Champions of Change Blog

Nominate a White House Champion of Change for Veteran Entrepreneurship

Since taking office, President Obama has been committed to upholding our sacred trust with America’s veterans and wounded warriors. As the President stated in his last State of the Union address, “We’ll keep working to help all our veterans translate their skills and leadership into jobs here at home.  And we all continue to join forces to honor and support our remarkable military families.” Entrepreneurs and small businesses are a big driver of our national economy, and veterans offer our country a set of skills that make them uniquely well suited for success as entrepreneurs.  Research demonstrates that veterans are at least 45 percent more likely than those with no active-duty military experience to be self-employed and are twice as likely to succeed. According to the most recent U.S. census data, nearly one in 10 small businesses are veteran-owned.  These businesses generate over $1.2 trillion in receipts annually and employ nearly 5.8 million Americans.  It is in the best interest of our country to tap into this incredible resource of veterans and find ways to help them succeed as entrepreneurs who fuel job growth and expand opportunity for all Americans.

Recognizing the need to fuel this entrepreneurial spirit in our service members, the President launched Boots to Business – an intensive entrepreneurship education program for transitioning service members to learn how to start a small business. To date, Boots to Business, delivered by the Small Business Administration, has trained more than 6,000 transitioning service members on how to start a business, while also informing them of the network of resources available to them, such as access to capital.

However, this is only one step along the path to providing opportunities for veterans to become successful entrepreneurs. Therefore, the administration would like to honor those who have supported this effort by serving as examples and demonstrating their desire to help other veteran entrepreneurs.

Today, we’re asking you to help us identify and honor veteran entrepreneurs and veteran spouses who are entrepreneurs or organizations that support veteran entrepreneurs by nominating a Champion of Change for Veteran Entrepreneurship by midnight on June 24th. Nominees may include:

• Veterans who have started a for-profit or non-profit business.
• Veteran spouses who have started their own business.
• Organizations that support veteran entrepreneurs by providing them with skills, capital, or other necessary resources.

Click on the link below to submit your nomination (be sure to choose Veteran Entrepreneurship in the "Theme of Service" field of the nomination form).

Nominate a Veteran Entrepreneurship Champion of Change

We are looking forward to hosting this event and to highlighting the achievements of the veteran entrepreneurship community.

Robert McFarlin is a White House Fellow at the National Economic Council. 

Building Walkable Communities

Dan Burden is being honored as a Transportation Ladders of Opportunity Champion of Change.

When I was a child in the 50’s my legs (and later my bicycle) gave me freedom to explore distant farms, ponds, creeks, woods, and the homes of many friends. Frequent busses gave me access to my entire city. From this start, I grew a healthy social network and became energized. Then our nation shifted its ways, and for sixty years, mobility switched almost entirely to moving people in cars. Tens of thousands of neighborhoods declined as people fled central cities for greener suburbs. Historic, character-defining buildings began to rot. I returned to my childhood neighborhood recently and truly shed tears for what was lost.

Halfway from then to now, in 1980, I had an epiphany.  While in Australia, also an auto-served nation, I noticed that all their neighborhoods were intact. What was the difference?  They had people, and they had cars.   I came back to Florida, already seated as the state’s first full time Bicycle Coordinator and without asking permission, changed my job title to “State Pedestrian and Bicycle Coordinator.” This simple change started transformation inside those transportation hallways. Sixteen years later, realizing I needed broader stage, I took to all of North America’s roads almost without pause for the last eighteen years, working in 3,500 towns on people-focused transportation with enhanced car mobility.  Through this process, I learned that by offering choices, especially in urban design, not only do pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders win, so do drivers and local economies. Building sidewalks or trails, for instance, adds value to homes and 7 times more jobs into communities than equal money spent on freeway ramps.

Transportation patterns have always played a critical role in shaping our cities – from foot traffic, to horses, trolleys, canals, railroads, trucks, cars and planes.  It’s not surprising that increased mobility in the form of automobile use, led to sprawling cities. Unintended consequences were vast: dying city centers, social isolation, unaffordable roadway systems and separated communities.  We have learned a lot since 1950, but maybe the most remarkable lesson is that we are social creatures who need one another to find value and happiness in our lives.

Motorist rebellions against my crusades for walkable communities have not developed. The last thing today's motorists want is growth of traffic.  Most taxpayers know instinctively that our road costs have hit the financial breaking point – potholes grow and repaving is forever delayed.  Sixty years of limited transportation choice has taught us that building more roads induces more traffic, delay, lost productivity, sprawling communities and increasing waistlines.  The answer, actually, is very simple: build robust, revitalized cities with greener, lower speed, inclusive streets that invite maximum exchange (social, retail, jobs and activities) with minimized trip lengths.  Build walkable communities. 

Growing populations of millennials and retiring boomers, want proximity to goods, services and intact neighborhoods. Seniors are now likely to outlive their abilities to drive cars by 7 to14 years, and they want to age where they currently live.   All of us – no matter our age – seek freedom and independence.   As much as 80 percent of our built landscape is now suburban, and many of these sprawled places can be saved through mixed-use centers and villages of defining character.  Across this country, citizens notice that their health and bank balances are deteriorating from their daily transportation choices.  By and large, Americans are tired of wasted hours sitting in traffic, book-ending their work days in frustration, and unsustainable costs, both personal and planetary.  Once informed, they advocate for communities through transportation rather than transportation through communities. 

Dan Burden is the Director of Innovation and Inspiration at the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute.