Jocelyn Mitnaul Mallette, the secretary of the NC Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, has a unique job. She has to concern herself with the large military installations in North Carolina and the quality of life for the 95,000-plus active-duty warfighters and their families.
She also has to concern herself with the more than 615,000 veterans who live in our state, and how they are faring.
She came to the job in January with a background suited to the position. She came from a military family — in fact, she attended eight different schools K-12, as her father’s assignments took him to new bases. She graduated from the Air Force Academy and served 10 years in the Air Force as an intelligence officer and a military lawyer, including time at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro.
And she went through the experience of leaving the military and trying to find a job. We have 20,000 service members who transition out of the military from our bases each year, and she can relate to the challenges they face.
The DMVA
The legislature established the cabinet-level agency a decade ago, and the legislation “intended for this department to serve as a hub for all things military and veterans and [their] families,” says Mallette.
That is a big job. The military and related defense businesses make up the second-largest part of North Carolina’s economy, behind agriculture. The bases are big employers and they generate a lot of economic activity, but they also need support from the state and from the communities in which they are located. Military families are constantly coming and going because the services constantly move service members to new assignments. This creates issues around things like getting kids registered in schools and military spouse licensures. Child care is a constant issue. Making sure the roads and utilities can support the bases. Ensuring that development doesn’t encroach on installations and make training difficult.
Dealing with veterans’ issues is also complex. Veterans need help navigating their system of healthcare and benefits. They need help getting into careers and into colleges.
And North Carolina isn’t operating in a vacuum. States compete to be “military-friendly.”
North Carolina wants to convince veterans to settle here and not in Texas or Wisconsin, and join our workforce after they leave the service and attend our universities and community colleges. So do a lot of states, and the competition can be intense, particularly when it comes to things like tax breaks. Everyone wants to talk about property tax exemptions, which is fine, unless you are a county with a lot of veteran-owned homes in your tax base.
There are dozens of organizations in North Carolina working on military and veteran-related issues, public and private non-profits, well-intentioned but sometimes only loosely aware of each other.
The DMVA secretary is at the center of all this. To be effective, the DMVA secretary needs good organizational and people skills and the ability to set priorities.
Mallette listed her three top priorities: Sector collaboration, transition support services and economic opportunity.
“And sector collaboration is first,” she said, “because it took me just a couple of weeks in this job to realize that there are so many groups and organizations that are doing wonderful work to serve and support military veteran families, but they aren’t all talking to each other and sharing best practices.”
She cited as an example Mayor Will Lewis of Havelock, who has developed a good relationship with the leadership at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, which is Havelock and Craven County’s big employer, including Fleet Readiness Center East. The challenge is that there’s a new commander at Cherry Point every few years, and so that relationship has to be rebuilt, constantly, and that’s true in all the communities that host installations.
“I want that relationship to be replicated with every mayor that has a military installation in their city,” she said.
It is, to varying degrees. For example, when Gov. Josh Stein visited Seymour Johnson Air Force Base to have Friendsgiving lunch with the airman, joining him was Goldsboro Mayor Charles Gaylor.
One of the challenges she has is in the legislature, where a lot of different organizations are active. There are always a lot of ideas floating around for legislative action. A lot of bills get filed, and some of them actually get passed.
“I also want to make sure that we’re talking to all the legislative advocates and policy directors in all these different organizations,” said Mallete. Her legislative director, Corey Curry Slife, “has been really working closely with all the advocates and lobbyists and all these different organizations.”
“Because I know our legislative agendas will diverge at some points, but when we’re arguing for the same things, we should be using the same numbers and statistics or talking points.”
The transition process
Improving the transition process for veterans draws upon her own experience, which she described as “terrifying.” And she was an officer with a law degree and experience as a military lawyer. She was fortunate. She had a friend from law school who helped her get a job, after a couple of anxious months, as a law clerk at the state Supreme Court, which then led to McGuireWoods, where she rose to partner. So when she left Seymour Johnson in 2016, she had a few more things going for her than a separating young airman with a high school degree, and she still found it a bumpy experience.
“And so we have asked the General Assembly for additional funding to expand our transition support services department, because right now, it’s a division of one. One person is my transition support coordinator.
“She’s amazing, but she can’t do all things, and so she’s really had to hold hands with other organizations who are doing transition support work. But we need to do a better job of closing what I’m sure you know they call the deadly gap, which is the year after you get out of the military.”
Active-duty military have a higher suicide rate than civilians, and veterans have a higher rate than active-duty, she noted. There is an urgency to connecting military families and veterans to benefits and resources.
