Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans

Scholarship hunting shouldn’t feel like a second job, especially for military families already juggling PCS moves, shifting school rules, and tight timelines. We sit down with Kristen Ferullo, founder of Partners in Purpose , to discuss a free, searchable scholarship database designed specifically for military children, dependents, spouses, veterans, and ROTC students. If you’ve ever clicked throu...

You can have the best product in the world and still lose if nobody knows you exist. That’s the tension we dig into with Austin Holmes, a Navy EOD veteran who now leads the Nashville-based PR firm Publicity for Good . We talk candidly about the mindset shift veteran entrepreneurs have to make when they leave a high-opsec culture and step into a marketplace that rewards clear, consistent communicat...

Fewer people personally know someone who served, and that quiet shift changes how communities understand sacrifice, leadership, and even citizenship. We sit down with Scott English, president of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to discuss how a modern military history museum can close that gap by telling authentic, relatable stories about the citizen soldier and the...

One customer, noticing an early arrival and a military haircut, kicked off a brand that’s now helping veterans become business owners. We sit down with Tracy Flanagan, co-founder of JDog Brands , to unpack how a junk removal and hauling side hustle grew into a veteran-owned franchise network with roughly 91 locations across 25-plus states and about 90% veteran ownership. Along the way, we get spec...

Paying retail for prescription eyeglasses is frustrating enough. Finding out you may have qualified for VA glasses the whole time is worse. We sit down with Sean Loosen, CEO of PDS Optical and a West Point graduate with an infantry background, to explain how VA vision benefits actually work and why awareness remains the biggest barrier to better eye care for veterans. We break down the real-world...

A former Navy SEAL with 10 trips to Afghanistan should have had an easy off-ramp into high-paying contractor work, but Todd Peters chose a different mission. After years of watching suicides stack up across his community, he founded Stronghold Alliance , a faith-based restoration nonprofit built to tackle veteran suicide prevention with urgency, humility, and real-world tools that veterans and fir...

A triple agent looks a young soldier in the eye and says the North Gate is about to be hit. Minutes later, the blast proves it. That moment is one of the turning points Sean Martin shares with us, and it’s also part of the story behind why his band, The Quarantined , doesn’t exist just to entertain. Sean is a prior-service Army airborne infantry veteran who deployed to Iraq and ran hundreds of com...

Many veteran-owned businesses don’t struggle because their founders lack discipline. They struggle because growth demands a new kind of support system: peers who’ve been there, mentors who tell the truth, and a clearer plan for capital, technology, and scale. That’s exactly where our conversation with Alex McKindra goes, drawing a straight line from military service to building stronger outcomes f...

Your spouse raises a right hand, and suddenly, your whole life has a new rulebook. Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, sits down with Kayla LaFond, military spouse liaison for the Virginia Department of Veterans Services (DVS), for an honest talk about what the transition into military spouse life really looks like, from the first duty station shock to...

A great car can stop you in your tracks, but a great car show can do more than that. We’re joined by Chuck Berge, board member at Willing Warriors and the team lead behind Vettes For Willing Warriors , to lay out exactly what happens when hundreds of vehicles roll onto the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run and the community shows up in force. We talk real numbers and real details: 240 cars and about 865...

The fastest way to lose your footing after the military is to lose your people and then pretend you’re fine. Host Larry Zilliox sits down with Navy Veteran Jordyn Jureczki, CEO of Frontline Healing Foundation , to talk about what happens when transition feels isolating, anger lingers, and the path to care is blocked by money, red tape, or geography.  Jordyn shares how her own post-service road led...

A locked Marine recruiter door turned into an Army career, and an IED in Afghanistan turned that career into a fight to rebuild a life. I’m joined by Jason Smith, a retired Army infantryman, double amputee, and ambassador for Catch A Lift Fund , and he tells the story with zero polish and a lot of truth: the terror of transition, the identity shift after catastrophic injury, and the small decision...

A lot of veteran suicide prevention talk gets complicated fast. This conversation stays refreshingly direct: isolation kills, connection protects, and a well-run event can be the difference between shutting down and showing up. I’m Larry Zilliox, and I’m joined by Kimberly Jewell Pond, Operational Support Coordinator and Lead Coordinator for the Washington, DC chapter of Irreverent Warriors, to br...

