From Combat to Campus:

From Special Forces to Student Leader

After nearly 27 years in combat roles, Heiko Grant brought his spirit of service to UW Tacoma — and discovered new ways to lead, connect, and give back.

At first glance, Heiko Grant doesn’t fit the mold of a typical college student. For nearly three decades, he served in the U.S. Army — including 24 years in Special Forces — deploying around the world operating in high-stakes environments where mental toughness, tactical precision, and trust in your team have life -changing circumstances.  It was a career in service that he loved.  But after enduring the physical toll of combat service, Grant knew he needed a new mission.

“All I got left in life is to continue to learn,” Grant said. “And life is service, if you’re not having fun doing it, what’s the point?”

The Next Chapter after Military Service

Grant enrolled in the Milgard School of Business at the University of Washington Tacoma, focusing and set to work Master of Science in Accounting.

“I had a difficult time starting out,” he said.

The transition to academic life wasn’t just a mental adjustment — it was physical, too. Years of service had left Grant with lasting injuries that made even routine parts of student life, like long lectures, a challenge.

“I’m very grateful for the Veteran and Military Resource Center and the Disability Support Center,” said Grant.  “This institution has made it possible for me to actually get my degree. I know I could not have done it on my own.”

After a long military career defined by mission planning, risk assessment, and leadership, he found surprising parallels in accounting — a discipline that, to him, also requires preparation and strategic thinking. He was drawn to the field not only for its stability, but for its potential to empower others — especially friends, family, and fellow veterans who don’t always have access to financial literacy or strategic guidance.

“I’ve seen what happens when people don’t have a plan, or don’t understand the system,” he said. “I want to help people build something that lasts — something they can pass on, build family and generational wealth.”

Leading with Vulnerability

Grant’s impact on the UW Tacoma community goes far beyond the classroom. As a peer advisor for the Veteran and Military Resource Center, he’s spent countless hours helping fellow students and veterans navigate campus life, transition from active duty, and find a sense of belonging.

Grant served as a graduate senator in The Associated Students of the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT’s student government body) and as treasurer of the Association of Student Accountants. He also helped found the Husky Clay Breakers, a student club built around sport shooting that gives veterans and others a space to connect, decompress, and support one another.

But perhaps the most striking thing about Grant’s presence on campus is his openness, humility, and willingness to lend a hand to those around him.

“I falter everyday so for someone to hold me up in the light a little bit is surprising to me,” he said. “I just want to help people and I’m going to keep doing that as long as I can.”

A New Kind of Service

As he looks to the future, Grant says he hopes to continue finding ways to lift others up — whether through business support, mentorship, or simply sharing his story.

After graduating, he’ll be working with the finance department at nearby Tacoma Community College, and the ties to education may not stop there.

“I see being a professor in my future sometime,” Grant said.

Heiko Grant’s service may have begun on the battlefield, but at UW Tacoma, it found a new front: one defined not by orders or rank, but by learning, leading, and giving others the tools to succeed.

A veteran’s story of reinvention

Kristin Bennett’s next mission is a quest to heal the brain.

By the time Kristin Bennett was 18, she was in Navy boot camp. Not long after, she was aboard an aircraft carrier headed for the Persian Gulf following 9/11. She spent six years as a nuclear chemist, helping to manage the chemistry and mechanical systems of the ship’s nuclear reactor — one of only a few women in the field at the time.

Now 43, she’s in her final few weeks as an undergraduate in the University of Washington’s chemical engineering program. A mother of four. A service-disabled veteran. A researcher and Husky 100 honoree. And someone who, by her own admission, has failed chemistry before.

“I didn’t have those opportunities coming out of high school,” Bennett says. “The military is a great place for people in tough home situations to get out. And I needed to not be where I was.”

The Navy helped her find direction — but also left lasting damage. Over deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Bennett was exposed to the smoke from burn pits, radiation, and hazardous chemicals. By 28, she’d suffered mini-strokes and lost function on her right side. In her 30s, she was diagnosed with autoimmune disorders with no treatments for her condition.

And yet — she keeps going. Physical rehabilitation is a constant in her life as she strives to keep doing the things she wants to do.

At one point, she drove double-decker semi-trucks hauling golf carts for delivery at local golf courses. In the fall months she would haul 60-pound bales of Christmas tree trimmings down Mount St. Helens in a semi-truck, and worked as a city bus driver.

Eventually, her body could no longer keep up. “I guess I’m the story of reinvention,” she says. “You can do it as many times as you need to, just to figure out where you’re at.”

Her interest in brain injury research — sparked by her own experiences — led her to the VA with a simple question: “How can I be part of this?” That led to an unexpected offer: vocational rehab benefits that would cover a full scholarship, with a salary, all the way through to a doctorate if she wanted it.

“I was like, ‘a what?’” she laughs. “‘A bachelor’s degree?’ They said, ‘How about a doctorate?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, OK!’”

She enrolled at Seattle Colleges to begin with prerequisites in the two-year system, then transferred to the University of Washington, applying to both bioengineering and chemical engineering. But it was Elizabeth Nance, associate chair of the ChemE department at the UW, who changed everything. “She was emailing me two days after the application,” Bennett recalls. “‘You are ChemE. You belong with us.’”