“We can make the deadly gap less deadly or close it altogether,” she said. “But when we treat transition like a one-size-fits-all approach, it’s just not helpful or productive. So one of our goals is to make sure that every transitioning family has a one-on-one appointment with either one of my 60 veterans service officers throughout the state or one of the 200-plus county VSOs throughout the state that are, of course, county employees, but we train them and certify them.”
“So that you do sit down and someone can say, OK, thanks for your service. What do you want to do now? Do you want to start a veteran-owned business? Does your spouse want to go back to school? Let me tell you about the GI Bill. Let me tell you about the schools you can apply to in North Carolina for free, that will give you in-state tuition. That’s the type of individualized, personalized approach that we owe to our transitioning service members and their families.”
Economic opportunity
“We, of course, want to ensure that federal government contracts are continuing to come to North Carolina, and we’re working with the Department of Commerce, Military Business Center on that, but we also want to make sure that veteran-owned businesses are able to stand up and thrive,” she said.
“But a big part of this economic opportunity priority for me is workforce development. My mom went to North Carolina A&T State University, got a degree in social work, and was a social worker for all of one year because it was too hard to find a new job in a new city in a new state every two years. So she never worked again.
“And so I care a lot about workforce development and helping companies and government entities understand that, like, sure, you don’t hire infantrymen at Cisco, and you don’t hire aircraft mechanics at SAS, but you hire people who are punctual and professional and work well under pressure, and are good team members and are mission-oriented.
“So that’s just the service members. It’s the spouses, like my mom, like my comms director, like my legislative director, who packed up a house on one side of the country, unpack the house on the other side of the country . . . make that house a home, register the kids in school, get themselves a job and do it again in two years. And by the way, they probably receive a phone call at some point in those two to three years from their spouse saying, ‘Hey, honey, got to deploy to an undisclosed location for an uncertain amount of time.’”
“The spouses, the ones who have that level of resilience and determination and flexibility should also be hired by these companies. And who cares if they’re going to be there for two years, lucky for that company for having their influence and impact for two years.”
Not the best, yet
So she brings passion and authenticity to the job. And she doesn’t hold back. Gov. Josh Stein learned that early.
“One of my first cabinet meetings, where the governor gave each of his cabinet secretaries 15 minutes to deep dive our respective agencies. So Gov. Stein said, ‘Alright, cabinet secretaries, each of you has 15 minutes to deep dive your agency. So, like, these three secretaries will go to this cabinet meeting next week.’ And so it was my turn. The trial attorney in me wanted to start with an attention-grabbing statement, but it’s also true. I said, ‘Good afternoon, governor and fellow secretaries. I want you all to stop saying that North Carolina is the No.1 state for military and veterans, because we’re not. And when you say it, it makes you look like you’re out of touch and you don’t know what’s going on.’ And then the governor said, ‘Well, Jocelyn, what are other states doing that we’re not?’ I said, ‘Governor, respectfully, you’ve given me 15 minutes to deep dive my entire agency. And if I were to tell you everything other states are doing that we are not yet doing in North Carolina, it would take all of that time to mention. So I’ll give you two now,’ and I gave him property taxes and spousal licensing certification. We can talk about the others later.
“But I love this story for a couple of reasons. First is, he is so competitive in a great way for our state, and he wanted to know immediately what are they doing that we’re not. Let’s do it. Let’s be number one. But he also is listening to me, because he has stopped saying we’re number one. He now says ‘North Carolina is a great state for military and veterans, and we are, but we are not number one, but my team and I have a plan to get us there.’”
The Home Builders Institute visit
Part of the job of the DMVA secretary is to go around the state and visit military installations, and she has done that. This is a big state, and you can put a lot of miles on the car visiting the Marines down in Jacksonville and the Coast Guard in Elizabeth City, or the Air Force in Goldsboro. There’s a photo I found on DVIDS of Mallette firing a simulated Mark 19 grenade launcher at Camp Lejeune in June, for example.
But I also found what I thought was a significant photo of a visit that she made in March to Fort Bragg. This shows Secretary Mallette, right, with Bernadine Brown, regional career development coordinator for the Home Builders Institute Military Services Program at Fort Bragg. The program provides 12 weeks of hands-on training in electrical and carpentry to active-duty service members within 180 days of leaving the military, as well as veterans and military spouses and dependents. I toured the facility last August. I learned that 87% of graduates get jobs and 72% work in construction trades. The military is made up of people from all over who just happen to be here, at Fort Bragg, for example, when they are preparing to leave the military. They might stay here if there’s a job they know about. One of the challenges is getting North Carolina companies to come to the program’s job fair events. So it was a good idea to bring Secretary Mallette through the HBI facilities, because she’s someone who can help with that.
