| I was born and raised in Colorado, leaving the state after high school to attend Georgetown University on a full scholarship. After graduation I joined the Marine Corps, where I served six years on active duty. At that point in my military career I was selected for the law education program and sent to Cornell Law School. I graduated magna cum laude while simultaneously earning two degrees- a J.D. with specialization in business law and a LL.M. in International Law.
With my law degree, I served at Marine Corp Air Station Iwakuni, Japan as the Senior Defense Counsel and then the Station Judge Advocate (SJA) despite being a junior Major. I left active duty in August 2003 and clerked for the Honorable Judge Eugene Siler, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
I returned home to Colorado in 2004 and moved to Highlands Ranch. Here, I began working for a large international law firm as a commercial litigation and appellate specialist. While there I wrote the "Appeals" section for the Practicing Law Institute's Securities Litigation Treatise; handled the appeal of the largest punitive damages case in Colorado history and did pro bono work through an appeal for Trout Unlimited to protect water flows in the Cache La Poudre river and taking action to stop a "Steer Tailing" event at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds on behalf of an animal humane society. I also provided more than 300 pro bono hours to the Denver County Court as a guardian ad litem and was deputized as an Assistant City Attorney for three months to help prosecute criminal cases in Denver County Court.
In December 2005, the Marine Corps mobilized me for service as a Police Transition Team Leader to mentor and train the Iraqi police in Al Anbar province. I was further requested to serve as the Deputy General Counsel for the Joint IED Defeat Organization, for service on the Warrant Officer Selection Board (which chooses the future leadership of the Marine Corps); and was mobilized again as the Officer in Charge of Governance for Helmand Province, Afghanistan (where I also acted as the Religious Engagement Officer, supervised the Female Engagement Teams, and was the head of the Afghan Reintegration Program).
After Afghanistan, the State Department requested that I return to Afghanistan as a Senior Rule of Law advisor. An undiagnosed injury, however, led to assignment to Naval Medical Center San Diego where I spent the most rewarding six years of my legal career advising and taking care of wounded and ill Marines and Sailors. In my final year of service as a Disability Evaluation System (DES) Advisor, I concurrently attended the University of San Diego Law School full time, earning a LL.M. in Tax Law while graduating at the top of the class.
After earning the LL.M. in Tax Law, I accepted a position with the IRS in the Large Business and International Litigation Division, where I handled cases involving billions of dollars and was frequently requested, by name, by auditors.
I was a proud Republican for more than 30 years, giving thousands of dollars to GOP candidates and causes and serving as a county, state, and national convention delegate. In July 2016, after Mr. Trump attacked Captain Khan's mother, I knew I could never support such an individual, but hoped that the GOP would return to sanity. That did not happen. I finally left the GOP in December 2017 and became unaffiliated when the party continued to support Roy Moore for the Senate in Alabama. And after experiences with the state and local Republican Party in Colorado and Douglas County, I proudly joined the Democratic Party in December 2021. I have not changed. But the world has changed around me. And my fellow citizens who are Democrats now have more faith in the American experiment than today's Republican Party.
I was proudly confirmed in the Episcopal Church. I am a lifetime member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW - Post 4666); Disabled American Veterans (DAV); an Advisory Board Member for the High Reliability Organization Council (HROC); multi-year Member of United Way's Tocqueville Society (Metro Denver's top philanthropists); and coached Girls Softball. In addition, I was the team captain for the Marine Corps Shooting teams from MCAS Iwakuni and MATSG-90 that fired in the Far Eastern and Eastern Regional Competitions and have a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to aid in my collection of historic military equipment.
I have been married for 30 years to my wife who works at an Alzheimer's facility while my daughter attended Northridge Elementary, Mountain Ridge Middle School, and Mountain Vista High School before graduating from Arapahoe Community College and then the University of Colorado in physics (magna cum laude). She currently carries on the multi-generational family tradition of military service to the nation as a nuclear submarine officer. |