Being drawn twice into chemistry fields was quite the surprise for Bennett, considering she dropped chemistry in high school to avoid a failure on her transcript. “Sometime others can see your skills and talents better than you can see yourself, and Professor Nance saw something in me I didn’t see in myself.”

Now she’s deep into research that she designed herself — a traumatic brain injury (TBI) model she developed as an undergraduate, with plans to pursue a startup and clinical trials if her drug screening work proves successful.

[READ MORE ABOUT KRISTIN’s GROUNDBREAKING BRAIN INJURY RESEARCH.] 

Her journey hasn’t been easy. She underwent bilateral hand surgery during her time at UW after losing the use of her hands from rheumatoid arthritis. “I had to do two quarters at home, voice coding my homework,” she says. But the faculty met her with compassion. “They made sure lectures were recorded, that I had what I needed. They made it possible.”

She’s also raising a family — her oldest stepchild is 29, her youngest daughter is 14. “Sometimes I’m doing homework on the side of the basketball court, yelling ‘Go!’ between lines of code,” she says. Her daughter, once struggling in math, is now excelling — inspired by watching her mom. “I was told as a kid that girls aren’t good at math, and it affected my performance. Many girls hear that, and it changes how you see yourself,” Bennett says. “But my daughter saw me excelling and it changed how she saw herself, and now she’s killing it.”

Bennett commutes to campus, pockets stuffed with snacks to hand out to classmates who haven’t eaten. “At some point I realized that my ‘momness’ was an asset, not a liability,” she says.

She’s still getting used to the idea that she belongs here — that this campus is hers, too. “At first, I was this little fish in a big pond. It was scary. But over the last three years, this has become home. I really do feel like a big part of the Husky community.”

There’s one more clue to that belonging: a four-legged friend at home — a miniature husky named JuJu.

Her family will cheer her on from the stands of Husky Stadium as she earns her first degree this June, but for Bennett, graduation isn’t the finish line — it’s another step in a journey shaped by curiosity, purpose and the drive to make the world better for others.

Master Sergeant becomes an on-campus mentor

Christopher Murillo’s second act at UW Tacoma after a whirlwind  military career took him to the White House and around the world.

When Christopher Murillo walks into class, people assume he’s younger than he is. It’s not until he speaks — or offers up a slice of his story — that they realize they’re sitting next to someone who once worked in the White House, served 22 years in the Army, and ran secure communications over Ground Zero after 9/11.

“I joined the Army as a teenager,” he says. “I retired in my early 40s. I spent more than 10 years at the White House Communications Agency — working with the President, Vice President, Secret Service. But I still wanted something more. I wanted to learn.”

Murillo has earned his first bachelor’s degree through the honors program at the University of Washington Tacoma, majoring in Political Science. He’s also a Husky 100 honoree — recognized not just for his academic performance, but for the way he’s shaped UW’s veteran community and mentored his peers.

Murillo is part of a newer generation of student veterans — older, focused, and fully invested. “The campus at UW is so welcoming to veterans,” he says. “They’ve built up the Veterans and Military Resource Center with everything from a foosball table to video games. It’s a real space for us to connect.”

He spent time there as a PAVE advisor and AmeriCorps vet navigator, building relationships with younger student veterans and sharing what he’s learned. “It’s kind of like being back in the Army,” he says. “They’d ask me, ‘What did you do?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, I worked in secure communications. I was in Afghanistan. I retired as a master sergeant. But now I’m still here, still learning.’ I think that gave some of them motivation.”

That discipline — the drive to keep growing — runs deep. “I was a master fitness trainer in the Army,” he says. “I never let up. I was always focused. And I think my professors appreciated that — I’d help get the conversation started when no one else would. And students appreciated it, too. I could tell when someone was struggling, and I’d ask, ‘How’s your paper going?’ or tell them, ‘You’ve got to go to office hours.’”

It’s not the kind of leadership that draws attention to itself. It’s quiet, earned, and always focused on others.

That ethic goes back to his family. His father, a retired Air Force mechanic, worked at the airport in Abilene for two more decades after military service. “He told me, ‘Chris, I never even liked that job — but it’s all I knew.’ And I thought, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do something that fulfills me.”

At UW, that meant pursuing something long-held: a love for philosophy and politics. “As you get older, you want to live your best life,” he says. “You want a strong body and a strong mind.”

But even with all that experience, finishing a degree hasn’t been easy. “The only time I was really nervous? The capstones,” he says. “It’s personal. You want that sense of accomplishment. You’re never too old to make your parents proud. Or your kids. Or your wife.”

His 8-year-old son, he says, is counting down the days until graduation. “He just wants me to be done so I have more time to play,” Murillo laughs.

But the moments keep piling up. A letter of congratulations on the Husky 100 from State Senator Yasmin Trudeau. Students he’s helped in class. And quieter memories — like flying over Ground Zero after 9/11, taking photos with a disposable Kodak camera, or shaking hands with a president in the Oval Office.

“All of that is incredible,” he says. “But you can’t live in that moment forever. You’ve got to keep moving. And sometimes, your kid doing well on a spelling test — that can be just as exciting.”