Leadership sets the tone for any organization. As Green Berets, we expect our leaders to be driven, demonstrate creativity and adaptability, seek solutions to complex problems, and to genuinely be a good dude. If our leaders set the example, it’s easy to get on board and make greatness happen.
Charlie Iacono is the President and CEO of Green Beret Foundation. Almost two years into his tenure, Charlie is pushing the foundation, and its staff, to become the premier charitable organization supporting America’s most important asset; our US Army Green Berets.
Charlie joined Fran Racioppi from what may be his biggest brain child yet; the Stars and Stripes Classic. An epic battle between Green Berets and Navy SEALS from the home of greatness and the GOAT, Gillette Stadium.
In his first long-form interview since taking charge, he shared his vision for the foundation, where it’s come from, the impact it’s made on Green Berets of every generation and how 2025 is set to become the most important year in its history as it increases investment in programs supporting the careers and health of transitioning operators.
Leading non-profit organizations is hard. Leading one that lives up to the standard of the Green Beret is even harder. So Charlie explains what’s important to him, how he’s transforming the staff, why service is the foundation of the job, and how building relationships is critical to making an impact.
Check out our conversation from the New England Patriots Bubble prior to the Stars and Stripes Classic. Although our snake eating bearded bastards fell to the squids, the intensity of the game looked more like a classic from the 80’s. Plus, there’s always next year.
Follow us on social media, read the full episode on our website, and head over to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast platform to catch all our coverage from the Stars and Stripes Classic.
Special thanks to the Premier Lacrosse League, the New England Patriots, and all our sponsors who supported the game. 2025 is here and Green Beret Foundation continues to lead from the front no matter the challenge.
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Charlie, we’re in the fieldhouse at Gillette Stadium. This is one of those bucket list items. You can’t even put it on a bucket list item because you never think that you would end up in the fieldhouse for the New England Patriots adjacent to Gillette Stadium. We’re here because we’re two days outfrom the Stars & Stripes Classic Green Beret Foundation versus the Navy SEAL Foundation. Our boys are behind us, practicing and putting in the work. This was a brainchild of yours. What does it mean to be here?
You touch upon it on the bucket list. New England Boy through twenty years of utter dominance that came out of this facility. True legends of the NFL game. A lot of people don’t know there’s a lot of lacrosse interwoven into the New England Patriots history of those twenty years of dominance. To come up with this idea in 2023 with Mike Gravel on the field of Gillette Stadium at the last quarterfinals and have it be here one year later, putting it all together, and our guys behind us doing the work, putting the work in, and gelling as a team is a dream come true, to be honest with you.
Lacrosse is something that’s been a very large part of my life. I played a fair amount as a young man. It shaped me into the leader that I am as well as being a coach and a dad to two boys who love the sport and the essence of the game. I have to be honest with you. The brainchild of the concept of the indigenous tribes brought us this game. The forefathers of this game are the Native Americans, a creator’s game. It was meant to be a healing game.
I also say that the Indigenous tribes were also the first unconventional warfighters. It’s really remarkable that you see how there’s so much cross-pollination between the two sports, between football and lacrosse and then lacrosse and the SOF world. That’s a testament to those guys out there on that field because they’re incredible operators but also really good lacrosse players.
I’ve been impressed by what we’ve been watching behind us. We do have some amazing athletes that sit across the command. It’s something that we’ve also put as a Special Operations command. We’ve put a lot of focus on that warrior athlete. A lot of these guys were athletes before they went into the Special Forces. That’s going to present itself here.
The last time we sat down was back at the Army-Navy game surprisingly enough in the same place at the other side of the building over there in the parking lot in the tailgate. We were able to start talking about the foundation, where the foundation is, and where it’s going. You’ve been on the job about a year and a half or so. You came into the organization and one of those primary responsibilities that you had was to really think about, “Where are we going? What do we want this organization to be? What is it going to represent? Not only what is it going to represent in the nonprofit space, but what is it going to represent for the command itself and the guys like these who are still active?”
You have the veterans like me who are out. That’s one subset of an audience. We got the guys who are in. You got guys who are getting ready to get out. Then, there’s the vision that has to come along with how the organization works with other organizations. It was certainly not a simple task that was brought to bear when you took over. As you look back at the progress that has been made, what are your thoughts?
We could probably do a whole episode on that topic. First, it is such an incredible honor to lead this foundation and to be a part of this community that has been incredibly welcoming from both the active city constituency to the veteran constituency, the families, and those who are in our community who are gold star spouses. It’s an honor.
There is so much that has been accomplished, and we’ll get into that in a little bit, but there’s still a tremendous amount of work to be done. I’m a big believer that there are no days off. Even when you’re taking some time off, you still should be thinking about how you can be that force multiplier and how you can get that word or the story of the foundation out there. How do we elevate the awareness to not only our own community that we’re serving but quite frankly, the American public?
We have started the consolidation in the nonprofit space, at least in the SF space. In 2023, we merged four incredibly storied organizations into the foundation’s portfolio, programs, and services. We have begun working on other consolidating efforts and not on the premise that we believe that we do it better or that we are the best. We’re doing it under the premise and the reasoning rationale because we need to do it for the next conflict.
We need to be ready to pick up that phone when that phone rings for the active duty community, the veteran community, and the spousal family community. We also have to be able to raise a substantial amount of money to be able to provide those programs and services and be able to further enhance programs like Andy’s Fund, the Warrior Sportsmen Fund, or the Special Forces Scholarship Fund, another great organization that we brought into the fold this 2024. You can only do that through consolidation.
The corporate landscape, philanthropic landscape, and ultra-high net worth donor landscape have said to myself and to others, “We want to support, but we can’t support 15 or 20 of you at the same level. We want to support one.” I’m a big believer. Much like the ethos in the regiment, you lead from the front. We’re leading that effort.
Not long ago, there was an announcement of the 3rd Special Forces Group Warrior Fund. Matt Karres and that team have been doing incredible work for the 3rd Special Forces group. They’re a part of the GBF program and portfolio. There’s that piece, and then there’s all the other stuff that we’ve been building on like brand enhancement, awareness, and understanding of who we are as a foundation.
We have programs and services that we offer to all of our constituencies. We have the Jedburgh Media Channel. We were sitting there, talking at the tailgate, and having beers. That story quickly evolved into an incredible partnership that has garnered incredible outcomes in a very short period of time. Somebody said to me, “What you guys are doing takes years to happen with the media channel.” You guys saw that with the D-Day documentary, the trip out to Alaska, and a lot of the stuff that’s coming out that we’re producing. We’re growing at an unprecedented rate and there’s a positive message in that.
We can share our stories and lead with the mindset that positivity wins the day. We want to work with people and tell those stories. Furthermore, we’re helping future generations at Green Beret. When you and I are long gone, the work that we’re doing and the seeds that we’re laying will have grown into a forest of strong success and mechanisms to support the community that’s in need of support. It doesn’t always mean supporting a guy that’s injured or a family member that needs help. Support comes in lots of different shapes and sizes. We’re always open to new and innovative ways to work with people.
To sum it up, it has been an awesome adventure. We’ve had great success. We have met tons of incredible people. We have been met with some challenges. That’s the perfect essence of our community. We serve all generations of Green Berets and their families. I say to my team all the time, “Positivity wins the day.” It’s an ethos that people laugh at when they first hear it. I had some sweatshirts made of that. It is really that. The work we’re doing is positive and we’re excited to tell the story.
As I look back, we’ve certainly come a long way. You mentioned the partnership and creating the Jedburgh Media Channel. You talk about the growth and the numbers there is something we don’t talk about ever on the channel. I don’t think that’s by design. We focus on moving forward. I check our stats once an hour and sometimes more.
Nobody’s more familiar with what that growth plan has looked like and what that pattern has looked like. It’s motivating and exciting every hour for the most part. Every once in a while, I’ll see something go down and say, “How can we do it better? What happened? Why didn’t that one hit?” You want to try to win every single one of those battles that we put out there every single day.
We have had the opportunity to tell some really impactful stories. There are so many more on the docket. We’re sitting here recording and going to do a few episodes but we got content that’s sitting out until December 2024 if we did nothing else. The biggest challenge, honestly, often becomes, “How are we even going to push all this out?” That’s a good problem to have. That’s a byproduct of the relationship that we’ve built not only internally in the organization but with our external partners and the support that we’ve gotten from USSOF, the 1st Special Forces command, and the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center.
