For Terry Slatic, serving his country as a U.S. Marine in Iraq at age 48 was training in leadership and communication that he couldn’t have gotten anywhere else

Terry Slatic eats challenges for breakfast. And he firmly believes that each one of them - whether it’s selling products for Sogeval Laboratories (which he does now) or serving as a captain in a U.S. Marine Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in Iraq at age 48 (which he just did) makes him more valuable to his family, his employer and his country.

Slatic was born in Queens, New York, in February 1960. His dad was a corrosion engineer whose job took him - and hence, his family - around the country and indeed, the world. It gave young Slatic a world view for which he is grateful today.

A successful center on his high school’s football team in Southern California, Slatic was recruited by several colleges, including Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he accepted a full football scholarship. He was attracted to the small college-town environment, which lay on the front range of the Rockies.

Duty on the meat squad
But his first year at Colorado State was a far cry from the serenity of the snow-covered mountains. A redshirt year, Slatic was part of what was affectionately known as the “meat squad,” so named because they were consistently getting ground up by the varsity team. That’s because the redshirts’ job was to study film of the upcoming weekend’s opponents, re-create their plays and then face off against the first string Fort Collins’ seniors in scrimmage. Slatic had the distinct “honor” of playing offense against Fort Collins defensive end Mike Bell, a first-round National Football League draft choice who would play 12 years with the Kansas City Chiefs.

“You’re trying to give your defensive guys the best possible look at what they’ll see that Saturday,” he says. “It was great character-building. But you have an issue staying motivated and healthy. You’re at the low end of the food chain, and you do get beat up. Their philosophy was, you have all offseason to heal.”

Beirut bombing
Following graduation in August 1983, he planned to join the military. His first choice was a slot in the Navy’s Officer Candidate School. But the process was slow. Then, in October of that year, 241 Marines and Sailors were killed by a terrorist bomb in Beirut, Lebanon. “I thought that the global war on terrorism had begun,” he says. He wanted to be part of that fight.
“I walked down to the Marine recruiting office in Fullerton [Calif.], and told them I’d love to learn more about it.” The Marines were known as the “first ones in and the last ones out,” he says, and that was appealing to him. He also knew that the Marines were happy to get former college athletes. “It’s part of the leadership fundamental that Marines are known for,” he says. He got a slot in Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Va., and reported for duty in May 1984.

Training to be an officer in the Marines is, in essence, an extreme leadership school. The first 13 weeks of OCS is followed by what’s called The Basic School, a 26-week course in which newly commissioned officers are sent to learn what the Marines call the “art and science” of being an officer in the Marines. Following The Basic School, or TBS, Slatic went to IOC, or Infantry Officers Course, where he learned the fundamentals of combat leadership, weapons systems, etc. The whole training process takes about a year.

Rifle platoon commander
Following that first year, he was assigned as a rifle platoon commander in the 2nd Battalion 8th Marines, or 2/8 for short, with responsibility for 30 to 35 young privates, corporals and sergeants. The 2/8 had seen action in the 1983 invasion of Grenada, and had also been sent to Beirut to replace 1/8, the unit that had suffered so many casualties. “So in my first rifle platoon were all these 20-year-old corporals, some of whom had received Bronze Stars,” recalls Slatic. “It was humbling.” It was also a valuable leadership lesson. “A good lieutenant doesn’t go in thinking he has all the answers,” he says.

After an overseas deployment, Slatic was assigned to what was then the Marine Corps’ newest unit and what is now referred to as a Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, which specializes in the operation of fast, wheeled, armored vehicles. The main vehicle used was the LAV-25, an eight-wheeled, amphibious armored personnel carrier so named because of the 25mm cannon it carries. It was to be of prime importance in desert warfare operations, such as Desert Storm in 1991.
Slatic stayed in the Marines for four years, until 1988. “I went in to serve in what I thought was the beginning of the Global War on Terror,” he says. “Then peace broke out.” The peacetime aspects of military service didn’t appeal to him. “The attraction to me was leading troops.”

