Ready for the next chapter

The 75th Ranger Regiment is one of the U.S. Army’s most elite units. That’s exactly why Jack Austin (MBA ’25) joined them.

Known as the Army Rangers, it is considered the premier light-infantry and direct-action raid force of the Army’s Special Operations Command. Its soldiers served in Asia during World War II, patrolled during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and participated in Iranian hostage rescue attempts in the early 1980s.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Rangers became a vital part of the Global War on Terror, spearheading airborne assaults in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2011, they supported the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

For seven years, the Army was Austin’s life.  He joined just months after earning a bachelor’s degree in business from Arizona State University in 2016. Before being selected to join the 75th as an infantry officer, he was part of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division which specializes in parachute assaults and can deploy anywhere out of its home base in Fort Bragg within 18 hours.

He loved it all — the limits-pushing training, the high-risk missions, the sweat and adrenaline. But as his deployment to Afghanistan wound down, Austin started thinking about what would come next.

“I will always be appreciative of the skills, the relationships and the experiences I had in the Army. I grew up a lot during that time,” he says. “Coming out of Afghanistan, I looked at everything that I set out to do in the military and all of my goals and felt like I was able to check that box and close that chapter in my life. That’s when I started laying the groundwork for my MBA. I had all these business aspirations that had been on hold. I said to myself, ‘Man, let’s just go ahead and realize some of those.’”

Joining the U.S Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment fulfilled Jack Austin’s long-held desire  to do something “bigger than myself.”

Austin doesn’t just like a challenge — he embraces it. That’s why he enrolled in the Full-Time MBA Program at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School right after his service ended and why he has a job waiting for him as a private-wealth associate at JPMorgan Chase in Atlanta. There, after moving six times in seven years, he can finally settle down with his wife, Julia, and start the family they’ve long wanted. That’s the next challenge that Austin is more than ready for.

“Here’s when some of the turbulence stops and here’s where we can start enjoying things a little bit more,” says Austin. “I’m looking forward to it because the things that I said I wanted to do, I feel like I have been able to do through the MBA Program. The ball is in my hand for the next step. I get to shape it however I want.”

After many years in the military’s heavily controlled environment, this is a new sensation he’s still getting used to. But whenever he sets a goal, he brings an unshakeable determination.

While he contemplated enlisting in the Army after high school, he instead decided to enter college at Arizona State far from the comfort and familiarity of home in Dublin, Ohio. He split his time between studying business and its ROTC program.

“Business was something that I knew I wanted to be involved in but being in the military always spoke to me loudly,” he says. “I grew up in a pretty patriotic family. I was drawn to being able to give back to my country and do something that was bigger than myself. I saw the military as a way to do that.”

Austin’s first post-MBA job is a private wealth associate at JPMorgan Chase in Atlanta. 

Transitioning out of the military is rarely easy but continuing his business education was Austin’s next mission. He also knew he wanted to start a family and be with them on his terms, something typically incompatible with a military career.

“The hard part was that I wasn’t sure what was out there or what would work best for me in business,” says Austin. “I had people in the past tell me that I could always go and do an MBA and honestly I didn’t think I knew exactly all that entailed. And when I learned about the opportunities that come with an MBA, I said, ‘OK, this is it. This is the endgame. This is what I need.’”

Austin applied to the top MBA programs in the South, where he and his wife preferred to live. UNC Kenan-Flagler was just a name with an academic reputation at first. But as Austin learned, the School and especially its MBA Programs, also have a strong reputation for supporting active duty military, veterans and their families through groups such as the UNC Kenan-Flagler Veterans Association. For the past several years, military-affiliated students have made up about 10% of the School’s overall MBA enrollment.

When it came time to make a decision, Austin reached out to students and alumni who were military veterans with two big questions: What’s the culture like and what are the people like?

“What really drew me to UNC was that I kept on hearing how collaborative everybody is and how willing they are to help one another,” he says. “That support has been instrumental for someone like me coming from something you knew for so long and into something so different and so unknown. It’s a different world, but it’s one that’s easy to walk through with so many people by your side.”

Austin quickly came into his own at UNC Kenan-Flagler. A Vetter’s Dean Fellow, he served as vice president of private wealth management in the UNC Investment Management Club and landed a summer internship with JPMorgan Chase’s private bank in Atlanta that led to a full-time job offer.

One of Austin’s fears about coming out of the military was that he would have a difficult time translating his Army work into a way that a civilian employer would understand but also appreciate. Getting a job offer was another mission accomplished.

“At UNC Kenan-Flagler, you’re going to get an absolutely incredible experience with some of the smartest people you’re ever going to meet,” says Austin. “You’re going to have the whole community behind you and they’re going to push you to help you become the best version of yourself.”