Michael A Focareto III

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  Chief Executive Officer
  Chief Financial Officer
  Founder
  President of the Board
  

  Michael A. Focareto III didn't build Veteran Tickets Foundation because it seemed like a good idea. He built it because he lived the life it serves.

  A Disabled Veteran of the U.S. Navy (1988-1992), Michael served during the First Gulf War as a Naval Nuclear Engineer aboard the USS Virginia (CGN-38). His connection to the military didn't start with his enlistment; it started at birth. Both of his grandfathers served in World War II: Michael (Tee) A. Focareto in North Africa, and his brother Anthony at the Battle of the Bulge. His grandfather George "The Bull" Kali served in the Merchant Marines and survived four ships being sunk beneath him. His grandmother welded tanks, test-drove them, and certified turret function at Cleveland Tank, because the war was everyone's job. His father, Michael (Mickey) Focareto Jr., is a Disabled Veteran who served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam era. Multiple uncles and cousins have also served or continue to serve.

  Service is not a chapter in Michael's biography. It is the whole book.

  Professionally, Michael built a parallel career that most nonprofit leaders can't match. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Computers and Information Systems, Magna Cum Laude, from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in 1998, then spent 24 years as a Senior Software Engineer at a major ERP company, designing, building, and scaling enterprise systems before ever drawing a paycheck from the organization he founded. In 2008, while still working full-time, he enrolled in the W. P. Carey School of Business and earned his Master of Science in Information Management (2009), applying the curriculum directly to a nonprofit he was already building on nights and weekends out of his garage.

  That organization became Veteran Tickets Foundation.

  The concept started with a single question: what would it take to get veterans to a Diamondbacks game? The answer, Michael quickly realized, was sitting in arenas and stadiums across the country, unused tickets going to waste while the men and women who served went without. What began as a garage operation in Phoenix grew into a national platform connecting millions of veterans and military family members to live events every year.

  Eighteen years later, Michael remains Founder, CEO, and CFO, the same person who created it, earned the business credentials to build, scale, and operate it with real efficiency, and carries the military service record that gives him the right to speak for its mission.

  Nobody appointed Michael to this role. He invented it. And eighteen years in, the mindset hasn't changed: study the wins, own the losses, listen more than you talk, and get better every single day, because the people we serve have earned nothing less.