A former Marine, Ayres had suffered severe injuries in Fallujah: A rocket-propelled grenade inflicted nerve damage, burns, partial blindness and traumatic brain injury. Ayres, who also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, worked with military recruiting firms, but they didn’t seem to understand how to handle his atypical rsum.
But Ayres impressed a Northrop Grumman executive with a speech he gave on Capitol Hill, and, through a Northrop program geared toward hiring severely wounded veterans, Ayres was brought on as a subject matter expert in the firm’s health information technology group.
Operation IMPACT, as the Northrop program is called, has hired about 85 veterans since its inception in 2004, most of them within the last three years. It’s among multiple veteran-focused hiring initiatives run by area defense contractors who say they want to support former service members and access the skills and values taught in the military. Though the programs represent only a small portion of the contractors’ hiring, the efforts appear to be growing
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