Today in the United States is Veterans Day, where we give thanks to the millions of veterans who have served our country in wartime and peace. Originally called Armistice Day in honor of the cessation of hostilities between the Allied nations and Germany in World War 1 on the 11th hour of the 11th day of November 1918, Congress changed the name to Veterans Day in 1954 to honor American veterans of all wars.

In June 2011, Cisco started a corporate veterans program focused on helping veterans find career jobs and establishing career training resources. The veterans program augments Cisco's successful employee organization, the Veterans Enablement and Troop Support Employee Resource Organization (Vets ERO). The Vets ERO consists of eight chapters and supports service members, active and retired, here and abroad, by creating greater awareness of veteran causes and helping veterans connect in our workplace and their local community. Two key activities of the Vets ERO are their annual mid-November Veterans Career Technology Day  and mentoring.

The following are some examples of our veteran initiatives:

• Cisco has focused on increasing US veteran hires and was recognized by Victory Media for the third straight year as a " military friendly company."

• The IT Training and Certification program launched by John Chambers and First Lady Michelle Obama in April 2013 fast-tracked transitioning military personnel through IT training and certifications from Cisco and other IT companies.

• The North Carolina for Military Employment ( NC4ME ) program brings together key North Carolina stakeholders in the military employment process to connect military talent to open jobs, education, and training opportunities in North Carolina. With funding by Cisco, Futures Inc., a key partner of ours in the veterans space, developed the North Carolina Military Pipeline (NCMP), a web-based job exchange portal that matches veterans with North Carolina employers; the tool is free to the job seeker and employers posting their jobs.

• NC4ME has held three leadership summits in 2015 to promote awareness of veterans issues and sponsored hiring events at Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune resulting in over 50% of the military job candidates obtaining a job or being called back for a second interview. As part of NC4ME, Cisco has established an IT training program with a coalition of 6 other IT companies offering certifications to military veterans seeking an IT career in NC.

• Cisco is one of 11 founding members of the Veterans Jobs Mission (formerly the 100,000 Jobs Mission), a coalition of private sector companies dedicated to hiring US military veterans. Today, the coalition has grown to 212 companies and collectively hired nearly 300,000 veterans and has set a new goal of hiring 1 million veterans.

• Through the Cisco Networking Academy, Cisco has partnered with the US Military and trained over 58,000 Service Members in IT.  Those Service Members can continue their education at approximately 1,000 Cisco Networking Academies in the US to gain additional IT training.

On this Veterans Day, let's make supporting and hiring military veterans in the US a priority -they've served our country, now let's serve them.

Learn more about Cisco's Veterans Program at csr.cisco.com.