Zack Baddorf is the executive director and founder of the non-profit organization Military Veterans in Journalism. Baddorf is a national security and foreign policy professional with more than 15 years experience on the frontlines of the world’s conflicts, including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central African Republic, Crimea, Kashmir and the West Bank.

Baddorf works for the Department of Defense conducting public affairs on high profile mission. He also runs a small business providing strategic communication services. 

Additionally, Baddorf teaches at NYU's global affairs program on disinformation. In his work at a DC think tank, he countered ISIS and al Shabaab propaganda by strategically challenging extremist narratives through video and other mediums. 

Baddorf previously served in the U.S. military and in the U.S. Peace Corps in Romania. He worked for the U.S. Special Operations Command in Afghanistan doing lessons learned work. He worked for Internews in South Sudan doing media development work. His journalistic work has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, and many other publications.

The PsychArmor resource for this week is the PsychArmor course series on Creating a Career Skills Program. A career skills program is a vocational and technical training program used for transitioning Veterans to a civilian workforce. Military experience already equips Veterans with a broad range of talents including organizational skills and a team-oriented mindset. This course series will help you understand the major benefits of creating a career skills program to leverage Veterans’ experience, know the labor requirements for unpaid internships, and recognize the best practices and guidelines for creating such a program. This course demonstrates why career skills programs are a great way to create a pipeline of skilled, ready to work talent for your hiring needs. You can access this course through this link: https://psycharmor.org/courses/creating-career-skills-program/

This episode is sponsored by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory with custom training options for organizations.

Our theme music Don’t Kill the Messenger was written and performed by Navy Veteran Jerry Maniscalco, in cooperation with Operation Encore, a non profit committed to supporting singer/songwriter and musicians across the military and Veteran communities.