Navigating New Opportunities: An Inside Look at NextOp Veterans
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
In this episode of Mission Matters, host Adam Torres welcomes Shelby Mounts, Executive Director of NextOp Veterans. They discuss Shelby’s first-time experience at the Milken Conference, the mission of NextOp Veterans, and the importance of supporting veteran career transitions. Shelby shares insights into the organization’s growth, its impact on veterans’ career success, and the broader implications for national security and workforce development.
About Shelby Mounts
Shelby Mounts brings more than 30 years of experience in Defense and Industry leadership roles to NextOp Veterans.
His private industry roles include CEO of Riverside Consulting Services, LLC, a small, independent Government Consulting services company, Chief Commercial Officer and EVP of Sales for Vita Inclinata Technologies, and Director of Defense Aerospace and Maritime Business Development at Allegheny Technologies Inc (ATI). In each case, the focus was development of relationships, positive outcomes and growth.
Shelby’s Government experience included service in the US Navy for 25 years, where he retired as a Captain. After graduating from Annapolis with a Bachelor of Science degree, Shelby served four years as a Surface Warfare Officer, including deployed time in South America, the Caribbean, Europe and the Middle East, then was selected to attend US Navy Flight School.
About NextOp Veterans
Founded in 2014 by veterans and industry leaders, NextOp is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a strong military talent pipeline across industries. Recognizing a critical gap between highly skilled service members and companies seeking qualified talent, NextOp set out to bridge that divide with a targeted, human-centered approach.
Transitioning service members and veterans possess invaluable leadership, discipline, and technical expertise, yet often face challenges translating their military experience into civilian workforce qualifications. That’s where NextOp steps in—providing personalized, one-on-one mentorship that helps veterans understand and communicate the value of their service in professional terms.
Through strategic partnerships and hands-on guidance, NextOp connects these exceptional individuals with meaningful career opportunities, empowering them to thrive in the next chapter of their lives while helping employers unlock top-tier talent.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have on the line Shelby Mounts and he is the. Executive Director over at Next Op Veterans, and this particular interview is part of our Milken conference coverage series where we highlight and feature some of the top individuals that both attended the conference and participated.
So first thing, first, Shelby, welcome to the show. Thanks, Adam. I appreciate you having me come on and talk a little bit about next stop and my experience at the conference. All right. Well excited to get into next stop, but first thing, first as I mentioned before, this is part of the Milken Conference coverage series that we’re creating.
And this year, I’ve been going to the conference now, the last three, I think, going on four years. Geez, time flies and I go back every year. I’ll tell you, it’s like for us, we call it like our Super Bowl of the Year as kind of like a Super Bowl level event. Is, have you been in the past?
This is your first time. Just curious about your experience. This was my first time. I had heard about it in the past, but frankly wasn’t a hundred percent sure what happened at a conference like that. Yeah, I had a 25 year Navy career and wasn’t plugged into this part of the community. And I got pulled in through the institute itself as they’ve stood up a new veteran’s economic mobility initiative.
And that’s what brought me. Hmm. Talk to me about your, experience just working with and attending the conference. Like, it’s, something else, man. It’s something special. If you, if somebody hasn’t attended, I highly recommend, but talk about your experience as a first time attendee. Well.
Yeah. Thank you. I, think it is absolutely something somebody just has to see to kind of understand. I had my eyes wide open going into it and had spoken with a few other people involved in the initiative just to get a sense of what to expect. But at the same time, I got the impression over and over again that people who had gone before came back again and again and again, and then the relationships and the, community that they built by participating over the years was what partly kept ’em coming back and open new opportunities for them. So as a first timer, I felt a little lost about mm-hmm. Who to talk to and which events to attend. But by the end of it, I definitely had met a lot of very interesting people and started to sort out in my mind a little bit of where other engagements and opportunities could be in the future.
Amazing. Let’s switch it up a bit here. I do wanna spend some time talking about next op veterans. So first off, I mean, tell us a little bit more about the organization. Sure. Yeah. So next OP was founded in Houston, Texas and went live in the spring of 2015. It’s a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit that’s focused on serving as the bridge for enlisted military veterans.
I. To industry careers. And so over the course of that 10 years, we’ve expanded from primarily oil and gas focused jobs to many industries outside of Texas, into Louisiana. Mm-hmm. And then about two and a half years ago I found out about the organization and came on board as the executive director mm-hmm.
And brought a strategy of growth. So we’ve. Essentially doubled our personnel count, and we’ve expanded our geographies into north Texas, western Tennessee, and Kentucky across Alabama and North Carolina. Now, now I’m always interested like obviously lots of ways you can spend your time, lots of things you can do with your background.
