Non-profit organizations are well-known as effective channels for companies to channel resources toward social welfare and community development.

Operation Motorsport and CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. have teamed up to give medically retiring service people or retired veterans a new lease on life through motorsport and, wherever possible, cybersecurity.

“They [the veterans] lose their team identity, their purpose,” said Diezel Lodder (pictured, right), co-founder and chief executive officer of Operation Motorsport. “And what we do is bring them onto the teams as beneficiaries, assign them a race team and give them the opportunity to find something new. We’re a recovery program.”

Lodder; J.C. Herrera (pictured, middle), chief human resources officer of CrowdStrike; and Craig Neri (pictured, left), beneficiary trustee (USA) and ambassador at Operation Motorsport, spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante at last September’s theCUBE @ Fal.Con event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the potential a program like Operation Motorsport could have in reducing the cybersecurity skills gap. (* Disclosure below.)

Giving vets another go

It’s worth clarifying that Operation Motorsport is a rehabilitation and recovery initiative first, Lodder pointed out. Beneficiaries aren’t directly funneled toward IT jobs in cybersecurity. Instead, the program creates networking and relationship-building opportunities wherein they pursue interests in cybersecurity if they’d like.

“It’s about networking and getting out of the dark places where some of them end up,” Lodder added. “In doing so, we now expose them to CrowdStrike. That’s one of the new relationships that we have where, if they want to, they can potentially pursue new opportunities in areas like cybersecurity.”

One factor that makes Operation Motorsport unique is that it considers every beneficiary’s prior military specialization and looks for its race team equivalent, and that’s where the beneficiary is placed, according to Neri.

“Slowly, as they start to grow and learn, they take on bigger roles,” he said. “But we also have different positions they can be immersed in. It could be in teams, but they can also be immersed in the series. So, we have folks that are doing jobs like tech inspections.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of theCUBE @ Fal.Con 2022:

(* Disclosure:  CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. and Operation Motorsport sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither CrowdStrike and Operation Motorsport nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE