HX5’s Margarita Howard Reflects on Four Years of Fellowship Support

Four years and eight fellows into its partnership with the Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, HX5 continues to treat veteran hiring as a long-term commitment rather than a periodic initiative. CEO Margarita Howard, a service-disabled veteran who served in the Air Force, has kept the company’s participation steady at two fellows annually since 2021.

The fellowship, established as a Department of Defense SkillBridge initiative in 2015, allows active-duty service members to work with civilian employers during their final 180 days of service. Fellows spend four days each week on hands-on assignments and one day in professional development training, all while continuing to receive military pay and benefits.

A Small Contractor’s Steady Contribution

HX5, a service-disabled veteran-owned and women-owned small business with roughly 1,000 employees, operates across more than 20 states and 70 government locations supporting Department of Defense and NASA missions. Howard has said the company’s modest fellowship numbers reflect its size relative to larger defense contractors, which can absorb dozens of fellows annually through dedicated recruiting teams.

Since the program’s founding, more than 500 fellows have graduated with an 80 percent hire rate and average starting salaries around $70,000, with participating companies ranging from Lockheed Martin and Microsoft to smaller firms like HX5. Margarita Howard views the fellowship as an extension of values she developed during her own military service and later applied while working on the Tricare health care program before reaching HX5’s leadership.

“My background was influenced by military service,” Howard says, tying her personal history directly to the company’s ongoing commitment. For Howard, sustaining that commitment year after year matters more than expanding it quickly, a philosophy that has defined HX5‘s approach to veteran hiring since the fellowship partnership began.

Looking back on four years of participation, Howard says the clearest measure of success has not been the fellowship’s size but the number of fellows who chose to stay with HX5 or move into related contracting roles afterward. That outcome, more than any single statistic, is what she points to when explaining why HX5 continues renewing its partnership with the Corporate Fellowship Program year after year rather than treating it as a program with a natural end point. Refer to this article for more information.

Learn more about Howard on https://www.margaritahoward.com/