{"id":132705,"date":"2022-11-08T09:10:03","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T14:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=132705"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:32:29","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T19:32:29","slug":"dbj-military-vet-uses-wright-state-business-education-in-his-leadership-role-with-sinise-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2022\/11\/08\/dbj-military-vet-uses-wright-state-business-education-in-his-leadership-role-with-sinise-foundation\/","title":{"rendered":"Dayton Business Journal: Military vet uses Wright State business education in his leadership role with Sinise Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_121387\" style=\"width: 470px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-121387\" class=\"size-large wp-image-121387\" src=\"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/files\/2022\/03\/Mike-Thirtle-and-Gary-Sinese-1-508x417.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"378\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-121387\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wright State alumnus Mike\u00a0Thirtle\u00a0and Gary Sinise on the bench in Savannah, Georgia, where Tom Hanks sat in the filming of &#8220;Forrest Gump.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">As a full-time military officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Mike Thirtle had little free time to take night classes at Wright State University. But he made time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">That determination turned into two business master\u2019s degrees from the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/business.wright.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Raj Soin College of Business<\/a>, a career advising senior military and national security officials, and is 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<aside class=\"inset inset--major\">\n<div id=\"cxense_in_content_link\"><span style=\"font-size: 16px\">Sinise is an actor, musician and humanitarian, perhaps best known for his role in the movie \u201cForrest Gump.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">\u201cI am charged with ensuring that we are supporting veterans, first responders and their families,\u201d said Thirtle, chief executive officer of the foundation. \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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">Thirtle grew up in suburban Chicago. His father was a U.S. Army veteran serving during the Korean War.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">While stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base following his graduation from the Air Force Academy, Thirtle enrolled at Wright State where he took his first finance course.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">\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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">Thirtle worked toward earning his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/business.wright.edu\/master-of-business-administration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Master of Business Administration<\/a>\u00a0with a concentration in finance for two years and then his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/business.wright.edu\/economics\/master-of-science-in-social-and-applied-economics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">master\u2019s in social and applied economics<\/a>\u00a0the third year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">He said the highlight of his time at Wright State was the learning environment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">\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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">Thirtle said his classes sparked his desire to learn more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">\u201cI learned a ton at Wright State and had the opportunity to apply what I was learning literally every day at work. It was this combination of learning and doing and repeating that cycle of learn-do that really enhanced my knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">\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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">Thirtle 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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">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<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">\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<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">When Thirtle was in the Air Force Reserve, he taught as adjunct faculty for about 15 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__segment combx meterwall__content\">\u201cI loved teaching and relearning the material that I had learned at Wright State and in my Ph.D. program. It 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<p>View the original story at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/dayton\/news\/2022\/11\/07\/military-vet-uses-wright-state-business-education.html?ana=RSS&amp;s=article_search\">bizjournals.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a full-time military officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Mike Thirtle had little free time to take night classes at Wright State University. But he made time. <a href=\"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2022\/11\/08\/dbj-military-vet-uses-wright-state-business-education-in-his-leadership-role-with-sinise-foundation\/\" class=\"morelink\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132705","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=132705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145064,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132705\/revisions\/145064"}],"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=132705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}