The first time Chance Mims went to Wall Street, he was on a field trip. An economics student at the United States Naval Academy, he visited the New York Stock Exchange and major banks with his department. Finance caught his imagination. Getting back would take rather more effort than buying a return ticket.
He graduated, went to sea and served as a navigator aboard a guided missile destroyer. On September 11, 2001, he was deployed near Iraq. His ship subsequently moved into operations connected with the opening of the Afghanistan campaign. When he eventually left the Navy, family considerations helped determine the decision.
Academy Securities, the investment bank he founded in 2009, joined two groups whose careers had been disrupted: experienced financial professionals after the financial crisis and veterans entering civilian work. The student who had once toured Wall Street returned with an idea about its recruitment habits. Useful experience, he believed, was being overlooked.
A field trip with a very long return journey
Mims’s professional biography has an unusual stop between naval service and investment banking: Home Depot. As an executive and project manager, he worked on the economics of operating stores. One Six Sigma profitability project generated millions of dollars in annualized savings. Another assignment involved regional project management for a $400 million capital investment.
Retail operations give an abstract word such as execution something solid to stand on. Stores, investment budgets and profitability projects require people to turn a decision into daily work. Read beside his later career, that experience supplies a useful counterweight to the more cinematic material involving ships and missile launches.
He also founded a San Diego business spanning real estate brokerage, mortgages and property management. For five years before launching Academy, he worked with property assets around the United States. His education combined an economics degree from Annapolis with an MBA from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.
The resulting career resists a tidy industry label. It includes managing physical assets, studying finance and working within a large retailer. Those chapters matter because an investment bank is also an operating business. Before the discussion reaches market insight, someone has to build an organization capable of delivering it.
A bank built while banks were shrinking
Starting a financial firm in 2009 was a decision with fairly conspicuous timing. Academy’s beginnings coincided with the contraction following the financial crisis. Mims put military veterans alongside people with established Wall Street experience, making the combination central to the company’s identity and its service to clients.
That arrangement asks something of both groups. Industry experience supplies knowledge of products, markets and professional practice. A military background supplies a different history of responsibility and teamwork. For a company, the interesting work lies in making those histories useful together. The founding premise becomes credible through the quality of the work.
In September 2012, JPMorgan Chase provided a $4 million subordinated loan to help Academy expand and hire and train veterans. A four-year Mentor-Protégé agreement, under a U.S. Treasury program, accompanied it. The larger institution would offer training and consultation on business and organizational management.
The form of that support is revealing. Money can pay for expansion. Access to an established firm’s experience can help a smaller organization learn what expansion requires. The relationship addressed both. It also gave Academy a practical connection to the industry in which its recruits were learning to work.
By November 2012, Academy had 25 employees and eight sales traders working across three trading desks. Four of those traders were veterans. These are modest, specific numbers from an early chapter. They make the founding story easier to picture: a functioning brokerage with desks to staff, orders to handle and newcomers to train.
The work after the welcome
A company can announce that it values veterans in a sentence. Turning that welcome into a career takes more arrangements. Academy’s veteran engagement programs include mentorship, summer and off-cycle internships, and fellowships that sponsor veterans to take securities licensing examinations. It has been an approved SkillBridge provider since December 2021.
Its mentoring process starts with a call from the chief compliance officer to veterans who reach out. Roundtable meetings let mentees speak with the team, discuss a move into corporate work and ask about networking and interviews. Internships provide exposure to departments ranging from capital markets to operations.
Each mechanism addresses a different uncertainty. A prospective recruit may understand the attraction of finance without knowing which daily tasks suit them. A conversation gives context; time inside departments makes the choices more tangible. Sponsorship for licensing exams addresses another concrete threshold. The route becomes visible in stages.
Academy also encourages veterans to apply for every open position. When it cannot hire someone, its stated approach is to help them find resources for employment suited to their skills and ambitions. That extends the recruitment mission beyond the boundaries of the firm’s own headcount.
There is a sensible business discipline beneath that promise. An employer needs to understand an applicant’s experience before deciding where it fits. A veteran needs enough understanding of the workplace to make an informed choice. Both sides benefit when the conversation reaches actual responsibilities rather than stopping at a gracious handshake.
When the world enters the trading room
Mims’s company also gives military experience a role in what it sells. Academy’s Geopolitical Intelligence Group offers clients perspectives from former military and intelligence leaders. Its coverage includes supply chain risk, regional instability, cybersecurity and competition between major powers. The delivery ranges from briefings and meetings to podcasts and written analysis.
This is a recognizable extension of the founding idea. Experience gathered in one institution can help people in another ask better questions. For an investor examining a disruption abroad, operational context may be useful alongside financial analysis. The task is to translate that context into something relevant to a client’s decision.
“You’ve got to find a niche and be additive to what the big firms do.”
Chance Mims, December 2023
The people around Mims give the institution some texture. Vice chairman Phil McConkey combined naval service with an NFL career that included a touchdown catch in Super Bowl XXI. President and capital markets head Spencer Wilcox brought Navy aviation experience and fixed-income trading experience. Their biographies offer several ways into the same room.
On October 20, 2026, Academy announced that retired Air Force Major General John Edwards had joined its advisory board and geopolitical group. His background included national security policy and large acquisition programs. Mims emphasized those areas of experience when explaining the appointment. The recruitment matched a stated client offering.
A mission with more than one balance sheet
Through Academy Asset Management, where Mims is CEO, the business reaches the investment-management side of finance. The Academy Veteran Bond ETF, VETZ, launched in 2023. It primarily invests in loans to service members, veterans, their survivors and veteran-owned businesses. In April 2026, the firm announced that the fund had exceeded $100 million in assets under management.
That is a dated measure of one product’s size. It also marks a widening of the business idea. Hiring brings veterans into financial institutions. A loan-focused investment fund connects investors with lending involving the same community. The mechanisms differ, while the people at the center remain familiar.
Another branch, Academy Ventures, invests in veteran-led businesses and early-stage defense technology companies. In August 2026, the firm appointed Rob Born as a partner. At that point, Academy said the venture arm had invested in more than 20 companies using internal partners’ capital, with plans to admit selected outside capital.
Municipal finance was expanding too. September appointments put Michael Hayes in charge of municipal trading and Brian Curci in charge of municipal sales. Both arrived with more than 15 years in the municipal market. The announcement described plans to strengthen trading capacity and distribution, giving the expansion specific jobs and responsibilities.
Seen together, these developments describe the demands now facing Mims as a founder. The enterprise has several places to allocate attention: investment banking, trading, advice, asset management and venture investing. Maintaining a shared purpose across those activities requires the ordinary machinery of management, however interesting the founding story may be.
The teammates in the acceptance speech
In 2023, Mims received an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Pacific Southwest award. His public response was brief and collective: “I am honored to accept this award on behalf of Academy Securities and my teammates.” He also thanked supporters of the firm’s mission to hire, train and mentor veterans.
It was a fitting emphasis for a business whose premise depends on people working together across different backgrounds. An award singles out a founder; the company still needs traders, operators, advisers and new recruits learning their profession. The acceptance placed those colleagues inside the achievement rather than leaving them in the audience.
The economics student’s field trip has acquired a long afterlife. Mims found a way back to the industry that interested him, then built routes for others to enter it. His career makes a practical argument for looking closely at an unfamiliar résumé. There may be quite a lot of work behind the words.