Malvern’s Derek Rodenbeck is no stranger to difficulty and casualty, and now it’s faced him on both military and business turf.
The Army veteran who has endured post-traumatic stress from his service in Iraq has also now endured a startup business failure and a resulting month of homelessness.
Rodenbeck, however, has let none of it keep him down.
Life after Iraq looked promising for the veteran, who went on to graduate from the inaugural class of the Veterans Entrepreneurial Jumpstart Program at Saint Joseph’s University. But reality once again treated him unkindly. His Lvnup line of artistic clothing didn’t go beyond its first batch of creative t-shirts, a Philadelphia Inquirer report by Diane Mastrull explained.
Left without cash for a place to live, he slept in his car until friends helped him hook up with a job. He is now a creative director with marketing, strategy, and personnel management responsibilities for a card game in the Pottstown area, and he’s also doing art for a comic book.
“I noticed a different person that was not the quiet, reserved person” from the Veterans Entrepreneurial Jumpstart, Co-Creator Ralph Galati said. “I think we drew it out of him. You never know what little nugget you might drop in a class, and someone takes it and that seed germinates.”
Read more on veteran Derek Rodenbeck’s story in the Philadelphia Inquirer here.
