Ohio University Leader Lounge

Keith Carr's Insights of Veteran's Journey in Education and Career Advancement

• Alex Winnenberg

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In this episode of the Leadership Lounge at Ohio University, Dr. Amy Taylor Bianco and author Keith Carr discuss various topics. Keith Carr shares his personal journey, starting with his 20 years of service in the Navy and his transition to civilian life. He talks about his experience with online education and obtaining his bachelor's degree in applied management. Later, Carr explains his decision to pursue the MSM (Master of Science in Management) program, highlighting the transferable skills he gained from his military background, such as supply chain management and business analytics. 

He also discusses the significance of education for his daughter and how she is concurrently taking college classes. Carr expresses his positive experience with the MSM program, praising the supportive professors and the practical approach to learning. 


For more information about the Ohio University MSM Program, click this link!

Check out the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership program here.

OnBrand Podcast Studios produced this episode. Special thanks to Audio Engineer Alex Winnenberg, Producer Nick Winnenberg, and Marketing Specialist Cori Stokes.

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UNKNOWN:

Bye.

SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to episode four of the Leadership Lounge here at Ohio University, the MSM program and the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership. That's a mouthful.

SPEAKER_01:

It is a mouthful. Every time I say it, it's like, I'm not sure

SPEAKER_03:

if I can get through it. I'm here with Dr. Amy Taylor-Bianco and also Keith Carr. How are you doing, Keith? Hey, good morning. How's life? Good. Welcome back to Ohio University. Oh, yeah. Beautiful weather we have, right? Kind of rainy for LDC this year.

SPEAKER_00:

That's it, you know, this second degree from OU and this It's my second time on campus, so I'm doing really well. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03:

How can you not be? First time you got in yesterday, right? Did you do anything fun last night? No.

SPEAKER_00:

Came in, relaxed, got something to eat, and just kind of got ready for the weekend.

SPEAKER_04:

But you usually bring the family, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, family's here. Okay. Family's in town with me, so my daughter's doing a campus tour this afternoon. Oh, how old is she? She's 17.

SPEAKER_03:

And

SPEAKER_00:

she's going

SPEAKER_03:

to go to OU

SPEAKER_00:

then. She's a junior, so she's got to figure it out. But yeah, junior in high school, she's going to be graduating next year, and she should have her associate's degree as well. So got to figure out if she's going to be a transfer student or a freshman coming in.

SPEAKER_03:

Wait, back up. So she's graduating high school and she already has an associate's?

SPEAKER_00:

She's going to graduate her high school with high school degree and an associate's degree. I knew that was an

SPEAKER_03:

option. That's amazing. That would have saved me a ton of

SPEAKER_04:

time. It's hard. You've got to be really wanting to

SPEAKER_03:

do that associate's degree while you're in high school. I couldn't even imagine that amount of stress and pressure. Good for her. That's

SPEAKER_00:

awesome. I would have never done it. I'm glad she's able to do it.

SPEAKER_03:

And you just recently graduated the MSM program, or I guess you're graduating next

SPEAKER_00:

year. Yeah, I'm graduating this weekend. Classes are done. Now it's just the formalities.

SPEAKER_04:

Just presented in the capstone class, presented the final presentation, did a phenomenal job.

SPEAKER_03:

So before we dig into your journey of what got you through the MSM program, what got you to the MSM program? Can you kind of walk me through your journey before you started the MSM program?

SPEAKER_00:

So I served 20 years in the Navy. Thank you for saying this. And whenever I retired In 2014, I had GI Bill money available to me, and I was going to actually go to Ohio State University. And whenever I actually went, they wanted me to do all my classes in person there. It wasn't really my cup of tea. So I ended up getting a job with Ohio Department of Transportation. Oh, wow. And while I was working for them, Found the applied management online through OU. So I went through that route and graduated in 2018 with my bachelor's from OU. Took a little bit of time off and then got a job as a county veteran service officer for Montgomery County and started researching it again and Saw the MSM program, and it kind of lined up with my military history and things that I had been doing. So jumped on board with it, and here I am. And

SPEAKER_03:

here we are. So what skill sets transfer between being a veteran or being in the active military and then the MSM program or education in general?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, a lot of them, actually. I mean, during my time in the military, I spent a lot of time doing a lot of logistics. And I was a construction mechanic. in the Navy. So we were always needing parts, figuring out how to get parts. And whenever you're in Iraq or Afghanistan, trying to get the parts you need, you know, you kind of got to understand the process and how to, how to work the, the trade agreements and, you

SPEAKER_03:

know,

SPEAKER_00:

it's

SPEAKER_03:

not an Amazon prime thing,

SPEAKER_00:

right? You can't just, I mean, trying to get things overnighted over there is a little difficult. Usually it takes at least three days, but it's a fly drop from a helicopter. Right. Right. But, uh, So the supply and logistics, that one, I'd seen a lot of government jobs associated with it. And then business analytics, that was just a, I like challenges. And that one, trying to predict the way things are going and researching things. So I jumped on that one and figured it'd be a good stepping point to move into a new career. That's

SPEAKER_03:

fantastic.

