A 30-Year Journey That Continues a Family Legacy

In brief:

• • Jeannie Hall, senior corporate policy specialist, celebrated her 30-year anniversary with the Exchange in July
  • Her mother, a Philippines native who found a sense of belonging at the Exchange and worked here 38 years, is an inspiration
  • Her father and her in-laws also worked for the Exchange—and her husband still does

One in a series honoring the Exchange’s 131 years of family serving family.

Who she is: Jeannie Hall, senior corporate policy specialist, Exchange Policy, HQ

Years with the Exchange: She hit the 30-year service mark in July.

Military connections: Hall’s father served 20 years in the Coast Guard.

Exchange connections: Hall’s mother, Estela Abulencia, worked at the Exchange for 38 years, starting in Human Resources at the Puerto Rico Exchange and retiring from the Finance and Accounting Directorate at HQ in 2012.

But there’s more.

“There was a point where my entire family worked for the Exchange,” Hall said. “My sister worked in the call center during the summer while she was in college. After my dad retired, he took a little break, then came to work for AAFES for a short time. He ended up finding a job at the VA hospital and retired from there with another 25 years of service.

“My husband, Jeremy Hall, works in Customer Experience. His parents, John Vandervort and Connie Vandervort, retired from the Exchange years ago. So it’s just a family affair here at the Exchange.”

Exchange memories: Hall doesn’t remember much about Puerto Rico, which her family left when she was 5. But she remembers what the Exchange meant to her mother.

“My mom came to America from the Philippines. It was very difficult for her because she was moving to a new place. My dad was serving in the Coast Guard and would be away at sea for months at a time, so she didn’t have family or an established support system nearby. The Exchange and military community became that extended family for her. It gave her a sense of belonging, connection and community while she was building a new life in a new country.”

The family left Puerto Rico in 1980, when Hall’s father was stationed in Alameda, California, near Oakland in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her mother went to work for what was then known as the Golden Gate Exchange Region, based in San Francisco. The family stayed in California through the ’80s. In 1990, her mother was offered a promotion to a headquarters position in Dallas.

“My dad was still in the service, but he decided to go ahead and retire,” Hall said. “So in 1990, he retired and we all moved to Texas.”

How she came to the Exchange: “I was a single mom at the time, going to Mountain View Community College, down the road from Exchange headquarters. I was looking for a job that had flexible hours and was close to home and school. My mom told me about the call center, which was the Deferred Payment Plan call center at the time.

“So I applied to the call center, got the job, finished my associate’s degree. They were very flexible at the call center. I worked nights, went to school during the day. And then when I completed my associate’s, I decided I wanted to pursue my bachelor’s degree. So I asked if I could switch to days and go to school at night. I pursued and earned my bachelor’s degree from Northwood University in business management while working for the Exchange.”

Later in her career, she would meet her husband at the Exchange.

“His mom also moved to headquarters in 1990. She got orders to move here from the Atlanta Distribution Center. And we moved here from California. And we joke about it because we never would have met outside of the Exchange. We don’t really hang out in the same places.

“He also started at the call center. And then one day we crossed paths, knew the same people, started hanging out. And that’s how we met.”

Her Exchange journey: Hall worked in a variety of assistant roles, including training facilitator assistant, customer service assistant and human resources assistant. In late 2000, she became executive assistant to the vice president of a region that technically no longer exists: Cyber Region.

“I worked for Bob Carreras, who was the VP at the time. We didn’t even really have the internet. We were essentially using an old email system.”

She went from there to Finance & Accounting, where she worked in a variety of positions for about five years before joining the Chief of Staff Administrative Branch as a vehicle fleet management specialist and then as a records and forms supervisor. Then the team disbanded.

“At the time, I was over the records management group,” she said. “We were moved into marketing. I would attend these marketing meetings and here I am, talking about records management, which had nothing to do with marketing.

“Audit came in and did an inspection and recommended that records management move to Policy. That’s when they brought forms, records and publications over to the Policy area. That’s how I kind of started my career in Policy.”

It turned out she had a knack for it. Experience helped.“I feel like most of my roles within the organization were from an administrative kind of policy perspective. You have operations roles that focus on making money, and then you have the administrative side, where we spend money. When I was in HR, I was part of the external recruiting team. When I was in FA, we worked on dividends. I was the dividends manager at that time. I processed travel vouchers when I was in FA’s Controller Division. Policy was just what I knew about, what I did in doing those various jobs within the organization.

“When I officially moved to Policy, I learned about other areas, like publications. And I shadowed [Command Liaison] Cindy Counts when she coordinated the Board of Directors meetings, and it kind of piqued my interest, listening to what our board would talk about and the policies and decisions that came out of it.”

Coolest part of her job: “It’s being able to work with the Office of the Under Secretary of War, with Personnel and Readiness, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force office and with internal teams, and being able to discuss various topics that impact the Exchange. It’s hearing their perspective and partnering with them and them championing us.”

Why she stayed for 30 years: “When they presented me with my 30-year service award, I was reflecting back about how I came here. I think about my mom and her moving away from her family and everything she knew into this new country, new place. So for me, it’s being able to continue to serve that community that became my mom’s family when she needed it the most. Through my 30 years, I’ve met a lot of great people, formed great relationships, had great mentors. And it does really feel like family here.”

Family serving family: “’Family serving family’ is very personal to me because the Exchange has been part of my family’s story for generations. When I hear ‘family serving family,’ I think about much more than serving customers. I think about generations of families supporting one another, creating connections and making people feel like they belong, just as the Exchange did for my mom all those years ago.

“For me, the Exchange is home. That’s just all I know. I’m here to stay.”