September: Awareness, Action, and ASCEND-ing Together
September is more than just the transition from summer to fall. It’s a month filled with opportunities to reflect, improve, and act with compassion. At The ASCEND Collective, our mission is to champion people by recognizing their skills, amplifying their voices, and connecting them to meaningful opportunities. This September, four awareness initiatives resonate deeply with our communities—National Suicide Prevention, Self-Improvement, Pain Awareness, and Hunger Action Month. Each connects directly to the work we do and the people we serve.
National Suicide Prevention Month: Standing with Veterans
For many veterans, the transition from military to civilian life can be daunting. Too often, it comes with feelings of isolation, underemployment, or a loss of identity—factors that can contribute to suicide risk. At The ASCEND Collective, we believe no veteran should ever feel invisible or undervalued.
Our work is rooted in skills-based hiring, ensuring that veterans’ training, discipline, and leadership are not only recognized but celebrated. By creating pathways to meaningful employment, we’re addressing one of the key social determinants of mental health—economic stability and purpose. Suicide prevention is not only about crisis intervention; it’s also about prevention through opportunity, belonging, and dignity. Together with our partners, we stand committed to ensuring every veteran knows their skills matter, their lives matter, and their future matters.
Self-Improvement Month: Mission2 ASCEND
September is also Self-Improvement Month, a time to reflect on growth and new beginnings. For those rebuilding their lives after incarceration, self-improvement is not just about personal development—it’s about reclaiming dignity, opportunity, and hope.
Through Mission2 ASCEND, we walk alongside individuals with criminal records who are determined to start fresh. These candidates are more than their past; they are people with resilience, transferable skills, and untapped potential. Yet too often, they face closed doors, stereotypes, and cycles that make rebuilding nearly impossible.
Self-improvement, in this context, is about breaking barriers and rewriting stories. It’s about helping second-chance candidates see that their lived experiences can translate into strengths, that their commitment to growth is valuable, and that their skills matter. By connecting them to employers who embrace skills-based hiring, we’re not just opening career pathways—we’re helping rebuild lives, families, and communities.
Pain Awareness Month: Building Understanding Through Ability
Living with visible or invisible pain is a daily reality for many in our community—especially veterans and people with disabilities. Pain Awareness Month reminds us that compassion and understanding must guide how we design workplaces, communities, and policies.
At The ASCEND Collective, our Ability initiative emphasizes that pain does not define a person’s capacity or worth. Skills-based hiring allows employers to look past assumptions and focus on what individuals bring to the table. When we recognize the whole person—including their strengths and lived experiences—we create environments where people can thrive despite challenges. Raising awareness of pain means building workplaces that are not only inclusive, but truly adaptive, empathetic, and empowering.
Hunger Action Month: Supporting Military Families
Finally, September is Hunger Action Month, a reminder that food insecurity remains a pressing issue—especially among those who serve our nation. Military spouses, in particular, face higher risks of food insecurity due to frequent relocations, career interruptions, and high unemployment.
At The ASCEND Collective, we see hunger not just as a nutritional gap but as an economic and opportunity gap. By helping military spouses connect to stable employment aligned with their skills, we’re addressing one of the root causes of food insecurity. Our work helps ensure these families can focus on thriving rather than surviving. Hunger is a community issue, and through collaboration, awareness, and action, we can lift this burden together.
A Call to Collective Action
These four September initiatives may seem different—suicide prevention, self-improvement, pain awareness, hunger action—but they are connected by a common thread: human dignity and opportunity. When veterans, military spouses, people with diverse abilities and justice-impacted are overlooked, the costs are measured not only in statistics but in lives, families, and futures.
At The ASCEND Collective, we know change happens when communities come together to act. Whether by supporting a veteran through a career transition, empowering a military spouse to find meaningful work, creating adaptive workplaces for those with chronic pain, or providing pathways to rebuilding—every effort matters.
This September, let’s commit to more than awareness. Let’s commit to action. It’s not only about getting better at what we do—it’s about creating systems that allow people to rise, no matter where they’re starting from. Together, we can build a future where no one is left behind, every skill is valued, and every person can truly ASCEND.
Talents ASCEND Takes a Step to Strengthen Communities Through The ASCEND Collective
At Talents ASCEND, our mission has always been clear: to create a more equitable, skills-based hiring process that removes bias and opens doors for untapped talent. But hiring is only one part of the journey. Thriving careers and successful businesses are built on strong, connected communities.
That’s why Talents ASCEND is taking the next step forward by focusing on the heart of our mission—the communities of The ASCEND Collective. Each community within the Collective—Veterans ASCEND, MilSpouse ASCEND, Ability ASCEND, Mission2 ASCEND and Founders ASCEND—was created to serve a unique group, offering them resources, advocacy, and a network of support designed to break barriers and open opportunities.