All of those organizations were critically instrumental in putting together the D-Day documentary, Unknown Heroes: Behind Enemy Lines at D-Day, where we told the story of Operation Jedburgh. We went forward, went to D-Day, and sat down with all those leaders again. We started putting those things out. We have the support of the Sergeant Major of the Army. We’re talking to the Secretary of the Army about going in and having to sit down with her. We’ve got five episodes in Congress, not because we reached out to Congress but because the congressional caucus that the Veteran House members are a part of reached out to us and said, “We would like to sit down with you.” Those are things that a few years ago were a dream that I had.
I was standing here with Phil Buttafuoco who’s the Executive Vice President for Gillette Stadium for special events. I said, “Tomorrow, we’re going to bring our Dodge WC-51 out on the field of Gillette Stadium.” This is the stadium that I grew up with. The Patriots helmet sits behind me. As a fan, I’ve got a lot of tears of joy, happiness, and possibly some blood somewhere at times watching these guys. I’m going to look up around the stadium and do the thing that I love. That’s because of what the foundation has done.
I tell people a lot of times that I am proud and honored to have the opportunity to be part of the foundation but in many ways, I’m also a client. What’s the goal of the foundation? It’s to help and support Green Berets of all generations to do great things and achieve their dreams. For me, this partnership has done that. It has allowed me to take what I wanted to do.
What got me there wasn’t going to get me to where I needed to go. This has allowed for that to happen and has built that foundation. I say that because I want to take the opportunity to thank you for that. I couldn’t be more excited about where we are, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going. That’s because of the support that the organization brings. That’s one program. There are so many others here. We sat down with Nick Lavery and that episode still gets a lot of hits every day. I get comments every day on YouTube.
Anytime you can sit with Nick, it’s to produce some fun.
We’re putting him back in the truck here.
I can’t wait for that.
It’s going to be him and Jocko in the back of the truck. There’s going to be a lot of meat or a lot of men in that truck. You talked a lot about the different programs that are within the foundation and where they were going. I want to highlight some of those because a lot of the things we talked about in December 2023 have come to fruition. I want to start with the Next Ridgeline 2.0. That was one of the focuses back in December. There was a trajectory. There was a date. It was sometime around May 2024 when you launched that. Talk about Next Ridgeline 2.0 and the success that the program has had since its launch.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t say thank you to you and your team and everything that happens behind these mics and these chairs that people can’t see. There’s a whole team that makes this come together. We’re indebted to your team as well in the Jedburgh Media Channel and also, honestly, to the community. Anything that I or my team is able to do is not made possible if it’s not for the generosity of the American public. Anybody who touches the Green Beret Foundation or supports the Green Beret Foundation, I say all the time, is also equally responsible for the success of our foundation. It’s not just one person.
We really try to emulate the mindset that the team wins as a team, the team loses as a team, the team struggles as a team, and the team succeeds and excels as a team. I was talking to so many of these guys behind us about what Monday is going to look like. Coach Alberici and Coach Benson said it. It was really interesting because it wasn’t scripted. There was an essence of a team. I said to the guys at the event that we did, “Play together as a team and it will all come together.” The Next Ridgeline 2.0 program is, in that same light, bringing the team back together.
When I was auditing and doing the overview of all of our programs and services, I saw some gaps in some of our programs as somebody who had been in the nonprofit space for 25 years. I thought to myself, “We’ve got a really great opportunity. We’ve got a good foundation with the Next Ridgeline, but now we need to up that game, that chance, or that opportunity.” We reinvented it through a collaborative effort of internal stakeholders on the GBF team. Some outside board members weighed in on it. Some individuals like yourself and others weighed in on it and got some thoughts together. We started to put the architectural plans as it would relate to the next version of that program.
The success that we have had very early on is exciting. We have launched the program. It touches upon all the major factors of somebody’s transition. It talks about how to communicate with your spouse better, what is life going to look like in retirement or separation, what it looks like for the Green Beret, what it looks like for the Mil spouse, and what it looks like for the whole family unit. It also talks about financial readiness and preparedness to a whole host of other questions that, quite frankly, guys don’t need to think about.
The American public doesn’t want them worrying about that stuff when they’re actively serving at the various groups but they need to be coached up on it once they’re getting ready to get out. It’s like, “What does your next job look like? What do you want your next job to look like? Do you want to be an accountant?” Nobody says yes to that. It could be, “Do you want to go be a lawyer? Do you want to go to law school? Let’s start to evaluate what that pathway could look like.”
Our partnership with your alma mater, NYU, is a perfect example of that. If guys want to go into cybersecurity, perfect. We’ve got a program with NYU that can put you into a Master’s degree in cybersecurity. You get credits for your time and service. You can be done with that program in almost under a year at almost no cost to the Green Beret.
