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Major General Mark Quander · Five Questions for a General

• 0:03
  Speaker A: You're listening to Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern Morses at West point. I am Dr. Charles Fate, the team lead for this podcast series, which features interviews of senior military leaders conducted by specially selected and trained West Point cadet hosts. These exchanges produce timely, relevant, and inspirational insights for professional development of leaders at all levels.
• 0:25
  Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the west point class of 1974 recording studio and the five questions for a General podcast. I'm Cadet Justin Rodriguez, your host, and it is my pleasure to be here today with Major General Quander. General Quander is a Westbourne graduate who was commissioned as an Engineer Officer in 1995. As a general officer, General Quander's assignments include division Commander of the Transatlantic Division, U.S. army Corps of Engineers, 97th Commandant of the Engineer School at the Maneuver Support center of Excellence, 79th Commandant of the United States Corps of Cadets of the United States Military Academy, and Commander of the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division, U.S. army Corps of Engineers. General Quander, welcome to the show.
• 0:59
  Speaker C: Hey, thanks, Justin. Thanks for having me. And special weekend for me as I come back up to West Point, to our rockbound highland home, and sort of celebrate my 30th reunion with classmates. And so it's great to be back, and thanks for having me.
• 1:13
  Speaker B: Of course. Thank you, sir. General Quander, what led you to decide to join the army, and why did you choose engineering?
• 1:19
  Speaker C: You know, you can become retrospective at times, but for me, growing up in a military household, growing up with family members who were almost all public service judges, police officers, school teachers, they give you awesome examples. And when you have folks that emulate what Wright looks like, folks who are dedicated to public service, there's a sense of purpose in serving our nation, whether it's in uniform or out of uniform. As a public servant, that kind of drew me to service when I was in high school, all the way up. I had no plan on joining the military, no plans on going to West Point. I was supposed to go to North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I had my room painted Carolina blue, and my dream was to be a civil engineer. But Desert Shield, Desert Storm kicked off. I had an older brother who had served in Desert Shield, Desert Storm. My dad had served in the military 20 years. He had been to Honduras. I remember I was in junior high school, and I came home and I asked my mom, hey, mom, where's dad at? Is he coming home tonight? And she's like, no. And the next thing we know, he's. He's in Honduras, the 82nd. And a grandfather who had served in World War II and hearing the stories for why they served. But it really kind of came home when I had to make a decision in high school about where I was going to go and what I wanted to do. And I think something about my older brother's service during Desert Shield, Desert Storm, protecting these freedoms, something just struck a chord with me. I'm going to back up to when I was in elementary school. I lived in West Germany. Not Germany, but West Germany. Let that sink in for a second.
• 2:52
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 2:53
  Speaker C: And I played on a German American soccer team. We would travel all over, and we had a soccer tournament in Berlin. So we had to go from West Germany through East Germany to Berlin. And it was a very different time and place. So I was a time and place where we had mps that were escorting us to school because of the threats. And when you look at what we have in the United States, it's pretty good compared to a lot of places in the. In the world. And to be part of an organization to protect those freedoms, to give us the liberties that sometimes we take for granted, I want to be a part of something like that.
• 3:25
  Speaker B: Sir, you mentioned your family having a long tradition of service, and I see you have your wife here with you as well today, so. And she's continuing that service. Can you touch on your service with your wife?
• 3:35
  Speaker C: Absolutely. So how we met is a different. Another story. My dad and my wife were working together doing rotc. My wife is doing rotc. My dad was teaching junior rotc. Blind date. We got married. That's like I said, another story for another time. But when we were serving in the military, my wife was a critical care nurse doing emergency. Emergency nursing. And I'm an engineer. I think we learned a lot about sacrifice. Our first three years were apart. She was in grad school, and I was at Fort Leonard Wood. And then in the captain's career course, I went to Fort Campbell. And then I deployed to Afghanistan during the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom. And as we served together, we weren't always in the same location. And a couple of things that really we learned early on. First, you can overcome any adversity, any challenge, but you don't have to do it by yourself. We did offsetting deployments for a number of years, and it was family who came to help us out. I mean, my mom took our daughter when she was probably just a little more than a year old. We were both in Iraq together during the surge, and she was helping us raise our daughter for a period of time. Got to spend some time with my wife in Iraq as well. And I got to see things through her eyes and her perspective on that deployment. I was a combat engineer and I was like, you know, we're doing route clearance missions, we're doing all these things. And my wife was on the other side and the in the green zone, working in the hospital there called Baghdad er and they call it good medicine in a bad place. And I got to spend a day with her on all the different missions that she was doing. And I just saw how incredibly tough it was. And so being able to kind of proverbial walk in her shoes for a day, I had a great respect for our men and women who do healthcare, our chaplains, our healthcare professionals, behavioral health, and what they do to not only treat our service members not only abroad, but our service members and their family members back home too. It's been an incredible journey being in this great military with her.
