“Veterans possess certain attributes that are essential for the corporate workforce to succeed. If a company wants to be profitable, they’ll want their employees to be mission-focused, collaborative, understand attention to detail, and have high levels of work ethic,” asserted U.S. Air Force veteran Jason Smith, the founder of Future Vet, an organization committed to collating and generating research related to veterans in the workplace.
The results so far have been undeniable.
“My mission is not altruistic. This is not about helping veterans. This is all about helping corporate America be better through using veterans in the world,” Smith told We Are The Mighty.
After his career as an officer in the Air Force, Smith transitioned to consulting and teaching within corporate America, as well as veteran entrepreneurial endeavors.
His mission is threefold: first, to collate existing research on how hiring veterans can impact civilian work environments; second, to personally drive new research and first-hand interviews to create original leadership content; and third, to engage with the community to guide implementation efforts across the U.S. and the globe, improving company efficacy and profits.
“The third phase of this project is to create those methodologies, those processes, those roadmaps as to how to implement cultural change inside of an organization that helps all employees—all employees—to create cultures that will allow veterans to shine where their attributes are not just a perfect fit, but an essential means of growing the organization,” said Smith.
In many ways, when service members transition to civilian jobs, they are asked to assimilate into a corporate workflow that may not have the most profitable attitudes, perspectives, or incentives. The military mindset, however, which begins with core values often involving excellence and integrity, is exactly what a business owner or CEO should want in an employee.
So rather than asking veterans to assimilate into corporate America, corporate America should be embracing military attributes—beginning with hiring vets and encouraging their hard-won discipline.
Beginning with this hypothesis, “…we want to prove that corporate culture is a thing that’s not allowing veterans to thrive. We also want to now find research to show that if veterans are allowed to thrive, it drives the bottom line,” stated Smith.
He’s still in the early stages of his objectives, but Smith has his eye on the prize, already leading by example. You can find out more about his efforts and get involved at the Future Vet website. You can also catch him moderating a panel at the 2025 Military Influencer Conference, titled “The Future of Veterans in Corporate America,” which will explore the distinction between perceiving veterans as a “needy” class of employees versus a “needed” class.
The panel will provide expert thought leadership on the “needed” attributes, capabilities, and value that veterans bring to the corporate workspace. The expert panel will share real-world examples of the highest caliber of veterans already in the corporate workforce today.