The biggest piece to this Next Ridgeline 2.0 program is it focuses on the promotion of strength in mind, body, and spirit. We want to work with the guys to get their minds ready for that transition process because it’s different from when you’re doing teamroom stuff to when you’re doing boardroom stuff. We want them to focus on, “What does family life look like for you in retirement? What does it look like for your family as you guys grow, possibly with more children, or as you get to go be a dad on the sidelines or coach lacrosse, hopefully, because we love the game?”
From a spiritual perspective, this is a program that we’ve done. It’s called Stressless Fridays. Stressless Fridays is an opportunity and a discussion that’s led by a former Green Beret, Michael Wise, who’s also a member of our board of directors at GBF. It’s where guys get together and they talk. They open up. They share their thoughts on retirement and their thoughts on what life might look like. They throw some things out there like, “I’m dealing with this. What do you guys think?”
Stressless Friday allows them to start that dialogue. We want that to pollinate into further discussions and start to grow for themselves as an individual and for their families to learn how to communicate and be vulnerable. It doesn’t mean that you’re not an alpha anymore because you’re vulnerable. You’re reflective. You’re thinking about how you can become a better person yourself, how you can be a better couple with your spouse, or how you can be a better father. The whole Next Ridgeline 2.0 program is to prepare them as they’re transitioning while simultaneously our VSOs are working on their disability claims. It’s not like they’re hurrying up and waiting. It ends with access to a private secure career services hub. We don’t have an acronym for it yet.
We’re going to need one.
It is a really fancy way of saying a job board. It is career opportunities that are with some of the best companies that we have. Mostly myself and Travis Wilson, our director of mission and program services, have personally vetted to ensure that 1) They understand what the Green Beret has done in service, 2) What they’re looking for in their career path, and 3) They understand that hiring a veteran is not like hiring any regular old civilian.
Sometimes, accommodations are going to need to be made for that veteran. We have those conversations with those companies upfront. If they aren’t willing to do that or if they don’t have a program to support veterans, we don’t ask them to support the foundation and ask them to put their jobs on the board. What we want is for guys to get jobs from that career services hub and know confidently that they’re going to be supported in that next chapter of their lives. We have over 100-plus jobs on that job board. It’s personally curated to be applicable to all the MOS in the 18 Series. We feel really good about it.
I can say the testimonials that are coming out of that is the proof in our hypothesis that this was going to work. Green Berets, you’ll find humor in this. The quiet professionals finally are maybe not writing a book about it but talking and letting us use quotes from them on what they’re getting out of the program. They are talking about how it’s changed their outlook, their readiness for retirement, and their excitement for retirement. That’s what we want. That’s what we know is going to stick. Hopefully, those guys will eventually become supporters of the foundation and force multiply so future generations can also experience what they’re experiencing.
I’ve got a few jobs that need to go up on that job board for FRsix. You brought up this concept of the quiet professional. We talked about that with Nick Lavery previously. The quiet professional is not the silent professional. One of the things that we’ve been vocal about has been this need to get out there and tell these stories. It’s critically important that we as Green Berets talk about who we are, why we’re different, and why it matters. Most importantly, why does it matter? Why does it matter to our national defense strategy? Why does it matter to us as individuals but also society?
There are a tremendous amount of Green Berets who transition from service and who are doing great things in the private sector in additional careers. Programs like the Next Ridgeline are doing that and setting those folks up to be successful post-service. When we talk about transition difficulty, it’s that identity. It’s that sense of purpose. It’s, “What can I do now? I had so much impact. Now that I’m getting out, how do I replicate that impact?”
It’s going to be different. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of days where I wake up and I’m like, “Would I like to hop in a helicopter today and go to a range? Absolutely.” Do I get to? Unfortunately, no, I don’t. I got to find a different way to make an impact. Being able to transition your mind to still achieve an effect and get that stimulus that you want is really important. That starts with talking about it. What we tend to do is not talk about it and say, “It’s not a thing.” It is a thing.
You joked that people don’t want to be an accountant. I certainly don’t want to be an accountant. I studied accounting at NYU because it was important and I didn’t have that skill. I didn’t take classes on leadership or organizational design. I took classes in accounting and finance because I knew those were skills that I needed.
