Our Story: The Veterans Advanced Energy Project
/The Veterans Advanced Energy Project started in 2016 during the Atlantic Council’s Take Point Initiative—a nonprofit pitch competition with the goal of getting veterans engaged in international policy and elevating the voices of post-9/11 veterans. The original idea was based on the US Department of State’s Washington Energy Seminar—a three-day crash course in the fundamentals of the energy industry, technology, and diplomacy with the Bureau of Energy Resources.
The Project’s founder, Dan Misch, attended this State Department seminar in 2014 as an employee of the US Department of Energy before he joined the clean energy company Invenergy. The seminar helped Misch find inspiration in his own post-military career in clean energy by showing how he could reduce US reliance on foreign fuels, diversify US energy sources, and mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. He realized that connecting the dots between clean energy and national security could help other veterans struggling to find meaningful employment after the military.
Misch received an honorable mention from the Take Point Initiative and returned to Chicago to host the first-ever Veterans Energy Seminar. In December 2017, with the support and advisement of Co-Director Greg Douquet, nearly 40 military veterans gathered at the downtown campus of University of Illinois at Chicago for a full day of lectures from experts across academia, government, and industry. Enthusiasm for the program continued to grow—enabled by funding from the founding sponsor Invenergy, participation in the seminars doubled in 2018 with events across the country in Chicago, Boston, and San Diego.
atlantic council global energy staff at the 2019 veterans advanced energy summit
In 2019, the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center invited Misch and Douquet to lead the newly named Veterans Advanced Energy Project with the goal to increase visibility and participation to a national scale. The 2019 Veterans Advanced Energy Summit helped achieve that vision by bringing together nearly 200 military veterans for a day long conference in downtown Chicago and reaching over 7 million impressions on Twitter. This trend continued into 2020 with the completely virtual Veterans Advanced Energy Week. Notable keynote speakers included now-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Senator Tammy Duckworth, and former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. The event was hailed by Atlantic Council CEO Fred Kempe as the “gold standard.”
vaep co-directors, dan misch and greg douquet, at the 2019 veterans advanced energy summit
The Atlantic Council Global Energy Center further expanded the Project by adding a Veterans Advanced Energy Fellowship—a nonresident leadership development program for high-performing, high-potential veterans in advanced energy. The goal of the fellowship is to create a cadre of future leaders within the advanced energy industry who understand the importance of clean energy to US national security interests. Fifteen veterans have now completed this yearlong fellowship which has evolved into a robust policy training platform through experience-based skills learning.
Throughout all of this growth and change, the mission set out by Misch at the beginning remains the central driver behind all of the Project’s programming: inspiring military veterans to seek meaningful and sustainable employment by educating them on the importance of clean energy to US national security. It is the Project’s goal today to provide more career opportunities for veterans in the advanced energy economy and continue to elevate the voices of military veterans. You can read more about our growth and goals in the 2020 Year in Review: Leading from the Front report. Of course, none of this would be possible without our many sponsors, and a special thanks to the continued support of our Advisory Committee and the Atlantic Council, including Randy Bell, Margaret Jackson, and Zack Strauss.
Interested in sponsoring of the Veterans Advanced Energy Project? Learn more here!
