In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry sits down with Terry Hill, the Co-Head of Emerging Middle Market and Co-Head of Veteran Initiatives for JPMorgan Chase Commercial Banking. Hill – a U.S. Army Veteran and a West Point graduate – helps lead the firm’s efforts to support veteran and military spouse founders and business leaders. Hill plays an active role in CEOcircle, a program for veteran and military-spouse entrepreneurs led by D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University (IVMF) and sponsored by JPMorgan Chase Commercial Banking.
Berry and Hill delve into the crucial role veteran and military-community business owners play in the economy, leadership lessons from the military to run effective teams, JPMorganChase’s broader work supporting veterans and the military community and more.
What You’ll Learn:
Whether you’re a Veteran looking to scale your business, navigate a career change, or simply gain insight into leadership that drives results, this episode delivers actionable takeaways you won’t want to miss.
Explore Resources from the Episode:
If it’s a place that everybody wants to be, great work goes on there. They want to be there. They want to do great things. And you can build that. You don’t have to be the most senior person. The military has trained all of us. When something has to happen, whether it’s your formal duty or not, just execute.
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today’s guest is Terry Hill, an army Veteran, and more importantly, a banker. Now, there’s a lot that goes into banking that I didn’t know when I first started my journey. Terry, I’m going to have you take it from here. What do you do for JPMorganChase, and how did you get involved in banking as a former artillery officer?
Yeah, no, it’s a really good question. First, thanks for having me here. It’s really great to have a conversation. We’re here at our headquarters at 383 Madison in New York for a program that we’re going to talk a bit about with about 75 Veteran CEOs, which is one thing I do at JPMorganChase. I’m the co-head of our Veterans Initiative in the Commercial Bank, and we’ll talk more about that. But what I do every day is I run a business, along with another West Point graduate, by the way. We oversee a business called emerging middle market. We work with mid-size, privately held businesses all across the country, about 155 locations. We are generally family-owned, some private equity. We are helping people as they experience this complexity that comes as you begin to grow. You expand in different ways from a technology perspective, from a people perspective, from a skillset perspective. We bring tools to help them tame that complexity. Pretty cool because what you are working with our family members that started this, that added to it, that built it, that expanded it, and they’re passionate about it. The fact that we get to work with those business owners is really, really cool.
How do you make that transition from an army officer, an artillery officer to getting into banking and helping people? This is some pretty sophisticated stuff. This isn’t just a call for fire here. This is…
Yeah. I have been at the firm for going on 29 years. This has not been an overnight journey. I used to get the question a lot, and I’m actually really excited that we don’t get that question very often anymore. The question was, we’re all bankers. What did you do the army? Did you do push-ups? Did you fire guns? We didn’t really overlap. The civilian world, the military world didn’t really overlap. The overlap at this point is complete. So it’s really, really cool. Firms like JPMorgan have invested millions of dollars to bring Veterans in, to help Veterans get placed, to train Veterans. MBA programs have brought Veterans in. Law firms have brought Veterans in. Law schools have brought Veterans in. And so what you find is, unlike when I began and one of my colleagues said, Hey, you should meet Rob. He was also in the military. He was the other person. Now it’s ubiquitous. We have programs that bring Veterans in and pipelines that allow them to bring the skills that they’ve developed in the military, which they know how to work hard, they’re dedicated, they’re loyal, they’re tenacious, they’re smart. They’re really well trained and really well uneducated.
They just don’t know how to do what we do. Well, by the way, when you join us from an MBA program, you don’t really know how to do what we do either. So either way, I have to train you. I love to have a Veteran to train. Back then when I joined, what really applied, people had asked me that question, and it was a little confusing at the time because I thought, Well, when I’m in the army, I’m developing plans, I’m communicating those plans, I’m motivating people to do the plan, right? And then we’re… And most importantly, we’re executing a plan, and when it doesn’t go according to plan, you make it happen. Sounds familiar. It’s what we do every day. We think about clients, we think about what their needs are, we think about the tools, the solutions, everything that we can bring to bear. Then our job is to bring it to them and help them understand why that’s important to them, why we’re the one that they should work with. Then over time, we adapt and we overcome and we execute for our clients. So Veterans know how to do that.
