My name is Jessica Hancock. I am an ITOT business process director for data management for Dow Chemical.I am also a woman veteran for for the United States Navy, where I spent seven years as a nuclear electrician's mate as well as a nuclear officer. And so today, I'm excited to come in and talk to y'all about my experience and how that has enabled me in my tech career. Okay. So I'm gonna kick this off by kinda telling a story, and it's really about my personal experience to paint the picture for you. So the ship hums beneath my feet. Right? I'm standing on the the a metal graded deck, 90,000 tons of steel. Reactors are running. Systems are alive, and my job is simple. Nothing goes wrong on my watch.

So every gauge, every vibration, every alarm tells me a story, and it's my job to understand it instantly. Out there on the ocean, a mistake can cascade in seconds, but so can excellence. And what I didn't know then was that the very same discipline, the ability to stay calm under pressure, make fast analytical decisions, and trust the team with your life is exactly what tech needs too. In the Navy's nuclear program, you learn quickly that pressure is actually a privilege. Every watch, every drill, every late night inspection is an exercise in earning trust, not through rank, but through consistency, through your preparation, through discipline. And standing watch has taught me a simple truth. Reliability isn't accidental. It's engineered in people as much as it is in the systems.

And that mindset is why women veterans aren't just prepared for tech. We're built for it. The goal of this talk is gonna be simple. It's just to show how the skills women veterans develop through service, vigilance, systems awareness, discipline to decision making, and mission first leadership aren't just relevant to tech. They're transformative. We'll explore the strengths women veterans bring, the barriers they still face when entering the industry, and what companies can do to recognize military experience as a powerful engine for innovation. So here's a picture that most people never see. Women veterans are not a small footnote in the workforce. We are one of the fastest rising engines of leadership and capability. More than 2,100,000 veteran women veterans live in The United States today, and we're the fastest growing part of the veteran community, rising from just 4% of all veterans at the turn of the century to 11.3% today, on track to reach 17.2% by 2043.

We've served in every branch, 20.9% of today's navy, 21.5% of the air and space force, and across and across deployed missions where many of us went overseas an average of three times. That kind of experience shapes you. It sharpens your instincts, deepens your resilience, and builds a level of system awareness you can't learn from a textbook. And when women veterans step into civilian life, we bring that same discipline and sense of mission with us. Statistically, we're more educated than non veteran women, more likely to hold bachelor's or advanced degrees, and we're more likely to study IT, engineering, and computer science. And once hired, we stay longer. Women veterans remain 16% longer at their first civilian employer and are 15% more likely to enter roles at the same or higher level than the positions they held in uniform.

These aren't just numbers. They're proof of something deeper deeper. That when women veterans transition into the workforce, we don't just fill roles. We elevate them. We stabilize teams. We bring clarity, accountability, and a way of seeing systems and people that make organizations stronger, safer, and more innovative. Women veterans bring mission focused leadership, systems thinking, operational resilience, and team cohesion. These skills are honed in high stakes environment. These competencies translate directly into tech roles, such as cybersecurity, data driven make decision making, and operations management. Mission focused leadership ensures clarity and accountability, while systems thinking enables holistic problem solving across complex architectures. Operational resilience and adaptability allow teams to pivot effectively during crises, and team cohesion fosters trust and collaboration. These attributes are not soft skills.

They're performance multipliers that enhance innovation and reliability in tech organizations. When women veterans transition into the tech world, they aren't held back by a lack of ability. The data shows that they're held back by barriers the system wasn't built to recognize. Women veterans experience 22% higher underemployment than other veterans, and it takes them three months longer than men to land their first civilian job. Even before they get into the door, they're overlooked. Women veterans receive 11% fewer recruiter outreaches than non veteran women and 22% fewer than the overall veteran community despite bringing some of the strongest operational and technical backgrounds in the workforce. Many apply less often not because they can't do the work, but because civilian job descriptions don't reflect their skills, which is why women veterans submit 55% fewer applications than non veteran women.

And more than 54% say they don't even know how to navigate the resources available to them during transition compared with just 35 of male veterans. Add to this the reality that 37% experience income loss during separation and that many are misidentified as spouses instead of veterans, and a pattern emerges. These challenges are structural, not personal. The good news is that every one of those barriers is fixable. When companies choose to see women, veterans clearly, their leadership, their discipline, their readiness, the entire organization becomes smarter, stronger, and more resilient. So now I'm gonna talk about my personal experience. I gave you a little bit of background on the things that women veterans face, as they transition. But sometimes people ask me when did I realize that my Navy experience actually gave me an advantage in tech.

