23 bake from scratch
Chances are that the affable person who hands you a sugar-
crusted scone or buttercream-frosted cake has already served
you in a less direct yet much more powerful way. Staffed by
service-disabled veterans, military spouses, and caregivers, Dog
Tag Bakery is a new home for those who have served their
country and are looking for a way back into a working civilian
life. Lucky for them, it starts here.The Dog Tag Bakery fellowship is designed as a “living business
school,” a hands-on, immersive program that might be too
intense for the average civilian but seems just the right pace
for former military members. “It’s like every day there was
something new, with these incredible business leaders coming
in to teach us how to be entrepreneurial superheroes. Then
there were the fi nance classes, the accounting classes, the
business classes—every day was just wild,” says Erinn Roth, a
fellow from the summer 2018 program.The unprecedented program is the brainchild of the late
Father Rick Curry, a bread-baking Jesuit, and Connie Milstein,
a real estate maven with a professional wheelhouse of cookie
recipes. The program gained steam once it partnered with
neighboring Georgetown University, which helps offer courses
and classrooms for the fellows. Beyond schooling the veterans
on how to launch their dreams in a smart way, the fellowship
is interested in a bit of reprogramming. If the military is all
about transforming a group of people into a cohesive unit, the
Dog Tag Fellowship is about reclaiming some of that precious
individuality. That’s where the stage comes in. The bakery has a
small raised stage in the center, an important contribution from
Father Curry, where fellows are required to practice public
speaking and learn to deliver a speech on their personal story.So, who are some of these individuals and what are their stories?
A great place to start is with the effervescent Erinn. After serving
“24 years and 15 days” in the military, Erinn knew her future
was in baking—she just didn’t have the fi rst clue as to how to
turn that dream into a reality. Enter Dog Tag Bakery, which
seemed tailor-made to help her focus her aspirations. The one
mantra she heard again and again was “Think bigger.” After
Erinn helped serve lunch to former President Barack Obama
and former Vice President Joe Biden that summer in 2018, she
began to take that mantra very seriously. Not even a year after
the program, Erinn has taken her catering business, Ms. Jo’s
Petite Sweets, to new heights and is just months away from
opening her fi rst brick-and-mortar in Alexandria, Virginia.