After 29 years of service in the U.S. Air Force as a dynamic IT and engineering professional, Crystal Heard retired in May of 2025—only to begin a new career pathway a few months later with Solomon Strategic Advisors. This time, she is focusing fully on what she calls her “soft” skill set.
Heard said with joy, “I always valued my IT skills, but as I matured, I realized that my abilities and strength in coaching and connecting others was my superpower. For many years, I was using my soft skills in organizations that I was a part of, but not my main career with the Air Force. As I matured and grew older, I began to have coworkers and leadership come to me and ask me to coach certain people at work, or to approach leadership about certain topics, sensitivity training or suicide resiliency days. So even in engineering and IT, those soft skills became very valuable.”
A turning point in Heard’s career was giving a keynote address to Air Force staff about the lessons she had learned from her adversities and how she had used them to overcome. It was noticed that she connected with her mostly male audience.
Heard is a highly sought-after speaker today for many organizations. She met Jessica Rimmer from Solomon Strategic Advisors on a technology panel they both sat on, and the two quickly realized they shared an interest in motivating people to become healthy leaders who could then multiply that health within their organizations.
When Heard retired, Rimmer reached out to offer her a position on the Solomon team. Knowing that working there would multiply her opportunities to work with groups and individuals to become stronger leaders and organizations, Heard accepted. “Sharing all the things that I have learned! That I get to do this now with the Solomon team is an awesome opportunity and I love it.”
Heard will also be a professor of engineering at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma Baptist University in 2026 in addition to her work at Solomon. “I will tell my students that they will learn many job skills on the job—but they will have to keep cultivating personal and emotional intelligence all their life,” she said. “I also want our young leaders to know that their lives will have some twists and turns they won’t expect. They must have grace for themselves and their journey.”
