Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will feature a charity pack that players can buy and donate proceeds to the Call of Duty Endowment.
The endowment uses the money to place veterans in high-paying jobs. Helene Imperiale, senior director at the Call of Duty Endowment, said the foundation has helped place more than 150,000 veterans in high-paying jobs.
“The Call of Duty Endowment was founded to give back meaningfully to the real-life heroes who inspire the marketing. We do this by funding the most effective and efficient nonprofit organizations that help underemployed and unemployed veterans find high quality jobs after their service,” Imperiale, in a press briefing at Call of Duty: Next.
Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick started in in 2009. The endowment creates a Legacy Tracer Pack that players can buy to use in the game. And Activision donates 100% of the proceeds to the endowment toward finding jobs for veterans.
The Call of Duty Next event highlighted the CODE Bowl, which features military veterans squaring off against each other in a charitable event where they play Call of Duty.
Danielle Green showed up at Call of Duty Next as a U.S. Army veteran who helped prep the pack. This legacy charger grew up in the city of Chicago and got herself onto the basketball team at Notre Dame. She didn’t score much at first but went on to become a high-scoring player.
After she did that, she served her country as a U.S. Marine at the age of 25. She served 15 months and was standing atop a roof in Bagdad and found a rocket had been fired right next to her. She was wounded and thought she was going to die. But she prayed that she would live and be able to tell her story. She woke up in a hospital in the Green Zon and realized her arm was missing. Her fellow soldiers went to retrieve the arm and found her wedding ring on it. She finished her service and later worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs and won the Pat Tillman award in 2015 for her service.
A couple of months ago, she summited Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. Now she’s on a “crusade to show people no matter what life throws at you, you are never broken.”
She’s been doing it for nearly 22 years.
“So my service didn’t end after 23 months in the service,” she said.
Disclosure: Activision paid my way to Las Vegas for Call of Duty Next.