From Paratrooper to Pilot — Army Aviation Foundation

The path

I enlisted at 18 in direct response to 9/11 — Delayed Entry Program while still in high school. The path that followed:

82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg — Paratrooper

America’s Guard of Honor. The paratroopers who jump out of perfectly good airplanes because someone told them to. Fallujah, Iraq, 2003 — the early years. Sandbags in Humvee boxes, AT4s strapped on with quick-release straps, pallets for beds in warehouse barracks.

Sniper school

Ninety percent of the job is patience and data collection. Lying in the same position for hours, factoring in wind speed, humidity, elevation, the curvature of the earth. A two-mile-an-hour crosswind or a half-degree change in temperature is the difference between success and failure.

If that sounds a lot like process optimization and Six Sigma, it’s because it is. I just didn’t know the vocabulary yet.

Medevac crew chief and door gunner

A different kind of mission. You’re not going out to fight — you’re going out to bring people home. Flying into firefights, IED strikes, mass casualty events. Whole job: get the wounded out alive.

That’s where I learned I didn’t want to ride in the back anymore. I wanted to be up front.

Warrant Officer flight school

The path from infantry/crew to pilot. Made the jump, became a pilot. That decision opened the door to the 160th and the rest of the aviation career.

What the foundation gave me

A bias to action under high uncertainty. A respect for process that comes from watching people die when process gets skipped. The instinct that the smallest variable can be the decisive one — and that the only way to find it is to keep looking.

Twenty years in uniform shaped every part of how I lead manufacturing operations now.