Happy Summer!
Your INFORMS Military Veterans Interest forum has been busy planning and executing activities for our forum members.
A big thank you to: Warren Hearnes, Katy Walter, Andrew Hall, Nick Ulmer, and Johan Bos-Beijer for their active and awesome support to the forum.
This message will contain a lot of information and will be longer than future more frequent and shorter communications.
Our goals for this calendar year are to increase awareness across INFORMS of the forum, to increase participation by forum members in INFORMS volunteer opportunities, and to increase the membership numbers of the forum.
Anyone can join. You do not have to be a military veteran to be a member of the forum. Anyone who has an interest in military veterans and their activities is encouraged to join. One of the forums activities between now and mid-July will be to put together a video on how to join. We are part of INFORMS Connect, and you can find us by searching for all forums that you can join.
Please reach out to your connections and encourage those who might be interested to participate.
You may have already seen the notice by Katy that we are hosting a virtual meet and greet every third Thursday of the month as a way for forum members (and those interested in the forum) to virtually share.
Johan is working to put together a virtual session on transition tips for veterans who are leaving active participation in military forces. It can be a daunting emotional and financial journey. Many have done it before and are willing to share their experiences and lessons learned. If you would like to participate in the event or help Johan with organizing the event, please contact Johan directly.
Warren is working on putting together a periodic newsletter. If you have suggested topics and especially if you are willing to contribute your time and talent to help create a first class publication, please contact Warren.
Our current INFORMS President and one of our board members have spoken with me about increasing veteran involvement in critical INFORMS activities such as participating in awards boards, editorial boards, and ad hoc committees. These are terrific chances to give back to the INFORMS community and great opportunities for professional experience and development.
To reach out to veterans, first, we need you to give us permission to share your contact information. While there is a formal, INFORMS volunteer form, it does not quite meet our needs. To supplement this, the forum leadership was looking at two additional methods for gathering veteran volunteer information, but we would love to hear your ideas on how best to identify veteran volunteers so that I can pass that information along to the INFORMS leadership.
That was a lot. Future messages will be more frequent and shorter.
Thank you for your time and attention.
In service,
Rich
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Richard Staats
2026 President,
INFORMS Military Veterans Interest Forum
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