The Manufacturing Institute’s Heroes MAKE America Program Graduates Inaugural Class.

The Manufacturing Institute’s veterans training program, Heroes MAKE America, graduated its inaugural class at Fort Riley, Kansas, and announced plans to expand the program to additional military installations beginning with Fort Hood.

Heroes MAKE America is a full-time career skills program launched in partnership with the U.S. Army Soldier for Life – Transition Assistance Program and the USO Pathfinder Program aimed at closing the manufacturing skills gap by training our veterans with critical skills and placing them on a path towards a rewarding manufacturing career. The program arms transitioning service members with in-demand qualifications and industry-specific certifications needed for today’s manufacturing workforce.

“Every year 200,000 of our nation’s best and brightest exit the military with exactly the type of skills and qualities needed to make meaningful and successful careers in the manufacturing industry, which currently has 364,000 open jobs but without qualified workers to fill them. Yet many veterans lack the certifications or training necessary to land those well-paying jobs, if they even know they exist. That’s where the Heroes program comes in,” said Manufacturing Institute Executive Director Carolyn Lee. “Our mission is to match heroes in uniform with the kind of manufacturing opportunities that will allow them to best and most meaningfully utilize their unique and in-demand skill-sets, then our training programs prepare them to not just succeed in those careers but excel. I couldn’t be prouder of today’s initial graduating class of Heroes and I wish each of them the best in their new journeys from here.”

The 13 soldiers of the graduate class have already landed more than 50 job interviews and netted nearly a dozen job offers.

Amid the success of the inaugural class, a second class of another 13 soldiers has already begun at Fort Riley. Moreover, the Manufacturing Institute plans to expand Heroes MAKE America to Fort Hood in Texas this summer, with a goal of graduating a total of 200 students by the end of 2018, and upwards of 400 students by the end of 2019.

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