Navy veteran Kathy Borkowski’s life story reads like a Hollywood script.
She reinvented herself from being an elite underwater bomb technician to stunt performer, children’s book author, and tech manager at Meta.
Along the way, Borkowski discovered how hard it can be for highly skilled veterans to connect with civilian employers, leading her to form Career PCS, a veteran-owned business that teaches American companies how to use the DoD SkillBridge internship program to hire talented veterans.
“The most important thing you are going to do when you get out is figure out what the next major step for you is,” Borkowski said.
You could say Borkowski was destined to join the Navy before she was even born - her parents met while they were in Navy boot camp.
“They were full career types,” she said. “My mother was a master chief corpsman and my father was a warrant officer and did a lot of maintenance on the big deck carriers. My mom could fix us and my dad could fix anything else in the house.”
That meant that there was little doubt about where Borkowski would attend college – the Naval Academy, where she also played international rugby.
Before her first year at the academy, Borkowski’s father was stationed aboard the USS Eisenhower, where she did a summer tour.
“He got me on every single airplane that flies off the end of the carrier,” she said. “While I was on that ship, I met the bomb tech team that clears all the ordnance and was, `this is a good time.’”
Borkowski’s career as a Navy Diver and Bomb Technician began. While in the service on active duty from 2001 to 2008, she deployed to Iraq and the Philippines. Borkowski finished her time in the Naval Reserves and retired in 2021.
Calling the move from active duty service to the civilian world challenging, Borkowski said the transition assistance classes she took taught her two things: Wear a suit and print your resume on 32-lb paper.
“I had my suit on and my resume, and nothing,” she said.
A personality test predicted Borkowski would excel in the fields of sales, marketing or as a stunt double.
“I picked stunt double. There was only one tiny problem. I knew no one who had ever touched a movie,” she said.
Borkowski was soon “talking her face off.”
“I talked to everyone I possibly could,” she said. “If you were standing next to me in line at the grocery store, I would be like, `hey, know anyone in Hollywood?”
She called building a network while transitioning from the military to the civilian workforce vital.
“Every job I’ve gotten has been the result of a veteran introduction,” Borkowski said. “A West Point grad hired me at Facebook.”
She emphasized that veterans are present in every industry and are a part of every community.
“We will bend over backwards to help the people who are coming behind us,” said Borkowski. “That’s what we’re doing with our company, Career PCS.”
Career PCS’s mission is to help every transitioning servicemember find meaningful work after the military. Each year, over 200,000 servicemembers exit military service and face the tidal wave of options and challenges, Borkowski said.
And while the DoD SkillBridge program can be a secret key that helps make the transition exponentially easier, Borkowski said the company is committed to making the program more accessible and helping service members apply what they learn to a career of better options.
“Where you land might not be where you stay,” she said.
To learn more about Career PCS, visit here.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.