SPEAKER_04:

It's really interesting where you came in with the experience and then learning more about it, but you came in as quite a few of our students too, right? Came in after working and leading for a number of years. Could we introduce Raz too?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, since she's walking around and changing. You're totally fine.

SPEAKER_03:

Who is Raz?

SPEAKER_00:

Raz is my service dog. She helps me with mobility and a couple other things. She She's about, she's almost two years old. She's had three different trainers that have worked with her in the last year. Going to events like this and stuff helps me couple months ago I had a full knee replacement so trying to get up and down stairs and everything it was tough before but I'm trying to build that muscle back so whenever I go up or down steps she helps stabilize and helps pull me up so I can get up and down steps pretty good.

SPEAKER_03:

Our audio engineer just pulled up a mic so he's probably going to try to mic my crowds here in a second as well. So that being said the next step for you as well so I know you were talking about that this role and going through the SM program your next step is actually a different county correct?

SPEAKER_00:

Well I just during this process I've started out I was working as a veteran service officer in Montgomery County which is Dayton area and then uh throughout the course of you know last year I got offered a position as a director in another county so I slid over so now I'm in charge of uh veteran services for Preble County which I'm ecstatic about I love my job love you know I like don't foresee moving anywhere anytime soon unless it's back to Montgomery to take over as the director, but I doubt that's going to happen. That's going to happen anytime soon. Yeah, but the main thing, the biggest thing with the MSM program and getting this degree, it was more to show my daughter. I mean, at the end of the day, I wanted her to see, same with the bachelor's degree, the goal was to show her how hard it is to go back to school later on in life. And to take advantage of the opportunities, because like with me, I had the Montgomery GI Bill that paid for it. I had 36 months to use. So I already had an associate's degree in social science that I earned while I was in the military. So to jump back in to get my bachelor's, I knocked it out in a year. while working at ODOT, plowing snow and everything, working anywhere between 40 and 60 hours a week, plus doing four to five classes a semester in order to graduate. There we go. Do we want to ask

SPEAKER_03:

Raz a question, Alex? Raz, what's it like to be Keith's... Oh, he's not interested. She's shy. He's like, I'm Keith.

SPEAKER_04:

There she goes.

SPEAKER_03:

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so trying to show her and then She started taking college classes the same time I started the MSM program. So you're kind of students together. Yeah. So as a sophomore in high school, she started taking college classes for biochemistry.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, wow. So who's a better student? You or your daughter?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I am. Without a doubt. And the reason is, is I have... More drive. Sure. You know, it's that I'm older. I've, I've, I've matured a little bit more, a little bit more than, uh, and she's still figuring it out. Right. Yeah. So, and she has sports and everything else where I go to work and then I come home, either go to watch her sports and then do homework or do my homework. So she saw that there was nights that I was up till midnight doing, doing coursework. And then next thing, you know, I'm, She's still up till midnight doing the coursework. So it was kind of fun. And now she's already looking at graduating high school with her associate's degree. And then she's playing soccer and stuff. So she's trying to find a place that she can play soccer. She'll have four years of eligibility. But if she can transfer in as a junior...

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Then she's like, oh, I'll play for two years, get my bachelor's and play another two years and get my master's. And that's

SPEAKER_03:

amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

And I'm thinking, man, she could be 22 years old and be done with her master's degree and have everything. taken care of.

SPEAKER_03:

That's what, what an amazing opportunity. I'm sure you're a huge role model for her, especially you going back to education when you did.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah. Like I said, she's, she's learned a lot that she doesn't want to wait until later on in life whenever she has a full-time job and a family and everything else. And then add, coursework on top of it

SPEAKER_03:

so i love it now so we can talk before the msm experience a little bit after what you're looking for in the next so and i kind of dig into like the process of msm because this podcast is really focused on people that are considering going to the msm program or at least ohio university graduate program what's been your experience with msm program like from start to finish

SPEAKER_00:

outstanding and every professor has been there to help uh the very understanding the the goal is to succeed And that is where the professors and everybody involved in the MSM program is there to help and to push you a little bit, but help pick you up if you're struggling. So I haven't had a single issue with any of that. The classes are spaced out and just perfect. I mean, that seven-week class is just enough to get in, motivate you, push you to– learn what you need to learn and the best part is everything is based on what you're doing what your experience is how can you relate your experience to the coursework as opposed to like getting your bachelor's where here you need to learn this stuff here's the here's the paperwork learn this stuff the msm program is more okay you're doing the job How can we apply it and tweak it to make it a little bit better? Nice.

