Designing New Pathways: How a Questrom Alum Is Building a Scalable, Research-Backed Career Accelerator for Veterans in the Cultural Sector

At a moment when long-standing career pathways for veterans are increasingly uncertain, a new model is emerging at the intersection of education, culture, and public service.

Veterans make up nearly one-third of the federal workforce, and recent federal job cuts—paired with ongoing contractions across the cultural sector—have exposed how fragile traditional transition routes can be. At the same time, America’s creative and cultural institutions are grappling with questions of equity, workforce sustainability, and leadership for the future.

The American Veteran Arts Collective (AVAC) was created in direct response to these converging realities. Founded by Fidel Gomez Torres (Questrom MBA’22), a former U.S. Navy Supply & Logistics Specialist, AVAC is reimagining how veterans and military families access leadership pathways in museums, cultural organizations, and the broader creative economy.

At the heart of the initiative is a rare interdisciplinary collaboration among Boston University, the Smithsonian Institution, and leaders across arts, health, and public service. Together, they are co-designing a research-anchored workforce accelerator that treats veteran transition not as a placement problem, but as a systems challenge—one that demands scale, rigor, and long-term impact.

Gomez’s approach is deeply shaped by his Questrom MBA experience, particularly the lessons of systems thinking and resilience that came into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. For him, leadership is not about control, but about designing ecosystems in which people, institutions, and communities can thrive—especially in moments of disruption.

As workforce systems continue to evolve and institutions reconsider how they recruit, develop, and retain talent, AVAC offers a compelling blueprint: one where social justice, cultural stewardship, and economic mobility are not competing priorities, but mutually reinforcing outcomes.

In the interview that follows, Gomez reflects on how his military service, creative-sector career, and Questrom training converged to shape AVAC’s mission; why the cultural sector is uniquely positioned to benefit from veteran leadership; and how this work advances social justice by expanding who gets to shape America’s cultural narrative.

The AVAC–BU CFR partnership introduces a powerful new model for supporting veterans’ transitions into the creative economy. What inspired you to build this initiative, and why is this moment so critical for reimagining veteran workforce pathways?

The American Veteran Arts Collective (AVAC) was born out of a very real collision of forces that I witnessed when I moved to Washington, D.C. at the start of this year. In a matter of months, the city was grappling with historic federal workforce reductions, contract cancellations, and structural changes that rippled across every sector. Because veterans make up nearly 30% of the federal civilian workforce, veterans felt those shocks first and hardest. These weren’t abstract policy shifts, they were lost livelihoods, disrupted families, and shaken identities for people who have already given so much in service to our country.

At exactly the same time, our arts and cultural institutions, places that safeguard our collective memory and tell the American story, were facing their own crises: funding cuts, leadership transitions, and severe workforce shortages. Yet here in the District, the creative economy contributes over $13.8 billion annually, accounting for more than 8 percent of local GDP, far above the national average.

I saw, in these two parallel disruptions, a once-in-a-generation opportunity. For decades, the federal government was the reliable workforce pathway for veterans. That is no longer guaranteed. It is now incumbent upon us to imagine more resilient, diversified, and future-proof career pathways for those who served.

AVAC exists at that intersection, where veteran transition, workforce stability, and cultural leadership meet. The moment is critical because the old systems are no longer sufficient. What we build now will define how an entire generation of veterans finds purpose, prosperity, and belonging in civilian life.

Your own transition from the military into creative and cultural leadership deeply informed AVAC’s design. What aspects of your service—and your personal journey—do you see reflected in this new national workforce model?

My career has been shaped by transition. In the U.S. Navy, I served as a Seabee in a construction battalion. After leaving the military, I found myself supporting a fashion executive in New York City; two worlds that appear, on the surface, to have nothing in common. And yet, it was precisely my military training, discipline, adaptability, leadership under pressure, systems thinking, that gave me an edge in the creative sector. Those skills were rare in that environment, and they became the foundation of a 15-year career in cultural leadership.

Earlier this year, when I relocated to Washington, D.C., I experienced transition all over again, this time alongside thousands of other veterans navigating shrinking federal pathways and unstable employment. At the same time, our museums and cultural institutions were wrestling with workforce shortages and questions about who will help steward the American story for the next generation.

That was the moment in which AVAC took shape. AVAC is not a program, it is a system solution. A research-backed, employer-aligned workforce model that creates real, measurable pathways for veterans into arts, culture, and the creative economy. In many ways, my own life is the proof of concept: veterans are not only capable of thriving in creative leadership, they are often uniquely equipped for it.

Veterans possess leadership, resilience, and mission-driven focus—qualities that translate strongly into creative and cultural sectors. From your perspective, what makes these fields especially meaningful and impactful career destinations for veterans?

Veterans possess some of the most mission-aligned qualities our cultural institutions need right now: leadership under pressure, entrepreneurial decision-making, teamwork across difference, and an unshakable sense of duty to something larger than themselves.

But beyond skill translation, these fields offer something deeper: meaning.

Museums, cultural organizations, and creative institutions are places where identity, memory, and national story are shaped. 

For veterans, people who have served in defense of the nation, there is profound alignment in continuing that service through cultural stewardship, education, interpretation, and community engagement.These spaces also offer what many veterans seek after service: purpose with impact, creativity with consequence, and work that heals not only the individual, but the community. The arts are not just an industry, they are a civic infrastructure. And veterans belong in its leadership.

This initiative is the result of a unique interdisciplinary collaboration among AVAC, Boston University, and the Smithsonian. How have these partnerships strengthened the model, and what role do you see higher education playing in shaping long-term solutions for veteran career mobility?

These partnerships are the reason this model has both credibility and national potential.

From Boston University’s Wheelock Center for Future Readiness, we gain the scientific foundation to ensure veterans don’t just enter the creative economy, but thrive in it. Employability science, identity development, and long-term career mobility are embedded into the architecture of AVAC.

From the Smithsonian, we gain something equally essential: institutional belonging. A pathway into the very spaces that tell America’s story. It sends a powerful signal that veterans are not just defenders of democracy, they are future cultural leaders within it. 

Together, higher education and cultural institutions form the backbone of a new workforce system, one rooted in evidence, equity, and community. Our measure of success is bold and unambiguous:

• Veterans in high-quality cultural careers.
• Cultural institutions strengthened by veteran leadership.
• And a scalable, national workforce pipeline that can be replicated across cities.

We are building more than an accelerator. We are building the next chapter of service, and higher education is the engine that makes it durable.

As a Questrom alum, how has your BU education influenced your approach to leadership, innovation, and building systems-level solutions like this one? Are there lessons or experiences from Questrom that continue to shape your work today?

As a pandemic-era MBA, I had a front-row seat to what happens when systems are stressed beyond their design limits. COVID didn’t just disrupt markets, it exposed which systems were resilient and which were brittle. That lens fundamentally shaped how I think about workforce, institutions, and community.

Questrom took the contingency planning I learned in the military and amplified it exponentially. More than anything, my BU education instilled a refusal to accept the status quo as inevitable. It taught me to question assumptions, design for uncertainty, and build for scale.

AVAC is not a reaction, it is a systems response shaped by that training. The frameworks of systems thinking, stakeholder alignment, and impact measurement that I refined at Questrom are now embedded into everything we build. And they continue to guide how I think about leadership, not as control, but as the design of ecosystems where people can thrive.

To learn about AVAC, or to support, please visit 

https://americanveteranarts.org 

Interview and introduction by Dee Polat, ICF-PCC, Director of Alumni Engagement at Questrom School of Business.