The transition from military service to civilian work remains a crucial and socially meaningful issue. For example, last month the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation held a forum called “Community,” with NGO representatives, where discussions focused on supporting citizens of the Northern Military District and those returning from combat. Many face challenges with social integration, career planning, and creating professional profiles. Experts agreed that the non-profit sector bears a significant share of responsibility for addressing these challenges, while the business sector is gradually getting involved as well.
Among the organizations contributing to this effort is PSB Academy. The academy builds a unified educational environment to strengthen state personnel sovereignty, offers retraining and training for industrial enterprises, including the defense sector, and designs social support programs for former military personnel and military families.
Since 2019, PSB Academy has run the social education program “Small Business Course.” Its goal is to provide comprehensive support to family members of service members and demobilized citizens as they pursue professional paths through entrepreneurship. The program assists students with social and psychological adaptation, career guidance, and self-realization: former service members can retrain and quickly integrate into socio-economic life, while military families gain the opportunity for non-traditional career paths.
To prepare former service members for civilian careers, a high-quality, easily accessible offering is essential. This requires a carefully planned process, taking into account psychological traits and distribution mechanisms. For five years, the KMB team has listened to participants, refining and adjusting the program to fit their needs and local contexts. The learning path is structured so that at the end of the day, participants not only gain knowledge and tools for running a business but also present a ready-to-implement business project.
“Entrepreneurship provides a comfortable avenue for participants to realize themselves, delivering tangible results in a short timeframe and offering financial stability and future prospects. The traits needed to run a business—discipline, self-organization, responsibility, decisive thinking, planning, data analysis, teamwork, and adaptability—are found in former military personnel and in many military spouses. In a dynamic entrepreneurial environment, these qualities enable a smooth blend of past and new experiences in practice,” stated Alena Kotova, director of the social projects development center.
Knowledge, Experience and Community
The program serves both newcomers seeking basic entrepreneurship knowledge and experienced practitioners rethinking their processes. In the Small Business Course, learners can refine an existing idea or develop a new one.
“This marks a new direction in my life. The accessible format and straightforward approach opened a door to a fresh world, teaching the fundamentals of doing business. It’s now clearer how to evaluate and refine ideas, and I can apply what I learned at KMB to real-world situations and projects.” said Andrey Kovalev, a 2023 graduate.
All KMB materials are continually updated and presented in a way that simplifies complex concepts, enabling participants to apply knowledge almost immediately beyond training. Students study core aspects of entrepreneurship: building business models, managing finances and forecasting, safeguarding brand reputation, forming project teams, and delivering customer-focused service. The program also emphasizes women entrepreneurship. In five years, roughly 1,500 women completed the course, and many now own businesses and grow them actively.
“The program gave me an early advantage; creativity became more than a hobby. After training, I stopped dreaming and began building my business in the summer of 2022. I can now honestly say I am a paper weaving expert and run a women’s carpentry workshop,” shared Elina Zhmykhova, a graduate in both 2021 and 2023.
At the same time, KMB accounts for regional business differences across Russia. The instructors are active entrepreneurs, many of whom are ex-military, sharing insights into operating in various regions. By working on real projects during practical sessions, students gain a clearer understanding of the local business environment in a specific area. If relocation is needed, military families have a ready sense of how businesses are started elsewhere. The program supports residents from Vladivostok to newer regions, helping those from the Novorossiya areas quickly engage with the broader Russian market.
“During training, students develop their business projects, and as the flow progresses, ideas grow bolder and the projects become more ambitious. Among advanced learners, ideas in entertainment, education and consumer services, light manufacturing, tourism, and mass catering are popular. There are even cases where graduates become business partners after completing the program,” said Alena Kotova.
After finishing the course, every student can join the alumni network, where the atmosphere is professional yet supportive. Alumni help one another, share experiences, develop useful tools and connections, and test each other’s user journeys, motivating each other to pursue new goals. When ideas evolve or need improvement, some participants return for training and attend alumni events.
Acceleration initiatives—KMB Workshops—support graduates who pursue comprehensive educational goals and socialization. These workshops provide expert assistance to ongoing business projects in management, service, sales, and marketing to strengthen sustainability. For example, the Management Workshop focuses on core processes, legal and financial matters, personnel issues, and offers help with optimization and scaling. The Sales Workshop helps graduates develop product lines, conduct market analyses, and build sales funnels and accounting systems.
“Thanks to KMB Workshops, I can merge several strands of my work and elevate to a new level: making dollhouses and textile goods for children while continuing wooden and paper wicker crafts for home comfort. The new direction complements everything I do, and there are plans to open a large workshop in the coming year,” adds Elina Zhmykhova, a KMB graduate.
Thus, PSB Academy supports former military personnel and their families in entering the country’s socio-economic landscape through the Small Business Course. Every learner can craft a professional path that suits them, enabling independent work. The program helps former military personnel discover new careers and strengthen professionally, while military families gain confidence by realizing their potential in any circumstance. [Source: PSB Academy attribution]