Honoring courageous entrepreneurs.

• Author: Dabo, Tyler
• Position: From the Editor

July is a time for patriotism, and in that spirit we thought it was a good time to highlight some military veterans who, in their post-military lives, have become business owners and entrepreneurs, applying the leadership skills acquired in the forces to the private sector. A Small Business Administration study, released in February 2014, looked at 20 years of U.S. Census data to create a detailed picture of veteran involvement in business creation and ownership. The most "striking" finding of the study was "the high level of firm creation and business management among veterans, which is comparable to their non-veteran age peers."

Other SBA data suggests there are nearly 2.5 million businesses with majority ownership by veterans. The most recent report found that these firms had revenues of $1.22 trillion and an annual payroll of $210 billion. In fact, 9 percent of all U.S. companies are veteran owned. In this issue, writer Pen Kinder talks to a few local military veteran business owners about how their military experience benefits their entrepreneurial efforts. You can find this story on page 48.

A few of this year's EY Entrepreneur Of The Year honorees are also doing their part to support military veterans. For example, most of the students at Upper Limit Aviation are combat veterans who are able to earn a helicopter pilot license and apply their military skills in the civilian workforce. HireVue provides mobile...