Dog Tag Bakery celebrates 10th anniversary of veteran entrepreneurship program

Washington DC-based nonprofit Dog Tag Bakery is more than just a coffee spot: it also serves as an entrepreneurship program for veterans with service-connected disabilities. Calling itself a “living business school,” Dog Tag Bakery aims to help veterans with both visible and invisible wounds.

The organization’s mission is to help veterans transition back into civilian life after military service. The five-month fellowship program offers veterans, spouses and caregivers the opportunity to take courses in business, storytelling, mindfulness and more. Fellows are provided a stipend and are required to attend four days a week.

Healing through agriculture

Peter Scott, a former Army counterintelligence agent who served in Afghanistan, is one of many veterans whose lives have been changed by dog ​​tags.

Scott enlisted in the Army in 1999. He was stationed in Germany and then deployed to Afghanistan, where he served as a counterintelligence officer with the Special Forces. Shortly after returning home, he began experiencing flashbacks and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It caught up with me,” he told “CBS Mornings.” “It wasn’t until after I had kids that I started having flashbacks.”

To cope with these symptoms and adjust to life outside the military, he entered an inpatient program and began finding solace in farming.

“I started beekeeping. I started gardening. I just did anything that would help me stay in the present moment,” he said.

In 2016, he founded Fields 4 Valor Farm, a nonprofit that grows produce for low-income veterans. The land in Brandywine, Maryland, is an idyllic setting but far from the battlefields where Scott trained. Scott said the dog tag program helped him turn his passion into a successful nonprofit.

“Fields for Valor Farm grew out of this program,” Scott said.

Business School for Veterans

Dog Tag CEO Megan Ogilvie assumed the leadership role following the death of the program’s valued co-founder, Jesuit priest Father Rick Curry, in 2015. Father Curry, with the support of co-founder Constance “Connie” Milstein, spent years developing the concept that would eventually become Dog Tag, Inc., as interviewed by CBS News. Father Curry in 2015 This was shortly after Dog Tag opened.

“The fact that I get to do this job is such a gift, and not everyone gets the opportunity to find their calling. I realize that every day I come to work. How lucky I am,” Ogilvie said.

Ogilvie now oversees the program, which helps veterans turn their military skills into valuable business and life skills.

“In the military, it’s black and white,” she says. “You’re told where to live, when to travel, what to wear, how to wear it. So it’s very efficient, right? And then when you leave the military and you put on a blazer and go to a career fair, your identity is gone.”

Finding community and purpose

For veterans like Nana Obi Obioha, who served in Iraq, dog tags have provided a sense of community and helped him reconnect with people who understand his experience. He is one of hundreds of Dog Tag Fellows who have taken the program’s business and storytelling classes, but he says it was the program’s mindfulness training and the connections he’s made with other participants that have helped him most.

“All of the veterans I met in my generation had different histories, different backgrounds, different jobs,” he said, “but we were all united through our service. Having a shoulder to lean on really helped me get back on my feet.”

The impact of dog tags doesn’t just apply to veterans.

Ximena Rozo participated in the program as an Army spouse and credits Dog Tag with helping her launch her award-winning design business. The classes she took at Dog Tag, in partnership with Georgetown University, provided her with the foundation she needed to turn her ideas into a tangible business plan.

“It’s like all the dots connected here,” Lozo said.

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