• 5:44
  Speaker B: Sir, You've led soldiers at every level, from platoon to major command. Looking back, what moment or experience most shaped your understanding of what it means to lead?
• 5:53
  Speaker C: Just nuts, you know, as I think about that, I don't think it's one particular moment, but maybe there's moments at a specific point in time where you have to learn a specific lesson. Lesson. And I'll give maybe a couple examples. When I first showed up to the 82nd, I just come out of Ranger school. And this was back in 1996, February of 1996. And I showed up to the 82nd and I was in an organization called the 307th Engineer Battalion. And when I showed up to the organization, the first person who received me was the battalion command sergeant Major wasn't my company commander, first sergeant wasn't a battalion commander. It was my battalion command sergeant Major. And the first thing he did is he took me out for a five mile run in the sand. Maybe I should have taken a little bit more time time off before I signed in first. And he wanted to tell me what my job was and what I mean by that is PT first thing in the morning. Take care of yourself first. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else. And then on that run he was just talking to me what his expectations were of a young lieutenant. I showed up to my platoon, all of my squad leaders had been either in just cause or Desert Shield, Desert Storm. You got to figure out what is a second lieutenant just out of Ranger school with no experience bring to this organization. And he spent that first few hours just talking to me. What he expected of me, he was a resource. And what my value was to that organization. I was to learn from my platoon sergeant, from my non commissioned officers. I was to plan great training for them, not waste their time. And it set the stage for what I would call reception and sponsorship into an organization. The next person I saw was my first sergeant guy named First Sergeant Falonica, who's a legend in the engineer regiment. And then it was my company commander, then my battalion commander. It was very sequenced on how they received me and how they brought me into the organization. And when I look back at all the folks that went to the organization, now Brigadier General retired Everett Spain talked about supercharged battalions. I was in that battalion with General Everett Spain, and it was incredible. It was a leadership factory. It was about how they received us in and how they raised us and trained us and educated us to lead. And so it was that sponsorship, that reception piece that I thought was so important as a young lieutenant when I was there, I think the next one was when I got to Fort Campbell. I was a company commander and kind of what I was talking about my wife, about walking through someone's shoes. I didn't really understand the importance of family as a young company commander when I first got to Fort Campbell, when I first arrived, I was Battalionist 1 before I took company command. And unlike when I was a platoon leader and some of my other assignments before that, everyone in that S1 shop had a family. Some were dual military. At this point in time, I was married, but we didn't have our daughter yet. And I got to see kind of some of the challenges service members had serving with families. And it gave me perspective. And that was important for me at that time because I was able to learn a lot of incredible lessons learned. You enlist a soldier, but you got to retain the family. And you can absolutely do both, but you got to think about it. And for me, that was a hugely important lesson to learn at the time. When we had our daughter a few years later, it really hit home. And when I had bosses who understood the importance of family, I really appreciated it. When I was promoted to general officer, the first thing that the person who promoted me did is they brought my daughter up in front of the audience and they thanked my daughter for everything she did as a military kid. And then he brought up my wife and then they said some things about me. You recruit the soldier, but you retain the family. And that's lasted me for a long time. And you can absolutely do both. The last lesson, I think that was really, really important and critical for me when I was with the pre command course, getting ready to go in the battalion command, and my wife was there, and it was great. And I was probably not ready for this when I was a young lieutenant, which is why I think you learn a specific lesson at a specific point in time. They had us write down our values, what we stood for. I had never gone through that exercise before, and I'm not sure I could have done it when I was lieutenant or a captain at that point in time. But through experiences, through serving, is absolutely something that I vector back to every single time. And I had to put what was important for me and what I stood for. And it was my faith, my family and my friends in that order. But that's allowed me to serve with purpose, served with conviction, and something that I always go back to when I'm thinking about what I'm going to do. I just go back to my faith, my family and my friends again. The lesson, as a young lieutenant may not have. I would have taken the right lesson later on in life. And then that exercise on your purpose, I'm not sure I could have gotten to the clarity that I needed to when I was a young lieutenant, sir.
• 10:45
  Speaker B: The Quander family has a remarkable legacy of service and perseverance. How has your family's history and tradition of service influenced the way you think about character and leadership in uniform?
