Business View Magazine | November 2020

39 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2020 NAT IONAL VETERAN OWNED BUS INESS ASSOC I AT ION “A colleague of mine who worked for Vetrepreneur Magazine - I was the Executive Editor from 2009 until 2017, and she was the Director of Corporate Relationships and Business Development for the magazine - incorporated NaVOBA as a non-profit organization in Pennsylvania in 2015, and we started to develop those standards. A direct analogue to what NaVOBA was doing is the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). It certifies women’s business enterprises for large corporate entities that want to be able to effectively, accurately, and confidently measure how much they’re actually spending with women’s business enterprises. That’s why they support statements. The advocacy over the years has been tremendous; I think the recent figure is somewhere around 489. So, it’s safe to say that almost all Fortune 500 companies that have any efforts in supply diversity are now making sure they’re including veterans in that effort. “Now, while they were successful in getting some corporate investment and buy-in, the corporations were pretty insistent that they didn’t necessarily want to support a media publication/advocacy organization. They wanted to have a non-profit group that would certify the ownership, operation, and control of veteran- owned businesses. The National Veteran-Owned Business Association (NaVOBA) announced the best U.S. corporations committed to working with veteran-owned businesses in 2019: American Airlines, AT&T, CenturyLink, Collins Aerospace a Rockwell Collins Company, DynCorp International, General Mills, Johnson & Johnson, Lowe’s Companies, Inc., PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., Pitney Bowes, Shell Oil Company, USAA, U.S. Bank, Vistra Energy and Wyndham Destinations.