He had brought Tony Watson -- the U.S. Navy's first African-American nuclear officer to reach the rank of admiral -- to Detroit to discuss the qualifications of former military personnel for engineering positions. The executive started yelling about the U.S. military's actions in Vietnam, and forced Watson and Poriotis from his office.

It wasn't Poriotis' only experience of that nature.

About six years ago, Poriotis finished his study for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and found that former military employees encountered discrimination when attempting to move into the private sector similar to the problems faced by women and minorities.

Now, Poriotis' Center for Military and Private Sector Initiatives Inc. will work with the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers in Exton to change some of those perceptions. The alliance will help connect broadband companies with military-trained technicians.

"Really, our main objective was to provide a service to the industry that we support," said Melissa Hicks, the society's director of membership services and member relations. "There has been a lot of interest, even though we're in the infancy stage of getting the word out."

As part of the partnership, the society and the center will team up at trade shows such as Cable-Tec Expo, an industry event attended by 11,000 people.

Poriotis, chairman and CEO of the center, has a background in minority recruitment. His Wesley, Brown & Bartle recruitment firm specialized in finding female and minority candidates for positions in Fortune 500 companies three decades ago, well before Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rulings.

"We were Sisyphus pushing the rock up the mountain long before there were ropes to help pull it up from the other side," Poriotis said.

The Joint Chiefs requested the creation of the center in 1995 to close the gap between the military and private sectors, and to translate more than 4,000 occupational descriptions into needed positions in corporate America. The center estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 program managers, engineers, technicians and supervisors transition or retire from the military each year.

"The military gave me $24,600.11 to complete the study," Poriotis said. "It took me two years and cost me $400,000."

What Poriotis found in that study stunned him. Navy chiefs who had maintained the launch electronics in weapons systems were $7-an-hour couriers. Colonels were painting houses. Lieutenant commanders who had left the Navy were chipping paint in Louisiana boatyards.

"`Be all that you can be' has become, `You've been all you can be,'" Poriotis said.

The private sector wasn't entirely responsible, Poriotis said: The military feared companies would poach its best talent.

The society says its partnership with the center will fill a gap.

"There's a shortage of cable engineers, and really of employees in all cable technical fields," Hicks said.

Cable companies need engineers to upgrade and maintain their broadband networks. The military has used voice-over-Internet technology -- which cable operators could launch late next year -- for at least a decade. Submarines communicated using wireless technology decades before the advent of cell phones.

"In the military, if you don't have 24/7 instant communication, bad things happen very quickly: people die," said Don Mills, operations director for the center and a Green Beret in the National Guard. "These technicians bring the same talent and commitment to these companies."

The center has placed former military technicians with firm such as Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc. and RCN Corp., among others.