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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
JOBS & EDUCATION
PROVIDED BY WEWORK
WEWORK, TOGETHER Veterans in Residence program offers free office space for small businesses
PROVIDED BY CARLA STEPHANY
Carla Stephany named her business Riveter Enterprises/Construction and Engineering after Rosie the Riveter and wants to help military spouses and veterans succeed.
leaders and make connections. “We had someone from a venture capital background who talked us through the spreadsheet of how you determined what’s a good candidate for business or not,” said Stephany. “We had an extremely seasoned lawyer who talked to us about small business law.” Stephany named her business after Rosie the Riveter, and her company’s Facebook page features a photo of her dressed like the woman in the famous “We Can Do It!” World War II poster. She is also developing a concept called the Rosie Project to help military spouses, particularly women, get trained in trades so they can more easily get jobs as they frequently move between military bases. “I’m marketing the trainees as ‘Rosies’ but of course we can’t be limited to
women and are hopeful to be able to take anyone interested,” she said. “My dream is to get some abandoned base housing, get some willing military spouses, financing (of course!) a training crew and create beautiful homes our military families deserve.” Thus far, she has procured land to build a home as a test project to build a curriculum and scale from there, though she’s still working on arranging financing for that project. She hopes if this goes well, to build more and work on branding, possibly creating a Riveter Homes or Rosie Homes company. Already, she has created an offshoot project to market a workwear brand for women. In the meantime, she’s determined to find success in helping a group she so believes in: “I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
When Army veteran Trevor Shirk started his digital marketing company, the reality of civilian business life hit him hard. “In the military, you step into a role, and there’s already a team built around it,” Shirk said. “But when you start a business, you’re an army of one.” The WeWork pilot program — which rolled out nationally on Veterans Day 2017 — has helped Shirk’s Denver-based company, Strattex Solutions, take wing, providing him with free office space, a special networking gathering spot and access to various mentorship programs. “The synergy is really powerful,” said Shirk, who helped search for improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army engineer in 2010 and 2011. “I met other veterans and other entrepreneurs in the program, and I felt less like an island.” WeWork’s Veterans in Residence program will give free office spaces and access to its local and global community to a new class of 10 veterans every six months — a national class of 140 veterans spread out evenly between 14 of its U.S. locations, including Los Angeles, Austin, San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Washing-
ton, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Denver, Nashville, Houston, Minneapolis and San Diego. The initiative, which will be accepting applications at we.co/ veterans, also includes onsite business counseling from Bunker Labs, a national nonprofit focused on helping veterans and their spouses launch their own businesses. “They gave to us, now we’re giving back to them,” WeWork CEO and co-founder Adam Neumann said. “It’s not just about providing a workspace that hopefully is inspiring; it’s also about sharing ideas and being part of a community.” Although WeWork rents space by the desk and office, its aim is to create the feeling of a hightech incubator where new ideas can spark from random encounters. Some locations feature lounges, pingpong tables and beer on tap, and workers can opt into organized gatherings that include cheese tastings and networking events. WeWork — which was founded in 2010 by Neumann, a onetime Israeli Navy officer, and Miguel McKelvey — now has 287 locations in 77 cities and 23 countries. — Marco della Cava