CEOCircle

Military-connected entrepreneurs selected for new mentoring and networking initiative

Inquire Within: Veterans and Work - Bunker Labs CEO Blake Hogan on helping military-connected families grow their companies
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A new partnership between nonprofit Bunker Labs and JPMorgan Chase Commercial Banking will provide support to 43 military-connected entrepreneurs, offering them guidance via education, networking, and mentorship over the next 12 months.

The inaugural cohort of business executives taking part in the CEOcircle program was selected after undergoing a thorough evaluation. The participants come from an array of industries including health care, data and IT, staffing and recruitment, and restaurants.

Bunker Labs and JPMorgan Chase looked at past and projected future growth, and business strategy. Varying in size, the 2021 projected revenues among the cohort members range from $1.5 to $150 million. The average projected earnings are $13.9 million.

Military Skills Lead to Successful Startups

Blake Hogan, CEO, Bunker Labs (Photo: Bunker Labs)

Blake Hogan is CEO at Bunker Labs and served in the U.S. Marines Corps. He tells WorkingNation editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim that the military-learned skills that veterans obtain during their service transfer well to entrepreneurship.

“Ultimately, entrepreneurship is very counterintuitive, right? You know you want to create the ugliest, cheapest, fastest thing. You can get it out in front of people. Have them tear it apart. Tell you what they don’t like about it and what they like about it,” says Hogan.

“And then quickly iterate on that so that you can get something to market that somebody loves and will pay for. Military experience, whether in uniform or as a family member, prepares people for that in a way that is unlike many other things that you could do.”

Hogan says, “We want to close the ecosystem gap, meaning that as soon as you land in Dallas, or Columbus, Ohio, or San Diego, you can immediately connect to a local thriving network that’s also nationally plugged in. What we realized is that the challenge here is not about aptitude. It is professional networks.”

Bunker Labs has established communities in a number of cities around the country to help boost that social capital.

Hogan says potential entrepreneurs should be prepared that not everyone will support that pathway. “Number one—believe in yourself and do it. Not a lot of people are going to encourage you to do it. You’re used to getting a paycheck on the 1st and the 15th. The people around you are used to getting a paycheck on the 1st and the 15th.”

He continues, “Most folks are not entrepreneurs. They’re going to tell you, you’re crazy. And what we’re going to say is keep your day job, build your dream job.”

InquireWithin: Veterans and Work

You can watch the full interview with Hogan, and read, watch, and listen to more stories about Veterans and Work in our digital magazine, Inquire Within.

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Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.