0:00 cynthia and i started fallen patriots with a mission to provide college scholarships to military children across all the branches who lost a parent in the line of duty i didn't know anything about business my dad was a journalist for cornell and my mom was a public school teacher as my southern grandmother always used to say you catch a lot more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar who are you and where are you going [Music] what do you want together we'll find the
0:35 ideal path on the way to wow show with your host kevin bemel making our way to wow is it's just not a linear process there's twists there's turns and there's transitions that we're going to have to make today you're going to meet someone who's made an unbelievable transition from military life to the civilian world doing dynamic things on wall street
1:10 and at the same time giving back to his fellow military members stay tuned i think you're gonna enjoy this my guest on the way to wow show this week is david kim david is an honors graduate from the u.s military academy at west point as well as harvard business school and you know as you would expect from the consummate overachiever he also went to army ranger school an airborne school and the jungle
1:46 warfare training uh program for uh for the army as well he served as an artillery officer in the seventh division of the u.s army and then he got out of the army and in 1994 he got involved in the private equity business which he's been in since then currently he's with apex partners he's the global co-head of investor relations apex is one of the leading private equity investment firms in the world they operate in the united states europe asia latin america in particular india and they have raised
2:22 over 48 billion dollars in capital and i suspect david was uh had a hand in uh at least part of that in addition david is the co-founder and ceo of children of fallen patriots foundation which along with his wife who volunteers as the programs director serves the children of our nation's veterans i'm going to we'll talk to david a little bit more about that david welcome to the way to wow show thank you good to see you again thanks for having me my my pleasure thank you for coming on
2:57 so um david you hear a lot in at least in uh military and veterans circles about the value that veterans can bring to the business world in your case you have some rather specific training in both the airborne and and army rangers how did being in those more elite parts of the army uh impact your transition into the civilian world um
3:33 well i think there are a number of core skill sets that overlap i think just just uh before i dive in i think i just clarify i graduated from ranger school so stranger qualified but i did not serve in a ranger battalion which would be a whole nother level but okay i appreciate the the thought behind that anyway um but you know i think that people from the military just given the breadth of experience that you have the level of responsibility that's thrust upon you and accountability that stressed upon you at a very young age for a lot of people in some very dangerous situations and where you know something goes wrong it's it's on you um and
4:10 and i think the the scope of responsibilities that you have are quite broad obviously and operating some dangerous places and so forth under very tough conditions i think it just breeds a certain core competency in in sort of being able to manage a team in obviously in leadership in being able to work through influence uh with with people both vertically and uh and and horizontally and people within and without the organization or people in the military have to work with civilians not only you know military people so i think it gives you a lot of dimensionality to the skill set and so civilian employers don't always
4:47 necessarily understand that because they just so few of them have had any direct military experience but i think those that that do and that's an increasing number of employers value that that skill set because they realize that that judgment and character and leadership is much harder to teach than the technical skills that are typically required in a civilian position that's a lot easier to pick up but what is really hard to to to teach someone is uh you know that that trust and dependability and ability to make decisions in the midst of ambiguous situations
5:24 i agreed so i want to pick up on something you said because it really plays against the common notion among people who without experience in the military and that is that the military works you know somebody gives an order and somebody follows the order and that's how leadership works but you mentioned influence as as a skill that was learned in the military certainly as a chaplain i ordered nobody around anything i could accomplish was done through influence peel that onion for us a little bit talk
5:59 how how is it that influence is such a big part of leadership in the military which goes against this this uh you know somewhat of a stereotype i guess yeah sure so i think any big organization be its civilian or military is composed of many different parts and and many of which don't report to each other but they need to work together smoothly in order to accomplish the overall mission for the team so in my particular circumstance i was an artillery officer so if the infantry needed some artillery called in or helicopter strike so forth that was my job and i had a team of about six men that we were
6:35 attached to this infantry company of about 150 men now i had to support that company i was responsible to the company commander i had to work with the his subordinate units the platoons that were reporting to him i had people detailed out to each of them and we had to get things done together and i didn't command any of his people but we need to be able to work together smoothly in order to accomplish the mission and so that's where that influence comes through you know you sort of um you know you have your rank but you know you really earn your influence and and it doesn't matter who you're talking to
7:10 uh you've got to be you got to respect where they come from you got to try to make an effort to understand where they're they're coming from their motivations their needs their desires and then also what you have to get done and try to find a way to get together as a team so for free let's talk let's talk about young people for a minute who don't have the benefit of some time in the military but for whom developing that ability to influence people how can they do that i think it's for me i think it comes down to maybe less acquired knowledge than than um
