March 1, 2022 – K. Graney Podcast on EBMA

PODCAST

Hi everyone; it’s Kevin. Today is Tuesday, March 1. Happy Mardi Gras! The Electric Boat Management Association (EBMA) is a great resource for our salaried employees with many opportunities for professional development and networking. Now that we’re seeing encouraging signs that life is moving more closely to normal post COVID, the EBMA will soon resume its training programs and dinner meetings, and I’m looking forward to that. Today I’m going to talk about the benefits of EBMA membership with Mark Wiggins, EBMA’s president.

So Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Kevin for giving me this opportunity to talk about the EBMA.

You and I first met back in 2019 when I came back to Electric Boat.  I had the privilege of speaking at EBMA’s “EB Night” during the first couple of weeks of my time back at Groton. I had a great time, I think we had a lot of laughs and caught up with a lot of familiar faces and I met a lot of new people that night and so really enjoyed that very much. Appreciate you being on the podcast. I understand you were a submariner; tell me a little bit about your background.

Yes, I spent 24 years with the Navy. I did 16 deployments on submarines during my career, serving on nine different submarines, four different classes of boat. It was a great time. I retired in 2006 and worked at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport for two years before coming to Electric Boat in 2008.

Thank you for your service to our country. Let’s talk about why you got involved with the EBMA.

When I joined EB back in 2008, I heard that EBMA needed a Treasurer. I had experience serving as a Treasurer for the non-profit SubVets, so I took on that role at EBMA, which is also a non-profit.  EBMA meetings were a great place to network and meet new people, including the leadership of EB. As a new employee, being an EBMA member helped me to learn about the different departments I was working in and enabled me to get up to speed faster.

I became a member of the EBMA back in 1995 when I joined the company for the first time. I joined for the same reasons you talked about. It was a great to meet people, make some connections and then navigate through your career and understand—it’s a very big company—how it works, and I used that to good effect when I had my first supervisory position back in about 1999. In fact, I received my Certified Manager Professional qualification through EBMA. As I recall, that was one of the first years EBMA offered that, so that was a great benefit to me. So let’s talk about some of the programs and the benefits EBMA provides.

As you noted, we offer our members several leadership and management development programs including the Certified Manager Professional Credential program you took part in which is conducted by John Consiglio.

Also, our monthly dinner meetings are very popular with our members, including “Corporate Night,” when a member of the General Dynamics Leadership Team is the featured speaker and “Electric Boat Night,” when the EB President speaks, as you did in 2019. Corporate Night is usually in June, and EB Night is usually in October.

Those are always great events. I enjoyed attending those over the years. So Mark, tell me what other things EBMA does.

Other events include management/leadership programs, joint EB employee association events—with WID, BEC and HSA—and free after-work management-oriented training sessions.

Also, for those who may not be familiar, we have many great programs that benefit our members and our surrounding communities, including our long-standing scholarships program and tutoring/mentorship opportunities. I encourage those listening to check out the EBMA website and additional information that will be linked in the podcast transcript.

So if you’re not a member of the EBMA, how can you join?

Joining is easy.  Go to Homeport, click “Business and Employee Support,” then “Employee Community” and we are under “Employee Organizations,” or just visit our website https://ebma.us/and click on the “Join Today” button which will take you to our member application. You just fill out and submit the short electronic form. You will become a member and a standard deduction of $2 per pay period will be withdrawn as part of the membership dues.  If you join and attend one dinner meeting, you will have gotten your money back, because we supplement each dinner meeting.

So that supplement by the EBMA is a great way to recoup the money you’re spending. But honestly $2 a pay period is a very, very small fee for a lot of value. I understand that elections are coming up for EBMA, and I encourage current members to consider applying for the open positions. It’s a great opportunity to lead a great organization. Mark, tell me which slots you are looking to fill.

This year we have five open Board of Director positions (two-year term), and the officer positions open are Secretary, Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer (two-year terms).

Thanks Mark for giving us a rundown on the EBMA, I really am looking forward to getting EBMA back up and running in a post-COVID world. I appreciate you taking the time to share the overview of EBMA. I encourage our salaried employees who are not yet members to join. Right now 2,700 people belong to the EBMA and are taking advantage of the benefits the EBMA provides. You’ll meet some great people, you’ll develop personally and professionally, and I can personally tell you that it’s been a benefit to me over my career. You have a great chance to make a difference both within EB and within our community. 

Thanks everyone; we’ll talk soon.