When Margarita Howard completed her Air Force service and eventually founded defense and aerospace contractor HX5, she carried forward an understanding that few business owners possess: the reality of military transition. That experience now shapes how her company approaches veteran employment: not as a recruiting advantage to exploit, but as a responsibility to meet.
HX5 has brought on eight fellows through the Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program since 2021. Two per year might seem modest. Amazon and Lockheed Martin host more through the program. But context matters. HX5 employs roughly 1,000 people. Major contractors count workforces in the tens of thousands. When adjusted for scale, HX5’s participation rate holds its own against defense industry giants.
Howard’s commitment runs deeper than numbers. As a service-disabled veteran who built a government contracting firm from scratch, she knows what transitioning service members face when they separate. The fellowship program offers something valuable: a bridge between military service and civilian careers in an industry where many veterans already possess crucial baseline knowledge.
The Difficulties of Military Transitions
Leave the military and suddenly everything changes. The structure disappears. Clear chains of command give way to dense organization charts and dotted-line reporting. Missions become projects. Orders transform into emails. Success metrics shift from operational objectives to customer satisfaction.
Veterans bring skills: technical expertise, security clearances, leadership experience under pressure—all directly applicable to government contracting work. Yet they sometimes struggle translating those capabilities into resume language that civilian hiring managers understand. A logistics officer who coordinated supply chains across combat zones has more than “operations management experience.” An intelligence analyst who briefed generals daily has more than “communication and analytical skills.”
The Hiring Our Heroes fellowship addresses this translation problem through immersion rather than instruction. Participants spend 12 weeks working alongside civilian employees at host companies, building real projects. Four days weekly go to working with partner companies and organizations. The fifth day covers professional development: project management techniques, corporate communication norms, strategies for influencing without formal authority.
This structure lets fellows experience civilian workplace culture while still drawing military pay and benefits. Employers evaluate them in genuine work settings rather than through interviews alone. Both parties gain information that matters more than a simple resume or reference check could provide.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation built Hiring Our Heroes around this mutual benefit principle when it launched the program in March 2011. Initial efforts focused on job fairs connecting veterans with employers. The Corporate Fellowship Program came later, in 2015, as a Department of Defense SkillBridge initiative designed specifically for active-duty members within 180 days of separation.
Since then, more than 500 fellows have completed the program nationwide. Most receive job offers. The hire rate is 80%, with positions averaging $70,000 in starting salary. Those outcomes matter. They represent successful transitions, veterans finding meaningful work, families achieving economic stability.
HX5’s Participation
Defense contractors need people who understand government operations. Security clearances take months or years to obtain for civilians without prior government work. Fellows know military organizational structures and may have worked on classified programs.
HX5’s work demands these attributes. The company supports activities that include such things as research and development efforts for advanced weapons systems, production readiness reviews for sensor systems, and modeling simulations for aerospace projects. Its contracts span engineering disciplines: aeronautical, electrical, mechanical, structural. Information technology support requires handling sensitive networks and classified data. Mission operations support means integrating seamlessly with government personnel on critical programs.
Howard describes ideal candidates as “purple unicorns”—professionals combining rare technical skills, appropriate clearances, and relevant experience. Few such candidates exist in the civilian labor market. But transitioning military members? Many already tick those boxes.
The fellowship allows HX5 to support veterans’ careers and provides early access to this talent pool. Howard says she tells potential employees at HX5 whether they want to do the work that “gets to the moon” or “accomplish this mission overseas.”
Some veterans want nothing more than leaving that world behind. Others seek continuation of purpose. The fellowship helps both parties determine fit before committing.
More Than Checking Boxes
Howard has integrated participation in Hire Our Heroes into HX5’s workforce development strategy. The fellows are seen as potential long-term employees whose military backgrounds align with the company’s government contracting mission.
This approach reflects Howard’s own trajectory. After leaving the Air Force, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, then worked on major government contracts including the Tricare military health care program implementation. That experience showed her how contractors and government agencies collaborate. It revealed opportunities for veterans in this space. Eventually, it led her to found HX5 in 2004.
Twenty years later, the company operates across over 20 states and 70 government locations with a workforce exceeding 1,000.
HX5’s eight fellows since 2021 represent individual transitions from military to civilian life. Behind those numbers sit people navigating major career shifts, families adjusting to new circumstances, veterans finding their place in the defense industry from the contractor side rather than the government side.
CEO Margarita Howard understands that transition because she lived it. It’s a case of a veteran helping other veterans find solid ground after military service, using the company she built as a vehicle for that support.