A little about me

I joined the military a few months after graduating high school, starting out as undesignated deck seaman and rescue swimmer on the USS Tarawa (LHA-1). Undesignated seaman is probably the closest to the bottom of the food chain as you can get on a Navy vessel. I loved the job- wrote a poem about it, even. 

After a few years, I left the Tarawa in San Diego Bay and crossed the Coronado Bridge to attend Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.  My class was profiled in the book “The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228” by retired SEAL Captain Dick Couch.  Following that, I spent the next six years as an enlisted SEAL Operator, serving as a Communicator, Joint Terminal Attack Controller, Sniper, and Team Leader.  After deployments to South America, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I applied for and was selected to the Seaman to Admiral commissioning program, attending George Washington University in the Elliot school of International Affairs.  

As a Naval Special Warfare Officer, I led maneuver elements at the squad, platoon, and troop level in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, and helped stand up an enduring training element for Ukrainian Maritime Special Forces. Along the way, I finished a Masters in Irregular Warfare from the Naval Postgraduate School. My final operational tour was as a Troop Commander at Naval Special Warfare Development Group, completing the last of ten overseas deployments and over twenty seven years of naval service.

At present, I write the Renaissance Humans Newsletter, about cultivating curiosity, character, and creativity in the turbulent twenties. I’m also hard at work getting my debut novel, The Infernal Tower, published.