What happens is we don’t talk about what a transition looks like. This is okay if the feeling is different, but what do we want to achieve? What does that effect look like? We brought up schooling. There are a lot of scholarships under the foundation. To name a few of them, we have the Bennie Adkins Scholarship, the SF Scholarship Fund, the Athena Scholarship, and the Major Darren Baldwin Scholarship. Why are those scholarships so important?
I come from a family of educators. I was very fortunate growing up and as a kid that both of my parents were in education. I understood very early on how important education was not for success but for the development of the human mind, to make you a better person, be more open and receptive to conversations, and listen with the intent to learn, not with the intent to respond. All of those pieces were critical in the development of myself as a young man and eventual leader.
My wife, Katie, is in education. We talk about this at great length. Education can, in fact, solve a lot of society’s problems. I’m also a big believer that education is a human right. When we started to consolidate the marketplace, we wanted to build up our portfolio and scholarship programs because, first and foremost, anybody who has served should not have to take a dime out of their own personal money to further themselves, to your point, or hone those skills that they maybe did not get in a career in the Military but they need to hone those skills to go be a successful businessman.
It is the same thing with children. We want kids to not have to worry about saddling themselves with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt because they want to pursue higher ed or vocational training. It is the same thing with spouses. Hats off to our Military spouses who are here. This operation on the field would not have happened if it were not for the Mil spouses too. When the Next Ridgeline 2.0 is finally approached by both the Green Beret and the spouse, if she wants to go back to school, she shouldn’t have to worry about taking out loans.
The scholarships are really important because we believe that it’s a human right. It’s certainly a right within our community. We want people to embrace that mindset of promoting strength in mind, body, and spirit without the financial worry of, “How am I going to pay for it?” This year of 2024 alone, we have given out more than $550,000 in scholarships to children of SF operators.
The Bennie Adkins Scholarship Fund is a fund that is available for active-duty guys and guys who are beginning the transition and want to pursue higher education. It is a rolling application period. You could come to me and say, “I want to pursue this and this is why I need to do it,” and we’re going to give you a scholarship of up to $5,000.
The Athena Scholarship is exciting because it’s when those Mil spouses are looking to further themselves. It doesn’t have to be traditional education. It can be other kinds of pursuits. That happens once a year, but we always tell our Mil spouse Steel Mags community, “If you have interest, you should file that letter of intent with us. Tell us that you’re looking forward to applying once it comes together.”
In the long run, in the end, we want people to be able to access education. My opinion with scholarships, and I know that Bennie Adkins felt this way as his son, Keith Atkins, told me, is that you can look back on your life and realize what you’ve accomplished professionally. This is why the profession of education is so incredible. Hats off to my parents, my wife, and so many others who have served as educators.
The generational impact you have when you either provide the opportunity for education or you are an educator is transformative. That’s the kind of work we’re trying to accomplish here at the foundation, generations of people lifting themselves up, feeling better, and feeling more secure in their entire being to allow them to go and chase those dreams.
The guys on the field behind us, the guys that are downrange or in the country, and the Mil spouses across the country or across the world that are supporting our community have dreams. This may be an element of that. You can wake up one morning and you want to hop in a helicopter and hit a range, but that’s not their only dream so we want to be able to provide them a conduit to those dreams when it’s all said and done too.
The organization remains one of the only accredited organizations by the VA to process disability claims. It is often something that transitioning SOF guys don’t think about and often don’t want to deal with. It can be a very challenging process. I tried to do it myself. You get to 40%, and then you bring in an advocate and they can get you to 90%. Finally, you came to the foundation and got to 100%.
The reason I believe that that program has been so important is because you’ve got to know how the process works. The Green Beret Foundation has established these
coordinators who are embedded with each of the Special Forces groups and are working diligently each day on behalf of the transitioning operators to get the benefits process going. How has that program evolved? Where is it going to better support the folks who are getting out?
You’re right. I love every opportunity I get to say this. This is not just within our community, the Special Forces community. This is across all branches of the Military. You saw a lot of this in the Vietnam era. Guys did not pursue their disability rating because they thought it meant more for their brothers who were really in need. That is not the case. Is that how the federal government works? It’s not like, “Fran, we’re not going to give you your money. We’re going to give more to this guy.” That doesn’t happen.
