STAFF

Executive Editor

Associate Editor

Chief Technology Officer

Associate Writers

BOARD

Pending

Justin Brown Executive Editor

Justin began serving our country at the age of seventeen when he enlisted in the United States Navy in June of 2000. He was assigned to the USS Boxer out of San Diego, California, where he was an aviation electronics technician working primarily on Marine aircraft. He completed one deployment in support of Operation Southern Watch and two deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was honorably discharged in May of 2004.

Immediately following Mr Brown’s military separation he became active in the veterans arena. He took a work-study position while in college with the American Legion helping veterans with their claims and advising them of available benefits. He also became active in his local VFW where he became the youngest All-American District Commander in the history of the VFW.

In Justin’s senior year of college he accepted an internship with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in Washington, D.C. Following the internship, he accepted a staff position with Congressman, and former Admiral, Joe Sestak, from Pennsylvania.

In September of 2007, Mr. Brown was appointed as the Legislative Associate for the VFW in Washington, D.C. His issues include economic opportunity, small business, education, transition, housing, homelessness, and related issues. He has testified before numerous Congressional committees and roundtables.

Justin launched The Virginia Veteran in June of 2009 in order to create a resource and informational outlet specifically for veterans of Virginia.

Mr. Brown currently resides in Gainesville, Virginia and married his college sweetheart, Brandi Stillman, in 2007. They have one daughter, Isabella Brown.

Bob Jackson Associate Editor

Robert Jackson, a native of Farmington, Michigan, was appointed to the position of Assistant Director of the VFW National Legislative Service in April, 2009. Before taking this position, he was the Assistant Director of the VFW National Security and Foreign Affairs department.

Mr. Jackson was the press secretary and communications director for Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter from July, 2003 to February, 2008. Additionally he was a political writer for the Arizona Republic, Glendale Star, Northville Record, and managing editor for a group of suburban weeklies in southeast Michigan.

Bob enlisted in the United States Navy in 1976, and was assigned to the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) first as an Airman assigned to Helicopter Squadron Eight (HS-8) and then as a Communications Specialist. He completed three deployments to the Western Pacific, his first to participate in the rescue of Vietnamese refugees, and his last in support of operations in the Arabian Sea during the failed rescue mission of the 52 American hostages in Iran. He received the Navy Expeditionary Medal, Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation Medal, Sea Service Deployment Medal, two Good Conduct Medals, and Battle Efficiency “E” ribbon. He was honorably discharged in September, 1984.

Following his service, he attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he was a founding member of the Missouri Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting. He left the University of Missouri in 1989 to work as a political reporter for the Northville Record.

Currently, Robert lives in the District of Columbia and is a Life Member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Erick L. Gonzalez, Chief Technology Officer

Erick was raised in Southern California in a small town called Hesperia, and graduated from Van Nuys High School in Van Nuys, California, where he completed a combined 3 years of Army and Air Force Junior ROTC.  A natural born patriot, he joined our nations’ military in order to “pay back” the nation that had given so much to his immigrant parents.

Erick enlisted and served with the U.S. Marines as a Navy Corpsman (medic) for over 6 years. He deployed to Iraq during the most dangerous and bloodies months of the Iraqi war. He was part of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division during the battle for Al Fallujah in April of 2004 and with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion 5th Marines during MOUT and security operations in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, the capital of Al Ambar Province, Ar Ramadi in 2005. Erick received 2 combat commendations for his action in combat.

Upon honorable discharged from the military in May of 2007, Erick created a commercial Wordpress plugin which integrated Invision Power Board with Wordpress into a single sign-on (SSO) and SaaS application. At the same time, he also started his undergraduate education for Computer Science with a strong emphasis in Enterprise and Open Source application programming and web design.

In January of 2008, Erick became increasingly involved with military veteran affairs. Having gone through a process filled with red tape, he started to look for ways to take action and be a driving force to help solve these issues through advocacy programs and veterans organizations.

In 2009, Erick worked for Oracle Corporation as part of the Business Developer and Sales Consultant group, under the guidance of the Senior Vice President for Public Sector, a retired Admiral. During this same period of time, Erick joined The Virginia Veteran and founded the NOVA Student Veterans Association.

Erick’s vision is to promote and assist the department of Veterans Affairs with social media, enterprise technologies and online applications that will improve and catalyze the VA’s visibility and veteran claim process. Erick is in charged of software implementation, information management, web and graphic design, user interface, community management and all IT for The Virginia Veteran. In addition he also blogs about technology and IT topics.

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