Veterans Affairs committee  Have a great one. I appreciate it. [Technical difficulty]

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. We focus only on middle enlisted personnel. We do not focus on officers or senior enlisted personnel. Because they have networks, degrees, and leadership skills, they typically make a faster and more successful transition into higher-paying jobs. There are many for-profit recruiting firms that are going after that talent proactively, but they're leaving out the 85% to 90% of the total force who are middle enlisted service members, and that's who we focus on.

Veterans Affairs committee  [Technical difficulty—Editor] Their Veteran Centre is fairly innovative. The reason we picked Denmark first is that they have the highest casualty rate among the ISAF forces in Afghanistan per capita, which shocks a lot of people. Really, they send only combat troops, which is why they have the highest casualty rate.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would love to do a comparative study on the U.S. versus Canada, even in just a couple of different communities we can pick out. We've talked to a couple of corporations to fund this, particularly McKesson. They have a large footprint in Canada. I and one of my colleagues, who went with me to Denmark and the U.K. as a Marshall fellow, engaged those individuals at the C-Suite level to invest in the project, but we haven't made a ton of progress.

Veterans Affairs committee  Here in the United States, there are a lot of private cemeteries, and, at the end of the day, they have to run a business. So if they have a family plot and they happen to be a veteran, they're not going to go and advocate for them to be buried at the VA cemetery, because they want the revenue.

Veterans Affairs committee  A lot of times, yes. It's really because of the network we've created. The organization that I run is called NextOp. We were founded by energy and construction executives who really wanted to pipeline more military talent into those sectors, specifically because they were facing a skills gap in leadership.

Veterans Affairs committee  Extensive [Technical difficulty—Editor] government on the federal side, comparatively, I think, to many European and even the Canadian system of governance, but absolutely I think it's more just a general awareness of veterans. The Vietnam War really soured the American people on what service meant in our country.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. I think we have access to more services than typical civilians do, and it's just a matter of navigating an extensive system of services and resources. It becomes complex and frustrating for veterans when they transition out of the military, especially when they're dealing with the support system that they've had for four or 20 years on base, and they return to a community that has nothing of the kind.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. I think that's a great observation and it's totally true that the greatest generation, as we refer to it here in America, is because of that GI Bill, the original GI Bill, which is still better than the post-9/11 GI Bill we have now, which is good, but still not as good.

Veterans Affairs committee  Obviously, I can't speak from direct experience of being in that war and returning home, but if we compare it to the situation in Israel, it's like that shared experience, that shared resilience with 75% of the population in Israel every year going into military service. And they protect their country, right?

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. I think a lot of people joke that the National Cemetery Administration is the most effective part of the VA, and it's a terrible joke but it is what it is. I think that the benefits extended to us, to our family, when we do pass, to really take that burden off the family, both financially and in terms of organizing and being able to be buried in a veteran-specific cemetery in many major communities across the United States, is one that's afforded.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a great question. The preponderance of the people we serve in our employment services are army and marine corps, many of whom are combat arms and don't have skills and experience transferable into most civilian industries. I think it's an awareness and education gap. We educate them about the opportunities that are available to them in the region they return to.

Veterans Affairs committee  I saw tremendous value. I'm an infantry guy, and we don't believe in a lot of that stuff, because we believe in our team first, and that's probably an old, outdated mentality. But we saw the results, having them not just at pre-deployment and post-deployment but also during down range in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Veterans Affairs committee  Sure.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's exactly what we were going for in terms of being the antithesis of the existing top-down process that the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs and their services provide. Obviously, the transition assistance program process is fundamentally flawed, and that's why we have such high unemployment rates of veterans, or we did for the past 10 years, and we're finally catching up with that.