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There is a quiet kind of test that comes after survival. Not the test of whether you can endure hardship. The test of what you do when life finally gives you margin again. For Ben Owen , that moment came after he and Jess had started rebuilding. By 2020, their business had taken off. They had moved out of his parents’ house. By March of 2021, they had bought a house big enough for them and the kids. After years of addiction, homelessness, legal trouble, and loss, they finally had more than they needed. That should have been the easy part. But Ben knew something about himself. Having “more than enough” had not always been safe ground for him. It had been the place where old patterns could reappear. Comfort could become drift. Success could become permission. Stability could become the beginning of another fall. So he and Jess made a different decision. They took the extra money and started a nonprofit to help other veterans battling opiate addiction. That was the turning point. Not because it erased the past. Because it put the past under command. Ben did not pretend his story was cleaner than it was. He did not build a mission from theory, branding, or distance. He built it from the exact ground he had fought to escape. The discipline in that decision matters. It is one thing to recover your own life. It is another to look at the surplus and decide it belongs, at least in part, to the people still trapped where you once were. That is where personal redemption becomes responsibility. That is where experience becomes service. That is where a man stops being defined only by what he survived and starts being measured by what he rebuilds for others. Ben Owen’s story is not polished. That is part of why it matters. He speaks with the weight of someone who knows what happens when potential is undisciplined, when pain is untreated, and when nobody reaches a person before the fall becomes a pattern. But he also knows what can happen when someone does reach them. The full conversation is in the comments. More on The Danny Li Podcast.

Leadership does not begin when you have the perfect resume, the perfect plan, or the perfect start. It begins when you take ownership of where you are, give full effort to the mission in front of you, and grow into the kind of person who can prepare others. From my conversation with Pete Tingstrom, I pulled out three hard lessons every future leader must understand: 1. Own your past 2. Give 100% where you are 3. Prepare others Pete’s story carries real weight because he lived these lessons: from struggling in college and needing direction, to earning the Green Beret, serving in Special Operations, and leading through decades of service. Thank you, Pete, for sharing your story on the Danny Li Podcast with honesty, humility, and clarity. Your example will help young leaders understand that leadership is built through responsibility, discipline, and service.

Larry R. Jordan, Jr. , works at the intersection of national security and innovation, helping bridge the gap between operational problems and real-world solutions. He joined the Danny Li Podcast to share how a life that once seemed settled became the starting point for duty, reinvention, and legacy. Larry grew up around the military, but that was the last place he wanted to go. He was living on the beaches of St. Croix, teaching, married, raising a young daughter, with another child on the way. But at 27, comfort started asking a harder question. The life he enjoyed was real, yet so was the pull toward structure, responsibility, and the family legacy that had reached back to 1863. So he chose Army OCS. Not because the path was clear. Not because the timing was perfect. But because he felt there was something he owed his family, himself, and the country whose flag had meant something to him since childhood. The Army gave him the brotherhood he missed from football, then placed him in moments that shaped the rest of his life. From the 3rd ACR to the Stryker Brigade, Larry watched innovation move fast, with new equipment, new doctrine, and combat testing all happening in just a few years. Then came the orders he did not expect. The Army sent him to the 82nd. It taught him that growth often comes from the assignment nobody planned for. Even an injury did not end his service. A ruptured tendon, then a broken pelvis, changed what he could do physically. Still, his leaders saw what he carried mentally, and that opened the door to new work in electronic warfare, cyber, and national security innovation. In the end, Larry’s story is not about having the perfect path early. It is about doing the work where you are, adapting when the road turns, and discovering that legacy is built through the moments that force you to become someone stronger. Watch the defining moments that shaped Larry Jordan Jr. on the Danny Li Podcast in several months - find the link in the comments.

