Wes Moore, a former Army combat veteran and executive producer of the upcoming PBS show "Coming Back with Wes Moore," spoke on HuffPost Live Monday about the difficulties veterans face reintegrating into civilian life.
Among these challenges, "a big thing is just a skill set transition," he said. Some veterans who carried huge responsibility while deployed are unable to translate the skills they acquired when they return.
"We have vets who come back and they were in charge of entire platoons, they had millions of dollars of equipment, but because everything in the military is acronyms and all that kind of stuff, a person is looking at their resume and they're like, but do you have any leadership experience?" he said.
Another issue Moore noted with returning veterans was tapping into their "entrepreneurial spirit."
"A lot of the common perception of veterans is that these are robots," he said. "A lot of the time you think veterans are great because if you tell them what to do, they'll do it. But if you don't, they just kinda sit there and wait for orders."
"This couldn't be further from the truth," Moore continued. "If there's one consistent thing about combat, it's that your Tuesday will look nothing like your Monday and your Wednesday will look nothing like your Tuesday. A lot of our operations were what we call react-to-contact. As things you happen, then you have to instantaneously react to what happens. Well, what's entrepreneurship if not that?"
Moore said society should "figure out that that's a great skill set the veterans are bringing to bear."
"Our veterans aren't necessarily problems that have to be fixed, or charities," he said. "In many ways, our veterans are investments because when we think about the things that veterans can do when they come back home ... we've got men and women who are prepared to continue to lead and prepared to continue to serve. So we have to understand just the diversity and the mosaic that our veteran community is, and that's the best way of getting them back on track to get them to be able to continue to serve."
Watch a clip of Moore's interview above.
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