• 10:55
  Speaker C: So very proud of my family, and that's something that I go back to a lot and I think a lot about. This past summer, my wife got to join me for the 100th Quandra family reunion. It was held in Alexandria, Virginia, 100 years straight. Family goes back to 1684. And very proud of being able to trace the family lineage back that far. Very, very grateful. Very, very fortunate. And you had folks from the old and you had the new generation. And there's just something about learning from each other and passing the torch to the next generation, growing, changing, sharing stories to continue that legacy. And it really is a blend of both past and the future for me. I remember lots of those family reunions, those same folks, those public servants, those judges, those school teachers, service members, shaped a lot about what I value, how I see things, people that I respect, I looked up to, and some of the reasons why I'm in the military today and some of the things that I got. We have a responsibility to preserve values in the past them on. And that's one of those things that I got from family reunions and something that I hope to be able to do in my current capacity for other quanders or family members or friends, is to pass on those values and those traditions for the next generation. The other thing I learned is character's not defined by rank. I mean, we had folks at the family reunion that are very, very successful, absolutely incredible, but the most humble people you'll meet. And that was an important lesson. Sometimes power rank is a disinhibitor in decision making. But these folks were always grounded by sense of purpose. They were grounded in humility, and absolutely something that I want to make sure that I can continue to do. My wife keeps me grounded every time I go home, and that's good, and that's important for me. The other thing is your character is going to be tested by adversity and hearing how family members preserve through different adversities. We're going to get this in the military all the time. You're going to be put in tough situations and to learn from them, just like you're going to learn from the upperclassmen and what they go through, and then you don't have to go through it by yourself. Just so important to learn from folks who have had those experiences ahead of you so that you can apply them to what you're going to see in the future, and then you can pass them along.
• 13:19
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. As an engineer officer, much of your success depends on collaboration. Soldiers, civilians, and partners working together under pressure. What have you learned about building trust among diverse teams?
• 13:30
  Speaker C: It does require trust. A lot of complexity in the world today. There's a quote, don't know who came up with it. John F. Kennedy mentioned it a couple of times, and I'm gonna not get it quite right, but it's something. Success has a thousand fathers, but defeat only knows an orphan. And the kind of thing is, don't do things by yourself. It takes a team. And the Corps of Engineers, we have a mantra that says we engineer solutions for our nation's toughest challenges. We're going to give us tough stuff to do. You don't have to fix it personally yourself. You got to bring a good group of teams together. There was a day and there was a ship that hit the Francis Scott Key bridge, and the bridge collapsed. And I remember that day, one of my fellow commanders was given the call, says, hey, the Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed. Your job is to recover it, pull it out of the water, take all the twisted steel, and open up the ship channel again for navigation. So after they were able to find the remains, recover the remains from the folks that their lives were lost. There were thousands of jobs depending upon him getting that ship channel open again. Millions of dollars worth of commerce relied on that ship channel. How about waking up one day and saying, this is your mission. You probably won't have to do that by yourself. And so just an incredible group of folks coming together, Folks from the navy, from the coast Guard, from all kinds of agencies coming together, trying to solve a really tough, complex problem for our nation. And you don't know when you're going to get that mission. And you got to be ready for it. I had the awesome privilege to respond to the hurricane Helene cleanup and to see what happened with the devastation in western. I mean, there were towns completely wiped away, and to be on the ground where people were probably having some of their worst moments and to be able to help them try to get back to some sense of normalcy was absolutely amazing. But it wasn't just the corps of Engineers. It wasn't just the folks from our organization doing it. It was an incredible group of teams. Some were young, recent graduates from West Point. And I got to tap into some of the intellectual capacity for some of these folks to help solve some really tough problems. And it was great being able to tap into them things that I didn't know how to do. And so, again, it's not about you or me. It's about bringing the team together. But in order to bring that team together, you got to build relationships. And you can't build them when you need them. You need to build them early on. And that requires constant engagement. And so absolutely important to build those relationships. And then the trust, There's a competency part of trust. It's not just delivering, but you got to be able to do what you say you can do. And so those various experiences that allow you to build that competency over time, the ability to build those relationships over time will allow you to form those teams, those diverse teams with incredible skill sets to solve complex challenges for our nation. You're going to get a mission that you're going to think is impossible, and our nation's going to expect you to do it. We don't get to say what we want to do. We don't get to say, hey, I don't think I have the people for that. We got to figure it out. But you don't have to figure it out by yourself, sir.
