Members of the Reserve and National Guard are highly skilled across a variety of private-sector industries and have the potential to make substantial contributions to Defense Department missions, a DOD official said.
The problem is, the department is not always aware of that talent, said Scott Sumner, technical project manager at Defense Innovation Unit’s artificial intelligence/machine learning portfolio.
For example, reservists in their civilian jobs might be working on cloud computing, software engineering, cybersecurity or any number of other in-demand skills. The department has no way to find them or to know that those skills even exist, he said.