MILITARY IMPACT SUMMIT.

Veterans take the mainstage at MCON! Warrior Rising is proud to offer our top-performing veteran entrepreneurs the opportunity of a lifetime: to pitch their business LIVE on the mainstage at MCON.

From corporate partners and military supporters to media and influencers — this is more than a pitch. It’s a chance to showcase their grit, innovation, and growth in front of a national audience during the expo portion of the event.

Selected entrepreneurs will represent the very best of our Warrior Academy and Business Shower programs. Backed by months of mentorship, pitch coaching, and real-world business development, they’ll demonstrate the power of veteran-led entrepreneurship in front of a high-impact crowd.

This isn’t just a platform. It’s a launchpad.

Veterans and military spouses aren’t struggling to find jobs. They’re struggling to find careers that match their capability, the kind that reflect 10, 15, or 20 years of leadership and mission-driven service rather than just a landing spot. For military spouses, the gap looks different but cuts just as deep: careers interrupted by moves, deployments, and duty station job deserts that have nothing to do with talent and everything to do with circumstance. Too many transition programs declare victory at the offer letter. ACP declares victory when someone is doing work worthy of who they are. This session frames the underemployment problem using ACP’s 18-year track record, a $40K+ average salary increase, a 98% alumni recommendation rate, and more than 43,000 mentorships completed, and makes the case that the real measure of success is fulfillment and trajectory, not just employment.

The brands that define a generation don’t just sell products — they sell conviction. Nowhere is that more evident than in companies built around the values of service, sacrifice, and community. In this session, the founders and executives behind some of the most culturally resonant companies in the country share how they transformed a core mission into a loyal customer base, a brand, and an enduring movement. From guerrilla content strategies to category-defining brand identities, panelists will pull back the curtain on what it actually takes to build something real — and why authenticity, when it’s earned and not manufactured, remains the most powerful marketing tool in existence.

There’s a wide gap between companies that write a check on Veterans Day and companies that actually restructure hiring pipelines, fund mentorship at scale, and build a culture veterans stay in. This panel puts real numbers on the table: what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what serious commitment costs versus what it returns.

Big impact doesn’t require a big budget. Small and mid-sized organizations are building veteran-focused products, hiring models, and community solutions that move faster and land harder than many enterprise programs, because the mission is personal and decision-makers sit close to the work. Founders, operators, and ecosystem builders share what they’re building, how they find and keep veteran talent, and what Fortune 500 employers can borrow: speed, accountability, and proximity.

Case studies in brand activations, campaigns, and partnerships that moved the needle, and the ones that didn’t. An honest conversation about what authentic actually means when a non-military brand shows up in veteran spaces, and how to tell real commitment from a marketing moment.

The veteran community has never lacked compelling stories. What it’s lacked is the right platforms, partners, and creative instincts to move those stories from niche audiences to national conversations. This panel brings together some of the most influential voices in media and entertainment working at that intersection and asks the harder question: what does it actually take to tell a veteran story that changes minds, shifts culture, and drives action? This isn’t about Veterans Day campaigns. It’s about the long game of narrative, and what happens when brands, networks, and studios get it right versus when they don’t.

The biggest brands in America want to show up for the military community, and the biggest names in sports and entertainment have the platforms and the credibility to make that meaningful. This panel pulls back the curtain on what military CSR partnerships look like when they go beyond logo placement and Veterans Day activations: what platforms actually require of corporate partners and how they measure real outcomes.

Hiring veterans is the easy part. Keeping them, and promoting them, is where most companies fail. This panel digs into what actually drives veteran attrition, what builds loyalty, and why the companies with the strongest retention numbers all share one thing in common: culture.

In the military community, trust is currency. Relationships, shared experiences, and personal recommendations often carry more weight than traditional advertising, yet many businesses and organizations lack a strategy for turning that trust into sustainable growth.

Drawing on his experience helping thousands of brands grow, Hawke Media CEO Erik Huberman explores how businesses can build referral-driven growth engines that turn satisfied customers, trusted relationships, and engaged communities into powerful acquisition channels. Attendees will learn how to make referrals more intentional, build advocacy without making relationships feel transactional, and turn the trust they've already earned into lasting business momentum.

Story is one of humanity’s most powerful tools — it makes facts resonate and forms the foundation of meaningful connection. Cappy Surette, a communications leader at The Walt Disney Company and former U.S. Navy spokesperson, shares why people crave stories and how to harness them to communicate effectively in any setting.

During this presentation, you will hear:

• Why stories resonate so deeply with audiences of any size

• The essential elements every story needs to connect — from the ballroom to the boardroom

• How to weave stories into speeches, pitches, and everyday communication

• How storytelling strengthens your personal brand and supports career transitions

Impressions and sentiment scores don’t tell you if a veteran’s life actually got better. This panel gets into how to build real outcome metrics into military CSR partnerships from day one, and why the companies demanding accountability from themselves are the ones getting the best results.

Military spouses are among the most credentialed, resilient, and underemployed people in America, not because of capability but because of mobility. This panel asks what structural changes, not just goodwill, actually open doors for military families regardless of duty station. Spouses who’ve sustained careers across multiple moves have built a level of adaptability corporate America should be recruiting, not accommodating, and the conversation flips the question from how do we help them to why aren’t you hiring them faster.

Session details are being finalized.

Recruitment is down, the force is smaller, and the demands haven’t changed. This panel asks what the private sector owes an all-volunteer military, and why corporate America’s response over the next decade will define what veteran support actually looks like going forward.

Service doesn’t end when the summit does. Fall In is the moment the Military Impact Summit stops being a conversation and becomes a commitment. Modeled on the national pledge movement, this closing session asks every leader in the room to do one thing: declare specifically what their organization will do differently for veterans, military spouses, and military families starting today. Not a campaign, not a task force. A number, a name, a date. Every panel today has made the case for structural commitment.

Here’s ACP’s ask: ACP’s mentorship program connects veterans and military spouses with business leaders for a yearlong, one-on-one partnership built around the protégé’s career goals, and the single most powerful thing anyone in this room can do today is raise their hand to be that person for someone. No budget required, no committee approval, just one hour a month and the willingness to show up consistently for someone who showed up for all of us. More than 43,000 veterans and military spouses have been through ACP’s program, and the leaders who mentored them will tell you the same thing: they got as much as they gave. Fall In starts with you. Visit acp-usa.org to become a mentor today.