About 200,000 men and women leave the U.S. military annually and transition back to civilian life. They become one of America’s approximately 18 million veterans as of last year.
Many of them continue working in the civilian workforce after their military service ends. In 2023, about 8.39 million veterans in the civilian labor force were employed, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. Data from last year showed that 8% of veterans worked in the retail industry.
“Retailers are committed to supporting America’s veterans and creating opportunities to help them transition their careers to the private sector,” Adam Lukoskie, the National Retail Federation’s senior vice president and foundation executive director, said in emailed comments to Retail Dive.
“The skills and work ethic former service members offer make them valuable additions to the retail workforce, and high-demand skills they provide include leadership experience, a team-oriented mindset, purpose-driven mentality and strong organizational and operational skills,” Lukoskie said. People who switch from a career in the armed forces to a civilian career in retail have an opportunity to develop new professional skills, Lukoskie said, including business management, foundational knowledge on profit and loss, sales techniques and marketing.
Each year, the U.S. pauses every Nov. 11 to celebrate Veterans Day. The observance dates to World War I, when fighting formally ceased on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. The holiday is meant to honor all who have served in the military. As the day approaches, here are the stories of three people who have stepped into retail after serving in the military.
Editor’s note: These interviews have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Pedro Medrano
Veteran, U.S. Marines. Medrano is a Sam’s Club market manager overseeing Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. He has been with the company for 23 years.
RETAIL DIVE: How did you wind up going from a military career to retail?
I began my career as a cart attendant while attending college back when I was 19. Throughout my life, I always wanted to be a United States Marine. With 9/11 and the events happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, I felt the need to support our country and joined the Marines in December of 2004. Sam's Club supported my decision and provided me with a military leave. After completing boot camp and [military occupational speciality] school, I returned to work in August of 2005. In May of 2007, my unit was activated and deployed overseas to Iraq in September of 2007. Sam's Club again afforded the opportunity to take a military leave until my return in June of 2008.
What skills from the military can and do you apply in a retail leadership context?
The military provides you with several key leadership learnings. One that comes to mind is troop welfare, always looking out for your Marines well-being. At Sam's Club and Walmart, we are people led. We know that without our associates, we can't accomplish the goal of taking care of our members and customers. I'd also say one of our basic beliefs, strive for excellence, goes hand in hand with one of the Marines core beliefs of commitment. Always striving to be the best day in, day out.
Has retail taught you anything or offered experiences they didn’t get in the military?
I would say retail, like the Marines, reinforces teamwork, trust, the importance of networking and relationship building. Those are keys to a successful operation within retail management.
Dan Collini
Veteran, U.S. Army. Collini is a Home Depot store manager and leads Team Depot, the company’s associate volunteer group, that improves the homes and lives of veterans and helps communities affected by natural disasters.
RETAIL DIVE: Please briefly share your branch of service, what your job was in the military and anything else you’d like to highlight about your military career.
I served over 20 years in active-duty service. My service began with nearly eight years as a U.S. Navy aircrewman in the Navy’s Take Charge And Move Out platform, which fulfills a critical aspect of our country’s nuclear deterrence system. Most of my service was affiliated with the Pacific Theater of Operations. I also served in the U.S. Army following Officer Candidate School as an engineer officer with the 101st Airborne Division before joining Special Operations Command as a Civil Affairs officer. My deployment experience with the Army included Afghanistan and the countries in Africa’s Lake Chad Basin.
How did you wind up going from a military career to retail?
The transition from the military, no matter the length of service, is daunting and usually difficult on both the service member and their family. My experience was no different, and I relied on programs designed to assist service members in their transition like the Army’s Transition Assistance Program. However, I leaned heavily on other transitional programs like the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Care Coalition and Hiring Our Heroes. These programs help service members by focusing on their experience, education, goals, family needs, and other factors relevant to their future success.
As I began to transition, I initially pursued career paths considered typical for a service member at the stage of my military career. Some examples were continuing government service as a civilian, government contractor, consulting, or other career paths related to my military expertise. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for work, and the typical paths weren’t right for me for various reasons. So, I changed my thought process and looked inward versus outward. Through introspection, I wanted to do something people-based and belong to something bigger than me. I didn’t need to search for a job, but I needed to search for an organization with the same characteristics I desired.
“The transition from the military, no matter the length of service, is daunting and usually difficult on both the service member and their family.”
Dan Collini
Store manager, The Home Depot
I reflected on all my previous roles in the military and the jobs I held outside of the military. Before joining the military, I worked for The Home Depot. At that time for me, it was a temporary job until I found what I wanted — the military. I remembered how the iconic orange apron represented something other than an article of clothing. There was a level of comfort with it for me, other associates and the customers. The comfort was a direct result of the company’s culture.
After more thought, I found that The Home Depot was the perfect fit for my desired organizational characteristics. It’s a people-based organization that looks outside of itself to empower its associates and customers while giving back to the community. The company just happened to be in the retail industry. I just knew I wanted to be a part of its empowerment of people and the level of service outside the company.
What skills from the military can and do you apply in a retail leadership context?
My military experience brought hierarchy and structure, bringing diverse groups together for commonality and serving others. This experience allowed me to carry over skills related to routines, planning, knowing available resources, and understanding the operational and strategic levels of the organization. It also afforded me a greater understanding of applying the tactical level or the small-scale actions needed to serve a greater purpose within the operational and strategic levels.
