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The Living Ledger of Military, Veteran Life & Leadership
Enterprise Desk
The Enterprise Desk covers veteran entrepreneurs, business owners, investors, operators, and builders creating economic impact across the country and around the world. This beat looks beyond the launch story to examine what veterans are building, how they are leading teams, solving problems, creating jobs, and shaping industries through business. Have an enterprise story to share? Contact the Editor or submit your story for consideration, then read the latest features from the Enterprise Desk.
What the Military Gave to Motorsports
Matt Mauldin, assistant strength and conditioning coach at Hendrick Motorsports, inside the Atrium Health Motorsports Athletic Center in Concord, North Carolina. Photo courtesy of Hendrick Motorsports Summary Matt Mauldin is thirty-two years old, the son of a Hendrick Motorsports institution, and the assistant strength and conditioning coach behind one of NASCAR’s most sophisticated athlete performance facilities. He is not a veteran. But when he went to Fort Bragg looking fo
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
13 min read
Nothing in the Chest: He has spent forty years measuring things. Risk models. Outcomes. Readmission rates. His own sleep and recovery. And yet the book he keeps giving people is not about data.
Dr. Kevin W. Lobdell, cardiothoracic surgeon at Atrium Health Sanger Heart and Vascular Institute, the institution where he built Perfect Care, a remote monitoring platform that has enrolled more than 3,500 patients and cut 30-day readmission rates to less than a third of the national average. Photo courtesy of Dr. Kevin W. Lobdell. Summary Dr. Kevin W. Lobdell is a cardiothoracic surgeon at Atrium Health Sanger Heart and Vascular Institute and a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
13 min read
The Man Who Builds Big Things: A Navy engineer who spent nearly three decades building infrastructure in places most people never see
Hemstreet's promotion to Captain, with his children pinning his new rank and Admiral Chooch Chaplin presiding over the ceremony Summary Ramé Hemstreet planned to serve four years in the Navy. He stayed for 29, building infrastructure across the Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, and the National Capital Region, where he retired as Commanding Officer of NAVFAC Washington. He then joined Kaiser Permanente, helping lead the organization to become the first large-scale healthcare
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
14 min read
The Man Behind the Mission: A Marine’s son. A Coast Guard Commander. A man who never stopped showing up and built something that still shows up for others
Summary Mike Flood gave 20 years to the United States Coast Guard, with a detour through Kansas that nearly killed him. He returned to service, retired as a Commander, and walked into the Seattle Seahawks the same year it was saved from relocation. What he built there reaches far beyond football. Football fills the seats. Mike Flood shows up for the people in the community it creates. The File Cabinet The file cabinet was in the basement, next to the furnace. Mike Flood was f
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
14 min read
40 Bombs That Never Went Off Dr. Jeff Heggemeier built a weapon to stop IEDs in the deadliest corridor in Afghanistan. Then he stood in it himself.
Summary Dr. Jeffry Heggemeier has spent his adult life at the intersection of the laboratory and the battlefield. A colonel in the New Mexico Air National Guard and Vice President and General Manager – Delivery Vehicle Programs at Oshkosh Defense, he built the MAX POWER electromagnetic IED-defeat system during some of the bloodiest years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He deployed it to Helmand Province himself, watched the rules of engagement cost a Marine his feet, and
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
17 min read
Have a Plan. Work the Plan: Walter Spinrad on Rebellion, the Credential Only 500 People Hold, and the Man Who Pinned His Wings
Summary Walter Spinrad did not plan to join the Army. He planned to study computer science. His father, a World War II veteran and physician, had other ideas. What started as an act of rebellion became eight years of service that shaped everything after it. Today Spinrad is a Managing Director and Salesforce Certified Technical Architect at Crowe LLP, one of fewer than 500 people in the world to hold that credential. He is the executive champion of Crowe’s Military, Veterans
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
12 min read
The Systems Underneath: Patrick Breen on the B-52H, the Backstage of Wealth Management, and Why the Infrastructure Always Drives the Performance
Patrick Breen grew up the youngest of four in Bayonne, New Jersey, a blue-collar city close to New York, in a house his mother had grown up in. His father was a Navy Seabee who served in Vietnam and rarely spoke about it. His mother cared for strangers and reinvented herself across industries without ever being asked to make it look easy. By the time Breen was 12, he was working. By the time he was 17, he was sitting across from an Air Force recruiter he had walked in to supp
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
10 min read
Throw Me Out There Like a Boomerang Jason Dunn-Potter on 26 Years of Choosing Mastery Over Command, What He Carried Out of Uniform, and Why the Truth Is Always the Right Technology
Summary Jason Dunn-Potter spent 26 years in the United States Army Signal Corps, retiring as a Chief Warrant Officer Five. He served his first assignment in South Korea as a private who did not know how to say bathroom in Korean, deployed to Iraq twice and Laos for MIA recovery operations, served as Director of IT and Chief Information Security Officer at I Corps, and held the role of Command Chief Warrant Officer (CCWO) aka Chief Technology Officer – Strategy at the White Ho
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
13 min read
Trust What You Know Bryan Watson on the Ambush He Survived, the Mission He Came Home To, and Why He Never Wastes a Day
Summary Bryan Watson joined the U.S. Army Reserve while finishing his business degree at Penn State, balancing a civilian career in banking with the unpredictable demands of reserve service. His second activation sent him to Iraq with a unit he had never trained with, to a war that had no defined front line. On April 9, 2004, his convoy was hit in one of the largest ambushes of the entire Iraq conflict. Nine people died. Watson was shot twice and went back. In 2009 he joined
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
16 min read
Black Boots in the Boardroom: Timothy Ross on the Gulf War, the Architecture of a Deal, and Why Compliance Is Not a Checkbox
Summary Timothy Ross is a Tax Partner in Government Contracting and Technology Industries at Withum, where he advises government contractors, private equity firms, and professional services companies on some of the most complex transactions in the Washington, DC market. He has spent three decades in public accounting and advisory, including four years at Withum in the DC market, building a career that runs from Big Four roots in Fort Wayne, Indiana, through the government con
Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
10 min read
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