Meet a Solar Ready Vets Fellow: Cameron Niccum
IREC leads the Solar Ready Vets Fellowship in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes program. Offered at no cost, the fellowship matches solar industry employers with service members who are in transition from the military to the civilian workforce.
Cameron Niccum: Supply Chain Manager, FTC Solar
Cameron Niccum launched his solar career as a Solar Ready Vets Fellow at FTC Solar in Austin, Texas, where he continues to serve as a Supply Chain Manager.
With a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from West Point, Cameron commissioned as an Infantry Officer in 2016 at Fort Benning, Georgia. Rising from platoon leader to squadron logistics officer over his military career, he was responsible for the deployment and maintenance of over $50 million of equipment, and provided logistical support for 180 personnel while deployed to Iraq and Syria. Later, he managed supply, transportation, logistics, maintenance, and budget for a squadron headquarters consisting of hundreds of soldiers and vehicles, and four infantry companies with over $280 million in assets.
When he decided to transition toward a civilian career, he set his sights on helping to scale solar technology and accelerate the transition to a renewable energy future. He explains that the Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program “helped narrow down what I wanted to do and the impact that I wanted to create, to make an informed decision on how best to apply the skills and experience I had gained through military service.”
His engineering background, paired with an aptitude for leadership, problem solving, and operations management, made him uniquely suited for his role at FTC Solar, where he currently works across a diverse team managing logistics from procurement to delivery—building capacity models within a constrained supply chain environment, and looking for scenarios to reduce costs and optimize lead and delivery times.
He describes the fellowship experience as “drinking from a firehose,” and that his success came from embracing each challenge as opportunities to learn, maintaining a “mission-completion” mindset, and seeking out mentors within the organization to quickly integrate with the team. For service members navigating the transition to the civilian workforce, Cameron emphasizes the importance of networking and prioritizing relationships that add value to something you’re passionate about.