Honoring All Who Served on Veterans Day

Today and every day, we are grateful to the men and women who serve our country in the military. We are constantly looking for ways to engage the military community – through our hiring initiatives, partnerships to strengthen the skills of transitioning service members, and our community engagement efforts.

We have had the opportunity to work with and for veterans and the military community in a number of different ways, including:

Cyber Vets Virginia: Cyber Vets Virginia is a new initiative to provide veterans with access to cyber security training opportunities and resources to help veterans enter the Virginia cyber security workforce.  AWS is collaborating with the Commonwealth of Virginia and other private sector contributors to offer access to our existing web based training program around security fundamentals to transitioning service members and recent veterans who have foundational IT skills, and want to pursue a career in cyber security. For additional information on the Cyber Vets Virginia initiative, please visit: http://cybervets.virginia.gov/

Joining Forces: Amazon pledged to offer 10,000 service members, transitioning veterans, and military spouses over $7m in Amazon Web Services (AWS) trainings. Amazon is also committed to training 25 wounded warriors at AWS Boot Camps for functional roles in cloud computing and commercial companies operating in the tech space and hiring 25,000 veterans and military spouses over the next five years. Learn more in the Amazon blog here.

AWS Educate for Veterans: As part of our Joining Forces pledge, we recently committed to training 10,000 veterans and military family members in cloud computing through AWS Educate. U.S. based veterans and their families are eligible to create an AWS Educate account, which gives them access to resources that can accelerate cloud-related learning endeavors to help power civilian career success. Get started today by visiting: www.awseducate.com/veterans

AWS Military Fellowship: We created the AWS Military Fellowship exchange program as part of the larger program across the Department of Defense (DoD), designed to expose active duty military to AWS’s technology and Amazon’s leadership principles. The programs build a unique cadre of officers who understand not only the profession of arms, but also the nature of the strategic problems facing the DoD, and the organizational and operational opportunities made possible by revolutionary changes in information and other technologies. Read the stories from our three fellows featuring Lieutenant Colonel (Promote-able) Maria Schneider (MS), U.S. Army Acquisition Officer, James Thomas (JT), U.S. Airforce Communications Officer, and Master Sergeant Kelly Butler (KB), U.S Army Acquisition Non-Commissioned Officer.

AWS Certification Exam Reimbursement for Veterans: US service members returning from active duty can face many challenges—including finding a new job or even a new career. To help veterans succeed, we’ve worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to make AWS Certification exams eligible for VA reimbursement. Are you a US veteran? Find out more about AWS Certifications and how you can be reimbursed for AWS Certification exams on Jeff Barr’s original blog post here.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs:  From action to impact, the cloud allows the VA to create an environment for veterans that is more applicable to their needs, while meeting security requirements. “The fact is innovation and technology has allowed us to dream and innovate like nothing else in our lifetime,” said LaVerne H. Council, Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology and Chief Information Officer, Department of Veterans Affairs. “And so as we think about embracing new solutions, collaborating and engaging, we need to think about the people… we need to think about how a vet can receive the data and the information the way he/she needs, to enable the best healthcare they can get.” Watch the video of LaVerne Council speaking at the recent AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, DC, sharing how she is acting as a change agent within the VA, taking the agency from vision to reinvention to adoption to change.

To all veterans, thank you for your service!