Workplaces built on accountability and attention to detail tend to feel familiar to people who served in the military. At HX5, CEO Margarita Howard has worked to keep that familiarity intact for the veterans who join her company.
Military service instills expectations around documentation, operational security, and performance standards, values that carry direct weight in government contracting, where clearance maintenance and reporting requirements are non-negotiable. Howard, a service-disabled Air Force veteran, has structured HX5‘s culture around those same principles from the top down.
“My background was influenced by military service,” she says, describing how her own experience continues to inform decisions inside the company she now runs.
EASING THE TRANSITION
That cultural overlap can make the shift into civilian work smoother for veterans joining HX5. Rather than adjusting to an entirely different set of values, new hires mostly learn new business processes while operating inside a familiar framework of mission focus and integrity built over years of service.
HX5 supports that adjustment further through its participation in the Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship Program, which has brought eight fellows to the company since 2021 at a steady rate of two per year. The fellowship’s professional development sessions cover topics like corporate communication and influencing without formal authority, addressing exactly the areas where military and civilian workplace habits tend to diverge.
HX5 operates as a service-disabled veteran-owned and women-owned small business across more than 20 states and 70 government locations, supporting Department of Defense and NASA missions in research, engineering, and mission operations. For veterans considering a move into that world, Margarita Howard’s own path from service member to CEO offers a visible example of what a full career transition can look like, one built on cultural continuity rather than reinvention.
Howard has also pointed to her preference for hiring people with prior Department of Defense or NASA experience, since that kind of work differs from commercial industry roles in ways veterans often notice quickly once they arrive. Combined with the fellowship’s steady annual cadence, that hiring philosophy gives HX5 a workforce that already shares many of the values Howard carried with her out of the Air Force. See related link for more information.
More about Howard on https://dataconomy.com/2026/02/23/infrastructure-as-competitive-advantage-margarita-howards-early-investment-philosophy-at-hx5/
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