Mike, a retired Navy SEAL (and former parishioner of mine) discuss on today’s podcast how to live daily virtue in a Catholic vocation in a society inundated with unnecessary information. Mike’s CV is unusually impressive: He is a retired career naval officer who served 27 years in Naval Special Warfare, which is the formal community designation for the US Navy SEALs. During his time in uniform, he led or commanded SEAL platoons, task units, assault teams, squadrons, strike forces, and joint task forces during 13 deployments, seven of them to combat. He did three tours at Naval Special Warfare Development Group and was among the first special operators to fight in Afghanistan. Besides combat, he also developed and deployed highly classified special undersea capabilities and clandestine intelligence-gathering activities in theaters as diverse as Bosnia and southeast Asia. As a senior officer he served as the Operations Officer for a deployed joint special operations task force of 5500 personnel in 27 countries across US Central Command and US Africa Command. His last tour was as commander of 1000-man Special Warfare Group that deployed special intelligence units worldwide in support of counterterrorism and counter-insurgency operations, including the fight against both ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Middle East, as well as the MILF insurgency in the southern Philippines. He has been awarded both the Silver Star and Bronze Star for valor in combat. Mike is a graduate of the US Naval Academy, where he graduated With Distinction (top 2% of the class) and also holds a Master’s Degree from the Naval Postgraduate School. His proudest accomplishment is maintaining a marriage of 27 years, and a family, through the many decades of deployments, war, family moves, and associated pressures and stresses. After military retirement, he worked for several years as a leadership and management consultant on Wall Street. As a semi-retired consultant, Mike has recently advised organizations as diverse as the Philadelphia Eagles, Merrill Lynch, Team Liquid (e-sports), World Cricket, and the USA Rugby Team on various leadership and performance challenges. He is currently semi-retired and living in the Rocky Mountain West.
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