Champions of Change

Champions of Change Blog

  • Honoring and Empowering Wounded Warriors

    Posted by Jeremy Feldbusch on July 7, 2011 at 4:06 PM EDT

    Ed. Note: Champions of Change is a weekly initiative to highlight Americans who are making an impact in their communities and helping our country rise to meet the many challenges of the 21st century.

    This past Monday, June 27 2011, I was honored with the Champion of Change Award, allowing me to join with other Veterans and White House Officals to discuss changes we can make to help injured veterans and their families in jobs, education, and health care.

    As an injured service member I know first hand the challenges injured veterans and their families face everyday. I am one of the 26 Founders of the Wounded Warrior Project. Our mission is to honor and empower Wounded Warriors. We are a non-profit organation helping not only the injured veteran but their families as well. The greatest casualty is being forgotten!

    I am also the Vice President of NEIE Medical Waste. We are a service disabled veterans owned business. We strive to help injured veterans by employing them so they can move on and be productive in life. We handle disposal of medical waste in a safe way so to keep our enviroment clean and safe.

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  • Entrepreneur Advances Technology and Job Creation Across America

    Posted by Ari Matusiak on July 7, 2011 at 3:16 PM EDT

    Before launching his own company in 1996, Kevin Didden was responsible for technology management at the United Technologies Corporation. Some of his core projects involved fiber optic sensors in helicopters, designed to provide real-time performance feedback. Mr. Didden saw an opportunity to scale this technology for work in the world's oil fields- specifically within the wells, themselves.  As a result, he raised $152 million in venture capital and started CiDRA in Wallingford, Connecticut, which specialized in the installation of sensors to report the pressure, temperature, and flow rate of active oil wells. The outcome was an innovative company, started in the United States, creating jobs for highly skilled engineers.

    Mark Fernald, CiDRA VP of Engineering

    Mark Fernald, VP of Engineering, installing a CiDRA SONARtrac system in the oilsands of Alberta, Canada.

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  • Woman Business Owner Creates Clean Energy Jobs By Being Bold

    Posted by Anne Filipic on July 6, 2011 at 7:32 PM EDT

    Wendy Jameson’s life slogan is “Fear Mediocrity: don’t be afraid to be bold”; a motto that Wendy and her partner in Colnatec, Scott Grimshaw (whom she met on Twitter), established. Wendy has always been an individual who stands out from the crowd and takes risks each and every day, the epitome of an entrepreneur. She is a former business consultant and coach with 25 years experience in sales, marketing, and business strategy for growth companies. A wife and mother of two boys, family has always been an important part of Wendy’s life, too.  But they are not the only people she calls family--the nine employees who work for Colnatec care for each other and believe in the success of Colnatec as much as she does. 

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  • Sharing Entrepreneurial Wisdom with Fellow Veterans

    Posted by Wayne Gatewood Jr. on July 6, 2011 at 10:35 AM EDT

    Ed. Note: Champions of Change is a weekly initiative to highlight Americans who are making an impact in their communities and helping our country rise to meet the many challenges of the 21st century.

    In 1987, as a Master Sergeant with 21 years of U.S. Marine Corps’ active duty service, I retired from the Marines and settled in the Washington, DC area. Two years later, during December 1989, I started Quality Support, Inc., with just $600 and a small loan from my father. Quality Support has since grown into a successful small business that provides world-wide administrative, management, technical, and conference and meeting support services to federal government and commercial clients. 

    It is a fact that we Veterans are particularly well suited to own and operate our own businesses. This fact is documented through ongoing research and reporting sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Advocacy. Thus, I take great joy in personally helping other Veterans embark upon their own entrepreneurial journeys. There are many ways in which we can give back to our fellow Veterans and one of the first ways for me was to give cost-free entrepreneurial classes through local military Transition Assistance Program (TAP) gatherings for our Troops leaving active duty.  It is truly a delight to receive e-mails and calls from Veterans that attended a TAP class I provided in previous years, informing me that they are now in business and they themselves are hiring and sharing entrepreneurial wisdom with fellow Veterans . . . passing it on! 