• 16:43
  Speaker B: You've served as commandant of cadets at West Point, shaping the next generation of army leaders. What lessons did you learn from the cadets themselves about future leadership?
• 16:52
  Speaker C: So I will Maybe go back to my time as commandant at Fort Leonwood 1st and then come forward to the time at commandant at West Point. So it was unique for me to receive the people that were coming from West Point when I was at Fort Leonard as the common out of the engineer school. I got to see the product that West Point was producing. And then when I left Fort Leonardwood, I got to go to West Point to help build that product that we were going to send out to the army. And what I will tell you is West Point does a Great job. This 47 month development process is incredible. And what I saw from my own experiences and from the experiences of the cadets is we're going to test you, we're going to push you, we're not going to break you, but you're going to learn from all those things. We're not going to make it easy for you. And I know it sounds kind of cliche as you're the best version of yourself. You're absolutely going to figure out how to be the best version of yourself here. And I saw that from cadets here. Absolutely incredibly talented, thoughtful and dedicated to serving our nation. I remember one cadet in particular here, he had cancer, and I think it was his sophomore year here. And there may be some people who remember this, and it's the power of coming together in these relationships in a bond that I don't see very many places. And he went home for I think six months. His classmates were sending him classwork, his professors were sending him classwork. He was doing everything he had while he was going through radiation treatment, which you know how challenging that is. You're weak, your body's breaking down. And he came back to West Point and he graduated a little bit six months later. But considering everything he went through and he commissioned, it was about perseverance, never quitting. And he wanted to serve our country and he was not going to let anything stop him from doing that. I don't know where many places where you hear those stories and you see that level of dedication and it's in every cadet here. The cadets absolutely taught me a lot about leadership, about perseverance and about never quitting. The energy and the intellectual capacity to challenge in a positive way was absolutely amazing and so absolutely incredible time here. And then they always remind me about the relationships with my classmates. And so coming back here and spending time with my classmates again, these lifelong lessons in relationships, absolutely incredible.
• 19:23
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. Sir. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you offer your younger self?
• 19:29
  Speaker C: That's tough. But when I Think about my younger self. There's a lot I didn't know, but I would say that life's a journey and you have to be patient with that journey. And you're not going to know where you're going to go. But I go back to staying grounded on your purpose and why you do what you do. And again, for me, that's my faith, that's my family, that's my friends. And then on this journey, I would always continue to remind myself, maybe there's a couple of things. If you stay grounded on your purpose, you'll keep things in focus and perspective. The distractions will go away, and you'll continue to move forward. Be persistent and stay inquisitive. And this is something my wife said, so I'll steal something. But she said, don't let anyone ever tell you no who can't tell you yes. There were some folks who thought I couldn't get into West Point, and when I was in high school, and it caused a little bit of self doubt, but that person had no influence or impact on my ability to apply to West Point. And I applied to West Point and I got in. There was another stage where I was applying for an internship as an army fellow. And I was like, man, this is competitive. There's no way I can get this. And I applied and I made a pretty tough cut for that army fellowship. If you don't apply, if you don't compete, you'll never know if you get it or not. And it is a journey, and it's not always a straight path. And you have to be comfortable with that. You have to be okay with that. You're going to learn something from that journey. Sometimes that journey will result in failure, and you gotta learn those lessons from that and bounce back the next time. This journey has not been perfect by any stretch of the imagination. And I think if anyone tells you it's been great and it's been perfect, they're probably missing a lot. Learn from those setbacks. Be persistent. Don't let anyone tell you no who can't tell you yes. Stay focused on your purpose and then invest in your people. You've got to pass on to the next generation and spend time developing those people because our institution needs it. It demands it. I wasn't sure how long I was going to stay in the military. Like a lot of folks, I was probably going to do five years and get out. I absolutely love what I do, and as I interact with folks, I like to be able to make sure that I'm Bringing the next generation along. World's complex. And some of these folks that I had a hand in and developing here at West Point are summing some of those complex problems today. And it makes me just so proud to see them doing what they're doing and how they're able to work together. They're able to utilize their talents and solve these incredibly complex problems. There were some cadets who I relied on during Hurricane Helene to solve some really tough. They were lieutenants, solved some complex problems for me during Hurricane Helene relief. And so grateful to have had that interaction with them here at West Point.
• 22:10
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. Sir. After decades of service, what continues to motivate you to lead? What keeps your work meaningful?
