About the EBVEBV's History The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) program was founded by the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University in 2007. The logic behind the founding of the program was simple; that is, leverage the fact that Whitman is home to one of the top ranked entrepreneurship programs in the world, to serve those men and women who have served and sacrificed for our country. From the beginning, the program was conceived as a social venture, where we would provide world class training in entrepreneurship and small business management to veterans with disabilities, without any cost whatsoever to the veteran. Our firm belief was that our veterans had already earned the price of admission, as a consequence of their military service. The First EBV Class
After the successes represented by the first offering of the EBV at Syracuse University, the Whitman School was approached by other colleges and universities from across the U.S. that recognized the enormous impact of a model based on leveraging their existing competencies to serve veterans through entrepreneurship. Expanding the EBV to serve more veterans represented a logical next step in the evolution of the program, and thus the impetus to form the EBV Consortium of Schools. The EBV ConsortiumThe EBV Consortium was formed in 2008 as a national educational initiative, designed to help veterans with disabilities to make the transition to self employment, develop professional networks, and ultimately start and grow sustainable businesses. The EBV Consortium is composed of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University, Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, College of Business, The Florida State University, the Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, the Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, the School of Business, University of Connecticut, the E. J. Ourso College of Business, Louisiana State University and the School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University. Today, each of these world-class business schools offers the EBV program on their campuses, with Syracuse University serving as the national 'host' for the program. The program continues to be largely privately funded, and offered at no cost to post-9/11 veterans with service-connected disabilities that demonstrate a passion for becoming a small business owner. The EBV Consortium represents the first major partnership of America's schools and colleges of business since the end of World War II, formed with the express purpose of serving military veterans. EBV Today
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The first EBV class (2007) represented a diverse group of veterans who shared in common not only their service to our country, but also their dreams of entrepreneurial success. Many of these inaugural EBV students had already overcome so much - so early in life - that we are confident they are up to the challenges of business ownership. Looking back, they did not disappoint. Today almost 70% of that first class are proud business owners, and four of those students own ventures that generated revenues in excess of $1M in 2009.
In the three years since the program was launched at Syracuse University, more than 200 veterans have completed the EBV training and the EBV has become an integral component of DoD's efforts to transition military members with disabilities from military to civilian life. In 2009, the Department of the Army named the EBV as a national 'best practice' for programs serving soldiers and their families. "By all accounts the EBV program has developed into a truly world-class initiative that is representative of a novel programmatic approach to addressing a social and economic imperative." Most importantly, the EBV program represents a means to empower America's veterans with disabilities to fight yet again for their own economic freedom in the most American way possible - through entrepreneurship.
