Daniel Taylor looks back on 21 years of military service

In 2022 Daniel Taylor of Fulton County retired from the Indiana National Guard after 21 years in the United States military. Taylor first joined the military in 1995 at the age of 18, starting with the active-duty Army as a light-wheel mechanic.

He began his time in the Army at Fort Bragg, where he went to airborne school and joined the 50th Signal Battalion. After two years, he went to Camp Humphreys, followed by Fort Campbell, where he was a mechanic. After 5 years in the army, Taylor chose to go to college and enrolled in the business/ HR program at IU Kokomo.

“I was a sergeant. I had some management experience, and felt I would have some good opportunities in business/HR,” Taylor said.

After college, Taylor landed a management role with Road and Rail Services. Around this time he also married his wife Tara. Immediately after graduating from IUK, Taylor went to IU Fort Wayne to get his MBA and pondered his future.

“I was thinking what should I do to get more experience and what could I do to get more qualifications. I ended up thinking I could go into the Guard and become an officer,” Taylor said.

He entered the National Guard in 2006, working in human resources. The Guard enabled Taylor to balance family, service, work and education. He did this through the adjutant general corps as deputy inspector general.

“It’s definitely a lot of balancing when being a citizen soldier because you got family, you have a civilian job and you have a military job that is pretty demanding. You have to keep good relations with your employer. It is also hard to be away from your family when you are stationed abroad,” said Taylor.

In 2006 Taylor started as an operations resource at Frito Lay. While there, he was called to Afghanistan from 2009-2010 where his division supported Operation Enduring Freedom. In Afghanistan, Taylor worked as a detainee representative at Bagram Theater Internment Facility. This was his favorite assignment in the military, and his work at this position earned him a Bronze Star.

A year after his time in Afghanistan, Tara gave birth to their first child and Taylor went back to college, this time getting his Master’s degree in human resources and employment relations from Penn State University. Upon his graduation in 2013, he joined Amazon as a HR business partner in Plainfield. His family welcomed their second child in 2015.

In 2016 Taylor became a compensation analyst/HRBP for Allison Transmission. From 2017-2018 Taylor attended the US Army Command and General Staff College.

A year after completion, Taylor was called overseas again, this time to Kuwait where he was stationed until 2020 with 600 Cyclone Division soldiers deployed to the Middle East to support Task Force Spartan. Taylor was deputy personnel officer of the 38th Infantry Division, where he helped manage 11,000 US service members. Taylor’s family also welcomed their third child while he was in Kuwait.

In Kuwait, Taylor made some of his favorite memories as a member of a cigar club. “It was a time where a lot of soldiers just got together from all different units. It wasn’t so much about smoking cigars but more about hanging out and relaxing together. I think about that time as just something that I enjoyed, and I think it all comes back to camaraderie and being with people,” Taylor said.

After returning home in 2020 Taylor returned to school, to the Academy’s Innovate HR. He then took a new position at Yelp, working remotely as a senior global compensation analyst.

In 2022, Taylor retired from the military.

“The atmosphere at the time was COVID, and I didn’t like it and I didn’t know how long it would last. Also, being inspector general and being part-time was tough for me because it was such a good job that I only could dedicate very little time to. … I knew I was a part-time soldier, and I knew I couldn’t do the full job unless I was deployed. I had to think on if I could do another deployment and my answer to myself was no. I wanted to get to 20 years and that was good enough,” Taylor said.

During his service, Taylor received two meritorious medals. He also received the Indiana Distinguished Service Medal in recognition of his 21 years with the US military.

Taylor is now the lead compensation analyst at Yelp, where he designs and implements a pay strategy. Working remotely allows him be more present at home.

He is also at Ball State working on his masters in data science and programming. He expects this to be his last round of college, but does not believe it is the end of his education.

“I am a continuous learner. I don’t think I will ever stop as long as I’m working or even after I’m not. When I retire I think I will continue to work on things and learn things,” Taylor said.

Looking back on his experiences, Taylor noted how the Fulton County community supported him.

“While I was in Kuwait, the network that we had with our church was really instrumental in being able to do that type of work. When you have a good support system at home for your family like we did with my wife’s family, the church family and just friends, it made it so that I was able to focus on and do that mission versus having to worry about things at home. I think that was very good.”