SPEAKER_03:

I love that. And similar experience. That's great. And then your two certificates, again, supply chain and data analysis, right? So going into those two, are they similar? Are they different? What's been your experience like with those?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, there's... Obviously, they go together well because whenever you're dealing with supply chain and logistics, ordering, understanding the supply chain and the different areas of it, you can use the prediction models from the business analytics to figure out, all right, how much are we spending? What are we expected to spend next year? The forecasting. Yeah, the forecasting models as well as, okay, where have we taken the big hits in the past? So you kind of have that. that broader perspective on the supply chain side. Yeah,

SPEAKER_04:

I love that you came in with a background of having done supply chain and then coming in with professors that are really pretty applied in the way they do things. Is there any particular class or particular project that you worked on in supply chain that you were like, yeah, that's something that I did or that I needed to know? Or I don't know, any specific experience that was useful for you?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm trying to think. I mean, there was one, and I can't remember which class it was. They all blend together. The seven-way classes blend together. They blend together. But there was one that had a video game that you went, you know, you'd learn it, and then you still had to do the practical. And the practical was going through and using this video game.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00:

And trying to work, all right, you know, you need to hire more people to work in this area or you want to cross train this person to be over here or, you know, and how to, you know, how your income goes up. And so that was pretty neat to go through seven weeks of trying to, you know, I thought I was pretty good at it, but. I didn't make near as much money as what I was hoping to on that one. I spent a lot, though. That's amazing. That's really interesting. Go

SPEAKER_04:

ahead. One other thing that I think you're very humble and you kind of just went over quickly is you got a pretty significant promotion, too, during the program. Yeah. So do you feel like you were better prepared for that or just more confident going into to get the promotion that you did? I

SPEAKER_00:

think, you know, I was a lot more confident. Being a disabled veteran, I never like to show weakness. No veteran does. And here I am walking around with a service dog. So going into any job interviews, the dog walks in before I do. As soon as they see her, Every question that they had in their mind kind of gets blanked. And it's more of a, they're looking at her wondering, why does this guy have a service dog? And how is this going to affect business? How is this, you know? So, and it was no different whenever I interviewed for this position. Even though I had been out in the county and helped out a couple times and they knew me and the veterans out there appreciated the work that I was doing for them. I still had to get through the interview process and everything. So part of the MSM program was I got a mentor like my second semester in. Not a bad experience, but didn't quite get as much out of it as I had hoped. And it was more because of timing and just the way things worked out. But even then, whenever I asked my mentor, you know, hey, I can interview. I know all the, I've been to enough interview classes, you know, be prepared for this, you know, dress accordingly, all the basics. And it's like, all right, now how do I do it with a service dog? How do I break that barrier during the interview process of, hey, I'm capable of doing this job and my service dog won't even, you know, you won't even realize that she's there. It's kind of like if, you know, I tell a lot of people, it's like having a medical device. Yeah. Same thing. If I walked in with a cane, nobody would care. Yep. But I walk in with a service dog and now it's, you know, what do we do? How do we do? How is this going to affect everything? And she's my responsibility. At the end of the day, everything she does, if she tears something up, it's my responsibility. So, and I fully accept that responsibility. So that throws them off a little bit too.

SPEAKER_04:

But you learned how to interview with dog. This is part

SPEAKER_00:

of you. It's a team. You know, they hire a team. Whenever they hire me, they hire a team. And at least in my

SPEAKER_03:

companies, that'd be a net benefit, honestly. If you walked in with a dog I'd be like, all right, when can you start? Right. So I feel, but I definitely understand the stigma that you're associating. Yeah. I mean,

SPEAKER_00:

it's, I actually found out that one of the jobs that I applied for and interviewed, I didn't get, and they ghosted me completely. Didn't even let me know. Whenever I left the interview, they told me I was hired. It was just waiting to give me a date.

SPEAKER_03:

Really?

