{"id":121371,"date":"2022-03-28T10:27:18","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T14:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=121371"},"modified":"2024-07-29T11:37:28","modified_gmt":"2024-07-29T15:37:28","slug":"mission-control-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2022\/03\/28\/mission-control-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mission control"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Wright State alumnus Mike\u00a0Thirtle\u00a0and Gary Sinise on the bench in Savannah, Georgia, where Tom Hanks sat in the filming of “Forrest Gump.”<\/p><\/div>\n

As a full-time military officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, he had little free time to take night classes at Wright State University. But Mike Thirtle made time.<\/p>\n

That determination turned into two business degrees from the Raj Soin College of Business<\/a>, a career advising senior military and national security officials, and now heading up the Gary Sinise Foundation, a nationwide cognitive health and mental wellness charity that provides care to military veterans and first responders.<\/p>\n

Sinise is an actor, musician and humanitarian, perhaps best known for his role in the movie \u201cForrest Gump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am charged with ensuring that we are supporting veterans, first responders and their families,\u201d said Thirtle, who was named chief executive officer of the foundation last July. \u201cMy goals are to grow our mission to serve more and more people every day. There is such great need out there; the need is literally endless. It\u2019s an honor and pleasure to support our nation\u2019s heroes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirtle grew up in suburban Chicago. His father was a U.S. Army veteran, serving during the Korean War. Two weeks after graduating from Wauconda High School in 1986, Thirtle began attending the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the longest and simultaneously quickest summer of my life \u2014 lots of physical activities and memorization of facts, history, etc.,\u201d he said. \u201cThe first summer was indicative of the entire four years. As we used to say at the academy: it was like \u2018sipping briskly from a fire hydrant.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirtle said the academy, where he majored in biology and engineering, was a great place to learn about academics as well as leadership, a leadership laboratory of sorts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe academy taught me how to persevere in a stressful environment and how to work with others in a variety of environments, from the chemistry lab to flying gliders to doing survival training,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base following his graduation from the academy, Thirtle enrolled at Wright State, where he took his first finance course.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always interested in learning more about the stock market, investments and how to think about finance and economics concepts,\u201d he said. \u201cThe MBA and master\u2019s degree program in economics unlocked my passion to learn more about how to think about investments, business and other ways of applying quantitative methods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirtle worked on his Master of Business Administration<\/a> with a concentration in finance for two years and then his master\u2019s in social and applied economics<\/a> the third year.<\/p>\n

He said the highlight of his time at Wright State was the learning environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not easy to work full time and be a night school student and sit in classes three nights a week at nearly three hours per night and then spend all week and weekend studying,\u201d he said. \u201cBut to be honest, it was the best thing that I could have done at that point in my life as a 23-year-old.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirtle said his classes sparked his desire to learn more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned a ton at Wright State and had the opportunity to apply what I was learning literally every day at work,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was this combination of learning and doing and repeating that cycle of learn-do that really enhanced my knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas Traynor, Ph.D., professor and dean of the Raj Soin College of Business, said Thirtle has used economic and business concepts in policy research and running organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a standout student in my forecasting class \u2014 great all-around intelligence, hard-working, open-minded and always curious,\u201d said Traynor.<\/p>\n

Thirtle left the active-duty Air Force after five years as a captain and earned his Ph.D. from the RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California. He then worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a consultant in Los Angeles and later for a consulting group in the pharma\/biotech market in Chicago.<\/p>\n

Thirtle then returned to the RAND Corporation as a full-time researcher, where he would spend the majority of his professional career at the think tank advising senior leaders in the military and in national security.<\/p>\n

Prior to joining the Gary Sinise Foundation, Thirtle served as chief executive officer of Bethesda, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit that provides housing and health care support for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome.<\/p>\n

Thirtle said Wright State prepared him for success by helping him add more tools to his analytical and professional toolbox of problem-solving.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a data-driven decision-maker and that way of thinking was what I learned in my graduate studies in the business school at Wright State,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When Thirtle was in the Air Force Reserve, he taught as adjunct faculty for about 15 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved teaching and relearning the material that I had learned at Wright State and in my Ph.D. program,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was great to work with students over the years and help them in the same way that my professors at Wright State helped me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a full-time military officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, he had little free time to take night classes at Wright State. But Mike Thirtle made time. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":121391,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,733,4299,748,4906,2060,725,2050,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-alumni-profile","category-business","category-finance-accountancy-management-information-systems-and-economics","category-graduate","category-home-news-sidebar","category-mba","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121371"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121403,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121371\/revisions\/121403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}