Show notes
Allen and Joel speak with Frank Martinez, Talent Acquisition Specialist and Veterans Ambassador for Pearce Renewables. With 32 years of distinguished U.S. Army service and 13 years at Pearce, Frank shares invaluable insights on creating pathways for veterans in the renewable sector. Pearce is leveraging veterans' unique skillsets and fostering a supportive work environment, with an impressive 10% of their workforce self-identifying as veterans.
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we're pleased to welcome Frank Martinez, Talent Acquisition Specialist and Veterans Ambassador for Pearce Renewables. Frank brings a unique perspective to our discussion combining 32 years of distinguished U. S. Army service with 13 years at Pearce Services. In his current role, Frank leads Pearce Renewables Efforts to recruit and train veterans for the renewable energy industry. This initiative draws on Frank's extensive military background and his deep understanding of the renewable sector. During his military career, which included both active and reserve service, Frank trained over 40, 000 service members.
Today, Frank will share insights into Pearce Renewable's veteran recruitment and training programs. He'll discuss how the company is creating pathways for veterans into renewables and explore the valuable skills. Veterans bring to the sector and Joel and I are looking forward to hearing about these initiatives in veteran recruitment and training for the renewable energy industry.
Frank, welcome to Uptime.
Frank Martinez: Good to be here, Allen. Thank you. And Joel for having me on the show today.
Allen Hall: So Frank, you have an extensive career in the military. My gosh. And I want to touch upon that just briefly because you don't run across people every day that have served over 30 years in the military.
That's right. And you want to just give everybody some insight into what you did with the U. S. Army?
Frank Martinez: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you're right. I usually don't meet too many people that have 20 plus years, let alone 30 plus years. So that said, I know that it is pretty unique. I will tell you that, I love being part of the Army because I really cared about the mission.
And what was the mission over the last 20 years? As you remember, we were at war. I had a really vested interest in helping those that were preparing to go to war be part of that solution. And so I did that for the last 18 years of my career. I was an instructor trainer for units Army, Air Force, and Navy that were going overseas to deploy Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, all types of contingent operations worldwide.
So I was part of that and like you said there in the intro 40, 000 service members that I stood in front of and taught a subject to. And I'm very proud of that. So I was part of that solution that the army needed to get people ready to go to war. That is incredible. I think it's incredible as well.
Just the opportunity to do that. When I was in it I was 100 percent dedicated to that mission and how serious it was. Because we're talking about people's lives, we're talking about America's sons and daughters at this point. It really I knew at the time when I was doing it that it was much bigger than myself.
And so just to be part of that I wanted to ride that as long as I could, and that's
Allen Hall: exactly what I did.
So when you left active duty and then went into the reserves, then you transitioned also into the renewable sector, right?
Frank Martinez: Let's start there. So my active duty time is mixed in with my reserve duty time.
So I went from active duty to the reserves and then from the reserves, I would get activated. for typically one year at a time, and then you go back to your civilian job. For me, like personally, I did I did three years straight at one point during that time in the
reserves, in the reserves. Yeah.
Three years, one whole stretch. Once again, training soldiers and service members going overseas When I came off of that is the time when I came to join this company that is now Pearce. That was 2011. So 2000, May of 2011 is when I joined Pearce. And then during that time since 2011 till now, or actually two years ago, when I officially retired there was three other times that I got called up for one year mobilizations of active duty.
So while I was an employee of this company, I got called up for duty to go serve. And during that capacity, I did the exact same thing. I was getting soldiers ready to go overseas.
Joel Saxum: But it plays directly into your military career, plays directly into your civilian career, because when you came over in 2011, of course, Pearce, Pearce right now, one of the largest, if not the largest, ISP in the United States, telecom, solar, wind, all the above, I know there's a couple there's four, four figure employees in just wind, so you guys are huge.
But you've seen that kind of Growth through. Mean, with Pearce has been growth through acquisition, growth through organic growth. Hey, we've got a contract. We need to get all these people in. So you've seen that change in the last 13 years in Pearce and what would become Pearce and all these other companies.
So you. They can lean on you by saying Hey this gentleman here has trained all these people. He has this experience. And I know when we were talking off air, you said when there was a point at Pearce where you got basically, Hey, we want to keep, we want you to be a part of the team.
Frank, how can we utilize your skills to the best of what your ability is? And you basically created what you do now Out of thin air, out of that conversation to, to help Pearce. So how did that work out?
Frank Martinez: So when I first joined the company, believe it or not, I came on board as what's known as a detail engineer.
And that is writing specifications for installing telecom equipment. I did that for exactly one month. My background in the military was signal. So I had a solid signal understanding and I had worked in that type of role before. That lasted exactly one month because the guy that was over procurement got fired.
And so when he got fired, the office manager at the time recognized, you're really like my military background. We spent a little bit of time talking about my background and he was like, I think you're the guy that should be in procurement. I'm going to move you over to procurement. And so I became the procurement guy, did the procurement role for about maybe four or five years, then I became the procurement manager for Pearce.
So I ran all that two years down the road after that, I became a project manager, and then after a project manager, I became the operations manager for the telecom division. So I really had a lot of career growth within this company just based on opportunities that were available at the time all the way to the role that I'm in now.
The role that I'm in now also plays well into my military background. Of course, like you said, very extensive 32 years when I retired in 2022. That's that pivotal moment where wow, 32 years, even saying that out loud it's almost impossible for me to even comprehend it, but reflecting on it and, really proud of my service. Like how, what can I do? Now that I'm retired to still continue something involved with the military. So for a time now, I had already seen Pearce growing in renewable energy and telecom, and then thinking to myself like, man, these roles are really well suited for service members.
And the reason I know that because as an instructor trainer, I've trained all types of We're talking about engineer construction units. military police units, signal units, transportation units, you name it. I've trained them. Aviation units, maintenance battalions. Like I've been around all these soldiers and all types of different skillsets.
So I've seen firsthand the type of equipment they use, how they work and operate to maintain that equipment. So I thought, I always thought to myself like, wow, there's such an opportunity for those service members to find careers. Here at Pearson, almost any division that we have available. And then, so basically this ended up just having a conversation at a Christmas party, believe it or not with my supervisor at the time.
My, my manager at the time was at this Christmas party and I just pulled him aside and said, Hey, listen, I just retired from the army and I want to know is why doesn't our company have a dedicated military recruiting program? And he said, I don't know, Frank, tell me why we don't, I said, or why we should.
And so I laid out the groundwork, like matching the skill set to the type of rules. Like these guys do this military service members and this specific skills have these skill sets. We need these skill sets. In this rule everything from renewable energy to telecom, you name it. We, those skills easily come across.
So he's Frank, that makes 100 total sense to me. We should figure out a way to get you transferred over to the HR team and figure out. How to get this initiative started. Officially in November of 2022, I transferred over to the HR department and they I've now the talent acquisition slash veteran ambassador for the company.
Basically in that role,