And to be honest, when I reflect on it, I'm a little bit surprised because it didn't happen in learning technology in a server room or a strategy session. It really started with listening. On a ship, you're trained to listen very carefully, not just with your ears, but your whole body. You learn the normal rhythm of the ship, the of the machinery, the vibrations, the subtle shifts, and it tells you that something is not right. And way before any alarm goes off, systems can start to tell you things, and you need to be able to recognize that to take action quickly. And if you're paying attention, you can act early, decisively, and, most importantly, calmly. So years later, as I'm working in Dow and kind of getting my footing, I realized I was doing the same thing in technology.

I spend a lot of my time working with plant operators and business leaders, listening very carefully to how they experience systems, how they do their job, what those experiences mean to them, and what they're seeing before anybody else does. I ask them where the data slows them down, where tools feel confusing, where decisions feel a lot harder than they should be. So my job isn't just built in the IT strategy space. It's also my responsibility to translate those signals into technology that actually works for people. So my Navy mindset, it really helps me do three things very quickly, identify the real problem, build a clear plan, and ex execute it to a high standard. So whether it's AI, analytics, data platforming, I focus on creating solutions that help people make trusted data driven decisions while still respecting their domain expertise and lived experience. So that's why it clicked for me. My Navy experience didn't just transfer to tech.

It trained me to listen for what systems and people are telling us and to act before small problems become big ones. And in technology, that ability to hear those things and listen is is is everything. Okay. So I do wanna jump into some of how do we actually overcome some of those challenges that I talked about. So if we wanna build a tech ecosystem that really includes veterans, women veterans, we don't need good intentions. We need better systems. So it does start by translating skills, not titles. Military job titles, as I said, don't always make sense in tech, but the work does. Veterans have led complex systems, operated under pressure, and made risk based decisions every day.

When we translate that experience into real technical and leadership capabilities, we stop overlooking talent that's been hiding in plain sight. Next, we have to hire for capability, not credentials. Technology evolves too fast to rely on degrees as proxies for potential. Veterans are trained to learn quickly, solve problems with limited information, and execute in ambiguity. Skill based hiring, simulations, and real problem solving assessments unlock that capability. But hiring alone is also not enough. We need to onboard with structure and purpose. Veterans come from a mission driven environment with clear expectations. A strong onboarding plan paired with a mentor turns uncertainty into confidence and momentum for veterans. We also need to build community and sponsorship. Mentors help veterans navigate, but sponsors really help them to advance. Visible veteran networks, allies, and sponsors create belonging and open doors for veterans. And finally, we must measure what matters. Inclusion isn't about effort. It's about outcomes.

If veterans are hired but not retained, visible but not promoted, then the system isn't working. What we track is what we improve. When we get this right, veterans don't just fit into tech. They strengthen it. And in a world increasingly shaped by technology, that's not just inclusive, it's strategic. So I wanna close where we began with the idea of watch standing. In the navy, you're taught that the most important moments don't always make themselves visible or known. Systems don't fail all at once. They drift. They incrementally change, and the people who make the biggest difference are the ones who are trained and trusted to notice those quiet signals and act on them before the crisis arrives. Women veterans bring that same mindset into technology every day. We notice that processes are fragile. We question systems that rely on tradition instead of logic.

We bring discipline, accountability, and a deep respect for safety, compliance, and people, not because it's trendy, but because it's what we were trained to do to protect the mission. But here's the truth. Talent alone is not enough. Systems matter. And if the systems we're building for hiring, onboarding, and advancement weren't designed with veterans in mind, then even the most capable people will struggle to thrive. So the opportunity in front of us is not just to welcome veterans into tech, but to design ecosystems where they can fully contribute, where skills are translated clearly, where potential is recognized early, where discipline and vigilance are not seen as rigidity, but as strengths.

