Frankie Beauchamp: ‘All veterans transitioning out of the military need to know about MSSA’
Shortly after completing his job interview, Frankie Beauchamp caught an unmistakable vibe: He just might have an edge for the role he badly wanted to land.
The job was with cloud services company Atmosera. It perfectly matched the type of tech career that Beauchamp, a retired Marine, had dreamed about when he’d graduated months earlier from the Microsoft Software and Systems Academy (MSSA). It would allow him to work in a new world, pursuing a new civilian mission.
But after the formal interview, Beauchamp, now 37, remained unsure about his chances – until the conversation shifted. The interviewer, a director at Atmosera, began telling him about a favorable trend he’d seen inside the company.
“You know, I’ve worked with a couple of MSSA guys,” Beachamp recalls the interviewer saying. “I’ll tell you what: Give you guys a couple of years and you’re going to be the most knowledgeable ones on any team.
“Even when they come here with no career background in tech, I’ve seen MSSA guys skyrocket over everyone around them,” the interviewer added. “It’s because of the hunger that veterans have – their desire to continue to learn, to not be stagnant, to not be complacent.”
Beauchamp thought to himself: “He’s describing how I like to work.”
That interview was on a Monday. He accepted the job on Friday.
Today, he’s a cloud support technician at Atmosera, working remotely from his home in South Florida. He’s responsible for monitoring cloud systems, aiding with compliance, supporting clients in their cloud migrations and implementing the latest Microsoft solutions.
Now two years after his hiring, he remains certain that MSSA’s reputation helped him lock up the job. During the 17-week remote program, he leveraged the Server and Cloud Administration learning path to focus on becoming a system operator who can install, configure, manage and support IT resources on premises, in the cloud or in a hybrid environment.
“Before I enrolled in the program, I felt that MSSA would get me more hands-on experience (versus college tech courses),” Beauchamp says. “MSSA would show me how the job would be in daily life. I also could connect with a lot of veterans in tech and learn from the best.
“But what MSSA definitely did was take the burden off of me – the burden I’d initially felt of going into tech with no real-world tech experience.”
He graduated from MSSA in 2022. It marked the first time that Beauchamp could see a clear career path. In 2009, he medically discharged from the Marines as a lance corporal with a shoulder damaged during military training and a murky plan on what to do next.
Of course, when he was wearing the uniform, each day’s plan was quite clear.
He served with the Marines’ security forces, which protect vital national assets and strategic weapons. Beauchamp helped guard Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in coastal Georgia, just north of the Florida border.
Kings Bay serves as home port for the U.S. Atlantic nuclear sub fleet. Many of the men and women working at the base maintain those vessels and their nuclear missiles. The base spans 16,000 acres.
“We did either roving sweeps or stagnant post duties where the subs come in, making sure nothing happened or that no one else tried to come in,” Beauchamp says.
His team often performed foot patrols at the base, climbing huge berms in full pack amid the swampy Georgia heat.
After Beauchamp left the Marine Corps, his adjustment to civilian life also seemed, at times, like an uphill climb.
“One of the hardest things, when you do transition out (of the military), is figuring out how to find your way,” Beauchamp says.
Case in point: After exiting the Marines, he was initially paying out of pocket for his medical bills – including treatments on his injured shoulder. But Beauchamp had received a disability rating from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. And had he instead gone to a VA medical center, his care likely would have been free. He just didn’t know.
“It’s hard unless you belong to a good (veterans) organization or can connect with some veterans who have been through all that, who know the things that matter,” Beauchamp says.
He then spent more than a decade of civilian life taking college courses, earning degrees in IT, supervision and management and more. He also accepted and ultimately left several jobs – like firearms instructor and banker – that never felt like long-term options to him.
To Beauchamp, tech seemed to be much more than an option. It seemed like the answer.
“I needed an industry where I could stay relevant, where I could still have a good job in 20 to 30 years,” Beauchamp says. “Tech is always evolving. And I could keep learning.”
In 2021, he began his quest to join a tech-first, veteran-ready program that would help him step into that world.
“One day, I was just randomly searching the internet. I discovered that Microsoft had the exact kind of program I was looking for. I knew I had to attend,” Beauchamp says. He soon applied to and was accepted by MSSA.
“Educationally, it is by far the best program I’ve ever attended. I can’t imagine another set of classes that would come as close to offering the same level of information,” he adds. “All veterans transitioning out of the military need to know about MSSA.”