Building Up Teams--and CommunitiesThese entrepreneurs help companies become teams, and they make it easy to give back.

Lain Hensley has always had a passion for helping those in need. In 2001, he saw the opportunity to do just that when he was hired by Lucent Technologies' supply chain team to get employees working together. "They were going through a reconstruction and wanted to get their team aligned around a vision, and we wanted to do something different to get them there," says Hensley, 41, co-founder of training and team building company Odyssey Teams. "I thought, what if we use the training experience we've created and allow the participants to give back at the same time?"

So instead of running a typical training program, he had the Lucent employees work with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to construct homes for dogs. It was a success.