However, and most importantly, in the military, I focused on the people I served who were my fellow service members and the American people. This focus and the interpersonal skills I gained allowed me to build and develop teams of diverse people to complete unified efforts. This premise quickly adapted to retail leadership and the people I now serve – our company associates and our customers.
Has retail taught you anything or offered experiences they didn’t get in the military?
Focusing on people did not change. Additionally, leadership in the military is driven by a chain of command and accountability, requires quick decision-making with the information at hand, is fast-paced, is unpredictable at times, and requires the highest level of mitigating risk to life and property. I believe this also describes the retail environment save replacing the chain of command with hierarchy and the level of risk mitigation. After entering retail leadership, I adapted to this environment and learned more about my leadership. I needed to adapt to the differences to increase my general business acumen and find the best way to serve my associates and customers.
Increasing business acumen wasn’t the primary thing I needed to practice. I leaned further into collaboration, empowerment, and ensuring the why, or purpose, is always given. Tasks in the military include the why as part of the directive, and it is assumed the context is there through the ‘task and purpose.’ I found providing more context to the tasks in the retail environment helps. The most significant change for me was how I engage, or interact, with associates and customers.
The Home Depot’s inverted pyramid philosophy of putting the customer and lowest levels of the company at the top is a hierarchy opposite of most organizations. I heavily rely on this when thinking about my daily routines and making decisions. If the action or decision is associate or customer-based, it follows our eight core values and is moral, ethical, and legal; it is an easily justified outcome.
Empowering the associates to follow the same mentality is critical. My level of engagement in retail is being purposefully aware by knowing our people, what is happening, and the seasonality and events that dictate the business. Retail has taught me to be more aware of the purposeful actions of this engagement. When engaged like this, I know who (and how) to celebrate and who (and how) to develop, and this builds trust and respect within the team.
Now that I am in a retail leadership position, I can directly contribute through additional responsibilities aside from my primary role. I am passionate about giving back (one of our eight core values) and serve as a local captain for Team Depot and our Homer Fund within The Home Depot’s Foundation. This lets me lead local efforts to help veterans, our communities, and support our associates in need.
Justin Burns
Veteran, U.S. Army. Burns is Target’s senior vice president of assets protection. He also works with the company’s military business council, which supports veterans across the retailer’s workforce and communities to help build an understanding of military service for the company.
RETAIL DIVE: Can you share more about your background in the military?
Service to our country is an important part of my family history. Both of my grandfathers served in World War II, and my dad helped instill the importance of service from an early age. Some of my earliest memories are of going to air shows with my dad, so the desire to serve started fairly young. I also recognized that some of the things I wanted to do in my life, like seeing the world and going to college, would be a lot easier to achieve through the military.
After I graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, I became a commissioned officer in the armor branch of the U.S. Army. During seven years of active duty, I held roles in supply chain and logistics as well as operations. I was deployed three times — once in Kuwait and twice in Iraq, where I was stationed in Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
How did you wind up going from a military career to retail?
As my time in active duty came to a close, I heard from a West Point classmate who was working in Target’s supply chain and told me it was a great company with a good atmosphere for veterans. Given my background in logistics, supply chain seemed like a natural fit, but I was actually more interested in the stores’ organization. I’m a bit of an action-seeker, and leading teams in the dynamic, fast-paced and sometimes unpredictable nature of a store seemed really exciting.
I started with Target in 2006 as a store director-in-training. Over the past 18 years, I’ve held regional leadership roles in St. Louis, Chicago, Dallas and Charlotte. Today I have the privilege of leading our talented assets protection team. I also work with our military business council that supports veterans across our workforce and communities and helps to build an understanding of military service for our team.
What skills from the military can and do you apply in a retail leadership context?
Many skills learned in the military are transferable to a retail career. As a retail leader, I have to help my team accomplish different goals and objectives in ever-changing environments, as I did in the Army. I have to work through obstacles and figure out how to help my team succeed. That starts with a solid plan, and just like in the military, there’s always going to be variability in the operation — weather, staffing, constraints, stakeholders. Things can change quickly and unpredictably, and it’s on the leader to help manage through that.
“Many skills learned in the military are transferable to a retail career. As a retail leader, I have to help my team accomplish different goals and objectives in ever-changing environments, as I did in the Army.”
Justin Burns
Senior Vice President of Assets Protection, Target
Most importantly, Target has a tremendous focus on supporting the team. There was a saying in the Army, ‘mission first, team always,’ and I still live by that. Whether in the Army or at Target, taking care of my team is critical to accomplish any mission.
Has retail taught you anything or offered experiences you didn’t get in the military?
The Army invested in my leadership development, and Target's investments have helped me continue to grow in my post-military career. When I joined the company, I did not anticipate the amount of intentionality, focus and leadership development that would follow, not only from my managers but from the entire company.
Target has also taught me about how much good a civilian organization can do for veterans and the veterans community. We offer flexible schedules for team members who serve or have family members serving. There’s a military discount for veterans twice each year around the Fourth of July and Veterans Day.
And we’re deeply committed to philanthropy and volunteering. I’m really proud of the things we do for veterans and their families through community impact work. For example, Target is a sponsor of the National Medal of Honor Museum, a national institution dedicated to the stories, impact, and legacy of the service members who went on to become Medal of Honor recipients, which is scheduled to open next year.