I always say when I have the opportunity, “Pursue that.” You may feel good because these guys out here are running around. They’re working out. They’re in the weight room. They’re exercising. They’re on active duty teams. They’re in shape. You may feel good the first couple of years of retirement because they’re still doing that, but 30 years from now, you are not going to feel like you feel at 40 or 35. How do you fix that problem? To your point, there are lots of different ways you can pursue it. The most effective and efficient way, which is very much in the Green Beret ethos, is you work with an accredited VSO to advocate for you.
What makes our program so special and how it has evolved is most of our teammates on that team are Green Berets themselves. They’ve served with most of the community. It could also be that they are spouses of Green Berets or individuals who are highly specialized and trained. This is what they have chosen as their career. They know the operator. They served in some sort of capacity. They understand the trials and tribulations and weight that you guys have carried on your shoulders literally and figuratively.
The evolution of the program, and hats off to John Armezzani, and the early beginnings of this program, he started it with the vision and then the board’s vision to expand it. He made sure we had guys at every group or gals in every group. In this next iteration, what we’ve started to do is take this foundation, which is, in fact, a global foundation, truly across the seas. Daniel Rosco, an absolute legend in the 1st Special Forces Group, was in Okinawa working with those guys on their SOF. Brian from the 10th group is headed to Germany.
We are going to start going where guys are so they do not have to wait until they get back Stateside. We are going to get ahead of the curve. We’re going to get proactive on that approach. It’s a little bit easier but it takes a long time. There is nothing special about our program in the sense that it’s going to cut your wait in half. It’s not like that. We know there’s no special red phone that we can pick up to call the VA and get it processed faster. The more we are proactive on that approach, the better it is for the Green Beret, the better it is for their family, and quite frankly, the better it is for us.
There is no special red phone to call a VA to process disability claims faster. The more we get proactive in this matter, the better it is for the Green Beret and their families.
It is a program that is offered at no cost to the Green Beret. I always like to demonstrate that commitment to our community because there are people, companies, and entities out there that take a percentage of the first year’s worth of disability from you. I always say as somebody flabbergasted by that as a civilian, “What right does that person have to any of that money? Nothing.” You go into this work because it is mission-driven work, not to make wealth or accumulate wealth for yourself on guys’ disabilities claims. I always like to point out too that those guys that charge money don’t cut the wait time in half either. It’s all going through at the same pace. Come work with us. We know how to advocate for you.
In the future, the VSO program, in my opinion, and through our partner networks with the Wounded Warrior Project and some of the others that have highly respectable VSO programs, we want to demonstrate to the community at large, not just the Special Forces community, that there’s a way to do this. We can do it and we can do it well, and we can get it set up for guys so they’re not looking for an appeal twenty years into retirement.
It’s probably one of the largest areas of our mission that has a significant impact on the community and the community’s well-being. That’s for every Green Beret. That’s not just for the guys that are getting out. If you’re a Green Beret and you got out several years ago and you think you should have a 100% disability rating, drop us a line at Info@GreenBeretFoundation.org. Reach out to us. We will look at your rating. We will look at your service record. We will advocate for you if you believe that you deserve more. We will fight for that back pay, and we have been incredibly successful in that fight.
We went to Alaska and came back with 50 pounds of fresh salmon. I’ve got my Warrior Sportsmen mug here, an important acquisition by the foundation. You mentioned Travis Wilson, 10th group alumni and Founder of Alpha Elite Performance and AEP Outdoors. He has taken that on under his purview to build these experiences that we can get folks out on to bring the community together. We had an opportunity to go out there to fish in the bush of Alaska. We took three plane rides and a bush plane. We got out there with the bears and spent five days salmon fishing.
The fishing was great, don’t get me wrong, but the conversation was better not only in the boats but also when you came back. You had the majority of the day because there are so many goddamn fishes out there that you don’t have to know how to fish. I don’t know anything about fishing. I threw a line in the water and fish are biting it. To culminate the last 3 fish that we caught for the week, I was in a boat with 2 others. They had fish on their lines together. One of the guys said, “What the hell are you doing? Get your line in the water. We got to get three.” I threw my line there and sure enough, we’re reeling in three fish simultaneously to cap off the week.
It was an incredible experience. We’re bringing folks together who I hadn’t seen in ten years. I served with them and knew them when we were in a group and then had
the chance to reconnect. There were also two generations before us of Green Berets there. We had a chance to listen to their stories and listen to a lot of the same challenges they faced when they got out back in the ‘80s or the ‘90s. We were able to hear about the businesses that they built and the opportunities that they created for themselves. It was really an amazing opportunity to bring folks together and share those stories. When you looked at different opportunities to create acquisitions, why was Warrior Sportsmen so important?
