VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — November marks National Veterans and Military Families month, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is helping to empower veterans to build the lives they always hoped for.

ERAU's RISE is a free program for veterans that stands for Realize, Innovation, Support and Empower, and it's dedicated to helping them and active duty service members achieve their entrepreneurial goals.

Dr. Joseph Lakatos, director of the Embry-Riddle Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, said the three-month program aims to have veterans walk away with confidence and the tools for success.

“Knowing and believing that they can run a business successfully with our support. We’re here anytime with questions, but walking away with that belief, knowing they can, because it’s their dream,” Lakatos said. “And it’s, it’s a minimum what we can do to help them for what they’ve done for us.”

Embry-Riddle just had its first class of about 12 veterans graduate from the program this year. Among them is Navy veteran and mom Lauren Warner, who is working on her first project in Palm Coast.

“I made a lot of mistakes, but I can’t, I can’t sweat it,” Warner said. “I’ve just got to keep on going.”

After leaving her career in computer science, she’s building a mobile retail shop, crafting a new future for herself.

“I found myself in a job I didn’t like and wanted to build the job that I wanted for myself,” she said.

She had no doubt that she could be an entrepreneur, especially after enlisting in the Navy as a teenager and spending her service deployed in Japan as an aviation machinist.

“I went from a 19-year-old working at a souvenir shop to working on F-18 engines on aircraft carriers,” Warner said. “So being able to really go out of my comfort zone is what, when I left the military, I wasn’t scared so much of not knowing how to do stuff because you can learn anything.”

However, she realized she could use some guidance as she navigated this new world.

“You just find yourself in a circle of knowing that you need to do stuff, but you don’t know how to do it, where it starts, what needs to come first in your research,” Warner said.

That is what led her to the RISE program at Embry-Riddle University. She expressed her love of reading and coffee, and they helped her hone in on her idea.

“The RISE program helped me realize that I need to take a step back when it comes to my grand idea of a bookstore cafe, and to try and figure out how I’m going to be different than my competitor,” Warner said.

The program helped her land the concept for her mobile book and roasted coffee shop, which she is calling The Coffee and Ink.

“Because I was able to take that what I thought I knew, take that to the RISE program, and they were able to help me tweak it,” Warner said. “Then I was able to get eyes on my plan and get feedback off of it right then and there.”

She is almost ready to launch in December, and she’s excited to see how it’s received. Until then, she said she is grateful for the knowledge that will help her forge her own path. 

“I can learn entrepreneurship. I can learn whatever I set my mind to,” Warner said. “A lot of veterans are like that.”

Warner also plans to give back to the community while honoring her father, who passed away from blood cancer this year.

She partnered with the National Marrow Donor Program and will raise donations at her cart.

Embry-Riddle will have its next round of the RISE program in the spring.

If you are interested in joining the program, reach out to Dr. Joseph Lakatos with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at 386-226-7554 or email him at lakatosj@erau.edu.