Veterans Day Spotlight: Tony Shepherd

The son of a high school principal and a registered nurse, Brigadier General Tony Shepherd was first introduced to a life of military service when he watched soldiers return from a long march at just five years old in his home of British Guyana. As he grew older, he knew he wanted to join the American Army as he heard stories of victories and their longtime roles as defenders and protectors.

Upon immigrating to America at age 20, Tony earned his associate degree in electronic engineering from Montgomery County Community College and enlisted in the Army. There he began his military career with the Army Reserve in Philadelphia and completed his basic training at Fort Knox in Kentucky. Sending letters to both the Oklahoma and Arkansas National Guards, he received a response from both, but it was the two-page handwritten letter sent to him from Arkansas that persuaded him to join the Arkansas National Guard where he has continued to advance and climb the ranks throughout his 31-year military career.

Tony served two tours in Iraq and currently oversees 6,700 individuals as the first Black commanding general in Arkansas National Guard history. As part of his historic promotion last summer, Tony reached yet another milestone toward a longtime goal of promoting diversity among the ranks in Arkansas.

Alongside his time in both the Army and Arkansas National Guard, Tony served as the CEO for Choice Communications in the Virgin Islands before serving as a Director of Operations at ALLTEL and Verizon and later joining PODS in 2018. At PODS, Tony is currently the Southeast Regional Vice President, having previously served as RVP for the West region.

“I’ve been fortunate throughout my entire civilian career to have had supervisors and leaders who honor and respect good military service,” Tony said. “That has been true here at PODS. Our leaders allow me the latitude and the grace to perform service-related activities and then come back to have my purpose here at PODS. We should not take this for granted – I am thankful that PODS maintains our jobs while we are deployed.”

Growth is not a solo journey. “We can’t do this alone. There is no place where someone like me can go from being a private to a general by themselves,” Tony said. “It came from good mentorship, it came from good support, and it came from people who recognize that giving someone like me an opportunity will inspire others to want to serve their country as well. So thank you to the people at PODS and thank you to all of those people in my life who are full supporters of this, because I couldn’t have done it by myself.”