• 22:17
  Speaker C: Justin for me, it's the ability to make a difference. I absolutely love what I do and I told myself a long time ago, if I didn't feel like I could make a difference, then I would find something else to do. I enjoy going to work, I enjoy making a difference. I love these complex challenges that I have to try to figure out how to solve with this incredible team of folks that serve our nation every day. And that's what keeps me going. And it is seeing that next generation coming up that's going to take my place to solve even greater challenges. And a couple of things that we're doing right now, it's not just the natural disasters, but it is. We've got this virus that's impacting the beef industry right now. And we've been given a mission in the Corps of Engineers to design a facility that's going to combat this virus that could wipe out the entire beef industry. And we were told, you got to get this thing up and running in 12 to 18 months. And we got an incredible team of folks working together to solve this complex challenge for our nation. It's when you give us missions like that that keeps me going because I want to be a part of that team that's going to solve that challenge for our nation. We have other things impacting our nation, not just at home, but abroad. We are trying to figure out how to reduce natural disasters that's impacting our communities and our nation here. I want to be a part of the team that's helping solve those challenges. A friend of mine, co worker of mine, General Jason Kelly, if you heard of the Palisades wildfires, they were given the mission to clean up debris from the wildfire. Very complex, lots of hazardous material in there. And people thought it was going to take them more than a year to clean it up. I mean, People are displaced from their homes. That team was able to do it in about four or five months and to see the look on people's faces when they could return back to where their house was and to rebuild where they're part of a community and rebuild that community again. So I do what I do, and that was a friend doing that mission. But you give me those all day long and I'm there and it goes back to purpose. It's about taking care of our fellow people.
• 24:24
  Speaker B: Sir. The Army Engineer Regiment often bridges the tactical and strategic rebuilding, adapting, enabling mobility and resilience. How do you see the engineer's role evolving in the future battlefield?
• 24:34
  Speaker C: Thanks, Justin, for that question. You know, when I was the commandant of the Engineer school, we had this video and it showed a soldier running up to the front of a minefield with the 10 foot section of explosives called a Bangalore torpedo. And this person was carrying this. And it showed a person with a grappling hook throwing it to try to set off tripwire. This is 2019, 2020. That was the same thing we were doing back during World War II. And so I think there was a recognition that things really hadn't changed that much, that we have to evolve much faster. And I think you see the army doing that to this day. For the engineers, we'll still be grounded in our purpose of engineering solutions to our nation's toughest challenges. We will continue to do all those things, but we're going to have to do it differently. And there's no reason why we have to put people in these hazard zones where we're carrying a 10 foot long piece of explosives to put it up in front of a minefield. Whether it's robotics, whether it is autonomous platforms, whether it's drones, we're looking at all those different platforms so that we can do our job better to enhance mobility for maneuver forces. But the Army's going through the same sort of transition as well, and, and we want to make sure that we're in lockstep with the army for how the engineer regiment's going to transform. But as we're doing this on the tactical side, we're also doing it in the Corps of Engineer side as well. You know, as we look at construction, as we look at how we're going to do stuff here on West Point. West Point's a major construction zone. We're looking at how we transform, how we deliver construction so that we can go, so that we can build smarter, faster. And together I think you'll see a lot of those things with the engineer regiment from the tactical side transforming as the Army's transforming, using the different technology and tools, not being beholden to the past. And we'll do the same thing on construction side as well.
• 26:34
  Speaker B: Sir, you're currently here for your class reunion. Do you have any final thoughts about being back at West Point or anything?
• 26:40
  Speaker C: Yeah, Justin, it's. It's. It's. It's first. It's great to be back at our Highland home. It's great to connect with folks that I first met 34 years ago. And the friendships, the camaraderie. Some of us have been each other's weddings, some of us been there when we've been at our worst. But it's this class connection that brings us back together. And we're bound by our love for the Academy. We're bound by our love for each other. It's just great to be back, and it's great to see where the future is going to be with folks like you. And so thanks for what you do, but more importantly, thanks for what you're about to do.
• 27:12
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. General Quander, thank you for your time today and for this great conversation about combat leadership, mentorship, and public engagement. On behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of the Modern war Institute, and Dr. Charlie Feint, the director of this podcast series, it is my pleasure to present you with this rare and coveted MW I coin. Thank you, sir. Thanks.
• 27:30
  Speaker C: Thank you, Justin.
• 27:34
  Speaker A: This has been an episode of Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern War Institute of West Point. If you like what you heard today, please download, like, subscribe and share this podcast to help us reach an even larger audience. All statements in this podcast represent the personal views of the speakers and do not represent an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States government.