WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE A MANDATE?

GIBRALTAR

By the time I started Gibraltar, I had already been back in Montgomery for several years.

I had been involved with the Chamber.

Leadership Montgomery.

Community work.

People.

Programs.

I was already paying attention to what was happening around me.

Then I left the Air Force in 2015.

The uniform came off.

The formal authority went with it.

That changed the question.

What do you do when you still want to contribute, but nobody is giving you a mandate?

I started with the same thing I had always started with.

People.

What were they trying to do?

Where were they getting stuck?

What did they need?

What was already working?

And where was there a gap?

Montgomery had a lot going for it.

It also had an economy heavily connected to government and the military.

That was an enormous asset.

But I had spent enough time around technology and startups to see another possibility.

What would it look like if Montgomery had more room for that too?

I didn't have a grand strategy.

I started filling gaps.

Technical consulting.

Software.

IT support.

Advising.

Programming.

Training.

Networking.

Professional development.

Whatever helped move the thing in front of us.

It starts with people and their problems.

One of those opportunities became StartUp U.

The Chamber had an idea for a program to support entrepreneurs.

I helped turn it into something that could actually run.

A twelve-week program.

A pilot.

A proof of concept.

A room full of people trying to build something.

The important part wasn't the curriculum.

It was discovering that there was an appetite for this kind of thing.

People wanted to build.

They wanted access.

They wanted other people who understood what they were trying to do.

Gibraltar became a way to keep doing that work.

Sometimes the work was technical.

Sometimes it was strategic.

Sometimes it was simply connecting someone to the right person.

The common thread was always the same:

Find the problem.

Find the people.

Figure out what would actually help.

Then get moving.

I also started seeing Montgomery differently.

Not as a place waiting to be fixed.

As a place full of people already doing interesting things.

Business owners.

Entrepreneurs.

Educators.

Artists.

Community leaders.

People building things quietly without much attention.

The opportunity was often less about creating something from scratch and more about helping the people already doing the work find one another.

That became increasingly important to me.

I didn't need to be the person with the answer.

I needed to be useful.

Sometimes that meant building something.

Sometimes it meant making an introduction.

Sometimes it meant giving someone a place to try an idea.

Sometimes it meant staying close enough to the problem to see what was missing.

Gibraltar wasn't one big project.

It was a collection of opportunities.

A way of learning what happens when you stop waiting for someone to tell you where you fit.

You find a place.

You listen.

You help where you can.

And eventually, you start seeing what could be possible.

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