Experience

Warrior Expeditions

• Wellness and Fitness Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Director Of Administration

  • Sep 2016 - Present

  Warrior Expeditions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit outdoor therapy program that helps combat veterans transition from their wartime experiences through intensive, long-distance wilderness expeditions. Warrior Expeditions trains, equips, and supports combat veterans for a 3 - 6 month journey (hiking, biking, or canoeing 800 - 3,700 miles across America’s most scenic trails). Our goals are to: - Teach veterans to use the outdoors as a long-term coping strategy for mental and physical health issues resulting from their military service. - Help veterans use the time and space of a long-distance expedition to decompress and process their wartime experiences. - Through veteran camaraderie and community interaction, help veterans reintegrate into society, restore their faith in humanity, and build a life-long support network. Our programs are unique because of their long duration and distances. We not only teach a therapeutic outdoor skill, but the 3-6 month duration of the journey itself has significant and lasting mental/physical health benefits. We provide psycho-educational training in a setting that permits introspection; facilitate a camaraderie between veterans that is often missed after leaving service; and allow active and mission-oriented veterans the opportunity to focus on their own transition. Since 2013, we've partnered with licensed clinical psychologists to study the impacts of long-distance outdoor therapy on combat veterans. Warrior Expeditions veterans demonstrate meaningful decreases in anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress symptoms as well as increases in quality of sleep and ability to feel and process emotions. Consistent themes in post-journey interviews include: social reconnection, life-improving change, inner peace and psychological healing, and processing and reflection. A common veteran sentiment is that the experience is like, "hitting a reset button." Show less


US Navy
• United States
• Armed Forces
• 700 & Above Employee
• Commander, US Navy JAG Corps

  • 1990 - 2010