Celebrating Veterans in Manufacturing

Shannon Hooper is the National Sales Manager for AB&I Foundry. In his seven years with AB&I Foundry, Hooper has also served as Technical Group Manager and Regional Sales Manager. Prior to working for AB&I, he served in the United States Navy from 1991 to 1997 and was a trained as a Radioman but held many different jobs as a 3rd Class Petty Officer. Hooper was twice deployed on the USS Briscoe in his four years of active duty.

Scott Kucirek is the CEO of OCHO Candy headquartered in Oakland. He spent nine years in the United States Navy as a Naval Aviator achieving the rank of Lieutenant. He flew HM-53E helicopters in support of mine countermeasure operations and was based in Pensacola, Florida; Norfolk, Virginia and Alameda, California with deployments to Canada, San Diego, Corpus Christi and Hawaii. His primary squadron was HM-15 and during his three years at the squadron, Kucirek ran divisions in both the operations and maintenance departments. He had achieved all possible squadron flight certifications to include night landings and the functional test pilot qualification, which enabled him to certify that recently repaired aircraft were safe for use in daily missions. His last three years of service were spent heading up enlisted recruiting efforts for the Northern California recruiting region supervising 300 service members in over 40 offices achieving the highest recruiting results in the history of the region during that time period.

 

Matthew Maziarz is the Regional Sales Manager for AB&I Foundry in Northern California. He served in the United States Navy from 2004 to 2008 and was stationed on the USS George Washington CVN-73 his first two years in their bomb building division. Maziarz then became a Hospital Corpsman and was stationed at the U.S. Naval Academy for his last 2 years. While at the Academy, he was deployed on a humanitarian mission called Partnership for the America’s in Central and South America aboard the USNS Comfort giving medical aide to impoverished areas of 13 different countries. Maziarz was honorably discharged in 2008 as a 3rd Class Petty Officer.

Gary Wickham is the Senior Sales Manager at AB&I Foundry. He served in the United States Navy from 1971 to 1977 (four years active and two reserve). He served at the NIOTC Naval Inshore Training center in Vallejo where he was attached to a River Boat company, which included PBR, Mike Boats and PCF boats and earned him a Coxswain certification and an Engineman certification. Wickham was also in the Engineering Department welding aluminum, stainless steel and steel. After this division was shut down in July 1972, he was transferred to C School in San Diego for welding certifications before joining the fleet on the Destroyer Tender AR-6 Ajax. Deployed twice to Western Pacific where he was in charge of the ship’s Company shipfitters shop with 12 other fitters. He was fire Marshall the last two years and the Master at Arms the last 8 months of his tour. Wickham was honorably discharged as a 2nd Class Petty Officer E5.