What happens when you achieve everything you thought you wanted and it still feels empty? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Kevin Howard, U.S. Army veteran, former FEMA Lead Disaster Assistance Loan Officer, who had a successful 25-year career in commercial banking before transitioning to climate risk & sustainability advisory services. Kevin Howard shares his journey from military service and a successful 25-year banking career to a deeply personal turning point that changed everything.

This episode serves as a masterclass in leadership, identity, and the courage it takes to redefine success on your own terms.

What You Will Learn

True leadership often begins as a reluctant journey rooted in service rather than ambition.

Success without alignment to personal values can lead to feelings of emptiness and lack of purpose.

Clarity comes from looking inward and redefining your life based on your own values, not societal expectations.

Discipline and attention to detail learned in high-stakes environments can translate into long-term professional excellence.

Starting a business requires strategic financial planning, especially understanding runway and minimizing risk.

External economic factors play a larger role in business success today than ever before.

Aligning your work with your personal passions creates both fulfillment and long-term impact.

FAQ:

Why do successful people still feel unfulfilled?

Because success built on external expectations rather than internal values can create achievement without meaning. When your life reflects what you “should” want instead of who you truly are, it often leads to emptiness.

How can I find my true purpose?

Purpose is discovered through introspection, examining your lived experiences, values, and what genuinely fulfills you, rather than following societal definitions of success.

What should I know before starting a business?

You need a clear understanding of your financial runway, minimal reliance on debt, and awareness of how external economic factors may impact your business.

Connect with Kevin Howard

Website

Book: Onward at Last (2024 Presidential Election Edition)

Podcast: Breadcrumbs – The Podcast for People Who Know It’s Not Working

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LVP 127 Kevin

Now here's your host, angel b Hardwell.

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries Podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time, and provide our listeners with world class examples, the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions to reality.

He established climate changes, everything LLC in February of 2023 and Atmosphere Press published his book Onward at Last, which was Rereleased October, 2024. As the 2024 Presidential election edition with the Forward written by John Fullerton, onward at last won the 2025 Bronze IPI for best adult non-fiction ebook from the Independent Book Publishers Award.

Kevin: So thank you for inviting me here today, angel. It is a pleasure to be here with you and your audience today.

That happened in November in Boston in November of 2025. And I remember that Kevin was very enthusiastic and so I thought it would be a wonderful time for us to have. Little talk with one another together today. So Kevin, I wanna start our conversation. I wanna start our conversation in your case around leadership, because clearly you're somebody who's had leadership roles in a variety of different, um, realms, a variety of different realms.

Kevin: What a great question, angel. Thank you for asking. Yeah, it is. Um, you would've thought, you know, given my background, I would've started in the military, but I would, I would say that my journey to characterize my journey, it was a reluctant leadership journey. Right. You know, it wasn't that I was looking to be the leader, right?

And so it, it literally started in the Boy Scouts if you could believe that, you know, because me and my brother, who's two years older. We joined the Boy Scout. We did everything. We played sports, we did everything. And certainly we joined the Boy Scouts together. And for whatever reason, based on what we were doing and how we were doing it the scout master selected me to be the senior patrol leader.

Anjel: And

Kevin: so that's my leadership approach. You know, whatever virtues and values, whatever discipline, whatever skill, whatever commitment you give that first. And when people see that, then they, oh, they will, they will run through the wall for you. And so, and so, it started when I was, uh, in, in the Boy Scouts and, um.

I did, I did not make it to be an eagle. I was a first class scout and stuff like that. But uh, but just as we were getting to that point, I started getting extremely active in competitive athletics and then, you know, so, so, but yeah. So I think it started there, but certainly my military service

Anjel: Hmm,

And then you, you know, and then you serve in the military. And I served I will date myself. I served president Reagan was my commander in chief. And, uh, I served from 1983 to 1987. I served over in Germany, uh, as a member of NATO at, at the time when it was the height of the Cold War and, and, and greatest tension between, uh, the United States and the Soviet Union.

I was there when President Reagan put M1 and M two tanks across Europe and shifted the balance of power. My role, because we knew we had a technological advantage over the Wasaw Pac Nations was to train soldiers how to survive in nuclear, biological, or chemical contaminated environments because the war college assumed.