    In addition to appearing at TAP classes, I have also given entrepreneurial talks at Bethesda Hospital for our Wounded Marine Warriors. I believe we should all  have a “Personal Program” and this Program simply includes “passing it on,” helping other Veterans find jobs; helping other Veterans learn the ropes of starting and operating small businesses; informing Veterans of pending legislation relative to their benefits and their futures. We do not stop serving once we depart active duty; rather, I believe like many of my fellow Veterans, that serving and giving back is a lifelong endeavor. True Service is a labor of love.

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  • Service Members Connected by the "Sea of Goodwill"

    Posted by Justin Constantine on July 5, 2011 at 11:55 AM EDT

    Ed. Note: Champions of Change is a weekly initiative to highlight Americans who are making an impact in their communities and helping our country rise to meet the many challenges of the 21st century.

    In 2006, and while still a Marine Captain, I volunteered to deploy to Iraq as a Civil Affairs Team Leader. Fortunately for me, most of my Marines had already deployed to Iraq, and my non-commissioned officers were all razor-sharp. We fell in with Third Battalion, Second Marines, a Marine infantry battalion headquartered at Habbaniyah, which is halfway between Ramadi and Fallujah. That was a very kinetic time period in Al-Anbar Province, with daily IED explosions, troops in contact and protracted firefights. Six weeks into my deployment I was shot in the head by an enemy sniper, but thanks to the courage and skills of Navy Corpsman George Grant, I am still here today.

    Five years later I am finally close to the last of my reconstructive surgeries, and along the way have in a variety of ways endeavored to help other wounded warriors and their caregivers and family members.  Most recently, I was very excited to be nominated by the Obama Administration as a Champion of Change, and to participate in a roundtable discussion with other wounded warriors and advocates to help identify ways that local communities can affect change with our new veterans, especially in the fields of education, employment and health care.

    Although our focus group was small in number, we came from a variety of experiences, backgrounds and perspectives, ranging from the Vietnam veteran who has dedicated the last 40 years of his life to promoting veteran-owned small businesses to the young vet from Operation Iraqi Freedom who is now blind but running his own company, and in whose name the University of Pittsburgh is about to name their newest endowment. That being said, we all agreed that there are far too many veterans from all eras who are homeless, unemployed and/or not receiving the valuable information provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense.

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  • Transforming the Global Lighting Industry

    Posted by Fred Maxik on June 29, 2011 at 12:04 PM EDT

    Ed. Note: Champions of Change is a weekly initiative to highlight Americans who are making an impact in their communities and helping our country rise to meet the many challenges of the 21st century.

    Earlier this year, I was honored to be recognized as a Champion of Change and to join in a White House roundtable discussion with leaders in the Science and Technology community. The invitation to join in the discussion gave me the chance to share how Lighting Science Group, the LED lighting company that I founded in 2004, benefits from the expertise of scientists and engineers who have joined us from NASA Kennedy Space Center. Our advances in the field of LED lighting, which produces high quality light using about 80% less electricity than traditional lighting, would not have been possible without the contributions of these talented and dedicated men and women working alongside our engineering, lighting and manufacturing professionals.

    In our conversations, we focused on what each of us are doing and what more can be done to further develop our technology-based industries while also contributing to job creation and quality of life in our communities. Our most significant insight was the virtuous cycle generated when centers of technical excellence create a center of gravity, attracting the commercial, educational and human resources required for new employment and business success. Kennedy Space Center has the technical resources, the facilities, the local educational infrastructure and the heritage to emerge as one such center. By creating a nucleus of technologies with the potential to transform large segments of our economy or create whole new industries, these centers of gravity are critically important to America’s continued competitiveness.  

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