Since 2021, HX5 has welcomed eight service members through the Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, a pace of two fellows annually that CEO Margarita Howard has kept steady regardless of the company’s shifting staffing needs. Those numbers look modest next to giant defense primes, but they carry real weight for a firm of roughly 1,000 employees.
The Corporate Fellowship Program itself operates at a much larger scale nationally. Launched in 2015 under the Department of Defense’s SkillBridge authority, it has graduated more than 500 fellows, with about 80 percent receiving job offers and average starting salaries around $70,000. Participants spend their final 180 days of active duty working four days a week with a host company and one day in professional development, still drawing military pay throughout.
Scaling to Fit the Company
Large contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton can absorb dozens of fellows a year through dedicated military recruiting teams. HX5 does not operate at that scale, and Margarita Howard has treated two fellows annually as the right number to integrate properly without overwhelming the company’s operational capacity.
That steadiness matters more than the raw count, Margarita Howard has suggested, since sporadic participation tied to short-term hiring gaps sends a different signal than year over year commitment. HX5’s continued involvement since 2021 reflects a policy decision rather than a reaction to any single staffing shortage.
It also gives HX5 time to plan around each fellow’s arrival, from lining up a mentor to mapping out which project team can best use their skill set. Margarita Howard has said this planning window is part of why two fellows a year works better for the company than a larger, less predictable intake.
As a service-disabled veteran herself, Howard has linked this consistency directly to her own experience leaving the Air Force, arguing that predictable pathways matter more to transitioning service members than one-time hiring pushes. The eight fellows HX5 has hosted so far show that philosophy in practice. See related link for additional information.
Find more information about Margarita Howard on https://about.me/margaritahoward