Stop Loss. That single policy changed thousands of military timelines overnight, and it changed Jonathan Tennis, too. Jonathan is a prior-service Army intelligence specialist who served through the post-9/11 shift, and he joins us at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run to talk honestly about what comes next when the uniform comes off and the mission feels unclear. We get into why military transition c...

What does it take to turn a veteran’s story into law that actually changes lives? We sit down with Jess  Finucan, a retired Air Force Senior Master Sergeant and now the Director of Policy and advocacy at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America , to pull back the curtain on how evidence, testimony, and relentless follow-through move Congress on veterans’ issues. Jess shares her rapid transition fr...

Burn pits and jet fuel aren’t just headlines; they’re lived experiences that can follow veterans for years. We sit down with Dr. Maheen Adamson (Research Director) and Dr. Jennifer Jennings (Clinical Director), two VA physicians leading the Women’s Operational Military Exposure Network Center of Excellence , to explain what we’re learning about military environmental exposure and why women veteran...

A single word on a headstone—Unknown—sent author Jeff Gottesfeld on a path to write children’s books that carry the weight of service with grace. Today, we sit down with Jeff to trace that path from 21 Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to his new large-format book, Honor Flight: Celebrating America’s Veterans , and a forthcoming project that centers on the kids who also serve. We dig...

When a cutter launches into a storm or a helicopter hovers over a capsized hull, the story we don’t see is the family at home watching the radar, praying for their service member going into harm's way, or the kid who just switched schools again. This episode pulls back the curtain on the Coast Guard Foundation —the nonprofit lifeline that helps Coast Guard members and their families stay read...

What if recovery felt less like appointments and more like belonging? We sit down with Donna Meltzer, CEO of Brain Injury Services in Fairfax, to unpack why “brain injury is a journey” and how a purpose-built clubhouse helps survivors—veterans and civilians alike—reclaim identity, skills, and community. From the first welcome to setting personal goals, the model flips the script: members choose to...

The most powerful sentence in today’s conversation is also the simplest: “Actually, she’s the veteran.” We sit down with Brooke Jackson Kahn—Army combat medic, neurosurgery PA, and founder of She’s the Veteran —to explore what service, transition, and healing look like when the world still assumes the veteran is a man. Brooke brings clear, lived insight into how women experience PTS differently, w...

The quiet work after the mission often decides whether a family bends or breaks. We sit down with Marine Raider Foundation CEO Jessica McAndrews to open the door on a community that rarely seeks the spotlight and yet carries a heavy load long after the headlines fade. From emergency travel and uncovered medical devices to childcare during recovery, Jessica explains how a focused nonprofit moves fa...

Too many women who served are still asked to fight for basic recognition before they can access care. We sit down with Virginia Giordano, CEO and founder of the Barbara Giordano Foundation , to explore a different path: small, trauma‑informed retreats and holistic wellness programs designed by listening to women veterans first. From equine therapy and EFT tapping to reflexology and targeted worksh...

Ten years in, the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run stands on stories that still move us—volunteers who swung the first hammers, families who found rest here, and a community that showed up in sunshine and storms. We take that history and turn it into fuel for a packed 2026, staying true to our core promise of five-night, no-cost respite for wounded, ill, and injured service members and their families w...

The question we ask is simple: Who watches the warriors when their war is over? Larry sits down with Denny Caballero, a former Green Beret and media entrepreneur, to explore how the Special Forces Foundation delivers rapid, peer-led support to Green Berets, their families, and Gold Star survivors—without red tape or delay. From crisis response to household needs, this is a ground-level look at a c...

A Purple Heart veteran turned advocate, Justin Hoover knows what it takes to look tough at work and feel lost at home. We sat down with the CEO of The Battle Within to unpack practical ways veterans, police, firefighters, EMTs, dispatchers, and frontline clinicians can get help early—before life hits crisis. The conversation is candid and actionable: why moral injury needs plain language, how timi...