Colleague Q&As

Colleague Q&A: From Military Service to Strategic Management

January 21, 2025

Special forces veteran brings a lifetime of skills to HCA Healthcare's Center of Excellence

At 57, Terry H. Pevehouse, Jr., operations director with the Project Management Center of Excellence for HCA Healthcare’s Information Technology Group, has squeezed more into two careers than many people do in a lifetime. Born in Missouri, he grew up in Amarillo, Texas, before joining the Army after high school. He attended Basic and Advanced Individual Training and Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was assigned to the 9th Infantry Division in Fort Lewis Washington.

Terry served in Germany for two years, then went through Special Forces selection and assessment. In 1993, he was assigned as a Special Forces weapons specialist.

“I wanted to be in Special Forces, which is considered to be the best of the best,” he says. “I enjoyed what I did.”

During his military career, Terry earned his bachelor’s degree and a master’s in business administration. In 2018, Terry joined HCA Healthcare as a project manager, advancing quickly to a senior project manager role, then program manager and senior program manager positions.

According to Brad Ninness, assistant vice president of the Project Management Center of Excellence, Terry brings compassion, accountability and servant leadership to his role. Promoted to director for his passion and perseverance, Terry is a strong supporter for organizations like Operation Stand Down, Hiring Our Heroes and more. He serves as a coach and mentor for several colleagues outside of his formal team.

In his current role, Terry directly supports more than 220 interns, as well as project and program managers in the Project Management Center of Excellence where he’s focused primarily on recruiting, training and providing support to senior leadership.

“People here care like a family,” says Terry of HCA Healthcare. “That was one thing that I knew that I wanted. I wanted to be part of a team again.”

Terry and his wife, Isabelle Lorenzo, have five children – Austen, Claudia, Gabriella, Sophia and Nicolas. They live in a beloved farmhouse in Clarksville, Tennessee.

The biggest thing we’ve done here with our veterans is educate them on available careers inside HCA Healthcare. No matter what job you did previously, there’s something that aligns with that here.

— Terry H. Pevehouse, Jr. Operations director, Project Management Center of Excellence, HCA Healthcare, Information Technology Group

Q: What kept you in the military for 30 years?

A: The people I worked with. Special Forces is a very tight-knit community. We’re a small organization – 1% of the military. We had the opportunity to go into these other countries and actually have an impact. It wasn’t just necessarily fighting a war. It was trying to improve an economy, help better people’s way of life, getting to build schools and divert water and irrigate farmlands to assist communities so they could sustain themselves and thrive in today’s modern world.

Q: Are there military milestones that really stand out?

A: Becoming a team sergeant, which is the senior noncommissioned officer on the team, and being in charge, being able to develop that team at that level, and be able to do that for about 2½ years, was amazing.

Becoming a First Sergeant and a Sergeant Major, and being able to drive the training and doctrine for not only the group and the teams and supporting them, were also milestones.

Q: How did the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001  impact your career?

A: Everybody remembers where they were on 9/11. I was one of five Special Forces soldiers that had been pulled out to help support Special Forces recruiting. I was at Hunter Army Airfield (in Georgia), about to give a briefing on the benefits of Special Forces to active duty soldiers. Unfortunately, 9/11 happened and everybody else got geared up and deployed. Five of us had to stay in Special Forces recruiting. The Army decided that was the best place for us at that time. I didn’t get to catch up until 2004, but then I more than made up for the missed time those first couple of years, with appointments in Operation Iraqi Freedom. I spent a lot of time in central and southern Iraq. I was a Company Operations Sergeant all during that time, supporting both Special Forces and the Navy SEAL Special Operations.

Q: When did you know HCA Healthcare was the right fit?

A: Once I was able to understand that our mission is our patients. I appreciated that kind of drive and that type of focus, because that’s where I came from. I was a retiring sergeant major coming out of 5th Group, known by quite a few people, and I was getting introduced all around Nashville. Everybody said: “Hey, if you can ever get a chance at HCA Healthcare, that’s a place you should really check out.” That piqued my interest.

Q: What are your responsibilities at HCA Healthcare?

A: Overall, I’m responsible for managing our open positions, which means overseeing our recruiting, our interview process, our candidates coming into our organization.I have responsibility over our training program, as well as all of our tools and the contracts for the tools that we oversee.

Q: How did the military prepare you for this career?

A: I equate what we do as project managers to things I did in my [military] life. We take a small group of very specialized individuals, and we get them to focus on a task, and then we accomplish the goal set forth by the leadership and within the capabilities of the team. The leadership education that I got and the opportunities in the military really helped me out and set me up for success on this side.

Q: Conversely, what benefits do veterans bring to HCA Healthcare?

A: They bring in a certain level of problem-solving skills and a level of maturity. They’ve had a variety of different tasks or problems that have been thrown at them, and they’re able to calmly pick through them. The way the military ingrains how to follow orders and accomplish tasks — it definitely serves veterans well in the corporate world.

Q: How is HCA Healthcare helping to bring veterans into the fold?

A: A lot of it has to do with education. When you’re getting out of the military, that may be all you know. “The biggest thing we’ve done here with our veterans is educate them on available careers inside HCA Healthcare. No matter what job you did previously, there’s something that aligns with that here.” It doesn’t have to just be in the facilities as a clinician. We have pretty much everything that you could have done before, whether it’s military police, we’ve got security. We’ve got ambulances, we’ve got maintenance, we’ve got helicopters.

Q: How important is it for you to be a mentor?

A: That continues to be one of my top jobs here. We’ve brought on several transition veterans or family members over the last couple of years into our department, and I make sure that I’ve got time to talk them through difficult times. There are fears. Helping calm those fears, and helping them understand that, “Hey, you’ve got this. You’ve got the skills you need to see you through the end.” Odds are that 60% or 70% of veterans, when they transition out, don’t stay in that first job. They take the first thing that’s available, and it might not be the right thing for them. We’re doing really well in keeping a lot of our veterans here inside of our organization.

Q: What are the most rewarding aspects of your job today?

A: The most rewarding aspect of my job today is being able to develop new young project managers. Watching people that I mentored from my first day here that are moving into senior consulting program management roles now, becoming the leadership of our department, and watching that transition. Becoming a program manager, I had 16 project managers underneath me in a very technical space when I was not comfortable being so technical. Managing that team and delivering the projects that we did was pretty rewarding as well.

Q: Were the leadership traits you employed in the military the same that make you a good leader now? 

A: When I get feedback – and we’re big into feedback in our Project Management Center –what I’m hearing from my peers is that the leadership that I provide, not only to the younger project managers, but also to the other managers inside of the department, is seen, is recognized, is very appreciated.

Q: What’s on the horizon for you and your team at HCA Healthcare?

A: There’re some amazing things that we continue to do with our data. How we manage that data, the things we can do with the data that will better improve our patients’ lives, are some of the things that I see. It’s just incredible to watch where that’s going.