Small Business Spotlight: Drexel Hamilton Offers Job Opportunities To Veterans

NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – When Lawrence Doll founded his brokerage firm, he knew he wanted to hire fellow veterans.

"When I came back from Vietnam, the country was split. It was a tough time to be a veteran. And I never forgot the people that helped me," he told Joe Connolly. "I see these young men and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They have volunteered to serve and protect us with their lives.

"So I wanted to be able to give some of those people – not all, because there's only so many we can work with – to give them an opportunity to have a business that they can take their families and give them enough money and give them enough feeling that they are doing something for the rest of their lives."

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Now, he says about 40-42 percent of his employees at Drexel Hamilton are veterans, half of whom are disabled.

Dan Boyle, a veteran and broker, was studying finance at a college in Philadelphia when the 9/11 terror attacks took place. He visited a military recruiter on September 12, 2001 and enlisted in the Marine Corps upon graduation. After multiple tours in Iraq, it was time to think about what's next for him and his family.

"I had studied finance in school and this was the industry I wanted to get in, I just didn't think I was going to have the opportunity," he said. "Because so many in my peer group go to college and then they go off to business school, and I was going to play in the sandbox."

Boyle says Drexel Hamilton's key to success is pairing an industry veteran with a military veteran.

"Few vets, or people even coming out of business school, have the opportunity to sit next to people with that much knowledge and breadth or depth of experience," he said.