Well I got to imagine with the largest bank in the United States, highly regulated industry, you have to pick people who have values, core values, similar to those that we have in the military, because you’re absolutely right. Nobody comes into a profession knowing how to do it. But if you can get somebody with a little bit of leadership experience and you can trust them, you can go a really long way. So I read that JPMorganChase has hired over 18,000 Veterans, and there’s some more great statistics that I read. But I know some people talk the talk, but JPMorganChase walks the walk. How do I know? Because I’m a member of the CEOcircle, I’m doing it for the second year now, and I’ve seen firsthand and secondhand how you support some of our cohorts, some of our team members who say, either I just have a banking question or I need help. But you invest in Veterans, not just hiring them, but you believe in Veteran-led companies. Why?
Our operating committee has a focus on one is serving the entire community. There’s elements of our community that just haven’t been served in the same way. As a Veteran, I can look at… When we work with our clients that we work with every day they have built networks, built knowledge, built connectivity with trusted advisors, friends, colleagues, family members that are in the industry are around. They know how to get the information. They know as they’re growing, that complexity I was talking about, they know how to tame that, partly because they have people around them that help them. Our Veterans were doing hard things for us, for our country, overseas, around the world. At the same time, that group that I’m talking about, we’re building that network. We can supplement that. Businesses that are owned by, whether it’s women, diverse owned, or Veterans that I’m focused on, you look at what the average revenue size and average employment size of those companies is it’s about 30% of the overall population, yet about 20% of the revenue. If we can close that gap, and it’s a really important thing to close that gap, it’s about a 1.3-trillion-dollar opportunity for the U.S. economy.
So this is… We want… What our operating committee tells us is we are serving the entire community. We want to help everybody. The strong community, business community, overall community means a strong JPMorganChase. Let’s invest in it and be serious about that. And it’s granular. It’s execution at the detail level, and you see that, right? You can help. You can help close that. We are the largest financial institution in the United States. It’s a real responsibility and it’s something we take seriously.
What programs do you have available? Obviously, I’ve experienced CEOcircle, and I’ve heard about a lot of them, but I know there’s many that I don’t know about. And many of our listeners, Veterans, they think, Where can I get help banking? And they don’t even I know.
Yeah. What I love about our strategy is the way that I describe it is as you begin to take the uniform off, we’re there to help you. As you are beginning to look for a job, a profession, we’re there to help you. We have something called the Jobs Mission that Jamie Dimon was foundational and helping set up. Initially, it was a handful of Fortune 500 companies with a goal of placing about 100,000 Veterans that were exiting the military. It’s now over 300 companies, very large corporates in the United States, and has placed over a million people, family members and Veterans that are exiting the military. That’s an example. We also, through IVMF, Syracuse University IVMF, organizations like Bunker Labs that have now come together with IVMF and many other Veterans organizations, we help people start businesses. Whether you want… There’s different paths to take. You can go to school, you can find a great career with great companies, or you can start a business. Each of those we help you with. Of course, along the way, financial literacy and all the fundamental tools that people need, we’re there to help. So CEOcircle, our program with IVMF that you’re part of, came from that.
And so that is we want to help you start the business. We want to help you grow the business. And we have just amazing resources around our branch network to help people think about a business plan and really grow it. And then now let’s scale it. And that’s what CEOcircle is all about. So beyond that, many other programs, it’s really as you’re taking your uniform off, you’re choosing your career, growing a business, and you’re moving through that. Amazing resources every step of the way, different programs. A lot of it is through supporting not-for-profits or like our CEOcircle program. It’s pretty exciting stuff.
Yeah, I found the financial literacy piece is something that we don’t like to admit this, but we come out of the military, we’re used to that pay scale. Here’s your rank, here’s your time and grade. This is how much you’re going to get paid. We get paid based on the value we bring to any situation. Learning that and then learning that debt can be good, which we now have 140 employees, and I’m learning that maybe I need to look at this a little bit more seriously because starting a business, everybody says, Oh, you don’t want debt, or if you take out a loan, pay it back as soon as possible. I think the education piece is like, Well, no, this is how the bigger companies run. I think for organizations like JPMorganChase to pull back the curtain and say, Look, do you really want to see how some larger organizations run? You bring great leaders here who have scaled companies and show us. They tell us. They say, Look, this was my journey, and I know what you’re thinking because I thought the same way when I was your size, but this is what’s happened.
