Margarita Howard has spent years shaping how HX5 welcomes veterans into government contracting work, and her own path from Air Force service member to company CEO informs the process at every step. Since 2021, the aerospace and defense firm has hosted eight fellows through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, keeping a steady pace of two participants annually.
Howard leads HX5 as a service-disabled veteran, and that identity carries weight inside a company built around Department of Defense and NASA contracts. She has said her background was shaped by time in uniform, and that influence extends into how the organization treats hiring, mentorship and day to day culture.
That personal history is part of why Margarita Howard has kept the fellowship program a fixture of HX5’s operations rather than a one-off initiative tied to a single hiring cycle. She treats the placements as a standing commitment; one renewed every year regardless of how busy a given contract cycle happens to be.
Building Toward Consistency
The Corporate Fellowship Program began in 2015 under the Department of Defense SkillBridge initiative, giving active-duty members a chance to work with civilian employers during their final 180 days of service. Fellows spend four days a week with a host company and one day in professional development, all while still drawing military pay and benefits. More than 500 people have completed the program since it started, with roughly 80 percent going on to accept job offers and average starting salaries near $70,000.
HX5 operates across more than 20 states and 70 government sites, supporting research, engineering and mission operations work that often calls for security clearances few civilian hires already hold. Margarita Howard has pointed out that experience gained inside DoD or NASA programs differs from commercial sector work, which is part of why veterans fit naturally into many HX5 roles.
With roughly 1,000 employees, HX5 cannot match the fellow counts of giant contractors, but two placements a year gives the company room to integrate each fellow properly. Howard has framed that steadiness as intentional, choosing consistent participation over occasional hiring pushes tied to short term staffing gaps.
The result is a hiring pipeline that treats veteran transition as an ongoing responsibility rather than an occasional gesture, something Howard credits directly to her own path out of the Air Force and into defense industry leadership. Refer to this article, for related information.
Find more information about Margarita Howard on https://www.f6s.com/member/margarita-howard