It goes back to my earlier point with the forefathers of unconventional warfare. Everything this country has to offer, there is an element of healing and grounding that anyone can find in the outdoors. Mental health resiliency and suicide awareness and prevention is a major focus of ours. The work that we do with the Marckesano family and Andy Marckesano’s memory and honoring his legacy is critically important to the foundation.
Everything the United States has to offer possesses an element of healing and grounding anyone can find in the outdoors.
One of the challenges is you can attack it from an academic perspective. You can attack it from a therapeutic perspective. I love to fish. I love to be outdoors. Sometimes, you need to breathe the fresh air and the freedom that all of you guys have fought for. That was the premise of the Warrior Sportsmen acquisition.
Doug Frank, me, and the incredible board that they had there talked about that. We were like, “Let’s get these guys outside more. Let’s scale this.” You guys have done incredible work. We’ve got fishing excursions in South Carolina and North Carolina on the docket in 2025. We’ve got hunting excursions in the Dakotas and Montana for 2025. We’ve got some exciting stuff that we’re going to talk about hopefully with Travis.
We want to create those opportunities for conversation. We want them to be created around the campfire. We want them to be created on a boat. We want them to be created in a deer stand. It’s not necessarily about the fish you’re catching, but hopefully, you’re catching fish. It’s not necessarily about the prize game that you’re trying to hunt all the time. That’s a part of it, particularly in the competitive nature of the Green Beret community, but it’s to create that opportunity for connectivity in nature.
I have long said that this country has so much to offer citizens, particularly those who have served from an outdoors perspective. The Warrior Sportsmen program was probably one of the fastest ones that we did because they saw what the foundation was doing. They loved our leadership at the board level. We have a proven track record of success in this space already. It was built around the conversation of, “You guys are already doing this. My team doesn’t need to recreate the wheel. In fact, let’s take what you’re doing and make it ten times bigger and better.”
I have to say that that is a program that I am probably going to look back on after I leave the foundation, hopefully in many years, or when I’m old and gray and see how that’s evolved and be so incredibly excited about it. Eventually, it’s going to evolve where guys are going to be able to bring their kids and their spouses. Some of my favorite memories as a kid growing up was sitting there fishing with my dad and we didn’t even catch a lot of fish all the time. I was sitting there with my grandfather before he passed. He was a World War II veteran. We were fishing and talking.
Dialogue is the biggest thing. I constantly talk about that from our programs and services perspective and support for the community. We have to open up the dialogue. Once we get the conversations going, then we’ll be able to bring in more donors. We’ll be able to help more guys. In 2025, I could see the Fish the Nush type of experience in other parts of Alaska. It’s not because we don’t want to go to Fish the Nush. We want to still be there, but because there is such a demand for more opportunities like that in Alaska. I’ve never been there, but it’s Alaska. You can’t get any better than that.
That was unbelievable.
That’s what we want. We want to create opportunities for experiences too. When I first was interviewing with the foundation’s board of directors and General Tovo and I was having a conversation, I said, “We got to focus on the guys that really need our help and that are struggling, but we also have to focus on all those other guys that maybe need new opportunities and new experiences to connect with guys that they served with 10, 15, 20, or 30 years ago and haven’t had that opportunity.”
You get out of the service and go in different directions. People move away, but you guys have shared foxholes together. You guys have cleared buildings, gotten out of helicopters, and jumped out of airplanes. I was like, “Let’s get that opportunity for camaraderie back. Hopefully, they in turn become supporters of the foundation too. If not, that’s okay.” It’s a line that I’ve said for a long time. It’s your life’s work and our mission. That’s what we want to present through the Warrior Sportsmen program, opportunities for guys to connect, get better, and get excited about what’s to come.
We got a couple of more minutes of practice back here as they’re gearing up. We have one more practice left and then it’s game time. As you look forward to ‘25, where’s your focus going?
2025 is going to be met with a three-pronged approach for myself. We need to scale our fundraising opportunities. We need support. It’s not because we want to give more money away. We want to build a foundation that’s so strong that the programs that we’re doing are growing at an exponential rate. The Jedburgh Media Channel, for example, we want to scale that. We want to scale our Warrior Sportsmen program. We want to scale our scholarship program and all of our programs. We need to focus on fundraising. Fundraising is the preeminent focus in 2025. We’ve fixed a lot of the internal mechanisms. We’ve built out new infrastructure. We’ve rolled out new programs, policies, and processes, but we have to scale that revenue.
