To celebrate Veterans Day this upcoming Friday, November 11th, the Energy Central Community Team will be shining a light on the many outstanding utility professionals in our network who also spent time in the military. This week, we'll be featuring interviews with these veterans sharing how they found their way into the industry. We will also highlight their unique perspectives of the industry and how they are influencing the utility space.
All the interviews will be collected at this special Veterans Day 2022 topic tag.
To all the veterans in the Energy Central Community, we want to say thank you for your service and we wish you a Happy Veterans Day.
Craig Chisholm, the director of finance for Lynnfield, Mass.-based JM Electrical Co., was a c-student in high school and his first semester at University of Massachusetts Lowell. Then, in September 1995, he joined the Army National Guard and four months later was sent to boot camp at Fort Benning, Georgia.
“After that,” he said, “it was dean’s list straight through my bachelor’s degree. And [the Guard] helped pay for college, which was helpful as well.”
Craig’s bachelor’s degree was in business administration. He got into the contracting industry through a bit of serendipity. He loved working on houses and was repairing the foundation of his parents’ house when someone called and asked him what he was doing. Thinking the caller was a friend, Craig told him. The caller turned out to be a recruiter, who set Craig up with an interview with a man Craig later found out was the recruiter’s best friend.
Craig hadn’t wanted to be an accountant, but he found being one on a construction site was much different than being one in an office, and he sees why some veterans are attracted to the construction industry.
“For the guy out on the job site, you strap up your boots, you put on your protective gear and you’re more than likely in a team environment,” he said. “You look out for your team like you do in the service and if you and your team all make it home safely, that’s a good day.”
Craig also thinks that the team mentality serves veterans well when they’re called on to manage a team — with one caveat.
“You have to treat people a little different than you do in the military,” he said.
By September 2001, Craig was out of the National Guard, but the terrorist attacks prompted him to reenlist. He was assigned to a finance unit and, during his stint in Iraq from New Year’s Eve 2004 through late October 2005, was involved with the distribution of $42 million in cash used to pay Iraqi contractors for work and supplies, as well as to compensate Iraqis for property destruction and civilian casualties.
“We were responsible for all the payments of the reconstruction of southern Iraq,” Craig said. “We would drive and fly with quite a bit of cash.”
When Craig returned to the U.S., he thought about becoming a police officer, but after taking and doing quite well on a police aptitude test, he decided to stay in the construction industry. He did so, however, with a different attitude.
One aspect of that is that he no longer lets little things bother him. But there’s something bigger as well.
“The way I see it,” he said, “is that there are two sides to someone who’s served — a civilian side and a service side that’s always ready to take on a challenge.”
Craig has earned an MBA from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and now serves as a vice president of the board of directors of the New Hampshire chapter of the Construction Financial Management Association. He joined JM Electrical a year-and-a-half ago after meeting with its CEO, Matthew Guarracino, whom he had connected with earlier in his career.
“The reputation that this company has in the construction industry is second to none,” Craig said. “It’s a family-run company — great people and once people get in, they usually don’t leave. That was the type of company I was looking for for a very long time.”