing opportunities, and help show our organization off to new prospective students, employers looking to hire, and most importantly, new donors.
The highlight of the trip for us was being able to present Nick Ostrowski as well as Mike Guerin and all of the Amada America, Inc. team with Workshops for Warriors awards as a thank you for all they do to help give our organization exposure and materials needed to be successful. Below is a quick snippet of the mini-ceremony to kick off FABTECH:
In addition to creating new relationships at FABTECH, we were able to connect with many of our loyal donors and supporters who attend the show from all over the nation. Below is just a very small taste of the photos we collected, so check out our
Facebook page to see the full album!
From left - right: Craig Vogel of LENOX, Doug Harris of HE&M Saw, Nick Ostrowski and Mike Guerin of Amada America, Inc., and Jerry Kroetch and Brooke Formanek of Scotchman Industries.
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Workshops for Warriors
Welcomes John Jones as New Director of Development
Mr. John Jones is now the new Director of Development at Workshops for Warriors. John was our Guest Speaker at our 2016 Summer Graduation, so many of you may remember the stories he told about his time in the Military with our Founder, Hernán. John Jones is the reason that Hernán started Workshops for Warriors (hear the story here) and we are honored to have him on our team.
John P. Jones served in the United States Marine Corps for twelve years as an Infantry Unit Leader and Instructor with two combat tours of duty in Iraq. John had to retire from military service due to injuries that he sustained during his second deployment. John has been in the nonprofit arena for ten years, ranging from Major Gifts Officer, Executive Director, and National Spokesperson for various military charities. John has been on the forefront of the veteran landscape from placing veterans with combat injuries into jobs on Wall Street, helping them achieve their goals of becoming active in sports, and ensuring that they have funding to send their children to college. John's personal decorations include, Purple Heart, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with Gold Star, Combat Action Ribbon, and three Good Conduct Medals. John's non-personal decorations include, Navy and Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal, Iraqi Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, two National Defense Medals, Overseas Service Ribbon, four Sea Service Deployment Ribbons, Joint Meritorious Unit Citation Ribbon, and Meritorious Unit Citation Ribbon.
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The L.S. Starrett Company Trains Workshops for Warriors Staff
Ira Friedman, Education Manager Precision Tools and BJ Guerin, Product Specialist/ Motorsports & Education of The L.S.
Starrett Company and Earl Bailey, National Education Partnerships Manager for
Snap-on Tools, came to Workshops for Warriors to educat our students and staff with a four-day precision measurement instruments course. We are grateful for their support and instruction!
Not only were we fortunate enough to learn from the pros themselves, but they gifted each person in the class with a personalized micrometer. Visit our
Facebook page to see the full photo album.
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Meghan West of Mastercam Welcomed to the Workshops for Warriors Board of Directors
This quarter we were honored to announce that Meghan West, President of CNC Software, Inc. (pictured in blue jacket), joined the Workshops for Warriors Board of Directors! Meghan will bring a whole new level of expertise and energy to the team, and we are excited to have her on board to help keep our organization growing and at the cutting-edge of industry technology.
Meghan joined CNC Software, Inc., the makers of Mastercam, in 2009 and was named President in April 2015. In 2014, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers named Meghan
one of the "30 Under 30 Future Leaders of Manufacturing". She has dedicated much of her time towards the educational market and recruiting the next generation of men and women into the manufacturing industry.
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Veteran Success Story: Chris
Chris enlisted in the
U.S. Marine Corps
just one week after graduating High School, so the idea of transitioning back to civilian life after working in the infantry was overwhelming. After 11 years Chris had planned on being a Marine for the full 20, but made the decision to transition out after he was plagued with an injury.
Workshops for Warriors helped Chris not only reach his potential with Nationally recognized machining credentials, but helped him realize that his Military experience actually prepared him to be an educator.
For those of you who have been to our school within the last year, you may recognize Chris as the Assistant Teaching Instructor for the WFW machining program. Read his story below.
