This segment is a Veteran Focused talk show that showcases individuals and companies in the community and is focused on Veteran leadership, service, stories and transition. Our Veteran host highlights other Veterans who serve, have served and who are doing great things in their business and in their community. Today our host, Steve Strum spoke with Joe and Noelle Charles.
Joe Charles
Founder of Ember Foundations
Website Address: https://www.emberfoundations.org/emberbridge
Noelle Charles
Founder of Ember Foundations
Website Address: https://www.emberfoundations.org/emberbridge
Short company description:
Ember Foundations is a faith-driven humanitarian engineering organization building suspension footbridges across Panama’s Cricamola River, where 20,000 indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé people have been cut off from schools, medical care, and basic resources for generations. Founded by retired Navy Seabee Commander and Professional Engineer Joe Charles and his wife Noelle, Ember Bridge has completed two bridges with zero overhead and zero institutional funding — and needs 18 more. Every dollar goes directly to the mission.
What’s one thing we should know that makes your company unique?
0% overhead, 0% profit — and it’s verifiable.
Most charities take 20–40% off the top before a dollar reaches the field. Ember Bridge is run by a founder who absorbs all personal costs himself, meaning every sponsor dollar is tracked and goes directly to materials, logistics, and construction. A licensed Professional Engineer leads every build — so this isn’t check-and-hope charity, it’s disciplined, accountable infrastructure with a 40+ year lifespan per bridge.
You’re not donating toward something. You’re buying a specific beam, cable, or plank on a real bridge that will outlive everyone in the room.
How do you define success?
Success for Ember Bridge is simple: nobody dies crossing the river.
Before Bridge One, communities along the Cricamola were losing roughly one person a month to river crossings. Children on their way to school. Mothers. Elderly men and women making an 18-mile trek through the jungle just to reach a doctor. In April 2026 — the same month Bridge Two was completed — another little girl was taken by the river on her way to school. Upstream from where we were working.
That’s what drives the urgency. We don’t measure success in donor counts or social media reach. We measure it in crossings that didn’t kill anyone.
Two bridges down means two stretches of river where that monthly death toll has stopped. Permanently. For 40+ years. For thousands of people.
But there are 39 miles of that river. And we’ve covered a fraction of it.
So success right now looks like two bridges standing and lives being saved daily — and failure looks like stopping before the other 18 are built, because the river doesn’t stop.
How did you get started in your field of work?
In 2022, I’d just retired from the Navy after over two decades as a Seabee Commander. My church took a mission trip to Panama, and I went along. While I was there, I learned about an orphanage caring for sexually abused teenage mothers from the Comarca region — and that alone was sobering enough.
But then I met Pastor Samuel Ábrego.
Samuel was ministering to 7 villages deep in the jungle — nearly 2,000 people — walking 18 miles a day through terrain most people couldn’t survive, crossing the Cricamola River every time. He sat down with our group and just started talking. About the people he couldn’t reach. About the children who couldn’t get to school. About the lives the river had already taken. He wasn’t asking for money. He was just telling the truth about what was happening to his people.
And I sat there with 20-plus years of Navy Civil Engineering behind me, and I heard myself say four words: ‘I can build a bridge.’
That was it. No organization. No funding. No plan yet. Just a promise made in a jungle to a pastor who’d been walking that river alone for years.
Three years, two bridges, and a lot of setbacks later — that promise is being kept. One crossing at a time.
What was the most impactful moment of your transition out of the military?
I retired for family reasons, so it was a bit earlier than I wanted. I felt like God, through the Navy, had given me unparalleled experiences and training. While transitioning from the military, a Pastor hiked over a mountain range in the remote jungle of Panama to show a video to some Americans of their little girls crossing a white water river in their school uniforms. He asked for help to build a bridge. That mission aligned with my skillsets and my desire to serve. 2 bridges complete, many more to go.
