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WEST POINT, NY, Apr. 20, 2017 (BUSINESS WIRE) – The Thayer Leader Development Group at West Point (TLDG) released a 13-minute video that helps companies learn how to support veterans and their families, beyond hiring policies. As a company founded by veterans and teaching the principles of military leadership to corporate America, TLDG consistently sees a high demand from corporate executives seeking information about how to support our military and veterans. This includes helping transition from a military to civilian career, as well as honoring and supporting the military, veterans and their family through philanthropic efforts and discount programs, as a few examples. TLDG released the video to commemorate the 242^nd anniversary of the start of the American Revolutionary War, on April 19, 1775, with the “shot heard round the world;” the day America’s military first started fighting for our liberty.  

This video distills the best practices shared by Fortune 500 executives at the Veterans Support Symposium hosted by TLDG and Nasdaq in November 2016. It recommends both simple and creative ideas for how corporations, large and small, can offer support by creating their own set of veterans initiatives, based on 13 categories of support.

One of the executives at the Symposium, Roland Smith, CEO of Office Depot, said, “As we went through those 13 categories, we defined seven that we thought we could do well and would be meaningful both to our organization, veterans in our organization, and veterans that we wanted to assimilate into our organization. We put resources against them so that we can start to execute them in 2017, and then we’ll review these each year. Hopefully, as you look 3 to 5 years into the future, we’ll be a company that does a much better job of supporting our veterans.” 

The video includes best practices, shared by a variety of companies, including Office Depot, Virtu Financial, Wyndham Worldwide, Citi, IAP, and Ironsword.

“In our experience, the greatest companies in the country honor veterans and the military. They also teach military leadership principles to their corporate executives,” said Dan Rice, President of TLDG. “We hope this video will jumpstart every CEO in the United States to adopt the ‘CEO Challenge’. This is a simple challenge to create and share their own Veterans’ Initiatives on their corporate websites. By this simple act, the needle can be moved dramatically on supporting veterans in corporate America.”

This video is released on the heels of numerous initiatives by TLDG over the past two years to garner attention for veterans support, including announcing the CEO Challenge on Fox & Friends. TLDG has partnered with the Association for Talent Development (ATD) to publish a special magazine sent to 40,000 HR professionals, highlighting best practices from 16 organizations that are trailblazers in recruiting, developing, and supporting veterans and active duty military. TLDG also hosted the Opening and Closing Bells at Nasdaq on Veteran’s Day, with companies raising their hands to pledge to hire more veterans.

About TLDG
TLDG is a premier executive leader development program, based at West Point, NY, on the grounds of the United States Military Academy. Founded in 2010 by U.S. Army veterans, TLDG has trained more than 31,500 executives and front-line leaders from over 500 companies across a variety of industries including automotive, financial services, medical, pharmaceutical, professional sports franchises, and more with customized, open enrollment, and online learning programs. Its mission is to help build leaders of character by offering leadership and ethics education grounded in the U.S. Army leadership philosophy of “Be, Know, Do” and the U.S. Military Academy values of “Duty, Honor, Country”. Learn more at www.thayerleaderdevelopment.com