Four years and almost 40 surgeries ago, Marine Staff Sgt. John Jones was blown 25 feet in the air when his Humvee hit a double-stack antitank mine while on convoy near the Syrian border with Iraq.
He remembers landing directly behind the Humvee, his legs a mess. One would be amputated below the knee soon after the blast. Ten months later, after getting used to one prosthetic, he finally agreed to amputate the second leg.
“Basically it wasn’t existing anyway,” he says. “It didn’t work. I said, ‘Screw it. Take it.’”
Today, medically retired from the Corps, he’s traded in his military greens for business-suit gray. But the lessons learned as an NCO still apply.
Jones is executive director of the Wall Street Warfighters, an organization that helps wounded vets find careers in the financial services industry. As one of the first two graduates of the program, Jones is a believer. So much so that he’s putting his own full-time career on temporary hold to help others.
“I saw it as my duty while in the service to take care of my fellow Marines,” Jones says. “Now, I’m giving fellow Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen the opportunity to thrive, despite their disabilities.”
The privately funded program is sponsored by Drexel Hamilton, a Philadelphia brokerage firm headed by Vietnam veteran Lawrence Doll, and the investment per recruit ranges from $25,000 to $42,000. The firm and a host of sponsors provide a monthly stipend, room and board, a clothing allowance, road trips to places like Goldman Sachs and the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, and an array of training opportunities, from classes at Wharton to hands-on sessions with financial professionals. The goal is to help the vets prepare for the grueling securities exams they need to start working.
Once they pass those tests, they are guaranteed a job.
That promise — backed by retired Marine Gen. Peter Pace, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who heads the Warfighters Foundation’s board — helped overcome Jones’ initial reluctance to sign on.
With years of surgeries and therapy behind him, Jones had moved with his family to Colorado to attend business school. When first recruited by Warfighters, the father of three wasn’t eager to leave his family for six months. But the guarantee — and a trip home every other weekend — was enough for him to accept the “mini-deployment.”
Jones finished the program in 4 1/2 months and deferred a job with Drexel Hamilton to head Warfighters. “It turned out to be a good fit for me,” he says. “One, I can work from home. Two, I’m independent like I want to be.”
While the flexibility and range of jobs makes the industry ideal for vets, the recruits are equally well-suited to the challenges they’ll face.
“It’s a very mental field, very stressful,” says Brooks Hulitt, managing director at Drexel Hamilton. “But they’ve been to hell and back. ... They eat stress for breakfast.”
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