Local Veteran Nationally Honored for #StillServing Other Veterans

St. Petersburg resident Valerie Ellis Lavin’s dedication to country and community has earned her recognition in the national Veteran of Foreign Wars #StillServing campaign. The campaign honors veterans who continue to serve after active duty. After serving in the Army for 21 years including deployments to Korea and Iraq, Lavin founded a nonprofit and two companies to help veterans.

Inspired by stories of fellow veterans struggling to find work after leaving the service, Lavin started her first company Veterans 2 Corporate (V2C), a veteran staffing firm. V2C helped firms who were unsure how military skillsets transferred to civilian jobs to qualified veteran talent.

Lavin then co-founded Action Zone, a nonprofit that provides entrepreneurship education to veterans and their spouses. Action Zone teaches veterans the entrepreneurial concept of “fail fast, fail forward,” which is foreign to veterans who are accustomed to “complete the mission” and “failure is not an option,” as well as teaching them the skills necessary to running a business. In 2019, Lavin helped launch the Bunker Labs Tampa Community to complement Action Zone’s program with entrepreneurial networking for veterans.

Today Lavin is CEO for Luminary Global which she founded to provide healthcare and emergency and preparedness supplies to military, first responders and civilians and ecosystem development director for Bunker Labs.

Lavin’s dedicated service to her country and veterans led her to be chosen as one of the few VFW #StillServing Heroes nationwide. VFW invites all veterans to submit their stories at vfw.org/stillserving.