Margarita Howard’s HX5 Builds Fellowship Hiring Structure
A twelve week window separates active duty service from full civilian employment for fellows who pass through HX5‘s veteran hiring program. That structure comes from the Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, a Department of Defense SkillBridge initiative available to troops in their final 180 days of service.
Fellows spend four days weekly working directly with a host company and one day on professional development covering topics such as project management and corporate communication. Throughout the fellowship, participants continue receiving military pay and benefits, easing the financial pressure that often accompanies a career transition into civilian work.
HOW HX5 FITS THE MODEL
HX5, led by CEO Margarita Howard, has hosted eight fellows since 2021, maintaining two placements annually since joining the program. That steady cadence sets HX5 apart from larger contractors like Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton, which can absorb dozens of fellows each year through dedicated military recruiting operations and larger internal budgets.
Margarita Howard, an Air Force veteran, draws on her own transition experience when shaping how HX5 approaches its fellowship commitments. “Experience in their respective fields, while supporting these agencies’ respective programs and missions, is very different from experience gained from working in the commercial world,” she explains, describing why she favors fellows and full time staff with prior Department of Defense or NASA backgrounds.
More than 500 fellows have graduated from the broader Hiring Our Heroes program since 2015, with an 80 percent hire rate and average starting salaries around $70,000. HX5’s contribution is a modest slice of that total, but Howard’s consistent participation gives the company’s veteran hiring efforts a structured, repeatable framework rather than one dependent on shifting staffing needs from year to year.
The Hiring Our Heroes initiative itself dates back to March 2011, when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation launched it in response to financial crisis era unemployment colliding with troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Corporate Fellowship Program came later, in 2015, formalizing the structure HX5 now relies on to bring fellows into its Department of Defense and NASA focused work each year. Read this article for more information.
More about Howard on https://www.margaritahoward.com/