“From the Sea to the C-Suite” is a veteran-focused talk show that highlights the journeys of Navy and maritime veterans as they transition from military service toleadership roles in the business world. We celebrate the discipline, resilience, and strategic thinking developed at sea. Those same qualities often turn into success in corporate leadership, entrepreneurship, and community impact.
Our show is more than a spotlight on veteran accomplishments. It’s a place where viewers can learn how teamwork, mission-driven leadership, and the mindset developed through service to help veterans navigate business challenges, innovate in their industries, and build organizations that make a meaningful difference in their communities.
Each episode features conversations with veterans who continue to lead and serve through their work in business and community initiatives. Today, our hosts Captain Rick Hoffman and Whitney Mincey sat down with Will Lahnen.
Will Lahnen
District 3 City Councilman for the Jacksonville City Council
Website Address: https://www.jacksonville.gov/city-council/city-council-members/d03
Short company description:
I am in year 3 of my first 4-year term on Jacksonville’s city council, representing District 3.
Transcript:
Whitney:
Welcome back to From the Sea to the C-Suite. We’ve got a great conversation for you today. I’m your host, Whitney Mincey. I’m joined by my co-host, Captain Rick, and our amazing guest, Mr. Will Lahnen from Jacksonville City Council. Welcome.
Will:
Thank you. I’m excited.
Whitney:
Yeah, I’m happy to have you here today. First of all, tell us a little bit about how your Navy experience gave you some really great leadership qualities and how you’ve brought that to Jacksonville City Council.
Will:
Yeah, absolutely. I tell a lot of people I don’t think I realized at the time the amount of responsibility and accountability I had really in my younger 20s. I mean, you go to school, you get your degree, and then you get commissioned, and the next thing you know you’re leading groups of ten, twenty, sometimes even more sailors right away.
That, for the most part, are more experienced with you, have more deployments. So you have to be a very quick learner. You have to learn how to gain trust extremely fast, and you have to hold yourself and your teams accountable.
So really a lot of the same things that carry over well to the corporate world. And I think that’s why you see, whether officer or enlisted, a lot of folks — I mean just here in Jacksonville especially — we see it all the time. How many prior service members are just doing great things for our community, especially a lot of the corporations here in Jacksonville as well.
Whitney:
That’s so true. We have an amazing military community here in Jacksonville, and I’m sure they’re very happy to have you at the City Council helping us out. So tell us what you’ve been doing there.
Will:
Yeah. So City Council — I know the name of the show is From the Sea to the C-Suite — and really the most important thing we have as City Council men and City Council women is the budget.
A lot of folks don’t understand just how big our budget is. Jacksonville is the tenth largest city in the country now. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like it because we’re more spread out than a lot of the other cities, but population-wise we are the tenth largest city.
With that comes an extremely large budget. When you add in the independent authorities like JAXPORT, I think the number approaches about roughly $8 billion.
Really what we focus on is the $2 billion budget each year, and that’s pretty much for public safety — which public safety is the majority of our budget — but then also our parks, our Public Works department to maintain the biggest square-mile city in the continental US, our library system, and other essential services.
So really on City Council one of our most important roles is to be a good steward of those taxpayer dollars, make sure we’re holding the entities that get the money accountable, and holding ourselves accountable to make sure that we’re investing what we think is the best and highest use of every tax dollar.
Rick:
I think that’s one of the biggest strengths of Jacksonville, is that we have so many people who served at sea and have stayed in Jacksonville and continue to serve the community.
You actually, after you came out, your day job is not City Council. What were some of the things you’ve done?
Will:
Yeah, yeah. I tell everyone a great way to get ahead in life is to join the military.
Rick:
Disclaimer — it’s not for everybody. Go ahead.
Will:
Right. But after seven years of active duty, I got out in 2010 and, at no expense of my own, I had my undergrad degree and two masters.
Just the great educational opportunities I was able to take advantage of.
I worked at CSX for about a decade in various finance and operations roles. A lot of the operations roles were very similar to what I did in the Navy.
