MU Business School Joins Veteran Entrepreneurship Program
This past week, the Trulaske College of Business at MU launched its Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities after being accepted to the national EBV program, a consortium only including a handful of schools.
“Mizzou was a perfect fit,” said Greg Bier, director of MU’s Entrepreneurship Alliance and director of the EBV.
The EBV program, founded in 2007 at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, is operated by Syracuse’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families and is partially funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. The EBV National Program is designed to leverage the skills, resources, and infrastructure of higher education to offer cutting-edge, experiential training in entrepreneurship and small business management to post-9/11 veterans with disabilities.
MU applied to the program knowing they would have the help of the Harry S. Truman Veterans’ Hospital, the Veterans Center on the MU campus, and the Veterans United Foundation, which made a $450,000 donation to help launch the program. With the existing network of veteran support, the EBV program could help veterans not only in Columbia, but all over the Midwest as well.
“The college of business also has grown in the efforts to help entrepreneurs with business workshops,” Bier said during the third day of the new program’s workshop, which brought veterans from all over the United States to Columbia. Farmers, manufacturers, franchisers, and even a man interested in starting a hostel for adventure tourism attended the eight-day workshop that included speakers, resources, and advice for the veterans.
Ivory Harlow, a veteran from Chillicothe, Ohio, learned about the program through a veteran’s coalition in New York. She was looking for new ways to help her and her husband’s goat business grow. While working with the group on their business plans, Harlow wanted to learn more about the language of finance in order to pitch her plan and make more money off of her goats to a lender. “The workshop really helped me by meeting and talking to so many successful veterans in business, especially women,” Harlow said.
The final part of the boot camp will be a continuation of giving helpful resources to the veterans and checking up on their businesses, seeing success and constantly keeping the connection to the Trulaske College of Business.