Our Story

Knutson Recognizes Our Veterans

Minneapolis, MN – 11/11/2022

In the Summer of 2020, Dempsey Spiekermeier received an opportunity that not every reserve officer receives: A selection to attend the Command and General Staff College. There were only 40 reserve officers chosen out of 1100 students—that’s less than 1%! There are various other options for the school, but he was chosen for the resident, in-person, 10-month course meaning that he would step away from Knutson but with the intent to return upon completion. But that wasn’t exactly how it turned out.

Shortly before he was due to return, and coincidently a few days before his wife’s birthday, he was involuntarily transferred to deployment in Kuwait. At this point, due to Covid restrictions, Dempsey had only been able to see his family for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break – not the standard one weekend per month. He began deployment planning and training in Texas before leaving for Kuwait for nine months of active duty.

In Kuwait, Dempsey was the chief of current operations for his brigade of about 1000 people, mainly focused on troop construction projects. He oversaw teams in Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Qatar who were responsible for meeting with clients on expeditionary and temporary construction projects.

One of the most challenging yet rewarding parts was working on Afghan refugee support in Qatar. Projects included processing centers, medical facilities, and general housing for the refugees. “Seeing the support our carpenters were able to do by turning warehouses into medical exam rooms and processing centers for these families was very rewarding and exciting to see. It wasn’t typical work,” said Dempsey. The challenging part was managing the financials as some pieces needed to be paid for by Department of State dollars and some with Army dollars and they couldn’t be intermixed.

In August of 2022, Dempsey returned home to Iowa just in time to see his three kids off to their first day of school. He started back at Knutson a week later and is grateful for how the team has helped him transition back into his day-to-day. From leadership to HR to various engineers that have helped him get back into the world of CMIC, the support has been very helpful. But there is no rest for the weary, Dempsey has 5 weeks of coursework left in obtaining an MBA from University of Kansas thanks to a partnership with the Command and General Staff College and select universities to transfer credits towards graduate programs. Congratulations Dempsey!