Tony Teravainen - Support The Enlisted Project

Tony Teravainen

Organization: Support The Enlisted Project (STEP)

Position: President & CEO

Tony grew up traveling the world as the middle child in his young military family with a career Air Force father.  Tony is an 8 ½ year Navy submarine veteran himself and has dedicated himself to serving the current generation of young military families. 

Tony started his nonprofit service by volunteering with this organization to lead the long term strategy development with the board of directors in 2009 and was quickly influenced to join the board.  In 2014, as the sitting Chairman of the Board, with the resignation of the sitting President, Tony became the Interim President of STEP, and in February 2014 took a formal Leave of Absence from his consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, to become the full-time President of STEP. 

Tony holds undergraduate degrees in Business Management and Nuclear Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Executive Leadership from The University of San Diego.  He holds various licenses in Six Sigma, Project Management and Change Management and holds one U.S. Patent.

Tony and his wife, Jackie, have a 10 year old daughter Grace and are expecting a baby boy on June 27.

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Program: Support The Enlisted Project (STEP)

STEP’s helps our young military and recent veteran families achieve financial self-sufficiency through financial counseling, educations and emergency grants.  In 2014, STEP assisted 820 families and granted $401,000 to bridge these families to become financially self-sufficient, with a success rate of 92%.

San Diego is home to 10% or our nation’s military.  Approximately 125,000 active duty military are stationed in San Diego County, of which 85,000 are junior enlisted, in the lower six pay grades (E1-E6).  This is the workforce of our military, and they volunteered to do the hard work necessary to protect our country.   These individuals are also some of the lowest paid workers in our country – 55,000 are low income 32,000 rely on food assistance regularly to feed their families.

The situation: Low pay, high cost of living, undeveloped financial planning skills and the other hardships of military life create situations where these families can inadvertently get themselves into a financial crisis. 

STEP cannot lower the cost of living or raise military income, but STEP can provide emergency financial counseling, education and grants to get them through their crises and help them become financially self-sufficient – so they can survive while they volunteer to protect our Nation.