Was the fifth core commander there, uh, before he president Reagan selected him to be assistant National Security Advisor, and he, he started his political track, but I served for him when he was fifth Core Commander. So yes, leadership certainly got accentuated through the urgency of what, what will you do when you're in a situation where you have to kill or be killed?

Mm-hmm. Are you prepared to do that? And, and what, what's the disciplines. That you need to engage in, in order to make those kind of decisions and, and you know, because at that point it's not about democracy. It's about partnership, it's about leadership. It's about full 110% commitment. And so that has served me for the rest of my professional career.

Those lessons.

Think about those people who are listening to this podcast, who are, you know, have ideas, who have, you know, innovations, who have things that they wanna change, impact that they wanna make in the world. It's not quite killer, be killed. However, I think that some of those, those learnings from that level of intensity certainly can apply to our listeners.

Kevin: My and that, that goes back to how I was raised. Okay. So my mother was not born in the United States. She was born in Panama. And, and she spoke Spanish as her first language and she was sent to the United States, um, a dying wish of her father. 'cause they felt that she gave the family the best opportunity to come to the States and establish herself or what have you.

She lived in Panama, in Cologne, Panama, and so the vision that she instilled in me raised up was to understand amongst the 8 billion and then it was probably about 5 billion people on the planet. We are blessed to be worn in a country. Where if we perfect our skills, if we study hard, if we actually dedicate ourselves, right, there is no limits to what we could achieve.

And so that lit a fire under me like, you know. Like, no one's business. And, and so that's why at 18 I volunteered to serve, you know, instead of going straight to college, I wanted to earn my own money for college. So I joined the military, you know, that was, you know, the, the motivation. So my vision was. To honor the privilege I have been blessed with.

It wasn't about kill or be killed, certainly not, but what it was, 'cause it's all the little things that make up excellence and, and, and it, in that urgent environment, not being excellent means someone is probably gonna die. So, so, so the, so to, to be present of mine in what we do. Enough that, that, that, that each step is done in an excellent way.

'cause that's basically, you know, you know, okay. And there's, there's a fou. There's so much information that you have to go through. And the thing about it is your capacity to do every one of those steps with precision. Is what home, what I got, what came outta the military, what, what big advantage I got.

Mm-hmm. Is because I recognize every little step really matters because now that it's the critical moment. Right. You know, are you gonna make the right decision? Are you in the right position? Or you know, for the team? 'cause it's always gonna be a coordinated thing. And in, in banking. Yeah. Do you understand this credit sufficiently to where you could say, yes, yeah, this is who we invest in, you know, versus the other opportunity, right?

Anjel: Beautiful. I love that. Well, and I love this idea of being meticulous with, with and being excellent, being transferred, you know, where in one case, lack of excellence could get somebody killed.

Being able to transfer that into your career, your long-term career was really a powerful thing and. Um, we're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back we're gonna talk about like, where did the vision arise for you to start? Climate changes everything. And how did the vision arise for your book Onward at last, and how do those two things mesh together?

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Anjel: And we are back with Kevin Howard. Before we went to the break, I said I'd let you know where you can find out more about him. You can go to www.onwardatlast.com. That's onward@last.com and we will have that for you in the show notes. So before we went to the break, we were talking about where did the vision come from for the book onward at last, and how did the vision arise for climate changes, everything.

Kevin: That is the definitive question from me. Angel. So thank you. And reason why is, is it actually, it started with a crisis moment that maybe some of our listeners can relate to. I, um, right around when I was 42 years old, I turned 60 this past November, I, I went to a crisis moment in that I had absolutely built my life about achieving.

The middle class dream, I wanted bounce, so I wanted financial success, yes, but I wanted the family, I wanted to be able to enjoy that success. And I was there. I had the house. I was married, I had the kids, I had the toys, I had the bank and the, the money in the bank it, everything was going great, and one morning I woke up and I couldn't believe it.

'cause I realized in that moment, I didn't know who I was. I had built my entire life based on these virtues and values that growing up in America, give us this notion of freedom. You know, independence, you know, competition, you know, self-interest. Right. Okay. And I had built my life this way and, and I achieved it, and then I found it to be.

You know, not meaningful.

Anjel: Empty,

Kevin: empty,

Anjel: empty,

Kevin: empty, right? And so,

Anjel: been there, done that, had the same experience right around the same time.

