How a former combat medic turned entrepreneur is improving disaster response

Natural disasters. Health care inequity. Disability accessibility. These are the types of universal issues being tackled by Veterans who come through DAV Patriot Boot Camp, an entrepreneurship program for the military and Veteran community.

Founded in 2012, DAV Patriot Boot Camp connects transitioning service members, Veterans and military spouses with valuable education, world-class mentorship and a supportive community to help them succeed.

Applications for the next DAV Patriot Boot Camp, to be held Oct. 9-11 in Washington, D.C., can be found at the Patriot Boot Camp website. There are limited number of seats. Participants will get the chance to participate in a pitch competition with no-obligation funding up for grabs.

Below, meet one DAV Patriot Boot Camp alum taking on one of today’s biggest challenges, or visit the website to learn what others are doing.

Combat Medic Turned Entrepreneur

Army Veteran and former combat medic Julie Sargent is the co-founder and CEO of Cardinal Medical Solutions, a company that provides on-site medical care for first responders and support personnel at wildland fires and other disaster incidents across the country.

What problem does Cardinal Solutions help solve? 

One of the big goals that we have is keeping our firefighters in the fight, keeping our support personnel out here on the incident. And so anytime that somebody gets hurt, or something happens, if we’re not here to respond, or there isn’t that capability on the site, then not only does the patient have to now be transported out, but oftentimes two to three additional resources to go with the patient and coordinate now have to be removed from the incident, which then affects the actual ability of that team to continue to operate.

And so, by us being on site and managing that care, and keeping it all in house, it allows the firefighters to stay in the fight and it allows the rest of the personnel to stay on the incident and continue working and doing the job they’re deployed to do.

How did military service prepare you to succeed as an entrepreneur? 

The incident management team style [in disaster response] and how they do things is very similar to military operations. And so, I think that in itself made the transition very easy for me.

Also, having that prior knowledge and experience working in remote and austere environments and learning to be creative with the level of care that you can provide, but also with the resources and knowing that you don’t always have resources immediately accessible [helped]. And there’s a lot of knowledge and experience that I gained from the Army side of doing things to then be able to apply out here working in the field.

How did DAV Patriot Boot Camp help you as an entrepreneur?

I was given some interesting perspectives on how to approach some of the government contracting and also kind of what that looks like, as far as getting into that particular field, because that’s a lot of what we do is we work directly with the Forest Service and other government agencies in order to provide them support.

And I just really appreciated having that mentorship and guidance to get us where we needed to be.

The sharing of any non-VA information does not constitute an endorsement of products and services on the part of VA. Veterans should verify the information with the organization offering.