• Gene Simmons surprises vet with dream job: KISS roadie!

    Back in March, rock band KISS announced they wanted to offer a roadie job to a deserving U.S. veteran for their upcoming tour with Motley Crue. After receiving over 1900 applications for the job, Gene Simmons reveals the winner.

    By Julieanne Smolinski

    Back in March, NBC News teamed up with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to launch Hiring Our Heroes, an initiative  to get veterans back into the workforce. Among the many organizations to step forward and pledge to hire vets and military spouses was the rock back KISS.

    KISS's job opening was for a roadie to work their upcoming summer tour with Motley Crue, and more than 1,900 hopefuls applied. And this morning on the plaza, The Demon himself, Gene Simmons was on hand to give veteran Paul Jordan a big surprise: He had been chosen to the new KISS roadie!

    Paul has logged in over 27 years of military service, and served three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has had even more service as a veteran in the KISS Army (with a tattoo of Simmons to prove it), having been a rabid fan of the band since he was 4. So when Simmons told him on-air that the coveted job was his, Paul was ecstatic – particularly since he'd been looking for work for a year and a half.

    "Since I retired, I've had a really hard time trying to find a find a job," Paul told the TODAY anchors. "It's tough for veterans out there sometimes." He called the KISS roadie job a "dream come true. I've always wanted to be involved with KISS somehow ... This is incredible!"

    Simmons, whose reality series "Gene Simmons Family Jewels" is starting a new season, said that hiring veterans "is the most important thing that we can do," and warned: "If you don't give him a round of applause right now, I'm going to find out where you live."

    More from Hiring our Heroes:
    Young veterans share their skills, dreams
    Capital One, Comcast pledge to hire vets
    Comcast and NBC Universal will hire 1,000 veterans 
    Hiring our Heroes 'unlocks the potential' of vets 
    Jill Biden: Veterans will 'get the job done' 
    Bloomberg: NYC is committed to hiring veterans

    For more on Hiring our Heroes, an initiative from NBC News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that aims to get veterans back into the workforce, click here. For details on the more than 400 job fairs being held across the country throughout the year, click here.

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  • Entertainment industry unites around 'Got Your 6' to help veterans return to civilian life

    With combat operations beginning to wind down, more than 1 million veterans will be returning to their communities, looking to reclaim their lives and livelihoods. A new campaign wants to help returning veterans and their families. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    By Joe Myxter, NBC News

    In an effort to show support to veterans returning to civilian life, a new campaign, called “Got Your 6,” was launched Thursday by heavy hitters across the entertainment industry, including actors, newscasters, broadcast and cable news networks, studios and talent agencies.

    “On behalf of the entire entertainment industry, we are proud to be engaging with our veterans through the Got Your 6 Campaign,” Ron Meyer, president and chief operating officer of Universal Studios and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, said in a statement. “Together, we are uniting to bring awareness to this incredibly important issue of bringing our country’s trained leaders home to be a valued part of our communities across the nation.”

    (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

    The campaign focuses on six pillars -- jobs, education, health, housing, family and leadership.


    “Got your six” is a military expression meaning “I’ve got your back.”

    The campaign debuted with a public service announcement that features, among others, Alec Baldwin, Michael Douglas, Tom Hanks, Sarah Jessica Parker and Bradley Cooper.

    “Over the next five years, more than 1 million service members will return to civilian life,” said Chris Marvin, director of civilian-military partnerships for ServiceNation, a unit of the non-profit organization coordinating Got Your 6. “As we welcome this generation of veterans home, it is crucial that we view them and their families as leaders and civic assets, said Martin, a former Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot wounded in Afghanistan.

    Hollywood, the major television networks and non-profit organizations are joining forces for the campaign, "Got Your Six." Managing Director Chris Marvin joins NewsNation to discuss.

    For more information, visit the campaign’s website here.

  • Facebook launches self-harm prevention program for veterans, military families

    Rosa Golijan/msnbc.com

    By Rosa Golijan

    A bit over a year ago, Facebook launched a program which aimed to prevent suicide by enabling users to instantly connect with crisis counselors through the social network's messaging system. On Wednesday, the company announced that it will augment those (and other) suicide prevention tools by adding customized services for veterans, active duty military service members, and their families.

    Ten percent of military family members and nine percent of service members have considered suicide, according to a Military Lifestyle Survey conducted by the non-partisan, non-profit Blue Star Families. That very same survey also found that "social media use is prevalent throughout military families with over 90 percent of respondents reporting some type of use, of which 86 percent said that they were on Facebook daily."

    So it makes sense that Blue Star, a military family assistance organization, is partnering with the social network and the Department of Veterans Affairs to address these issues.

    Stephanie Himel-Nelson, director of communications for Blue Star Families, explains in a blog post that, thanks to the partnership — and the Facebook engineering team's efforts —  there is now a "customized solution that could help to identify military families and military personnel, ensuring that family members could send critical military-related counseling information to their soldiers." This information includes, among other things, ways to reach the Veterans Crisis Line, which connects veterans (and their friends and families) to qualified Department of Veterans Affairs responders via phone, online chat or text messaging.

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