In the spring, many New York City residents fled the metropolis, seeking refuge from the endlessly ringing sirens and the unshakeable feeling of loss. At that time, it was as if the city could be split into three groups: those hunkered down in their homes, the essential workers and emergency first-responders who were helping people, and those who were sick. Between travel restrictions and dread, New York became a place to avoid.
But Safi Rauf, a Navy veteran and Georgetown pre-med student, traveled upstream to help pull New York City back from its worst days. Rauf, who remained a Navy reserve corpsman, had been keeping tabs on the spread of the novel coronavirus through Asia through the winter via a Department of Defense database. When he saw that potentially infected travelers were being allowed to take commercial airlines around the country back to their homes, he knew things were about to get bad.
“It just didn’t seem right,” Rauf says, “and fast forward, it started spiking in the U.S.”
Around that same time, Georgetown went virtual, and Rauf began volunteering locally at the Arlington County Public health office as a contact tracer. In early April, the Expeditionary Medical Facility Bethesda, in which Rauf serves, was mobilized to help set up a field hospital at the Javits Center in Manhattan.
There, Rauf and his colleagues worked 13 to 14-hour shifts completely in isolation, with only one break to use the restroom or have a meal so that the unit could “minimize wasting the personal protective equipment.” What Rauf saw when he got to the city was a clear picture of who was mostly being afflicted with the deadly virus. At the Javits Center, which was “like a big warehouse,” Rauf mostly cared for unsheltered folks and immigrants, many of whom had never seen a doctor in their lives or were not fluent in English. Despite serving as a translator and cultural advisor with Special Operations units in Afghanistan, Rauf found himself unable to communicate with many of his sickest patients. “We just gave them everything, monitored their body fluids, and hoped for the best,” he says.
Now, Rauf is back at Georgetown, where he is part of the 2020 class of Tillman Scholars and the president of the Georgetown University Student Veterans Association and studies antibiotics treatments. It just so happened that the incredible test of human strength that he experienced in New York in the spring served him well as he interviewed to earn a scholarship from the Tillman Foundation, a nonprofit named after the football star turned military hero, Pat Tillman, that empowers service men and women and their families through education and community.
Rauf, who was born in an Afghani refugee camp in Pakistan and moved to America when he was 16, had a powerful backstory and history of military service that was already exemplary, but he believes the experience in New York put his application over the top.
“Us Tillman Scholars, we don’t feel like any one of us is good enough, but at the end of the day, every single one of the Tillman Scholars has a unique aspect to them,” Rauf says. “You won’t find two Tillman Scholars who have the same story.”
On the other side of the interview process was Marie Tillman, the chair of the foundation and wife to the late Pat. The team had to make the selection process virtual this year, and reschedule its annual charity run in Phoenix near Pat’s alma mater of Arizona State University. As 2020 continued, though, Tillman was proud to see that from public health to social justice to politics and everything else that has bubbled up during this chaotic year, there always seemed to be a Tillman Scholar leading.
“If something’s going on, we more than likely have a scholar who’s right there trying to have an impact on that issue,” Tillman says.
Shortly after Pat’s death in April 2004, the foundation was formed to help the next generation of armed forces members and empower a new generation of leaders. The first class of scholars came in 2009, and as the scholars have gotten older and gone out into the world, their impact has been manifold.
Take Chris Diaz, a Navy veteran and 2011 Tillman Scholar who started Action Tank, a veteran-led non-profit in Philadelphia that brings people of different disciplines together to tackle a significant societal issue through a yearlong project, alongside two of his fellow scholars. After jobs in sports and medicine as a performance psychologist, Diaz is now also volunteering as an executive secretary of the agency review team for veterans’ affairs on the Biden transition team.
There are countless others like Rauf and Diaz. Shreveport mayor Adrian Perkins is a Tillman Scholar. Kimberly Jung, an entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” contestant who got an investment from Mark Cuban for her Afghan saffron company Rumi Spice, is a Tillman Scholar. And this year’s Make Your Mark award winner, Jackie Munn, is a colleague of Rauf’s at Arlington County Public Health, as well as a mother looking after her children while her husband, a former Green Beret, was away for work.