You’ve done a phenomenal job bringing outstanding speakers in here to educate Veterans that, Hey, some of the stuff that we were doing in the military or the way we thought about finances money is not the same way we need to think about it to grow a business.
None of it is static, by the way. There’s not one answer. Just like personal finance, there’s a lot to learn. It’s situational. You’re preparing to save for college. You’re preparing for… I have three daughters. Preparing for weddings. Just all the different things that go on in life. You’re saving for a home, you’re financing a mortgage, you’re selling it. Now you want to take some cash out and do something. There’s a lot going on every step of the way, and I think that’s the same way our business owners face things. Is it’s not, once you know this, okay, here you go. The best business leaders that I’ve seen, whether small company, mid-size company or large company, they just never stop learning. They never stop asking. The market is always changing. Once in a while, people say, Well, 29 years, that’s a long time. One year has never been like the previous. The market changes, the situation changes, the environment changes, and that changes for our business owners as well. And so whether it’s putting a capital structure together, it’s hedging interest rates, foreign exchange, commodities, just who are they working with and how do they manage that risk?
How do they grow across border? How do you bring some of that back? Just all these business decisions that have to be made, there are people that have thought about this, and our business owners will take that in and make great decisions. Sometimes that information comes from us. Sometimes it comes from programs like CEOcircle where you bring other CEOs together, and they faced it before. Because there’s no one answer, there’s no one situation, there’s no one company that’s exactly like the other, but it’s just taking it in, taking it in, and making great decisions. That’s what it’s all about.
I think as we move along in our careers, we get a chance to decide who we want to be a hero to. I think it was Dan Sullivan that said that. How did you decide that you would be involved? Obviously, you’ve got the middle market job, but now you’re also, I guess, the co-chair in the Veteran space for JPMorganChase. How do you get to that position? Was this something that you pursued? Did someone voluntell you? For Veterans listening saying, That sounds like a cool job. I’d love to be in Terry’s position. How do you get there?
Every step of the way, what I said, and this act 100% comes from the military, right? It is the environment that you’re in, you can shape it. Whatever role I had, whether I was a brand new associate just started, I was the most junior person in the group, I was always involved in recruiting, helping people understand what we’re about, driving what’s going on in the group. Every step of the way, whether it’s a training program or managing the more junior people or just giving yourself to the organization. What you find is when you’re giving back, you get a lot, one, but also you have great influence over what it looks like. What I want is a great place full of great people that we all want to be at every day. You can build that. You don’t have to be the most senior person. Every single person influences what is going on in that organization every day. The way a lot of this came about was I just got in there and started. Just make it happen. You want something to be a certain way? Don’t wait for it. The military has trained all of us.
When something has to happen, whether it’s your formal duty or not, just execute. It is very much our culture here that this is not a hierarchical top-down, this is about how do you make it great every day. There’s things you’re passionate about. I’m passionate about what does it feel like just even in that single office, that floor you’re on, what does it feel like? Does everybody want to be there? One, that’s where I want to be. I want to be where everybody wants to be. But two, if it’s a place that everybody wants to be, great work goes on there. They want to be there. They want to do great things. You can help them feel that. All that came from the military. That’s 100%… I was at Forest Hill, Oklahoma, learned how to… It’s 2:00 in the morning, it’s freezing, and how do you bring it together? How do you help everybody understand just what are we doing here and why are we doing it and where we’re going? And there’s clarity in that. You can do the same thing. Then as you move down the road, Veterans are obviously something that I’m passionate about.
The opportunities for Veterans in our organization is something that I’ve always worked on and there was a bit of a struggle because it was just, how do you close the gap? To your question, how do they fit together? Over time, it really opened up. We have great programs that bring Veterans in, and we rotate them around and they find the right spot and the managers build a relationship and then the managers hire them, for example. That was something that our operating committee set up through our Military and Veterans Affairs program to create but also to bring great people into our organization. So everywhere you look, there’s opportunity to do good things that you care about. Just dive into it. That’s what I did.
