Seminar helps wounded vets start businesses - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Seminar helps wounded vets start businesses

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Former stockbroker Greg Amira, who barely survived the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and later was injured in Iraq as an Army reservist, now wants to get into something safer: pizza.

His goal is to start a franchise pizza restaurant, and a “bootcamp” for disabled veterans is helping him do it.

Amira is among 19 participants attending the “Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities” at Florida State University, one of five universities offering the program across the country.

Amira’s classmates have business plans ranging from printing to a helicopter commuter service. They wrapped up a week of in-person study with professors and business people Tuesday.

“This is probably the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time,” said Amira, 39, now living in Trinity, Fla., near Tampa. “I think it’s helped me avoid quite a few mistakes.”

The bootcamp also includes a three-week online course and a 12-month follow-up of mentoring and other support.

The privately funded program began in 2007 at Syracuse University. It has since spread to Florida State, Texas A&M University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Purdue University. About 100 veterans have graduated from the program since it began.

It’s open to post-9/11 disabled veterans. Nearly 300 applied for about 120 slots nationwide this year, said Randy Blass, director of Florida State’s camp.

“We’re trying to catch these folks in a life transition,” said Blass, an assistant professor of organization behavior and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.

Blass said the veterans typically need information about the basic nuts and bolts of running a business. They usually leave with more questions than answers because they’ve learned what questions they need to ask before they can get started, he said.

For Amira, it’s a transition back into a life in business that was shattered when two hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers.

Then a vice president for Morgan Stanley, Amira worked on the 73rd floor of tower No. 2. He made it out but went to the first tower to help others escape when it collapsed. He was trapped in the rubble for five hours, suffering a badly damaged elbow, head trauma, burns and other injuries.

That didn’t stop the Army from calling the reserve captain into active duty and sending him to Iraq in 2006. Amira suffered back and brain injuries in combat and has post traumatic stress disorder.

He’s interested in opening a Little Caesars Pizza franchise because the company offers special help for disabled veterans.

“I don’t need the money,” said Amira, who gets disability benefits and abandoned his “spend, spend, spend” lifestyle after 9/11. “I need something to keep my brain busy.”

Warrant Officer Johnny Moncayo, 46, wants to combine his experience as an Army helicopter pilot with what he’s learned at the camp to launch a commuter helicopter service in Alabama when he retires at the end of July.

As a result of the advice he’s gotten at the camp, Moncayo, who is stationed at Fort Rucker, Ala., has scaled back his business plan to make it more manageable.

Moncayo said it also is helping him adjust to being his own boss after the ordered life he’s led in the military.

“They tell you what to do, they tell you what time to get up,” he said. “When you come into the business world, that structure is gone. It is up to you to go out and find it, to make it happen.”

A couple of last year’s graduates returned to help inspire this year’s class.

Don Hash of Little Rock., Ark., described how he turned pigeon racing — a hobby he began while growing up in Layton, Utah — into a business that releases white doves at weddings and funerals. His United Doves LLC is in five cities now and he plans to expand.

J.R. Martinez, who landed an acting job in New York on the daytime television program “All My Children,” urged fellow veterans not to give up their dreams.

“You don’t quit and you listen and learn from other people,” he said in an interview. “Don’t be afraid of the fear.”