Barnett, 40, joined the Army in February 2001 while he was a student at Ohio State University. He spent six years on active duty and in the National Guard. He never deployed overseas but worked on the policy team in the nation’s capital while in uniform. He stayed in Washington after he left the Army in various policy roles, including with the Department of Defense and on Capitol Hill as a congressional staffer.
His policy work included health and safety issues, such as veterans’ mental health and access to care. On the side, he became interested in automotive policy and safety and started an automotive blog, which he said led to a connection with former Hyundai Motor America CEO John Krafcik, who became TrueCar’s president in 2014.
Barnett joined TrueCar’s ALG subsidiary in 2015 as a junior analyst working on residual values before moving into other roles within the company. Today, he is director of military marketing and growth at TrueCar.
Green, 52, enlisted with the Marines at age 17 in 1987 and deployed to the Middle East during the Gulf War. When he left the military in 1991, Green said, he landed a job selling cars the next day.
That was the beginning of a 24-year career in auto retail. Green said he found the dealership performance-based environment fitting with the work ethic he developed in the military. Before he joined TrueCar in 2015, he was managing partner of Showcase Honda in Phoenix, a job he transitioned out of when billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. purchased Van Tuyl Group, which owned the store.
Green, now TrueCar’s senior vice president of major accounts and military business strategy, helped spin up a new auto-buying program, TrueCar Military, last year after the company learned USAA Federal Savings Bank planned to end its 13-year partnership and exit the car-buying space.
TrueCar executives say the new program will allow it to reach a larger group of military service members and veterans than it could through the USAA partnership, which had comprised about 30 percent of vehicles sold to buyers who connected through TrueCar’s network.
The company is “very, very positive and very bullish” on growing TrueCar Military, Green said.
“Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, a reservist or immediate family, our goal is to be that name of choice,” he said.