So he went on the interview circuit. Turns out a lot of employers seek junior military officers, or JMOs, because of their leadership skills, resourcefulness and discipline. In fact, a cottage industry of JMO recruiters has cropped up. One of those JMO recruiters got Slatic an interview with Abbott Laboratories’ Diagnostics Division, with whom he ultimately accepted a sales position.

Learning to be credible
In an odd way, Abbott Diagnostics was kind of like the Marines. For one thing, of the 20 people in his class, five were right out of the military. “We used to joke that Abbott could have its own paramilitary force,” he says. For six months, the young “recruits” were immersed in graduate-level training in relevant sciences, such as microbiology and chemistry, as well as selling skills. “Your customer is the pathologist, biomedical analyst or chief medical technologist in a large hospital,” he says. “Abbott’s big point - which I still adhere to today - was, you have to be credible with such people and that there is no substitute for technical competence.”
The training, delivered on Abbott’s campus north of Chicago, was arduous. “The Abbott model is, you train the crap out of people so they know their stuff forward, backward and sideways. You prepare your people for success. The analogy to Marines Corps OCS is extremely solid.”

Turn to the veterinary world
Abbott “deployed” Slatic to Chico, Calif., and later promoted him to be the senior person in the company’s Fresno, Calif., office. But in December 1991, he followed another lead - another challenge - into the veterinary industry. He joined IDEXX, which at the time was a young but growing company. The company had just bought a Swiss diagnostics firm called VetTest and needed highly trained diagnostics salespeople. Slatic was hired as IDEXX’s 211th employee.

Like Abbott, IDEXX was an intense experience. “They worked your tail off and you were well-compensated for being successful,” says Slatic. But the challenge and the effort needed to be successful were worthwhile, he says. “I learned everything about the vet industry.”
He had worked for IDEXX for seven years when he got a call from a friend who had left IDEXX to join a small biopharmaceutical company called Biopure. The company was working on a promising technology for hemoglobin-based oxygen-carrying fluid, or artificial blood.
The position suited Slatic well. “I have always liked the technical aspects of sales,” he says. And there were plenty of technical aspects to talk about with Oxyglobin®, Biopure’s product. “I enjoy the interaction with people, and I’m told that I’m fun to hang around with. But there are a bunch of other guys who are good at that. Being technically credible has been my forte since Day One.” At Biopure, he also had the opportunity to help design the company’s sales model and marketing campaign.

Developing a new pharmaceutical, or technology such as artificial blood, is hugely expensive, notes Slatic. It’s not unusual for a pharmaceutical company to spend $800 million to get a drug approved for human use through the FDA. Though Biopure was able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, to this day it still hasn’t received FDA clearance to market its product for human use. It has, however, received USDA and European Commission clearance to market Oxyglobin for veterinary use. (It is indicated for the treatment of canine anemia regardless of cause.)

After six years with Biopure, Slatic left the company to join VCA Antech, with responsibility primarily for marketing the company’s diagnostics services. He stayed for two years, leaving in 2006.

Back to the Marines at 46
But before he left, Slatic, who was 46 at the time, made a huge decision - to request reappointment in the Marine Corps. “I said to my wife, ‘If we don’t fight the global war on terror 11 time zones away, we’ll be fighting it here,’” he explains. “‘This is how I can do everything I can to keep my children safe.’” (He and his wife, Kim, have four children, who are now ages 8, 9, 12 and 13.) “Am I going to tell you there wasn’t a tear or two? I won’t tell you that at all. But my wife - who had been my girlfriend when I had previously served - knew it was important for me to know I was doing everything I could to keep my family safe.”

Had he tried to rejoin just a year or two before, he would have been summarily rejected, because the Marines had a policy that if a Marine had been discharged for more than seven years or was over 35 years old, he or she could not come back. But the Marines knew they were gearing up for what would be known as “the surge” in Iraq, and they needed to increase their numbers. Consequently, they let it be known that they would make waivers to the long-standing policy on a case-by-case basis.

