After 22 years, four deployments, and duty stations from Fort Bragg to Korea to Italy, retired Army First Sergeant and Ranger Mike Pickens and his wife, Army veteran Amanda Pickens, thought coming home to Oklahoma would be the easy part. It wasn't.

In this honest, deeply relatable conversation, Mike and Amanda open up about the side of military life that rarely gets talked about: the transition out. They share what it was like to raise two kids overseas with no family nearby, why the structure and built-in community of the military is so hard to replace, and the quiet shock of returning "home" to find that friends and even family had moved on. Amanda speaks candidly about the mental-health toll of that isolation, and Mike reflects on trading a career of leading soldiers for a mission he never trained for — figuring out who you are after the uniform comes off.

Then they found the Eagle Ops Foundation. What started as showing up to a golf night with zero interest in golf became something they didn't know they were missing: a positive social connection with other veterans, a "found family," and a support system built for the whole family — not just the service member.

Whether you're a veteran, a military spouse, or someone who loves one, this episode is a powerful reminder that the hardest battles often come after service — and that no one has to fight them alone.

🇺🇸 Learn more about the Eagle Ops Foundation and find a Rally Point near you.

Subscribe wherever you listen — Apple, Spotify, and YouTube — and we'll see you at the next Rally Point.

Part two with Dr. Carter Check a former Army CAV scout, VA clinician, and founder of Hunt Therapy. In this episode, Dr. Check unpacks what moral injury actually is (and why it's not a weakness), why veterans who die by suicide often believe they're saving others, and how purpose becomes the most powerful weapon against shame. He shares the story behind Hunt Therapy and his book Healing in the Wild built on the idea that nature shows up even when people don't. Host Travis and Dr. Check also dig into what makes Eagle Ops different: a place where veterans don't have to be their title, just themselves. Raw, real, and worth your time.

Williams CEO Chad Zamrin joins Shep on the Eagle Ops Rally Point Podcast to talk veteran workforce investment, mental health stigma in construction and the military, and why supporting organizations like Eagle Ops is one of the highest-ROI decisions a business leader can make.

Chad opens up about his 10 months as CEO of Williams — an $8B company forecasting 10% annual growth — and what the company's WWII legacy taught him about servant leadership, problem-solving, and community.

Topics covered:

• Williams' role in building the WWII War Emergency Pipelines
• John Williams surviving Iwo Jima and becoming the company's longest-serving CEO
• Veteran suicide rates in construction — and what companies can actually do
• Eagle Ops' Freedom Shoots and the veteran whose life it turned around
• How to reach 285,000 Oklahoma veterans at scale
• What Chad tells other CEOs about investing in veteran nonprofits

Eagle Ops Mission: Connecting relationships to resources to bring our heroes home. eagleops.org