No matter what kind of mission Dr. Breon Haskett takes on, he finds a connection between his personal experiences and his pursuit of helping others.
The former Marine combined the multiple career paths he explored while on active duty with the leadership acumen he developed during his decades-long career. Now, through an extensive history of entrepreneurship and advocacy, Dr. Haskett is sharing his knowledge with students.
“There are probably more budding Breons out there that, if happenstance puts them in my class, I'm going to make sure that I afford them time so they can build their self-efficacy,” says Dr. Haskett, a full-time faculty member at the University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC).
Military Motivations
Dr. Haskett enlisted in the military in 1985 and spent 25 years in the Marine Corps, where he catapulted through various roles and excelled quickly.
“I thought the Marine Corps came really easy to me because it was pretty cut and dry,” he admits. His secret?
“There's a book for everything and a rule for everything, so just follow those rules and follow the criteria, and you tend to excel,” he advises.
While he started as an engineer, he eventually transitioned to platoon sergeant, followed by roles in teaching and instruction. These promotions took Dr. Haskett across the world, where he moved 13 times during his 25-year career, which also included a strategic role at the Marines headquarters in Quantico, VA, and in an instructor role in Pittsburgh, PA.
The parallels Dr. Haskett sees with his military students are reminiscent of his teachings in the Marines, where he witnessed movement throughout the branch that bestowed him with empathy for those students.
“Military students are busy, and sometimes that busyness moves beyond what we can even comprehend,” he explains.
A Job Close to the Heart
His natural affliction for leadership spearheaded an entrepreneurial venture after his retirement from the Marines. Dr. Haskett launched his own consulting business in 2010, dubbed Corps Concepts, where he coached individuals in the Atlanta area in management and leadership roles.
“I worked with small businesses, not to develop their business acumen, but teach them a little bit about leadership, as in comparison to management,” he says.
As a leader himself, he describes his philosophies as rooted in communication and working to develop efficiency and success within an organization.
“My selling technique was always leadership is about people, and management is about process. Improve your process,” he says.
A Propensity for Achievement
Dr. Haskett grew up in Newport News, VA in a community that lacked the resources to nurture its high-performing students. While he calls himself a “free and reduced lunch kid” at the time, he also recalls not being able to take advantage of his academic potential.
“I had a very high academic acumen, but there wasn't anyone there to foster that,” he explains. “It wasn't an environment where that could be fostered.”
Despite a glowing curriculum vitae of his military time, Dr. Haskett recalls less-than-stellar behavior in high school, where he admits he didn’t take his education seriously. When he applied for his bachelor’s degree program, he had to write a “letter of excuse” to explain his poor performance during his secondary education.
However, tapping into discipline and motivation during his time in the Marines pushed him to complete his undergraduate program.
“I tell everybody I've gone from Mr. Knucklehead to Mr. Distinguished,” he says, laughing. “I got the capstone project of the year that year and was really lauded in terms of what was in my brain that helped with my academic self-efficacy.”
After that, he went on to earn a master’s degree in organizational leadership, followed by a PhD in the same subject. With his higher-education degrees, Dr. Haskett spurned his own family of high achievers, where his son is also a published doctor in the demography field.
A UAGC Destiny
While Dr. Haskett worked through those degree programs, he made an observation that shaped his pedagogy around his teachings and missions: not many students and faculty looked like him, let alone shared in his experiences.
“I'm a bit of an anomaly in terms of being phenotypically a Black male, coming from an impoverished community. I was an anomaly in terms of just excelling at a very high level,” he says. “I didn't see anybody that looked like me or had experiences like me, particularly when it came to my professors and military veterans who didn't experience any of that.”
When Dr. Haskett was working at brick-and-mortar institution Kennesaw State University in Georgia in 2021, he found UAGC, and after some time as an associate faculty member, Dr. Patricia Ryan, a colleague, suggested he might be a good fit for a permanent role. A series of connections — including a fateful viewing of his work at a UAGC Culture of Care conference by Dr. Katie Thiry, who pushed for his onboarding alongside Dr. Ryan — brought him onto the faculty full time shortly after.
As a full-time UAGC faculty member since 2024, Dr. Haskett teaches courses in organizational behavior and plans to continue his research into supporting military veterans and students who have experienced trauma and foster strong student-teacher relationships.
“If you believe the VA statistics, there's a lot of trauma there, and those students are going to find our door,” Dr. Haskett says. “How we delicately, and in an informed way, deal with that trauma is something that I like to explore.”