And great leadership lesson here is, it’s like we learned in the military, you don’t have to be the senior leader to pick your team or to set the culture. You can recruit, you can set the conditions for success, and obviously, that’s what you did. Now that we’re here, let’s go to the after-action review. The three examples of great leadership and three examples of not great leadership that you experienced that could have been in the banking world or in the military, but things that you saw that over your career, you say, That was great leadership, and things that you say, This is leadership that doesn’t work.
Yeah. Thankfully, I’ve seen a lot more good leadership than not. To me, it all begins with, and one of our board members was at our dinner last night, you heard it from her as well, it’s humanity. Are you bringing humanity to the situation? These are people. It’s really the basics of leadership. It even goes as far back as at West Point, as a plebe given your Bugel Notes, little book that you memorize, and then you’re often called on to recite it. There’s 11 principles of leadership, and I’m not going to recite them all, but know yourself and seek self-improvement. Just these basics of leadership that are, be technically, technically proficient. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions. Those are the first three. Keep going if you want. Those are things that are timeless. I’ve made a… I watch for those. Whether it’s people that work for me or over time, people that I worked around or work for. You admire that when you see that. When you don’t see that, those are the things that you admire a lot less because it’s really about, do you care about the people? Do you care enough about them to actually learn how to do what you need to do?
Do you care about them enough to actually execute in the way that you need to execute? Do you care about the organization and them enough to communicate really clearly so everybody understands what needs to be done and then lead from the front and help everybody make it happen and support them and be positive and all the great things that we want from our leaders.
And so the bad is?
If you’re not doing that. Again, I just see so much more positive than I see negative. And I think maybe in the early days of banking, people thought a little… In my early days of banking, people thought a little bit less about leadership. Back in the organization, as it was once upon a time, for a long, long time, we focused a lot on leadership and a lot on having great environments and great leaders and investing in that. In fact, we’ve taken a lot of our senior leaders to West Point for different programs. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody really significantly lack the things that I’m talking about. It’s a great environment to be a part of because really, we’re given a lot of freedom to do good things, and that’s what’s expected, just do good things.
I think there’s a great lesson there, which is once you get into a great organization, you get to experience that great leadership, and you don’t see the bad. I can think back to… We all have had great and bad examples from the military, but it is interesting when you get in a great civilian organization where everybody’s aligned, and there’s a great culture, it seems you see less of it.
Well, and so that’s a really important point because often I’ll get… I talked to a lot of Veterans that are coming out or different stages, or they’re maybe in our different rotational programs. The question comes up, how do I choose the the first step or where I’m going to… It’s 100% what you just said about the people. But if you’re doing it with great people in a great environment that has clear goals and you’re going to achieve it together, you’re going to have a great situation. Go find great people. That’s really what it’s about. Don’t look for something that somebody told you is really cool, or it’s a hot thing, or the best brand. Go look for great people who believe in what you believe in and go execute with them, and you’re going to have a great career.
Brilliant advice. Terry, where can people learn more about the programs that JPMorganChase offers for Veterans?
If you go to our homepage and Google or search for our Veterans programs, you’ll find them just directly on the JPMorganChase website.
Thank you for everything that you do for our Veteran community.
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the chance to talk, and I really appreciate you being part of CEOcircle. Maybe the last thing I’ll say is CEOcircle is an accelerator program that we built for mid-size businesses, and your business is part of that as the CEO. We actually started yesterday with 75 CEOs that are in our fourth cohort. We finished with our 75 CEOs that just finished the third cohort. Really excited to have everybody here at our headquarters and really appreciate the chance to talk to you.
Thanks and for some of our guests that are tuning in for the first time, we’ve had several CEOcircle members on the podcast, and you can hear about their journeys and a lot of them talk about how CEOcircle specifically helped and what you’ll find is it’s in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it’s having that CEO peer support network. Sometimes it’s the great folks at JPMorganChase who help them out, help them understand complex financial matters. But the great thing about the CEOcircle is not only do you have a cohort, but you also get support from IVMF and the great team at JPMorganChase. You have somebody who can answer questions for you. As you grow a business, and that’s what was missing. Look, I’ve done EO, I’ve done Vistage, but what was missing was having that financial expert in the room. I mean, everybody can talk about their vision and how they’re going to execute it. But if you don’t understand the financial piece, you’re going to find yourself in trouble. That has why this has been such a great program for me, and that’s why I’m doing it the second year.
Great. Glad you’re doing it. Thank you very much.
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