To celebrate Veterans Day this upcoming Friday, November 11th, the Energy Central Community Team will be shining a light on the many outstanding utility professionals in our network who also spent time in the military. This week, we'll be featuring interviews with these veterans sharing how they found their way into the industry. We will also highlight their unique perspectives of the industry and how they are influencing the utility space.
All the interviews will be collected at this special Veterans Day 2022 topic tag.
To all the veterans in the Energy Central Community, we want to say thank you for your service and we wish you a Happy Veterans Day.
John Moxley enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1982 to 1986, motivated by a sense of duty to serve his country and protect its citizens. Trained as an electronics technician on radar systems during his time, John worked his way up to an E5 Sergeant by the time his service ended.
The background he gained in power systems may have predicted his eventual career in the utility industry, but he notes that didn’t come until later in his career. After leaving the service, he worked with software companies mainly in the manufacturing sector. But the energy industry eventually came calling, and he found it was with good reason.
In 2018, John found the power sector, specifically working at Survalent, a company providing utilities with leading edge Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS). Today, John is a sales manager at Survalent for the Eastern United States.
Reflecting on how he ended up in energy and why he’s seen so many of his fellow veterans pursue a utility-focused career, he realized certain commonalities between military service and the utility industry make the transition a perfect fit.
Moxley notes, “The most impressive aspect of the utility industry is the sense of camaraderie. This is commonly cited by veterans as the biggest thing they miss from the military – and rightly so. Having been in multiple industries, the utility industry has a higher developed camaraderie than I have seen anywhere. Upon reflection, this is not too surprising, because when utility folks are working in the field, they commonly are dependent upon each other for their safety. For their lives. We have each other’s back, and that creates both deep friendships and loyalty. The military rewards a combination of teamwork and personal work ethic. These absolutely transfer to success in the energy industry.”
The sense of camaraderie draws veterans to the utilities, but it’s the innate qualities in veterans that make hiring them to the energy sector so seamless. As John noted, “Time in the Marine Corps taught me the true definition of servant leadership, and putting others first. I carried that into Survalent.”
And looking ahead, the leadership is just one of the qualities of veterans that are going to make them such critical employees in the utility sector of tomorrow. It’s no secret that the power industry is undergoing massive transformation: digitalization, decentralization, decarbonization, and more. But, John notes, no one is better prepared to adapt on the fly than veterans. “A mantra from the military is: adapt and overcome,” John notes. “The plan goes out the window with first contact, yet the objective must still be met. The current state of change for the energy industry is truly unprecedented. For a veteran, this is a part of how we are trained to operate: in the midst of chaos and change, the objective must still be met.”