Thank you for letting me present this information to you and share my story a little bit. So I'm gonna actually open it up for questions now, and I'm gonna go to my first slide so that at least I have a backdrop. And let me check the chat as well. Thank you, Amina. I'm gonna pull this slide over. I have so many screens open so I can see your chats. I will say so I I wanna respond a little. Michelle, I saw your note about raised navy brat, but I'm an army veteran. It's interesting you say that my son is also now in the navy, and I feel like a lot of even if you're not a veteran, the way that we as moms also shape our children and the discipline we bring to them, it is, it is passed through even, you know, as we we raise them. So any other questions or anything else you got? I still have quite a few minutes, so I didn't expect to go as fast as I did.

I've got about seven minutes. So if you've got things that you wanna know or even if just about my, experience in tech or the military. Well, I will leave this open, and I will hang out here for a few more minutes in case anybody else joins or has any questions or just to chat. But, hopefully, you got something out of today just in the experience of seeing the value that we all bring every day, and what our past experiences maybe outside of tech also bring to the table even if it goes unseen. Hi, Laura. Thank you. Yes. Can I talk about how I find opportunities? Oh my goodness. So it took me a very long time, I think, to really even personally translate. I wanna talk about my own skills from the the military into my life today in the corporate world.

But when I talked about sponsorship and mentorship, that is a very large port way that I've found these opportunities. It was about building confidence through those mentorships and sponsorships and building my network where I was able to see and translate what I did and what I learned in the military to actual, opportunities in tech. So like I was talking about with leadership, I think there was a time where I could see a problem, solve a problem, especially early in my career. And so I did a lot of good individual contributor work, but I never really felt like I was a leader. And I think a lot of that also comes from when you are in the military. It's very much a brethren, so everybody depends on each other. And while there are leaders, leaders are expected to be the same as their their peers and the people that they lead.

You know, a leader would be expected to do the same type of work if you're on a mission. They're not, hey. I direct you or I tell you which way to go. So I think it took me a long time to learn what kind of leader I was to find opportunities to grow as well. But, again, those mentorships and the the sponsorships and people giving me that confidence of being able to translate what I've taken from my military experience was critical for me to say, yes. I can go work on this opportunity and probably learn how to do that job pretty quickly. And then, Amina, you asked the statistic of women waiting longer. Yes. So I personally, I was always a go getter, so I didn't wait.

I also had a family when I was in the military, and I think maybe that drove a little bit of me not waiting. But when I exited, I did leave with several other women, and it took them a substantially longer time. And I actually gave them a lot of my networking to be able to speed that time up. But I think a lot of it was they didn't know where to start. They didn't understand, because a lot of the jobs you do in the military in the civilian world are traditional male roles. Like, you know, I did an I was an electrician. Unfortunately, that's typically held by a a man in our civilian world.

And so I think there's also this kind of when you transition, you're accepted as a woman electrician in the military, but then it's not necessarily as acceptable to fill those types of roles. So I think there is a stigma that does that, and I did see a lot of my, friends and people that I worked with that were a little bit afraid to go out there and find things and maybe jump outside of those stigmas. And and, I I mean, it's understandably why, but, yes, it wasn't so much for me, but I think I had motivators that that I didn't experience that. I've got time for one more question if anybody's got them. I think Laura and and Amina are the only folks left in here. Oh, no. Michelle as well. So and Gabriela. Welcome, Gabriela. Thank you, Amina. Yes. And I will I'll I'll leave one last thing that I think I also took away from this, experience and kind of once I really realized how I can take my military experience and apply it to my civilian job, and, yes, it did take a long time.

I and Laura can probably attest to this too if you ever meet her or talk to her, and Amina as well. But I'm very much a servant leader, and I think that was very much shaped by my experience in the military. Like I said, it's a very strong community where everybody it's it's links. Right? Everybody is dependent on another, whether you are the most senior leader or the most junior member. Everybody is dependent on each other to accomplish the mission. And so if you are not if you're inwardly focused or self focused, it's very challenging, to make change. And so when I look at my leadership style, it's very servant leadership.

And when I look at the tech space and what we build, especially in software development and things like that, to build a meaningful product for somebody or a meaningful solution, it does take listening. It really takes the putting somebody else's experience and bringing what they need and making sure you're building things on their strengths and helping them thrive through their weaknesses. That's really what makes the difference to me in in having a a sustainable and successful solution tech solution. So I think my leadership style is very much shaped by that, and how I lead my team also helps us build better products as well. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that you guys came in and spent some time with me today. And if you have any other questions, please reach out to me. Build a network with me. I'm on LinkedIn.

You can find me here, and I am very grateful for your attendance. So have a great rest of your conference.