What comes through from Tillman Scholars — and trickles down from Marie, as well as foundation CEO Dan Futrell — is not only a steadfast belief in leadership, but a resounding optimism. Particularly in 2020, it seems almost impossible that a group of people could wake up every day with a belief that better is on the horizon. Yet that’s exactly what this community of veteran leaders has.
“If all great crucibles, we need those things in our lives to rise as leaders, then this is no different than that,” says Diaz, who led Action Tank’s work restoring Philadelphia tree canopies in 2020, “so I view it quite frankly as a blessing that I’ve gotten this opportunity to hone and sharpen my own leadership abilities through this time of crisis because that’s what always has happened.”
That resonant positivity, says Futrell, who was a 2013 Tillman Scholar before becoming CEO, comes from a desire to live up to Pat Tillman’s legacy, which includes leaving a career as an athlete behind to enlist in the Army and his eventual death by friendly fire in Afghanistan.
“I and 695 other Tillman scholars have committed ourselves to have an impact in the name of somebody who lived before us and lived a good life that we were motivated by,” Futrell says, “so you know it’s not lost on us that, as, as the years continue to take on after his death, that, that there will be fewer people that might know his name.”
The foundation has helped foster community and connection among its scholars this year by hosting virtual events including leadership talks as well as simple meet-and-greets for networking. Guest speakers have come in to lend a voice and support scholars as they continue on the front lines of the world’s many struggles.
“The thing about building community, and a responsibility that the foundation has taken on, is creating an environment where the connections can happen,” says Diaz.
Yet in sifting through all the through-lines of 2020, another is that America again had to determine what its relationship with the military was. The presidential election polarized the nation, often with discussions over military service at the center. One of the brilliant things about a big, diverse group like the Tillman Scholars, and the veteran community more broadly, is that it is not monolithic in its politics or its view of the world.
There are Tillman Scholars who helped run Veterans for Trump and others who led the Veterans for Biden organization, and folks who have supported all sorts of candidates in the past. The Tillman Foundation itself is, as a non-profit, inherently apolitical, but nevertheless derives value from its diverse viewpoints on politics and society.
“That’s where we want to be,” Futrell says. “Because we know that our scholars are carrying the right set of values, and are going to have a discussion with each other and ideally in the world that is respectful and that is … built to advance the conversation and not just tear each other down.”
It’s a principle core to Action Tank’s work in Philadelphia and Diaz’s worldview, too, in large part due to a curiosity and wisdom forged through multiple military deployments.
“The military is a small microcosm of the country,” says Diaz, “so it’s made up of every color, race and creed, and you’re able to take from that experience and see the full breadth of the human experience, both in all of its heights and all of the pain and depravity and suffering that is war.”
Leading then becomes easier when people can join one another on common ground and bring the best out of one another. The Tillman Foundation believes creating and supporting leaders creates the largest possible impact.
“We always talk about, because we invest on an annual basis in a relatively small amount of people, the impact those people have through the work that they do and the leadership roles that they’re taking has such a huge impact,” says Tillman. “Being able to leverage what we’re able to give and support, the fact that it is in the leadership sector, there’s an amplification of that.”
Since returning to Georgetown, Rauf has heard from many students, some veterans and some not, asking for advice about a career in medicine or how to nab a Tillman scholarship. He organized the large annual Veteran’s Day celebration on Georgetown’s campus in a socially distant and mostly virtual capacity and got some wiggle room from trusting professors to design his own research.
Some day, Rauf hopes to become a surgeon but will keep seeking out ways to lead in his field. Doing just that, though, he may only be able to help his own patients. But as a leader in his military unit or medical team, there is no end to the impact he could have.
“If I can influence that type of policy in a leadership position, I can help millions of people,” says Rauf.