What follows is not a résumé, but a glimpse into the chapters that shaped how I serve. Military leadership, diplomatic protection, systems design, wilderness immersion, contemplative discipline, and fatherhood each refined specific capacities within me. This is not the whole story, only a window into the qualities that now inform my work. What shapes us often becomes what we are able to offer.

After 9/11, I enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps to protect my community. Over eight years, including a combat deployment to Iraq as a machine gun platoon leader, I held diverse leadership roles, rising to Staff Sergeant. Under pressure, I learned that strength is not force but composure. The nervous system must be steady before others can trust it. Emotional regulation in crisis became a lived discipline.

Holding a Top Secret clearance, I directed detachments safeguarding U.S. embassies in Russia, Germany, and Cyprus, operating where diplomacy and espionage quietly intersect. Protection demanded vigilance, discernment, and the trained ability to notice what others overlook. I learned to assess risk without panic, to prepare for complexity without overreaction. Safety is never accidental. It is designed through awareness, discipline, and care.

After years shaped by defense, I felt called toward building. I shifted from preventing harm to participating in the creation of systems that support health and well-being in communities and public institutions. Growth required redefining contribution. Protection matures into stewardship.

As an executive director, corporate facilitator, and startup operator, I aligned leaders across health, technology, sustainability, and innovation. I learned that every system mirrors the awareness behind it. When intention is clear and trust is cultivated, collaboration becomes regenerative.

Through biomimicry and regenerative practice, I studied patterns that have allowed natural systems to thrive over millennia. Ecosystems endure through reciprocity, adaptation, and intelligent interdependence. Nature refines what works and releases what does not.

At Standing Rock, I helped bring together tribal leaders and nonprofit partners working on vital resources. Reconnecting with my Oglala Sioux ancestry was a healing and empowering experience. I witnessed how history lives in the body and how guidance begins with humility. Direction without listening fractures trust.

For years, I have sat in council with men and, at times, with women, sometimes under Indigenous guidance. Through my own trauma healing and guiding hundreds through grief, initiation, and altered states over more than a decade, I have learned that vulnerability carries strength. To hold space well is to remain grounded in intensity without needing to control it.

Since childhood, I spent summers hiking deep into wilderness with my father and his father. Later, nearly half a year on the Pacific Crest Trail, a month on the John Muir Trail, and a forthcoming Camino pilgrimage deepened that lineage. The land teaches patience, proportion, and trust in timing.

For decades, meditation, mindfulness, prayer, and contemplative study have anchored my life. I stepped away from modern life for a year to deepen that commitment and spent extended time in monasteries learning to listen inwardly. Awareness is trained long before it is tested.

Traveling the world, I sought spiritual communities, regenerative models of living, alternative healing, and immersive gatherings shaped by shared values. I learned that collective transformation does not arise by accident. Environment shapes behavior. Culture must be cultivated with intention.

As COO of a telehealth company, I led an international team delivering nervous system regulation tools and accessible mental health care at scale. I trained therapists and coaches in rigorous screening, structured integration, and ethical standards rooted in harm reduction. This work sharpened my literacy in psychological risk. Transformative technologies can meaningfully enhance wellbeing and conscious evolution, but only when held within disciplined systems of care.

Fatherhood has been my most demanding initiation. I am committed to a world where the exploration of consciousness and the right to healing are protected freedoms, especially for those without alternatives, as I once was. Choosing integrity in service of this path has brought seasons of hardship. Devotion clarifies what comfort cannot.

Strength built steadiness. Precision refined care. Systems revealed design. Nature taught reciprocity. Council deepened listening. Practice strengthened presence. Culture shaped the environment. Structure ensured reliability. Fatherhood clarified devotion. Each chapter prepared the ground for how I now hold space. When we honor every season of our lives, even the difficult ones, they reveal their purpose.