7:49 they're trying to just understand people trying to use the golden rule it kind of comes down to really basic things of look they have their job i have my job they have uh things that they need to accomplish they have their own hot buttons and points and and uh i'm not perfect they're not perfect but how do i kind of give them some grace and try to really understand where they're coming from and at the same time i've gotta i've gotta accomplish what i'm responsible for accomplishing and how do we do that together i think if you just come into that any situation with the golden rule is gonna take you a long way is my southern grandmother
8:27 always used to say you catch a lot more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar [Laughter] she's not here so she can't hear me say this but my wife tells me the same thing so you you chose uh wall street uh specifically private equity for your post military career how did you come to to that choice i've found it to be a career that's incredibly varied because we're you invest in many different industries you invest in many different companies and so
9:02 you really don't get pigeonholed into one area number one so it's it's quite intellectually stimulating um i thought secondly it's um it's one that requires a lot of a lot of knowledge around many different areas so um corporate finance strategy development uh legal and regulatory management incentives you know how the public markets work so you have to marry up all that knowledge together and then thirdly the people elements very important and and just because you own a company doesn't mean that the ceo
9:38 and the management team are going to do what you think is right you know it's it's um you have to work on it together and and they have a very important voice and knowledge set and so you have to work together to accomplish the objective and so that part of it also i thought fit my own background and interests and and what was what was your path into it i guess did you go to harvard after you got out of the army or i did yes so i went to to hbs after the army and i didn't know anything about business my dad was a journalist for cornell and my
10:13 mom was a public school teacher taught music so i knew nothing about the business world and i just kind of walked around to all these smart people and said what did you do and what is that and what did you do and what is that and i sort of heard about private equity and started drilling down on that and uh so i think the other part that really appealed to me about it is that you're a principal you know you're responsible at the end of the day for for the results to your investors uh you know if you're a consultant or or an investment banker you're more of an agent it's like uh you know the person who sells you the house versus the person who actually puts their money into making the house a better place
10:49 and and being a principal appealed to me uh in terms of being accountable for those results and and ultimately we invest money i mean people shouldn't forget this we invest money on behalf of pension funds do they state pension funds public pension funds private pension funds like companies so we're investing on behalf of retirees and so uh the money that we make benefits their future it benefits the taxpayer because the tax base has to pay in less to support those pensions that they're responsible for and so that appeals to me as well in in your case you have a
11:26 a an international portfolio is that generally the case with private equity that that people get an opportunity to to work you know worldwide sure it varies i think for we're among the larger group of private equity investors and many of them invest on a global basis however they do it in a different way and by that i mean apex has one fund that we invest globally whereas other large private equity peers might be investing globally but they do it through dedicated funds that may invest only in north america
12:01 only in europe only in asia i i don't think one's better than the other it's you know everyone's got a different strategy and uh but but many of the larger firms are are doing that so for the um the the person who's in career transition which i think is a lot of people these days um you know you read stories about young people getting out of college who are you know struggling to find a job mid-career professionals who have to pivot even people in the hospitality industry who really have to look for something new to do what what advice would you give as
12:37 someone who seems to have transitioned and really found his his mettier in life what advice would you give people in that situation veterans included military people included um for for finding that that next thing to do i think a couple different levels one think hard about what your real skill sets and interests are i think it's important to be in a career field that you just have a genuine interest in that you like thinking about you're interested in reading about it and talking about it you get those little flashes of
13:12 inspiration you know while you're walking the dog you know at night things like that that um you know if you're in a career or a job that's drudgery you can't wait to stop thinking about it and you're probably not gonna enjoy your life nor be very successful at it so number one think about who you are number two i'd say um just talk to a lot of different people and get get advice uh try to find out them the most authoritative sources you can and uh you know everyone's got an opinion but not everyone's got a very good opinion so find people with good opinions who are in a position to know
13:47 and ask for their advice because as i got into it i just realized there's a lot that i didn't know and uh and so by asking for that advice you can leverage the knowledge base of a huge number of people and then thirdly just make a real attempt to network but in a very genuine way you can instantly smell the difference between someone who's transactional in their intent and someone who has a genuine interest in learning more about this career field about you know maybe just taking some time to get educated and and again it kind of goes back to the
14:22 golden rule in my opinion there are no silver bullets they're just you know treat people like you want to be treated and be genuine and good things will happen so unfortunately no golden golden bullets to offer but uh but i think it just takes a lot of hard work and and being genuine i i think that's spot on and that's certainly what i've counseled the military people and the people um that i've talked to about this subject over the years so i want to shift focus here a little bit and and talk about the children of fallen patriots foundation what was your inspiration for for start
14:59 well first of all tell us what it does what you do and and what was your inspiration for starting that sure so uh my wife and i started it really in honor of a soldier that i served with named sergeant delaney gibbs he and i were in the same unit that was sent to panama in 1989 to remove emmanuel noriega from power in operation just cause and unfortunately he was killed in the fighting and that was um five days before christmas and uh he had a baby daughter due in march and he was only 21 or 22.