At one point I managed all of our facilities and the airfield and power systems across the network. It was just like kind of being in the engine room of a submarine a lot of times.
Then I was at Wounded Warrior, a nonprofit, for about five years after that. CSX had become one of the largest donors, so I got to know a lot of folks there.
Being on City Council the past couple of years, I’ve been diving into the fractional CFO world, which is what I do right now with a business partner of mine.
It’s really just looking at how we can bring our experience to small and medium-sized businesses. Jacksonville, as you know, we have so many small and medium-sized businesses.
My father started a small business here, as did both my grandfathers.
Going back to City Council, one of the big things we’ve been focused on — on Council we have seven veterans. We think it’s the most veteran-heavy council.
Proud to say it’s a Navy majority, as it should be here in Jacksonville.
We’ve done a lot of initiatives because we want to make sure Jacksonville is the most military-friendly city in the country.
We talked about some of the stuff I learned in the Navy and how I apply that to the corporate world. That’s not just me — that’s every service member.
There’s about 3,000 people a year that either retire, decide not to re-enlist, resign their commissions, that call Jacksonville their last duty station.
One of our goals is how we can convince as many of those as possible to stay here. These are well-trained, relatively young folks.
We know housing is an issue, but these are folks that already have housing in our community, so there’s no real incremental housing need.
We’ve done a number of initiatives.
One thing I’ll touch on real quick: last year we started the Veterans Entrepreneurship Grant program.
I mentioned both my grandfathers — they got out of the Navy and started small businesses. We see a lot of that.
This grant program we administer through Jacksonville Small & Emerging Business Department.
If you complete the training and can show you have a business plan, and if it’s a tangible asset that will help grow or expand your business, you get a $2,000 grant after completing that program.
So really just one other way, at a fairly low-cost incentive, we can incentivize veterans to stay here, start a business in the community, and let us help you expand your business as well.
Rick:
Jacksonville is the only city in America I think that has a cabinet-level representative for Military and Veterans Affairs — Harrison Conyers.
He is daily involved in things like supporting our veterans because once we get them here, we have to sustain them here.
Services like Harrison Conyers and others are vital to making sure that we can sustain it in a healthy manner.
The other thing that’s interesting is we have the largest Navy ROTC program in the country because all the future admiral programs would much rather go to college here at JU or UNF because it splits both campuses.
So we have a huge not only retiring Navy program but aspiring Navy program.
Will:
That’s right.
Rick:
Yeah.
Whitney:
Very true. Well unfortunately we are out of time here. I would love to continue this conversation.
But thank you so much for being here, Will. Captain Rick, as always.
Rick:
My inaugural event.
Whitney:
Yes. Thank you both for being here.
If you would like to see more, make sure you head over to DailyNewsNetwork.com. All of our information will be listed there for Will and the amazing things he’s doing over at the City Council.
And we will see you next time on From the Sea to the C-Suite.
The Daily News Network, Buzz Tv News, and DAILYBIZBRIEF highlight business professionals, nonprofits, veterans and community leaders on over 40 TV Segments including The Horse’s Mouth, Legacy of Leaders TV, Veterans Buzz TV, Finding Your Frequency, and Buzzworthy Businesses.
Teal, The Agency, powered by Client Focused Media, offers marketing agencies a full-service white-label solution to scale their services without the cost or complexity of building large in-house teams. Tailored for small and medium-sized agencies, Teal specializes in relationship-driven lead generation, advanced CRM workflows for personalized client engagement, and end-to-end project fulfillment. With powerful integrations like HighLevel, Stripe, and Zapier, Teal simplifies your operations while optimizing efficiency—saving you valuable time and resources. While other tools on the market like Vendasta, RocketDriver, and DashClicks, may require contracts, Teal provides flexible, no-contract pricing, giving you the freedom to grow on your terms. Ready to elevate your agency’s impact and efficiency? Explore how Teal can help you deliver exceptional results and better serve your clients. Apply on BeTeal.com today to start your journey toward becoming a marketing powerhouse by understanding digital marketing strategies for agencies, SEO best practices for marketing agencies and scaling a marketing agency.
