{"id":284,"date":"2015-10-16T04:26:18","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T04:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/?p=284"},"modified":"2017-07-19T14:37:32","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T14:37:32","slug":"staff-sgt-kenneth-smith-trooper-of-the-quarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/2015\/10\/16\/staff-sgt-kenneth-smith-trooper-of-the-quarter\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Sgt. Kenneth Smith: Trooper of the Quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Staff Sgt. Michael E. Davis Jr., Maryland National Guard Public Affairs Office \u2014<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Maryland National Guard takes great pleasure in recognizing its citizen-soldiers and airmen who have interesting qualities and stand out in their military and civilian careers. This quarter, the MDNG would like to acknowledge Army Staff Sgt. Kenneth T. Smith for his outstanding work as a full-time program analyst with the Maryland National Guard and as a successful entrepreneur.<\/p>\n

\"2130-20150509-Z-XH589-009\"<\/p>\n

Guard Status<\/strong>
\nAffiliation: Maryland Army National Guard
\nUnit: 29th Military Police Company
\nMilitary Occupational Specialty: 31A – Military Police Officer
\nYears of service: 10<\/p>\n

Citizen Status<\/strong>
\nCareers: Program Analyst and entrepreneur
\nAffiliation: Maryland National Guard and Self
\nEducation: Early Childhood Education, minor in Business Management<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> So what do you do for the Maryland National Guard?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> I\u2019m a full-time program analyst for the Maryland National Guard, in the human resource office and I\u2019m also a military police officer with the 29th Military Police Company.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> What does your full-time job as a program analyst entail?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> As a program analyst, my primary function in the Human Resource Office is to maintain the Maryland National Guard\u2019s tech-pay budget, which is roughly a 33-million-dollar budget to cover down on the technician\u2019s pay in the whole state of Maryland. I also assist the chief of staff, general officers, and manage the budget for the AGR (Active Guard Reserve) and tech travel for the whole state of Maryland.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> How long have you been a program analyst?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> About five years.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> Ok. What do you do on the civilian side?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> On the civilian side, I own my own business; I am an entrepreneur. It\u2019s been five years and my company is called Xtreme Snow. We\u2019re a mobile-shaved-ice service that serves over 50-plus flavors in the Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. area. We do this every summer. Everything is event based. We have customers that will call us up and say \u2018hey, I\u2019m having a birthday party or a wedding and I think snow cones would be a great treat to offer to my guest or employees.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"(Photo<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> Has your business supported the Maryland National Guard in any way?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> Yes, I actually do a lot of family-day events for the Maryland Army National Guard \u2013 Joint Force Headquarters being one of them.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> How long have you been offering shaved ice, with over 50 plus flavors, to all of the friends, family and fellow citizen-soldiers of the Maryland National Guard?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> Probably for about three years now. I\u2019ve also been doing Unity Day as well every year for the past five years.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> So what made you want to become an entrepreneur and own your own shaved ice service?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> Well (chuckle), it\u2019s funny because when my wife and I were in high school, we actually worked at a snowball stand together. I wanted to start out as a stationary stand, but that didn\u2019t happen. But it came to me to do mobile, so I can move around. But on July 1st, I just opened up my first stationary stand in Glen Burnie.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> Wow! So how\u2019s that working for you?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> So far, so good; foot traffic has been picking up everyday. We\u2019re open from twelve to eight and it\u2019s just about building the trust of the community and just continually providing that quality service that we do when we do these individual events.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> Do you run the whole business yourself?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> No, my whole family is involved. My sister is involved, my in laws, my four sons and my wife. Not so much my wife now, because she has her own bakery. My wife has been doing designer cakes for well over 10 years now.<\/p>\n

\"2130-20150509-Z-XH589-006\"<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> So, it\u2019s a family affair?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> Yes, it\u2019s always some one moving in the house. We don\u2019t even bother to have cable because we\u2019re always doing something (chuckle).<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> So, what makes you want to continue with Xtreme Snow? What\u2019s your motivational drive?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> Honestly, it\u2019s the smiling faces I see and meeting new people from all over the MD\/DC\/VA area.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> Do you feel being a program analyst for the Maryland National Guard helps you with maintaining your business?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> Absolutely. It teaches me how to stay disciplined financially. It teaches me how to make key decisions. Knowing how to be proactively instead of being reactive definitely helps me in the entrepreneurship world.<\/p>\n

PAO:<\/strong> What are your future plans with the Maryland National Guard and your business?
\nStaff Sgt. Smith:<\/strong> To retire from the Maryland National Guard and expand my business across the East Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Maryland National Guard takes great pleasure in recognizing its citizen-soldiers and airmen who have interesting qualities and stand out in their military and civilian careers. This quarter, the MDNG would like to acknowledge Army Staff Sgt. Kenneth T. Smith for his outstanding work as a full-time program analyst with the Maryland National Guard and as a successful entrepreneur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,2],"tags":[324,325,327,323,326],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-i-am-the-mission","category-news","tag-29th-military-police-company","tag-31a","tag-active-guard-reserve","tag-entrepreneur","tag-program-analyst"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1541,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/1541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}