SPEAKER_00:

And then I called them back, called them, you know, and left, sent emails, never heard anything. I just moved on. And then I got a call about a year later saying, hey, are you still interested? That guy that interviewed you has been fired and we'd like to interview you again. I went back in, come to find out that his comment was we're not hiring him because of that dang dog. Are you serious? Yeah. And, you know, I didn't know it at the time. You know, it didn't bother me. I moved on. But. Yeah, that was the big thing. They didn't want that. At the time, I had my other dog that was a black lab. So big black English lab.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow. That's very interesting. So was there any class that surprised you going into it that you maybe were like, okay... I'm going to put my seven weeks in, but you got way more out of it than you thought you were going to. Cause I mean, for me, that was Dr. Camilla's course of decision-making. Yeah. I wasn't expecting like, okay, it's going to be like a lecture series, but I don't think she lectured once. I think it was all very much conversations. And so that was my big surprise. Was there any class like that for you?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I, Like Dr. Chamele's, I mean, that, yeah, the whole, there's this many people on the boat. I know. I'm like, how do I

SPEAKER_02:

respond

SPEAKER_00:

to that? Thank God for a second. That worked out great because it also gave, you know, everybody in the class time to mix and get to know each other a little bit better. And, you know, have that open discussion that people wouldn't normally have, you know, especially online. Because you can go online classes and not meet anybody if you don't want to. Just show up, do what you got to do and, Turn the camera off and coast, right? So that one kind of broke the barrier. And then I think my analytics classes, two of them, the predictive and the descriptive, just because it's so much Excel-based. I know. And I just don't use Excel as much. Yeah. So watching... watching the professors just bounce around the Excel sheet. And I'm like, where did it go? Control shift, right? You're like, how did you highlight all those awards? They're flying all around it. And I'm like, doing the henpecking, you know, okay, use the mouse, try to figure it out. I'm just

SPEAKER_02:

glad I could pause the videos, right? Because I'll pause, I can't jump and play again.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, a 30-minute video takes me two hours. You're not alone. So, you know, I was just happy to, you know, accomplish it. You know, because I'm one of those I want to do the best I can. At this point in time in my life, it's one of those I push myself to almost be OCD that I want to get it, you know, get where I need to be. And those classes, I couldn't do it. You know, it's just one of those frustrating. Why can I not move this, you know, move around the blocks as quick? It's just

SPEAKER_03:

experience and

SPEAKER_00:

time. And you pick it up eventually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And can you walk me through? I know you had a pretty impactful capstone experience. Can you walk me through what that looked like?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah. Professor Musser, the 14-week capstone was a great research project. We went on the beer industry, learning all about the beer industry for the first seven weeks and kind of looking at the business model. What's the growth rate and everything? And then the second seven weeks, we worked towards building a presentation for Brooklyn Brewery. Oh, fun. And the CEO, Eric Ottaway, yeah, he came in and we briefed him. Oh, wow. So the goal was to have two of the students brief and then just question and answer during that time

SPEAKER_03:

frame.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Well... Right before, about a week before we did it, I got asked if I'd brief, do one of the briefs. Yeah, no big deal. Sure, why not? Yeah, I was like, if nobody else is willing to do it, I am. Right, appreciate it. So I put it, you know, had it all put together and then... There wasn't time for two, so I ended up being the only one to brief him. Oh, my gosh. Which was pretty cool. I kind of threw some different angles at it, and I learned. I didn't realize non-alcoholic beer was harder to brew than regular beer. Really? Wow. Whenever he started explaining that, I was like, well, that explains it. Yeah, it explains a few things. But those guys, they have three or four different non-alcoholic beers. Wow. And whenever you look at their cans, you can't tell that they're non-alcoholic. They look just like the rest of the cans, and it just says in small print.

SPEAKER_03:

Non-alcoholic, wow.

SPEAKER_00:

So if you're sitting at the bar, you would not know that somebody's sitting over across the bar. is drinking non-alcoholic

SPEAKER_03:

so it's very interesting because it has the same brand you saw the same experience that's great so going through that capstone as well i mean have you done a lot of presentations as ceos before was that the first time and like what's what was your experience

SPEAKER_00:

like uh i've done a few presentations uh my last duty station while i was in the navy i was i worked for a two-star admiral oh my gosh so i for four years i got used to Briefing him and whenever I was deployed, I'd brief two-star generals and stuff.

SPEAKER_03:

So you would use those high-octane conversations. Was there a lot of overlap with that? With this briefing a two-star general versus CEO of a brewery?

