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. There’s a critical difference between placement and purpose, between landing somewhere and landing somewhere that actually reflects 10, 15, or 20 years of leadership, operational discipline, and mission-driven service.

For military spouses, that 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 a veteran or military spouse is doing work worthy of who they are.

This opening session frames the underemployment problem with ACP’s 18-year longitudinal data: $40K+ average salary increase, 98% alumni recommendation rate, 43,000+ mentorships completed. It makes the case that the real measure of success isn’t employment. It’s fulfillment, trajectory, and the kind of career that makes a military family proud they served.

The difference between companies that write a check on Veterans Day and companies that restructure hiring pipelines, fund mentorship at scale, and build veteran cultures that stick. Real outcomes, not aspirations.

Military spouses are among the most credentialed, resilient, and underemployed people in America not because of capability, but because of mobility. What structural changes, not just goodwill, actually open doors for military families regardless of duty station?

Military spouses who have sustained careers across multiple moves have developed a resilience and adaptability that corporate America should be recruiting, not accommodating. The framing flips the narrative from “how do we help them” to “why aren’t you hiring them faster.”

Case studies in brand activations, campaigns, and partnerships that moved the needle — and the ones that didn’t. Honest conversation about what “authentic” means when a non-military brand shows up in veteran spaces.

The veteran community has never lacked for compelling stories. What it has lacked is the right platforms, the right partners, and the right creative instincts to move those stories from niche audiences to national conversations. This panel brings together three 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 a panel about Veterans Day campaigns. It’s about the long game of narrative. How you build a body of work around military service that earns trust with veterans and civilian audiences alike, and what happens when brands, networks, and studios get it right versus when they get it wrong.

The biggest brands in America want to show up for the military community. The biggest names in sports and entertainment have the platforms — and the credibility — to make that meaningful. This panel brings together leaders from the NFL, NBA, NASCAR, MLB, and sports entertainment to pull back the curtain on what military CSR partnerships look like when they go beyond logo placement and Veterans Day activations. The conversation covers what platforms actually require of their corporate partners, how they measure real outcomes, and where a mentorship organization like ACP fits as the connective tissue between a brand’s commitment and a veteran’s career. If you’re a corporate partner looking to do something that lasts longer than a press release, this is the panel to be in the room for.

Hiring veterans is the easy part. Keeping them — and promoting them — is where most companies fail. What drives veteran attrition, what builds loyalty, and why do the companies with the strongest retention numbers all share one thing: culture?

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans made a choice to serve something larger than themselves. That choice has been made again and again by every generation since, by men and women who volunteered not because they had to, but because they believed the country was worth it.

In 2026, as America marks that extraordinary milestone, the question before every corporate leader, every advocate, and every organization in this room is not whether to honor that choice. It is how. The commemoration year creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move the veteran and military spouse story from the margins of the national conversation to its center, and to make the case that corporate engagement is not charity. It is obligation, it is opportunity, and in 2026, it is history.

Impressions and sentiment scores don’t tell you if a veteran’s life got better. How do you build outcome metrics into military CSR partnerships from day one — and why are the companies demanding accountability getting the best results?

Not every company committing to veteran employment is a Fortune 500. What do scaled-down, high-impact veteran programs look like without an enterprise HR budget — and why are smaller organizations often getting better results?

Career instability is one of the leading drivers of veteran mental health struggles — and career stability is one of the most effective protective factors. The angle is economic: stable, meaningful careers save lives.

Recruitment is down. The force is smaller. The demands haven’t changed. What does the private sector owe an all-volunteer military — and why will corporate America’s response define veteran support for the next decade?

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.

ACP: Every panel today has made the case for structural commitment. Here is yours. 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 any individual 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. 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.