Even so, it was quite a process for the 46-year-old Slatic to be re-appointed. Physically, he was in great shape. Even so, recruiters were reluctant to pay for the exhaustive physical required on a guy his age. But Slatic found a sponsor, a arine Corps major who had an opening in his Light Armored Reconnaissance unit. “It was a perfect fit for me,” he says. Slatic passed the physical and in June 2006 was once again sworn in. By then, he had accepted a position with Sogeval.

Two weeks after his first reserve duty weekend in Riverton, Utah, Slatic was shipped out to Pearl Harbor for several weeks of shipboard life and to practice beach landings and other war games. He returned to Fresno and began doing reserve duty one weekend a month. Then in January 2007, he got the call letting him know that his unit was in the premobilization or predeployment “pipeline” for Iraq. “I told my wife that I could use my leadership skills to help ensure that the best possible outcome came of this deployment, and that as many of the young men as possible under my command would come home alive. That was my give-back to our country.” He celebrated his 48th birthday in Iraq in February 2008.

Yes, there were some remarks about the silver-haired captain. “If someone from another unit would see me and ask, ‘Who’s the really old captain?’ some of my troops would joke, ‘He was a lieutenant colonel … until the war crimes trial,’” he says. His commanding officer in Iraq - a major - was 34, and that person’s commanding officer - a lieutenant colonel - was 41.

Valuable lessons in communication
Slatic served as XO, or executive officer, of his company. That meant he was second in command, akin to a chief operating officer in the civilian world. “The commander comes up with a plan, and my job is to make sure his intent is carried out,” he explains. “That means I am talking to a hundred people a day, asking thousands of questions and holding people accountable for their answers. The ability to be involved in thousands of decisions, many of them life-and-death, every week during combat deployment is something you won’t experience in the private sector. It’s decision-making training, and it makes you a better problem-solver. It’s like a damned MBA.”
It was on those missions in Iraq that Slatic learned some valuable leadership lessons, which he has brought home with him. “Leadership to me is ensuring that the lance corporal (a very junior rank) understands everything that he needs to know for a mission,” he explains. “It’s communication like we don’t see in the corporate world.” A platoon of 50 or so Marines might go out on a typical mission. “The lowest guy on the food chain knows everything I know on that mission - every radio frequency, where the medical guys are, every contingency. The communication is pushed, proactive, comprehensive. That’s opposed to the corporate world, where people tend to compartmentalize things.

“I’m a firm believer that any corporate mission, just like any military mission, can be enhanced by getting different points of view from people up and down the food chain. That lance corporal needs to know why he’s kicking in that door. And smart leaders know that they can get some great ideas from the people in the trenches.”

“I have absolutely made it my life’s mission to help in every way possible every veterinary clinic and distributor optimize communication, because there are so many different people who can help you do what you want to do, and create a win-win situation, if they’re in tune with you.”

Stephen J. Ettinger, DVM, DACVIM, DACVIM, and editor of Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine, who has known Slatic for more than a decade, observes: “Most employers would, unfortunately, look at having an employee gone for a year, leading men in Iraq, as a total negative, due to the short-term loss of productivity. [They seldom appreciate] that they will be getting back one who has acquired - at an accelerated level - leadership and problem-solving skills that would probably take a decade or more to acquire in the corporate world.”

Of all his accomplishments in Iraq, though, Slatic - who was promoted to Major upon his return - is most proud that he brought all of his 185 Marines and Sailors home safely. His most harrowing day was March 1, 2008, when one of his guys - a gunner in the turret of a vehicle - got hit in the neck. Luckily, the fragment missed everything important. “It was touch and go for awhile,” he says. “But the Marine survived and chose to return to Iraq with another unit after several months of recovery.
“It was a day I will never forget.”