- My Story
The story behind the shift.
I was born in Colombia. I grew up to wear the uniform of the United States Marine Corps for 20 years, most of it in bomb disposal and special operations, including six years in MARSOC. Work where being wrong one time is the last mistake you ever make.
I earned the rank. I earned the instructor billet. I stood in front of rooms full of hard, serious people and made the most complex material on earth simple enough to keep them alive. I was good at the mission. For a long time, I let that be enough.
What Shaped Me
The uniform. Twenty years in the Marine Corps, six of them in MARSOC, taught me to stay steady when everything says panic, and to teach hard things simply enough that they actually stick.
The rebuild. Then came a season all my training could not touch. The man who could stay calm over a live device could not hold his own life together. That was the bottom, and it was also the beginning. I stopped performing and started becoming.
Faith, then Tawnya. I put Jesus at the center instead of somewhere off to the side, and traded leading through control for leading through love. Then came Tawnya. We met at the Defense Nuclear Weapons School while standing up a new course for Navy and Air Force EOD. Honestly, the first day I did not see it coming. The next night at a bar, her young niece walked up and gave me the most important interview of my life. Do you like beer? Yes. Do you like chocolate? Yes. She looked me dead in the eye and said, then go talk to my aunt. Best orders I ever followed.
Off the clock. You will usually find me on a river with a fly rod. Fly fishing is where the noise stops. It is patient, quiet work that rewards presence over force, which is most of what I am still learning to do everywhere else.
What Shaped Me
The uniform. Twenty years in the Marine Corps, six of them in MARSOC, taught me to stay steady when everything says panic, and to teach hard things simply enough that they actually stick.
The rebuild. Then came a season all my training could not touch. The man who could stay calm over a live device could not hold his own life together. That was the bottom, and it was also the beginning. I stopped performing and started becoming.
Faith, then Tawnya. I put Jesus at the center instead of somewhere off to the side, and traded leading through control for leading through love. Then came Tawnya. We met at the Defense Nuclear Weapons School while standing up a new course for Navy and Air Force EOD. Honestly, the first day I did not see it coming. The next night at a bar, her young niece walked up and gave me the most important interview of my life. Do you like beer? Yes. Do you like chocolate? Yes. She looked me dead in the eye and said, then go talk to my aunt. Best orders I ever followed.
Off the clock. You will usually find me on a river with a fly rod. Fly fishing is where the noise stops. It is patient, quiet work that rewards presence over force, which is most of what I am still learning to do everywhere else.