By investing deeper into these communities, Talents ASCEND is not just helping individuals find the right career or businesses find the right talent—we are building ecosystems of empowerment. Whether it’s supporting veterans as they transition into civilian careers, uplifting military spouses as they navigate employment challenges, creating inclusion for neurodiverse individuals, opening doors for justice-impacted to rebuild, or equipping small businesses with the tools to understand the often-overwhelming world of HR, The ASCEND Collective is where lasting impact begins.
This step is about more than recruitment. It’s about sustainability, belonging, and growth—ensuring that every person and every business connected to The ASCEND Collective thrives.
We are proving that when communities work together, we all ASCEND.
Want to learn more about our communities?
Visit https://theascendcollective.org/
Your support would be greatly appreciated. Please consider donating to our mission. Thank you.
https://givebutter.com/TACAnnual or text FundTAC to 53-555
Watch Now!
Introducing Founders ASCEND — because visionaries deserve support, not just survival.
Founders ASCEND is a bold new initiative from The ASCEND Collective, created to champion, support, and elevate entrepreneurs—helping Founders succeed and thrive with tools, mentors, networking and more!
Whether you’re launching a tech startup, building a business from your trade, or turning lived experience into innovation, founders need more than funding—they need a foundation. 🔹Coaching and readiness
🔹 Access to resources, mentors, and networks
🔹 Blogs and events
🔹 Visibility, advocacy, and inclusive opportunities
At Founders ASCEND, we meet entrepreneurs where they are and walk with them as they grow. Because when founders thrive, so do families, communities, and the future of work.
If you’re a founder—or if you believe in the power of entrepreneurship to change lives—join us.
This isn’t just a program.
It’s a movement to support those who will build and lead our future.
Owners in Honor: Service, Legacy, and the Call of Ownership
At Owners in Honor we believe service is a lifelong calling; not something that ends when the uniform is reverently placed in a closet. Service evolves, and for many veterans it becomes a path of building, leading, and sustaining communities through business ownership.
This conviction is deeply personal. My father and both of my grandfathers were veterans who went on to become small business owners. They showed me that leadership in service can flow directly into leadership in commerce, and that the two are not separate callings but chapters of the same book. Yet when my father sold his business, he did so without a trusted advisor by his side. He was the kind of veteran who could have used an advocate: someone to protect him from the predators that too often take advantage of sellers unprepared for the process. That memory is one of the reasons I founded Owners in Honor.
I followed my family’s path of service, spending more than twenty years in Special Operations. Later, as a recruiting battalion commander in Los Angeles, I saw the power of young Americans stepping forward to serve. After completing an MBA at Duke University, graduating from The Honor Foundation, and working in financial services with Andersen, I recognized my next mission was clear: to stand beside veterans as they transitioned into ownership, and to protect them from the kinds of risks my own father faced.
The OIH ETA Program is our six-phase curriculum designed to guide veterans through entrepreneurship through acquisition. Within that program, the Buyers Basecamp equips transitioning service members with the tools and confidence to acquire companies, while the Sellers Summit prepares veteran business owners to exit with clarity, dignity, and protection. Both sides of the table – buyer and seller – need trusted partners, because the ETA space unfortunately attracts predatory actors who exploit inexperience. At OIH, we ensure veterans are informed, supported, and protected.
This mission also has a powerful geographic dimension. More than 80 percent of service members would like to return to their home of record after leaving the military. Yet fewer than 30 percent are able to do so, due largely to economics. Ownership provides the bridge. By acquiring businesses in their hometowns, veterans can return home with purpose, apply millions of dollars of leadership training in familiar communities, and have an exponential effect on local economies. Most importantly, it brings families back together after years of service to the country. Business ownership is not only a career path: it’s a homecoming.
Timeless wisdom reminds us of the character this work demands. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” Our veterans live this truth when they keep businesses strong and communities vibrant. Veterans welcome that challenge with eagerness. Abraham Lincoln reminded us, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” Veterans embody this when they step into ownership, building futures for themselves, their families, and their hometowns.
At Owners in Honor, advocacy is as essential as education. Veterans deserve allies who honor their service, protect their legacies, and amplify their impact.
Service continues. Legacy endures. Ownership inspires. That is our mission; and it’s a future worth embracing.
Patrick Flood is a former Green Beret, recipient of the Bronze Star for Valor and Purple Heart. He is a 100% disabled veteran with over twenty years of service, including five combat tours. He has led teams at the highest levels of Special Operations, diplomacy, and business, and now serves as CEO of Owners in Honor, a nonprofit dedicated to helping Veterans and small business owners navigate life-changing transitions with dignity and purpose.
Coming from a proud line of Veterans and small business owners, his father and grandfathers wore the uniform and later ran their own companies, Patrick understands both the challenges and opportunities of transition. He holds degrees from George Washington University, the Naval Postgraduate School, and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and is a George W. Bush Center Stand-To Leadership Scholar.
“As a Veteran and the son of a small business owner, I’ve seen how hard transitions can be. Owners in Honor exists to make those moments a launchpad; helping Veteran buyers, operators, and sellers navigate change with dignity, purpose, and pride.”