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Workshops for Warriors in the Media
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Workshops for Warriors Graces the Cover of FFJournal Magazine
FFJournal featured Workshops for Warriors on the cover of their December issue, complete with a feature article explaining how companies are partnering with
Workshops
for Warriors to re-build a skilled workforce in their industry. Many of you, as well as some of our other partners, were kind enough to offer quotes, and it is because of these opinions that the article is so powerful. We cannot thank you enough! In the article you will hear from:
- Doug Harris, Owner, HE&M Saw
- Jerry Kroetch, Owner, Scotchman Industries
- Peter Zierhut, Vice President, Haas Automation
- Ed Miller, Director of Corporate Accounts, SolidWorks
- Kevin Mooney, Vice President for Programs and Supply Chain Management, General Dynamics NASSCO
- Nick Ostrowski, General Manager-Media/Communications, Amada America
- Brenda Miyamoto, Vice President of Corporate Initiatives, Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.
We are so thankful for your help as we work to spread the word about our mission. Turn to page 18 and pick up a copy today or visit here
to read the full story online.
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Manufacturing Day Was a Success with Boeing and Congressman Scott Peters
On Friday, October 7 WFW hosted The Boeing Company team and Congressman Scott Peters during Manufacturing Day. "MFG Day" is celebrated throughout the nation to inspire the next generation of manufactures. This is the second year WFW has participated in this annual event by hosting tours for participants that sign up through www.mfgday.com. Below is a group photo we took for a Boeing Company check presentation along with Congressman Scott Peters. For more information, you can see the press release covering the $50,000 Boeing Company grant to WFW here.
Workshops for Warriors was featured on NBC7 on the 6pm news.This was part of the coverage that happened on Manufacturing Day, and the interview shown was an interview with our Machining Teaching Assistant (and Veteran who went through our program), Scott.
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Founder Hernán Luis y Prado Featured as the Humanitarian Spotlight
in
LOCALE Magazine
Hernán sat down with LOCALE Magazine back in August and has been highlighted in the December issue as their Humanitarian Feature. It's a great piece, and LOCALE Magazine is distributed all across San Diego for free. Check out this link to find a location near you and check it out!
If you just can't wait to read it, you can also find the full article online here. The article starts on page 94.
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New Supporters and Sponsorships
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 SolidProfessor
SolidProfessor and Workshops for Warriors announced a partnership to provide engineering and design skills to Veterans to help them transition successfully into civilian engineering technology and advanced manufacturing careers.
 Nvidia
Nvidia donated
24 GPU cards. This will ensure that all of the Veterans in our programs can create the most cutting-edge designs on our PCs and will allow us to continue to move forward as the only accredited school in the nation that trains and certifies Veterans into advanced manufacturing careers.
 Tesoro
Workshops for Warriors received a $40,000 grant from the Tesoro Foundation, which was presented at this semester's Graduation Ceremony. The funds will be used to help the school purchase a new Haas Automation Computer Numeric Controlled (CNC) Mill VF-2, a piece of equipment that supports hands-on learning of CNC machining.
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Veteran Success Story: Scott
We partnered with M2 Digital thanks to an American Marketing Association win earlier this year, and they helped us tell the stories of our Teaching Assistants. First, o
ur Machining Instructor, Scott, is a Veteran who struggled to find a meaningful career after transitioning out of the Marines, where he was a combat engineer. We spoke with his wife Michelle to get her perspective on the difficulties that come from transitioning out of the Military and entering into civilian life.
Veteran Success Story: Alex
Second, Alex had a very different story. He started Workshops for Warriors while he was still Active Duty in the Marine Corps. He credits Workshops for Warriors with helping him avoid some of the hardships other Veterans go through when transitioning out.
Ford Motor Company Scholarship Recipients
Will Film for Food volunteered to help us tell the story of our two Ford Motor Company Scholarship winners, Heidi and Shaye, as well as create a video covering our Graduation.
[insert video when approved]
Workshops for Warriors 2016 Fall Graduation Ceremony
This semester we had 36 Veterans, Wounded Warriors, and Transitioning Service Members graduate from Workshops for Warriors with nationally recognized credentials from The American Welding Society (AWS), the National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS), Mastercam University, SolidWorks, Immerse2Learn, and the National Coalition of Certification Centers (NC3). As of December 2016, Workshops for Warriors has now trained 338 with a combined 1,318 credentials. Let's bring advanced manufacturing back to America, one Veteran at a time!
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