The new office is the result of two years of conversations between Wright State and the SBA, said Seth Gordon, director of Wright State’s Veteran and Military Center.
There was a feeling that a similar center in Michigan wasn’t serving Ohio residents, Gordon said in an interview. And the presence of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — one of the nation’s largest Air Force bases — and the Dayton area’s concentration of defense contractors and veterans provided a natural center of gravity when thinking about where to locate an Ohio office.
“It’s a huge, big deal,” Gordon said. “To add this means that we’re expanding our reach from just serving the students at Wright State University, to serving the veterans in the state of Ohio.”
“I think entrepreneurship is about taking a leap into the unknown,” he added. “We know that the more prepared you are, if you talk to veterans ... they always talk about going back to their training.”
The new center hopes to provide some of that training not only to veterans, but to military spouses inclined to explore the possibilities of starting a new business.
Nicholas Ripplinger, president of Dayton’s Battle Sight Technologies, told the Dayton Daily News that an SBA sponsorship of the D’AnielIo Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University helped launch his company. Another SBA loan helped his business survive COVID.
The center was possible by a grant from the SBA.
The idea is to grow the knowledge and the capital veterans and their families need to launch businesses and create jobs, said Geri Aglipay, regional administrator for the SBA’s Great Lakes region (which includes Ohio and five other states).
There have been about 20 million start-up businesses since early 2021, she said. In Ohio, about 5% of those are owned by veterans.
The Economic and Community Development Institute (ECDI) is one of the institutions behind the new office. It is an SBA microloan intermediary that says it has disbursed more than $194 million through more than 8,000 loans since 2004.
“We want to make sure they (veterans) have access to capital, the funding needed to start and scale their business,” Aglipay said. “Part of that is we’re also offering counseling.”
Nicole Liatos, vice president of entrepreneurial programs for the ECDI, said the new office will offer coaching, mentor-matching and training. It will be open to veterans not only in the Dayton area but across Ohio.
“We’ll do some hybrid and virtual workshops across the state,” Liatos said.
If anyone is interested in availing themselves of the office, she suggesting starting at ecid.org. The organization can also be reached at (888) 210-3039.
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