What made next stop veterans like made it a place where you’re like, you know what, this is where I wanna spend my time. This is where I wanna be. Like what stuck out about the organization? So I think initially it was the mission focus and the desire to help veterans in transition to be successful in industry because based upon my own experience of transition and many, many people that I’ve mentored and worked with in the past, it’s a challenge to figure out how you take that unique experience in uniform and convert that into opportunities on the outside.
And I was lucky to have landed successfully after the military. Worked very hard in a couple of different roles, but that the thing I think that I missed and kind of kept coming back to and hearing in conversations with others was the need to continue to serve and be around other veterans and the comradery and the mission focus that that conferred.
And so. Next stop kind of hit on all cylinders of that. Mm-hmm. And when I reached out to the previous executive director she was also a Naval Academy grad. We had met in my one year fellowship at Shell Oil. And we had actually done a veteran recruitment trip with their military recruiter. And so I, I knew her name.
I saw the. Article about her in Naval Academy alumni article magazine. And I reached out and, and said, tell me more. You know, this has intrigued me. And on the end of that conversation, she had me pretty excited about their mission and said they needed somebody to come in and grow it. And so once I got on board, I.
Started working with the team and saw the direct impact that we have, not only on the individual’s lives, but the opportunity to work across and build ecosystems of training and education pathways and connecting those to direct employment on the backside so that employers in key industries could realize their desire to hire veterans and demystify some of that.
Process and, and simplify it. So it’s a fun challenge on a daily basis, trying to make all of those connections work and implement the strategy of growth. But it’s done in a team environment with a bunch of veterans who are all very focused on the mission. And it in a lot of ways reminds you of military service, but it’s different.
Why should America care about military veteran careers? why should this not be overlooked? Well, I think there’s a lot of reasons for that, but the ones that stand out in my mind are mm-hmm. Around, first and foremost, the strategic impact of taking care of our veterans on the backside of their service and what that means for the services abilities to go out and recruit new service members in an all volunteer force, reality world that we have.
And so, if, mm-hmm. Our youth are not willing to volunteer and serve. We don’t have a defense, and everybody is influenced on that decision by a lot of different factors, but also from family and friends opinions. And if family and friends see that service members go and volunteer and serve and then are not.
Doing well on the backside of that service, they’re not likely to encourage the youth to go ahead and volunteer to serve. So I think strategically that’s a critical reason at a national level for us to care about these impacts. Mm-hmm. But it’s deeper than that as well. Military service is very intensive from the perspective of skills development, the soft skills, as well as hard technical skills.
And the United States government puts a lot of investment into every individual to develop those skills for service. But if you don’t. Take that candidate post-military service and get ’em into a good career somewhere, we’re not recognizing the return on that investment as a country. So that’s a much more efficient way to develop workforce and align it to the needs of the country.
And I think that’s critical because it helps satisfy in industry’s need for qualified and skilled talent. Mm-hmm. And then mm-hmm. The last piece, I think is just by, at the individual level, providing pathways for service members to create success for themselves, their families, and their communities is good for our country as well.
Hmm. so for be listening to this, just for some context, you know, it’s June, 2025. I’m curious what’s next for you, for you, Shelby next op veterans. Like what do you, what do you have going for the rest of the year? So on that growth journey, we have set new highs, I suppose, around the number of candidates placed, the time it takes us to get those candidates placed.
The average starting salaries that those candidates make, I. And then the partnerships that we develop in order to enable greater impact and scalability of our mission. And so this year is no exception. We’ve increased our goal for total placements to this year, 1100. Mm-hmm. Be the first year that Congrat.
That’s huge. Congrat. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we’ve never exceeded a thousand in a year. Last year was our all time high at 7 73, so we’re excited about that milestone. And then just in the last 10 days, we’ve surpassed 5,000 placed all time which is, is a nice milestone in 10 years. But, mm-hmm. We’re, we want to see how quickly we can get the next 5,000.
Wonderful. Shelby last question. How do people follow up? How do they get involved, whether they’re employers, whether they’re donors, otherwise? how do people, or whether they’re, you know, they want to just support, like how do people get involved? The simplest way is probably just direct to our website, which is pretty simple.
It’s next ops.org, and you can go on there and click a button to say, I’m a candidate looking for a job. I’m an employer looking to hire a veteran, or I want to donate to support the cause. Those are the simplest ways. But we also have an info email, which is [email protected]. And then we have social media pages on particularly LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram I believe is our other one.
Mm-hmm. Wonderful. And for everybody watching and listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes so that you can just click on ’em and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Shelby, thanks again for coming to the show. Adam, I appreciate it.
