By Nancy Colasurdo
Back in high school, Dan Goldenberg had three goals: row on the Olympic crew team, become a pilot, become an aerospace engineer.
“I got cut from the crew team,” Goldenberg says with a laugh in our recent interview. “My eyes were too bad [to fly], and my calculus grades were too bad to be an engineer.”
Bye, bye, goals. Well, at least those three.
Goldenberg, executive director of the Call of Duty Endowment and a commander in the Navy reserve, found his way with some others. A self-described “awful” student in middle school, he was later impressed with the Air Force Academy cadets he met at a Boy Scouts Jamboree.
“A switch flipped,” he says. “At that point, I became all about setting goals. I was determined to become a military officer on my way to becoming an astronaut.”
As an adult, he still sets goals. After nine years of active duty in the Navy, a stop at Harvard Business School, and more than a decade of business experience, he now pulls it all together running a non-profit for a company known all too well to over 30 million gamers – Activision Blizzard or the creators of Call of Duty, a team-building and strategic game.
The Call of Duty Endowment lists this as its mission: Raising awareness of veterans’ employment challenges and supporting groups that assist them in finding high quality careers. What it does is use what it calls a “venture philanthropy approach.” It funds organizations that “demonstrate effective and cost-efficient” veteran job placement.
In fact, this seed was already planted in Goldenberg when he was still on active duty (1992-2001), getting more senior, and sending his sailors to Afghanistan and Iraq. He began to help them get jobs.
“It was personally the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my life,” he says. “If they have a job, they have self-respect, family stability and access to health care.”
It became the core of his calling. Upon taking his current position at the Call of Duty Endowment in 2013, he knew one of his goals had to be to bring a business perspective to a social problem.
“There’s a bewildering landscape of non-profits, 47,000 charities devoted to helping veterans,” Goldenberg says. “They’re incredibly well-intended, but few are well run.”
Enter the process-oriented guy with a business background. One with a powerful network. A national epidemic of under-employment would add to his challenge. But here’s what he knew about goals – they have to be ambitious. Realistic with a stretch. So here it is – 25,000 job placements by 2018. It’s right there on the website.
“As of yesterday, we passed 14,000 placements,” Goldenberg says. “When we set the goal, there were only 800 placements.”
But let’s be clear. Goldenberg is seeking to help post-9/11 veterans find meaningful work. Emphasis on meaningful. He doesn’t just live riveted to goals, he lives riveted to doing them right.
“Down the road, is the vet still in the job?” he says. “This is not just about checking boxes.”
His own path after leaving active duty is tinged with irony. He was working at the Pentagon, his last day coming on August 11, 2001. He had decided to go to Harvard Business School as a transition vehicle.
“It was a pre-9/11 world,” Goldenberg says. “If I was looking at staying in the Navy, I would have spent the next nine years at sea. It wasn’t a fit for our lifestyle. [My wife and I] had a kid. There was not much going on in the world militarily.”
One month later, everything changed.
“My brothers and sisters have been hit,” he says of his mindset after the September 11th terrorist attacks. “That’s why I’m in the reserves. I love the people, the collective purpose of what we do.”
With one foot in the military he set out to put the other in the commercial world. He also endeavored to learn the language of business. On his first day of classes at Harvard, he heard the philosophy ‘soft hearted and tough minded’ and it resonated.
“I’m an experiential learner,” he says. “I learn by story. The entire curriculum is case based. You do something like 500 cases. You’re taught through case studies. They’re set up as problems. This protagonist has a problem, propose a solution. That worked for me. I can’t do lectures.”
He used his newly acquired knowledge working in the business community – learning what works and what doesn’t — for more than 10 years before seeking something more meaningful and joining the Call of Duty Endowment. Wondering how to harness all the energy of the millions playing the video game, the Endowment is conducting a campaign where participants who contribute $5 or more will get the chance to be a zombie in the latest iteration of the game.
“It is a cool promo,” Goldenberg says. “It is to get people involved. Like J.J. Abrams and [Star Wars: Force for Change] did with a walk-on role [as a prize]. The link to causes greatly appeals to the millennial generation.”
As a way to distinguish the best organizations that connect jobs and veterans, the Endowment bestows a Seal of Distinction upon them. Goldenberg sees the value of putting a name to it. He is quick to distribute credit for the Endowment's success, not just to those organizations but to employees within Activision whom he corrals into helping out.
“Goals are very catalyzing for employees,” he says. “The company funds our efforts, but I also have to rely on the kindness of strangers (in-house). It helps to regularly revisit our goals.”
Goldenberg finds he’s consistently amazed that there’s not more “cross-pollination” between the non-profit world and the business world. He believes when funders get involved in philanthropy they should be active and concerned investors rather than hands off. He has found a natural home in that space.
“The military tends to attract idealistic people,” he says with a laugh. “Obviously I’m not an astronaut.”
But there are always new goals … get those check marks ready.