SPEAKER_00:

It was both about the same. I knew more briefing the two-stars because I was briefing them about things that we had going on in different areas and stuff. So I was well-versed on that. I could have talked to anybody about that stuff. Talking to a CEO of a brewery that's been in business for 35 years, I don't have that much knowledge. You've never been to a brewery before? Yeah, I've never worked in that area. So I basically brought the different perspective, different thoughts that he could try, or maybe he's tried in the past that just didn't know. And like with all things, there's trends. You can see it. I realized throughout the course of the MSM a lot about people drinking non-alcoholic beer. That's just something that I've noticed in my own life. A lot of veterans have started drinking non-alcoholic. And usually it's the older ones. And I didn't... At first, I was like, well... You know, guys 80, 90 years old starting to get dementia. Right. Probably doesn't need to be drinking regular beer anyway. Right. But they're the ones that go to the AMVETS, the VFW and stuff. That's their. It's their social thing. Social thing. So to see them all of a sudden, you know, you start to see they start switching over to the non-alcoholic. And it's like, oh, there's a whole demographic that I'd never thought about trying to sell beer to is the older. And then nursing homes. Really? Serving non-alcoholic beer. Are you thinking about that? Yeah,

SPEAKER_03:

that's a really good point. Why not?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, they still want to drink beer and sit around and talk, but they don't need to get hammered while they're doing it. That's probably a good call. So, you know, and a lot of the non-alcoholic beers are, you know, a white can with a red label with, you know, non-alcoholic and a big N-A on it.

SPEAKER_03:

You know? Why? Right. That's the branding thing. That's very interesting. Now, last question for me in case you have any more questions too. Um, If there was an MSM student or perspective student that's about to jump into the program, what advice do you have for them? If you went back to day one of your MSM experience.

SPEAKER_00:

I'd say, you know, stop hesitating. Just do it. Now, there's nothing that can't be accomplished. And everybody is so supportive. The fear of the unknown. just get rid of it because it's worth every minute you spend on it. The people that you'll meet, the networking, the education is top notch. So I know some people get worried about an online class. I'd rather be in class. But with everybody's different work schedules and the professors are always, they've record all the classes so if you have an event or something that's going on you can still see the class and they're always available to email and most of them will email you back like within half an hour which I blew my mind whenever it's crazy like a Saturday or Sunday and I was having an issue and I sent an email I'm like I probably won't hear back for a day or two and within 20 minutes I had a response I was like oh This is how I fix

SPEAKER_03:

it. You know, it was amazing. I think it was Professor Young's course that I was mid-exam. And I emailed him a question. I'm like, hey, you probably can answer this. I'm mid-exam, so no worries. I just want a heads up. There was something that was messed up with the template sheet because I deleted a cell or something. And it was literally three minutes. I'm like, were you just looking at your email waiting for students to message you? Because you're absolutely right. They're responsive.

SPEAKER_00:

That's rare. And I don't know if you'd get that in a lot of the other programs. I've talked to other people that have went through and got their master's degree, and they didn't have that. They fought it a lot harder, and they didn't get as much out of it as I think I did. Yeah, it's awesome. Do you have any questions?

SPEAKER_04:

Just real quickly, I think you both and both as students in the program have highlighted the community and the connectivity. You're talking about it with professors right now, but the other connectivity. And you've... Keith taken advantage of a lot of the things you're at nearly every extra opportunity that's there, whether it's a fireside chat or a, you know, networking event or anything. Is there, is there anything you'd tell students like, yeah, you could get through the program, but make sure you do, you know, this, whether it's the LDC or whether it's going to the career coaching or like, what would it be that you'd say, make sure you.

SPEAKER_00:

There's so much. To pinpoint one is impossible. My big thing is take advantage of everything. Use it all. Try it all. You know, if you go to a fireside chat and, you know, maybe it's just not in your wheelhouse. And some of them I've went to and they weren't. They didn't play to what I need.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But I still went. because you can find little things in there. Not to mention, you see people, you start talking to people, you start that network, and then whenever you come to the LDC, you sit down with people face-to-face that you've been looking at on a computer screen for a year. Like, Nick is shorter than I thought he was. It's like, okay, and then you can build from there. The mentoring and the coaching, you know, take advantage of it. You know, if you try it and it just doesn't work out, okay. You're not losing, you know, you're not losing on anything. The GradCat program is another one that, you know, I joined that and the coach that I had, great, had a lot of great points, had helped me navigate some of the the computer stuff that I hadn't looked at because I don't have a big social media by any means. So to see the importance of my LinkedIn page and some suggestions on how to improve it, little things that start to add up.

SPEAKER_03:

Fantastic. Anything else you want to talk about? No. Anything

SPEAKER_04:

else? No.

SPEAKER_03:

Raquel, well, thank you so much for your time. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm excited for LDC too, right? It's going to be a good day.