USD Magazine Summer 2014

To weave a safety net for the enlisted Back on USD’s campus recently, Tony Teravainen ’12 (MSEL) was considering his options. He had a solid job, two opportunities for increased pay, and one for a pay cut.

“I was on the same balcony where I stood when I was in the graduate program, looking out over Mission Bay, dreaming about how I was going to change the world,” he remembers.

Teravainen opted for the pay cut. As the chairman and chief executive officer of Support the Enlisted Project, he is leading the nonprofit through the labyrinth of a reorganization, rebranding and restructuring after separating from its national group. The work — providing emergency financial grants to qualified enlisted or recently discharged service members — touches his heart. “I’ve seen the need. I’ve lived it. I understand it,” says Teravainen, who was raised in an enlisted family and served in the Navy himself. He witnessed the second jobs, the long absences and the financial emergencies that turned struggle to crisis overnight. With an elite four-star rating from Charity Naviga- tor, STEP serves an average of 60 Southern California families each month with a combined $45,000 in worry-free grants. So, what about that decision back at USD? “I’ve worked in front of nuclear power panels on submarines, but this is the most responsibility I’ve had,” he says. “How could I not do it?” — Trisha J. Ratledge [www.stepsocal.org]

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USD MAGAZINE