My story begins in Kansas, where my family owned the Tangeman Dairy Farm for three generations. My father worked on the farm, and he passed its strong work ethic on to me from the very beginning of my life. I began college as a cross country and track and field athlete, then transferred to the University of Kansas to complete my degree in psychology. My interest in the field was personal as well as academic. Experiences within my family and friends made me curious, from an early age, about human behavior, resilience, and the different ways people respond to difficult circumstances. Those questions stayed with me long after college and continue to shape how I approach leadership, organizations, and public service.
The Army became the next, and in many ways the most formative, part of my education. After enlisting in 1993, I spent my first five years as a UH-1 and UH-60 helicopter crew chief and an aviation operations specialist. A commission in the Medical Service Corps followed, expanding my responsibilities to managing clinic operations, leading emergency medical teams with mobile treatment and ambulance transport apparatus, and later working at the intersection of medicine and technology. While deployed to Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, I served as Chief Information Officer for the U.S. military hospital. The September 11 attacks occurred while I was there, an experience that profoundly changed how I thought about the remainder of my service. Airborne wings, a Ranger tab, and the Green Beret followed, and I ultimately spent my final decade in uniform as a Special Forces officer, serving in combat and peacekeeping missions with U.S. forces and partner nations across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Some of my most meaningful exposure to the practical work of governance came in rural Africa. Our work included building bridges and water-filtration systems, and I observed negotiations during a labor dispute over an airfield and worked alongside the gendarmerie, local prefects, and regional officials. There I saw the same issues that define public service at home: clean water, reliable infrastructure, public safety, economic opportunity, and the relationship between government and the people it serves. By the time I began thinking seriously about my transition, local government felt less like a new direction than a natural continuation of the service I had come to value.
The greater challenge was translating more than two decades of military experience into a civilian profession. It took roughly seven months of searching, networking, and learning a new vocabulary. In August 2015, during my final months of active service, I was appointed chief executive of Pueblo West, Colorado, and I formally retired from the Army at the end of February 2016. That transition convinced me that service members interested in local government deserved a clearer path into the profession. In May 2016, I co-founded the Veterans Local Government Management Fellowship, which has since helped hundreds of service members explore careers in local government.
Over the decade that followed, I served three very different communities, from a rapidly growing district in southern Colorado to communities on Cape Cod. The work spanned finance, personnel, infrastructure, public safety, housing, and long-range planning, and it deepened my appreciation for how closely the decisions of local government shape everyday life.
My family has shaped that perspective just as profoundly. I am the father of two daughters, and being their dad has always been central to my life. During a particularly difficult season, I raised my girls as a single father while also serving as a city manager. Public meetings ran late and budgets had deadlines, but neither homework, school events, nor the ordinary moments that matter as children grow up could wait. Those years taught me that balance is rarely achieved perfectly. It requires thoughtful choices about time and priorities, accepting help when it is needed, and remembering that the people we serve carry circumstances that may not always be visible. I had the privilege of watching my daughters grow into independent and capable young women.
After nearly a decade as a chief executive, I expected my next step would be another city management position, and I became a finalist for chief executive roles in two large communities. At the same time, a respected colleague offered me the opportunity to become Finance Director and Chief Financial Officer for the Town of Orleans. The timing mattered. My youngest daughter was entering her senior year of high school, my oldest was in college, and I was approaching the final year of my doctorate. Remaining home meant continuing substantive public-sector work in the community where I live while being more present for my daughters. It also allowed me to focus more deeply on public finance, which had been central to nearly every executive role I had held. The decision reinforced something experience had taught me over time: careers do not always need to follow a straight line, and different stages of life can call for different forms of service.
This period has also given me the space to complete my doctorate, which brings together several strands of my professional and academic life. My research examines how local governments communicate factual information, respond to contested public claims, and maintain institutional trust in a rapidly changing information environment. In an unexpected way, it returns to the questions about human behavior that first drew me to psychology. Looking back, a career that may appear to have taken several directions has a clear continuity. Today, all of these experiences inform my work in public finance, local government, veteran transition, and research, and my continuing interest in how public institutions earn and sustain the trust of the communities they serve.
