VETRN announces the start of its 2024 VETRN MBA Online program on September 18, 2024. The 2024 online cohort includes 19 veteran small business owners, service-disabled veterans, and family members from 12 states across the USA. This class starts our 11th year of the VETRN MBA training program, teaching veteran participants how to successfully grow their veteran owned small businesses. More than 110 veteran small business owners and family members have graduated from the VETRN program to date, with many success stories. The VETRN MBA program is free of charge to the veterans and family members accepted into the program.
To all of you who have provided VETRN with sponsorship and support in 2023 and in prior years, thank you very much for your continued support and for helping veterans and family members achieve their dreams and goals of becoming successful small business owners.
Thank you also to our many sponsors and to the Small Business Administration (“SBA”) which has recognized the success of the VETRN program and, in 2022, announced VETRN as a resource partner and provided our program with a non-competitive four-year grant.
VETRN is one of a few programs nationally that now receives funding for its VETRN MBA Program to train veteran and service-disabled veteran small business owners in entrepreneurship and how to successfully grow their veteran owned small business.
As the VETRN MBA program is a national online program, it is critical that VETRN be able to identify both local professional resources and experienced mentors for each of our class participants. In addition to our own list of mentors, thank you to SCORE for working with VETRN to help secure outstanding mentors. Our heartfelt thank you also goes out to our outstanding guest experts, panel judges, and substantial list of professional resources, who have selflessly volunteered their time, and to the SBA VBOC regional chapters, the regional SBDC Chapters and the SBA District offices so that all VETRN participants across the country has access to their valuable local SBA resources.
VETRN also wishes to thank Walter Schuppe, Steve Awtrey and Kathleen Kelly, each of whom has agreed to take on a larger role as guest experts and instructors for the 2024 VETRN program. Walter is a seasoned commercial credit officer, most recently as SVP with Pacific Western Bank, Steve is a sales and marketing professional with The Nova Consulting Group, and Kathleen is a highly experienced SBA lender and SVP with Webster Bank.