15:34 so that was a tough one i didn't know him personally but he was the only member of our unit that was killed and i just kept thinking about his daughter and you know there are thousands of of kids like her but who's going to take care of her you know how what was going to happen to her and uh so many years later cynthia and i started fallen patriots with a mission to provide college scholarships to military children across all the branches who lost a parent in the line of duty and that includes obviously combat there are lots of training accidents there are lots of suicides unfortunately the result from military duty and
16:09 illnesses and things like that so we thought that was really the best way that we could honor the sacrifice of our fallen heroes because they're gone what else could we really do i think what they would want above everything is is to take care of the people they love most of the worlds or or their kids and give them hopefully the bright future that their parents would have wanted for them yeah yeah so how how has it gone what what have you been able to accomplish with fallen patriots oh well it's going great thank you i mean people love the military so i really give all the credit to the great american public who
16:44 really respects what the military does for us but there are about 20 000 students children who lost a parent in the military over the last 35 years i say about because nobody knows exactly how many there are the government doesn't track it in a comprehensive way and and so there is no central database of students out there and so that's one of our missions is to find all 20 000 because believe it or not believe it or not no one has ever done that and so we've made a very good progress toward that we found half of them so far and uh and so we're looking at trying to
17:20 close that gap uh to to those next 20 000 so we can get them in the system because they're often quite young when most of the times is dad that gets killed and so you want to make sure we get them in the system and track them for many years and be there when they're ready for college so that that's the first part of our mission the second part of course is the financial aid so there are a couple of government programs to help these students a lot of people um question ask about that but there are but it doesn't cover the full cost of college and it leaves a 25 000 a gap for one student for four years of college so 25 000 ahead for four years of college
17:56 is the gap between government aid and other sources of aid in the cost of college and so that's what we're here to plug so the total need is about 500 million dollars you know 25 000 times 20 000 students i'm happy to say that we've been able to provide over 42 million dollars in support to uh just under 2 000 students at this point and we have about 800 college graduates all of whom are debt free and so we think that flips a big negative into into a big positive so david um we're we're gonna wrap
18:31 things up here tell um tell us and the viewers how can we help you in in in your mission for uh for the fallen patriots foundation yeah um well you know i'd say a couple different things one is that um to help well i'll back up or say i think the biggest way you can help obviously is donating on fallenpatriots.org but but beyond that i think it's it's just as valuable to to get other people involved to get other people aware of the mission and because everyone i found left or right no matter what race they are they
19:07 appreciate what the military has done for us and they give us our way of life and so getting them involved in our mission would be super helpful to you know not only raising the money that these students need but also finding more so we have on our website thing called team fallen patriots where it's almost like a gofundme where if you have you know you want to set a goal and raise a certain amount of money for your from your network and get other people to to contribute and so forth you can do that right on our website and it's quite easy so i think that's very important and lastly i would say that it doesn't matter how much you give
19:43 the families are extremely grateful for the support the financial supports important but just as important is the message of support that it sends to the families because they're they lose a loved one and they think that people have just forgotten about them they have to go rebuild their life but you know they're so grateful we hear over and over that you know all the support just says to them their fellow americans will never forget them always honor their sacrifice and always be there to have their back and uh that just means more to them that then you can know so i think this is a particularly appropriate time of year to
20:19 do that yeah and i think that's that's a good note to end on uh really an an uplifting note of of of service to uh to people who have as you so rightly noted help us live the kind of life that we're able to live here in the united states david thank you so so much for being a guest on the way to wow show today really really appreciate it thanks so much kevin i appreciate you having me on and i appreciate your service great to see you so good of you to join us this week i hope you enjoyed hearing from my guest david kim
20:54 and you'll consider helping him meet his mission to identify all 20 000 children of fallen patriots and help them as they make their way to wow through the fallen patriots foundation the link is just below in the show notes whether you can make even a small contribution or help david and his wife connect with a potential recipient anything you can do will be appreciated courage at all times my friends marie you're still my bell
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