The second piece will be the continued consolidation of the marketplace. The continuation in consolidation of the marketplace will not only ready us for that next conflict but it will make us stronger. I use the hashtag all the time in my posts, whether it’s LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. It’s #GBFStrongerTogether. We were the first SOF and SF charity. We have to lead from the front. We’re going to continue to do that.
The third is to get more connected with our community. That’s on the micro and macro levels. That’s going to be a little bit harder because we are a 100% remote organization. I made that decision because I wanted to put that money that we were spending on overhead for offices and stuff like that back into the community.
We’re going to work to get more connected with our community and other great organizations that are doing great work and spend some time figuring out how we can improve our position and our community’s position within the greater complex of the nonprofit marketplace. The other piece to that would be to continue to make this organization into something that all generations as well as their families are proud of. That’s a heavy lift.
It’s a bold vision. What’s your prediction for the game?
We’ve talked about this a lot. We’ve both played a lot of lacrosse. There are a couple of different ways you can win a lacrosse game. You can win it with a flash. You can win it with stick skills. I’ve won a fair amount of games built on brute strength and winning ground balls. I’ve said to all these guys, “The first guy to put a body on a SEAL sets the tone of the game.”
I like our chances. Nobody grows up playing sailor. Everybody grows up playing Army. We’re going to win this game. What we accomplished typically takes eighteen months to plan, not just with the Military. We had to bifurcate events to make sure that it was all on the up and up with the Military. We had to get clearances. We had to get support mechanisms in. The Premier zone is going to be unlike any other Premier zone the PLL has ever put on.
The static displays from USASOC to the Naval Special Warfare community, we are going to put on a show that people are going to be excited about for years to come. We’ve had great supporters like Alpha Elite Performance, Charlotte’s Web, 1st Phorm, and Wilcox Industries. The list goes on of people who made this game come together.
These guys are special. I’ve had the absolute distinct honor and privilege of spending days with them and talking about their lacrosse experience, how they work together as a team on their own teams, and what they’re looking forward to. They’re ready to play. The whole premise of this was to start the renewed rivalry between the SEALs and Green Berets but finally let the American public see it.
We’ve never been able to see that downrange or in the country when you guys were competing for ops and the banter back and forth. The few of us who are very blessed to work in this space understand it. This is exciting. It’s exciting because you hear, “Ground balls win games.” Our guys are quick and agile. We know the SEALs are too. It’s going to be a battle of the ages and it’s going to be the first of many to come. Go Army, beat the Navy.
I’ve been using the term Boston versus New York or Red Sox versus Yankees for the analogy. You’ve changed my tune here. The phrase is certainly going to be, “Nobody grows up playing sailor. Everybody grows up playing Army.” I like it.
Lacrosse is so great because it’s one of those games that anybody can have an impact. The face-off, get-off contact of a team is that their primary purpose is to do the face-off and then they get off. That’s in their title. That is their specialization. It still plays so nicely into the 18 Series MOS. You have a specialized area that you focus on.
Our team is versatile and equipped to be adaptive to the gameplay and how it’s going to unfold. I played this game for a long time. My boys were like, “Are you going to suit up and practice with them?” I don’t want to be sitting on a crease with some of these defenders. It’s going to be a battle of the ages. We’re very fortunate and thankful to the PLL and ESPN+ for streaming it. It’s going to be on YouTube eventually. People are going to watch this game and we’re going to get a lot of fun out of it.
We’ll be in the WC-51 at the end zone. We’ll be watching it from there and talking to everyone. I can’t wait.
It’s going to be fantastic. These guys are going to tell their kids about it. Their kids are here. The kids are excited. We know that that’s the case for the SEAL community too and the veterans there. It’s awesome to finally see it come together.
We’ve come a long way. I appreciate everything that you’ve done for the organization. I’ve been involved with the organization at some level over the past several years since I got out but the trajectory that it’s on is unlike anything I’ve seen, at least in the last several years. I’m excited to be a part of it. I value your friendship very much, the partnership that we put together, and the creation of the Jedburgh Media Channel. All the programs of GBF are rapidly rising. Most importantly, they’re achieving effect. That’s what we’re here to do, achieve effect and support generations of Green Berets and their families. Thanks for all you’re doing.
Thanks. I appreciate it. Go Army, beat the Navy.
