VERG CO-CHAIRS Jason Bush and Abiola Ashorobi

Abiola Ashorobi and Jason Bush are the co-chairs of the Veterans Employee Resource Group (VERG). Both are veterans themselves, with Abiola serving in the Navy and Jason serving in the Air Force. Their dedication to supporting veterans at the Lab comes from an understanding of what those with a military background can offer the Lab as both employees and people.

Why are you leading the Veterans Employee Resource Group?

Abiola and Jason: Supporting and promoting veterans is something we strongly believe in. The Veterans Employee Resource Group strives to recognize, connect, and utilize the value and experiences of the Berkeley Lab service member community. Our overall goal is to promote an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere, identify and address emerging issues or challenges such as veteran recruitment and retention, increase the visibility and value of veterans’ skills in the workplace among management and staff, provide guidance for institutional processes and programs, enhance policies of non-discrimination, and recognize achievements impacting our community.

We strongly believe that veterans are one of the Lab's greatest assets. Veterans bring real life skills of leadership, discipline, communication and time management, all of which translate well into the work culture at the Lab. VERG brings light to and recognizes veterans at the Lab for their contributions.

We also became involved with VERG because it gave us an opportunity to do something more, and to really bring our whole selves to the Lab.

What big challenges are you hoping the VERG can solve in the next 20 years?

From a practical perspective, we want to increase participation and awareness in the group. One of our goals is to encourage more Lab veterans to self-identify. Self-identification recognizes the importance of the veteran workforce at the Lab. Identifying our veteran employees also assists the Lab in accurately reporting representation to show our progress and presence in the Lab’s workforce, as well as assisting the Lab in developing veteran-friendly programs and policies.

Another big goal is to promote Berkeley Lab as an employer of choice for veterans. We want to make the Lab an attractive place for veterans, a place where veterans want to apply. We need Lab leaders and managers to understand the value of, and legal requirements around, veterans outreach. The Lab has a legal requirement to conduct employment outreach to veterans.

We’re also interested in how to help veterans better navigate training and promotion opportunities at the Lab. A key area for us - and really all the Employee Resource Groups - is how to help the members of our group navigate career advancement opportunities at the Lab.

What steps are you taking today to accomplish this vision?

One of our first steps is to better empower our group members by forming committees, some of which we have already started. We have a development group, internal and external outreach committees, and an internal job development committee. These groups are empowered to help us realize our long term goals of greater participation and awareness, and making the Lab an attractive place for veteran employment.

Within VERG, we can help by encouraging greater outreach by Lab veterans across social media and veteran community job websites such as LinkedIn for Veterans.

We have to mention the work of Kelly Johnson from the IDEA Office. Kelly hosts monthly outreach meetings with other organizations where Lab veterans are spotlighted and can help with external outreach. She continues to help us identify and promote veteran internship partnership opportunities at the Lab including:

• Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program

• Department of Veteran Affairs Non-Paid Work Experience (NPWE) Intern

• NPower IT Intern

Many of these opportunities are at no cost to the Lab and provide a great opportunity for both Lab employers and veterans. And for departments that are interested in hosting a veteran intern, requesting a veteran intern is easy.

Who would you like to partner with at the Lab to bring this vision to life?

The team at the IDEA Office are very supportive of us and are key to our ERG meeting our goals. As we mentioned above, their work with federal hiring programs and outreach is incredibly helpful.

We also want to continue to partner with other ERGs, where we find a lot of intersections. There are veterans in every ERG.

We’re very interested in partnering more with senior Lab leaders and gaining their insights on leadership, among other topics.

Who from the past, present, or future would you like to collaborate with? And on what?

Jason: I have this long range idea of collaborating with one or two veterans who serve in leadership or executive Lab positions on what we (VERG) could do to teach people how to navigate their careers at the Lab. There are a lot of opportunities here but sometimes you need to think outside the box. It would be great to get the perspectives of a veteran who is also a leader at the Lab.