When failure is not an option

Matt Muncey, Director of Product Management, and Chris Bulkley, Director of Customer Success, have the shared experience of having served on active duty, but that is pretty much where the similarities between their military service ends. 

Muncey likes to joke that, thanks to a girl, he was an “adult onset airman.” After his girl-of-interest accepted a job with the Air Force Band, Muncey joined the Air Force Medical Service, where he served active duty for eight years working in healthcare operations in San Antonio, Washington DC, and on deployment in the Middle East.

Muncey says luckily for him, the girl that he followed into the Air Force turned out to be his wife. Today, Muncey still serves in the Air Force Medical Service Reserves.

Bulkley’s first experience with the military came a bit earlier than Muncey’s: He joined the Army’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) as a pre-med major at Cornell. He originally thought he’d go on to medical school after college and then complete his required military service as a physician, but that plan changed.

Bulkley’s first assignment after college was in the Infantry. After a year of extensive training in the States, he was stationed abroad in Germany, which included a deployment to Kosovo. Back in Germany after Kosovo, he ultimately became Assistant Operations Officer for a battalion of 750 soldiers. When Bulkley returned to the States, he served in the Massachusetts National Guard for two years as a Company Commander, extending what he initially thought would be a short stint in the military to a total of six years of service. 

A shared gratitude for lessons learned 

Despite serving in different branches, in different capacities, in different locations, Muncey and Bulkley have a shared gratitude for the perspective their military service gave them. They also agree the lessons they learned in the military are ones that have served them well in their work as civilians.  

Bulkley says, “One of the most valuable pieces of advice was given to me before I went abroad to my duty station. My military trainers at Fort Benning advised, ‘You’ve been in the military for about five minutes. When you get to your duty station, your second-in-command has probably been in the military for about 18 years and may know a little more than you. When you get there, you’d be smart to observe. Listen. Watch. Don’t step in and immediately make changes.’ I did that, and I think that served me really well. I’ve done that in every role I’ve been in since, military and non-military. That advice to listen and observe first in a new environment was extremely valuable.”

One of the most valuable things Muncey’s military service has instilled in him is that no one wins alone. “The military is obviously a team sport. Whether we win or lose depends on how effectively we work as a team. If you do (teamwork) well, you get exponentially better results than you would alone,” he says. 

Muncey says he sees the value of teamwork embodied at Moxe, too. “It’s just part of the culture,” he says. 

A focus on mission

For Muncey and Bulkley, Moxe’s focus on mission is one of the biggest things that drew them to the company.

“The mentality in the military and at Moxe is: you work through obstacles together, with the resources at your disposal, and execute,” Bulkley says. 

“Everybody (at Moxe) is starting from a place of being mission-focused. Everyone is focused on getting administrative waste out of healthcare and putting the dollars where they matter, into patient care,” Muncey says. 

The value that veterans bring

Muncey and Bulkley note there is often a lot of emphasis placed on helping veterans transition to civilian work. Both feel, however, that much of what the military does strongly parallels the civilian sector. 

“All of the experience is translatable. In leadership in the military and the civilian sector, you need to ask: Do you understand the mission? Do your people understand their part in the mission? Do they have the resources they need to get the job done?” Muncey says.

Muncey is proud to be working with the SkillBridge program, a Department of Defense initiative that allows active duty service members to participate in civilian job training, employment skills development, and apprenticeships during the last 180 days of their military service. Ultimately, Muncey says the program aims to help veterans to see some of the ways they can meaningfully and powerfully contribute to the civilian sector. 

Thanks to Muncey’s outreach efforts, Moxe hopes to have their first SkillBridge intern begin in early 2024. 

“The skills that veterans bring—drive, focus, organization—those are applicable to anything. I think start-ups in particular would be smart to bring more veterans on. It sounds cliche, but in the military, failure is not an option. We can’t fail; we just figure it out. More companies should consider bringing veterans on and letting them figure it out,” Bulkley says. 

If you are a veteran interested in exploring internships through the SkillBridge program, check out the opportunities. And, we thank you for your service!

Ready for more on Moxe?

Learn more about the passion behind our mission-driven approach in this podcast featuring Moxe's CEO and founder, Dan Wilson.