“I have no regrets: If I hadn’t joined the National Guard, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” said former service member Nicole Olson. After 18 months trying the college route, she enlisted in the Iowa National Guard as a preventive medicine specialist in 2008. “My job in the military led me to the environmental world” she said, when describing how she discovered her current position. “I didn’t even know it was here. I discovered the passion I have for it.”