Business View Magazine | November 2020

38 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2020 which was for military vets to get post-military careers and find employment. They also had Military Spouse Magazine, which was for the military families, and they launched Veterans Business Journal, which was originally geared to try and help veterans who were trying to compete in the federal marketplace, because of Public Law 106-50, which requires that three percent of all federal contract dollars must go to service-disabled veterans.” “The initiation of the magazine was to try to make sure that veterans were getting equal seats at the table, and to hold government agencies accountable for the mandate to spend with veteran-owned companies,” Pavelek continues. “And then, the founders saw that there was a much greater opportunity outside of that federal marketplace. There was a whole bunch of organizations that were trying to achieve the same goals – that veterans would be treated equally and fairly, relative to other diverse business communities within the federal marketplace. So, they decided to target the private sector. “In 2007, they launched NaVOBA as an advocacy organization and as a spin-off of Veterans Business Journal. At that time, they re-branded the magazine and called it Vetrepreneur, with the idea to make sure that veterans were included in corporate contracting programs. At that time, there were only 97 companies on the Fortune 500 that had anything mentioning veterans in their supplier diversity AT A GLANCE NATIONAL VETERAN OWNED BUSINESS ASSOCIATION WHAT: A non-profit organization representing veteran-owned businesses WHERE: Carnegie, Pennsylvania WEBSITE: www.navoba.org