Roger Braman, RN, BSN, second from right, with veterans, from left, Anit Shrestha, Jonathan Duchnowski, and Kevin Lama.
The Mount Sinai Health System recently partnered with Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS), a leading nonprofit that is dedicated to recruiting, training, and placing underserved and veteran job seekers into long-lasting civilian careers. Through the organization’s WOS On Demand program, veterans Jonathan Duchnowski, Kevin Lama, and Anit Shrestha were recruited and placed in various roles within Mount Sinai’s Department of Information Technology (IT). Prior to joining this program, they struggled to find gainful employment opportunities as they transitioned from the military to civilian life.
“The Workforce program gives us a great opportunity to give back to those who have served in the military protecting our country,” says Roger Braman, RN, BSN, Senior IT Director of Infrastructure Project Management, who leads the partnership at Mount Sinai.
Using a scientifically based model derived from research conducted at Columbia University, the program recruits, educates, trains, and then places high-potential candidates at leading organizations around the world that are committed to diversifying their workforces. Key to the effort’s success, says Mr. Braman, is “the additional support and training that the candidates receive, both from the WOS program and Mount Sinai, to allow them to build on the valuable skills they learned in the military and help them to transition to the civilian workforce.”
For example, Mr. Duchnowski, who served in the military from 2000 to 2006 as a Nuclear Propulsion Plant Machinist’s Mate and Engineering Laboratory Technician, completed his BA in 2018 and was looking for work in health care or in a biological lab when he found a position at Mount Sinai through WOS. He says, “I was contacted by one of their team members who also happened to be a Marine. He explained what WOS was all about, and I was immediately hooked.”
Mr. Duchnowski, who currently works in Infrastructure Project Management as the Infrastructure Project Coordinator, spent three weeks in general business professional development, as well as in focused Project Management training modules as part of the WOS program to prepare him for the Mount Sinai job. “I wanted to work for an organization trying to heal and help people, and I always wanted to work with IT, as well, so this fits both of those desires,” Mr. Duchnowski says.
Mr. Braman says, “All of the participants are really motivated and eager to learn and have quickly been able to integrate themselves into the teams to which they have been assigned.”