Meet John Gervais: Retired Military Officer, Author & Transition Strategist

Retired Lieutenant Colonel. U.S. Army Veteran with 20+ Years of Service. Author. Project Management Professional. Military Transition Coach.

Bio Opening

The Security Office Moment That Changed Everything

August 2016. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A routine Tuesday morning at the beginning of a new military assignment.
Lieutenant Colonel John Gervais was waiting in the base security office to process his entry badge — a formality he’d navigated dozens of times across sixteen years of military service. Across the room sat another Army Major. Same rank. Same branch. But this officer carried the particular weight of someone who had just received a verdict.
John made small talk. The Major’s response was matter-of-fact: “I was a non-select for Lieutenant Colonel. I’m retiring in a few weeks.” When John asked about his plans, the Major shrugged: “I don’t really have anything lined up. But I’m sure something will come up.”
That casual certainty about a completely uncertain future didn’t comfort John. It alarmed him. Because he was a Major too — and in that moment, he realized he was on the exact same trajectory without realizing it. The military had provided everything: a paycheck every two weeks, housing, healthcare, structure, validated decisions, annual performance reviews, a clear chain of command, and a built-in professional identity. On the day you retire, all of that disappears simultaneously.

The Research Years

What the Military Transition Market Gets Wrong

Over the following years, John did what his military training had prepared him to do: he planned. He enrolled in the Army Transition Assistance Program (TAP). He read every military transition book available — from What Color Is Your Parachute to Mission Transition. He attended General Officer retirement seminars. He watched online workshops. He hired a professional military transition coach.

What he found everywhere he looked was the same fundamental gap: resources that told you what to do, but not how to do it. Checklists that treated your transition as a series of independent tasks, when in reality military-to-civilian transition is a deeply interdependent system where your financial situation affects your job options, your job options affect your timeline, your timeline affects your VA disability filing, and your disability filing affects your financial plan.

More critically, none of these resources addressed what John recognized as the central challenge of military retirement: the identity crisis. For twenty years, your professional identity — your rank, your unit, your chain of command, your performance reviews — is assigned to you by the institution. The day you take off the uniform, that assignment ends. And no checklist tells you how to rebuild who you are when the institution stops defining you.

The Campaign Plan Breakthrough

Applying Military Planning Methodology to Personal Transformation

Eighteen months before his planned retirement date, John made the connection that changed everything. He had spent his entire career using campaign planning methodology to organize complex, multi-faceted military problems. A campaign plan forces you to be honest about where you are, clear about where you want to be, and strategic about the key lines of effort required to bridge that gap.

He applied that methodology to his own transition — and it worked. Not because it was a clever idea, but because it addressed the actual complexity of what military-to-civilian transition involves: five interdependent lines of effort (Military Requirements, Financial Reality, Employment Strategy, Professional Brand and Networking, and Identity Reconstruction) that have to be sequenced correctly and understood as a system, not a list.

That framework became The Campaign of Your Life — the military officer transition guide John spent two years writing and refining.

Today

Author, Coach, and Military Transition Community Builder

John Gervais is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with over 20 years of active service. He currently works as a Project Management professional in Missouri, where he applies the same disciplined planning instincts that defined his military career to operational leadership in the civilian sector.

His mission with authorjohngervais.com is straightforward: to ensure that no military officer walks into civilian life the way that Major walked out of the security office — without a plan, without clarity, and without a sense of self. Through his book, his articles, and his one-on-one consultation sessions, John is building the community and the resources that the military transition market has been missing.

Service, Experience & Credentials

  • 20+ Years of Active U.S. Army Service
  • Retired Lieutenant Colonel (O-5)
  • Project Management Professional — Manufacturing Sector
  • Author: The Campaign of Your Life (Military Transition Strategy Guide)
  • Military Transition Coach — serving commissioned officers across the United States
  • Veteran of multiple command assignments, duty stations, and leadership roles

Ready to Build Your Military Transition Campaign Plan?

Whether you’re 24 months out from retirement or counting down your final weeks, the best time to build your transition strategy is now. John offers free 30-minute consultations for military officers who are serious about getting this right.

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