That, that, that the Kevin Howard, my priorities, my personal virtues were different than those cultural virtues. Those cultural virtues I love. Right? But they weren't, they, they weren't unique to me and that I had built my entire life on those things and not who I was. And so what the, what the book was inspired by is, is the wisdom, the steep wisdom of my lived experience.

Because I think as great as our culture is, it encourages us to create these avatars of ourselves, which reflect the cultural norms, the cultural expectations, whatever. And there's nothing wrong with that. And again, those are good things, but that's not who we are. In order to find purpose in your life, to find fulfillment in your life, you have to honor who you are, and that's no dishonor to the country.

We have reborn in. Right. In fact, that's the best way to honor the country that we've born in by being who we actually are. And so what had happened is, is once I realized the things that really make me tick, I decided to rebuild my life that way. And so I found a way within my th my banking career. I was passionate about ecology.

You know, as, as, as a level one risk to safety and soundness for major institutions. And I happened to be at US Bank, the fifth largest bank in the country, and was a part of the first team at US Bank. I, I was the, I was the qua, the climate risk qualitative lead. And so my job was to write the draft climate risk management framework for the bank and then to lead the review process to the stakeholders and get it approved by the board of directors of the bank.

An invitation to the reader to do the same, to, to reorder their lives based on who they truly are. And that's the best we can do for our societies, for our communities, and for our country. Right? And that's what I did. And then the, on the professional side, once I completed that journey of helping US bank develop their strategic approach to climate risk management, I, I, I started my own consultant business with the focus of advising top 100 banks to do the same.

You know, I was at number five, so why not help number 30, number four,

Anjel: why? Why not? Yeah, why not take it? Why not duplicate that success elsewhere, you know, elsewhere as you're talking about this inward journey? You know, I definitely have been on this journey. Many of, most of my clients have been on this journey.

And this is where ingenious, insightful, and innovative and inspired things can, can really happen. And as you were talking about that and about particularly about this country and how, you know, becoming your best self is, is what? Is going to serve your country as well. It made me think about, you know, we do talk about this being the land of the free and the home of the brave, and so there's nothing more freeing than being yourself, and there's nothing more brave than being yourself, but you can't do those things if you haven't taken the time to dismantle.

I'd love to have you speak about your own experience starting up your consulting business. And any, you know, issues you may have had personally with the money side of things or any other challenges that you faced that you weren't expecting?

Kevin: Again, great question. Angel. Yes, it was. For most of, for much of my career, certainly in the earlier stages of my career, my focus was helping entrepreneurs start their businesses.

And, and, and, and, and they're putting it on the line. And I'm thinking I would have a heart attack day one. Right? So after 25 years of helping those tho, you know, those type of courageous leaders, that that's courageous leaders, right? You know, I took, I, I had to benefit of understanding what, what, what works, what techniques, and the fact that yes, you cannot come into it.

You cannot come into it. Borrowing everything. You have to have a really good sense of, of, of the, we, we, the term is working capital, but the, the money you need to operate before the business is sufficient. It's to sustain itself.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Kevin: Did you know, and and

Anjel: runway, Jesse, I call that runway. You runway.

Gotta have some runway.

And then you just destroy your credit and you're left without the business and you're left route with credit. So there you are. Alright. I mean, horrible. And so when I started my business, I understood what that was. And so I knew I was gonna do a consultancy. And so there's not a lot of overhead in that for if, if you're, there's lots of, if you wanna be a home builder, you know, again, barriers to entry, you know, you know, so whatever your business model is.

You know, and, and, and, and. 'cause what I've, what I've learned over these, examining the economy over these last 30 years is that the success of the individual business used to be more a function of your due diligence, your capacity to compete. That your expertise, you know, what you were doing. The micro today it is.

Much more about externalities that are beyond your control. What's going on in the economy? How are tariffs gonna impact you? What is, you know, how, you know, what is the economy doing to your target customers who would love to buy your, your service or product, but maybe they can't afford? I mean, all these things, it's all, it's almost all externalities these day.

Because right now, that's what's changing and changing severely.

Anjel: And there's climate change in the economic environment. Economics. Yeah. We've got one minute left, Kevin. So in the last minute, I'd love to have you speak to who specifically would be really well served to hire you.

Kevin: Well, it's interesting right now I, I hope the city of Seattle because I have a, I have a proposal with the new mayor there.

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