TCN Civic Engagement Fellow · 2026 Cohort
Eric Gage
SD Air National Guard · Security Forces Staff Sergeant
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Service
SD Air Nat’l Guard
Home
Sioux Falls, SD
Project
SD Civic Leadership
Focus Area
Healthy Civic Culture
About Eric
A veteran, Eagle Scout, and community builder rooted in Sioux Falls.
Eric Gage is a veteran, Eagle Scout, and community builder rooted in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His life has been defined by a single through line: showing up for people and building things that matter.
Eric served twelve years in the South Dakota Air National Guard as a Security Forces Staff Sergeant, completing seven deployments in support of the Global War on Terror. After returning home, he earned his degree from the University of South Dakota and spent years with Student Veterans of America, eventually serving as Director of Programs — overseeing national conferences, leadership training, and grant programs that touched thousands of student veterans across the country.
He returned to South Dakota as the founding Executive Director of Veterans Community Project of Sioux Falls, launching a nonprofit from the ground up dedicated to ending veteran homelessness. He has mentored hundreds of student veterans, advocated at the national level for veteran and civic issues, and currently serves as Cubmaster of Cub Scout Pack 318 in Sioux Falls — helping shape the next generation of community leaders one Monday night at a time.
The Initiative
Civic Leadership Development Program
Equipping South Dakota’s grassroots community builders with the storytelling, advocacy, and digital organizing skills to make their work visible and scalable.
South Dakota is filled with remarkable organizations doing important, community-changing work in near invisibility — simply because no one ever taught them how to tell their story.
By equipping these organizations with storytelling, advocacy, and digital tools, this initiative turns good work into visible, sustainable, and scalable impact. The mission is already happening. This project makes sure people know about it.
Focus Area Healthy Civic Culture
Eric’s program connects to TCN’s focus on Healthy Civic Culture. The grassroots organizations he is building capacity for are the connective tissue of community life — civic groups, local nonprofits, and community builders that hold people together. Equipping them to tell their stories strengthens the soil democracy grows in.
Follow the Fellowship
One of five veterans building civic action in their communities.
Eric is one of five veterans in TCN’s inaugural Civic Engagement Fellowship cohort. Follow the full cohort as they build community-based civic initiatives across the country.