Tom Armbruster did not grow up certain that diplomacy was his path. He has met many people who seemed to know “in their bones” that the Foreign Service was what they were meant to do. He was not one of them. His path began with something far more ordinary, and in some ways, far more revealing. As a high school student, Tom was babysitting for distant cousins who were preparing to move to Moscow. Gil Calloway would become press secretary at the U.S. Embassy there. Then came the unexpected invitation: come live with them in Moscow and help take care of the children. So in 1975 and 1976, Tom lived in the Soviet Union as a young American. During the day, he watched the kids. He also worked at the Anglo-American School as a gym teacher. But around him was an entirely different world. Marine security guards at the embassy. Diplomats heading off to Murmansk for talks with the Russians. A Cold War capital filled with pressure, consequence, and history. Tom did not describe this as a perfectly planned career move. He described it as serendipity. But some opportunities only become defining because a person is open enough to take them seriously. That year in Moscow gave him a window into public service, diplomacy, language, culture, and the stakes of representing the United States abroad. He came home, studied political science, and took the Foreign Service exam several times before getting in. That detail matters. The story is not just that an invitation changed his life. It is that he followed the invitation with patience, persistence, and work. For Tom, the Foreign Service began not with certainty, but with curiosity. Not with a title, but with responsibility. Not with a grand plan, but with a willingness to step into a world he did not yet fully understand. Many consequential careers begin that way. A door opens. A person says yes. Then they spend the rest of their life proving they were ready to walk through it. The full conversation is in the comments. More on The Danny Li Podcast.

Holley Harris is a U.S. Army Intelligence Officer with nearly two decades of service who now leads OSINT solutions for law enforcement and academia while chairing Tampa’s Human Trafficking Awareness Committee. She joined the Danny Li Podcast to share how a childhood dream, an unexpected setback, and years of service shaped the leader she became. Ever since she was little, Holley wanted to join the Army. While other kids were still figuring out who they were, she already had a picture in her head. She watched Tour of Duty with her dad and told him she wanted to be a soldier. But her path did not go the way she first imagined. She wanted to become a helicopter pilot. Then came the flight physical. Her dream was rejected. That moment could have felt like a door closing for good. Instead, it pushed her into Army intelligence, which had only been her third choice. Yet over time, that unexpected assignment became the best thing that could have happened to her career. A lot of young people are in that same place, making early decisions without knowing where they will lead. The plan changes. The first choice falls apart. The job is not glamorous. Still, sometimes the path that looks like a backup becomes the one that builds everything. For Holley, intelligence took her to South Korea, Afghanistan, defense work, law enforcement, and eventually OSINT, where public information becomes part of real investigations. What started as circumstance became a skillset that kept growing with the world around her. In the end, her story is not about having every step figured out. It is about staying open when life redirects you, taking the hard jobs, asking for help, and learning fast when the mission changes. Watch the defining moments that shaped Holley Harris on the Danny Li Podcast - find the full conversation through the link in the comments. -- These views are personal and do not represent the DoW

Tanner Yackley described a kind of pressure most people will never see. He could be sitting far away while an MQ-9 Reaper was operating halfway around the world. The aircraft was controlled through satellite relays. There was a two-second delay between what he did and what happened on screen. And during a strike, that delay mattered. As the sensor operator, Tanner’s crosshairs were tied to the laser a missile could follow. The pilot would put the aircraft in position. The team would move through the chain of decisions, settings, timing, and clearance. Then the waiting began. Sometimes someone would come in and say they needed a weapon in one minute. Other times, Tanner could sit for hours with everything ready, watching for a single movement that might or might not happen. A turn left. A turn right. A moment that changed the mission. He described sitting there with a finger on the trigger, not knowing whether the decision would come now, eight hours later, or after someone else relieved him from the seat. That is a difficult kind of responsibility to understand from the outside. It is not only the action that weighs on a person. It is the waiting. The anticipation. The precision required while exhausted. The knowledge that real lives are connected to what happens on a screen. Tanner spoke about this with care. Not with shame. Not with exaggeration. Not as someone trying to make himself the center of the story. He spoke as someone who understands that service can leave marks even when the battlefield looks different than people expect. There is a human being behind every role that demands calm under pressure. There is a cost to carrying responsibility in silence. And sometimes the defining moment is not the loudest one. Sometimes it is the long wait, the disciplined restraint, and the quiet realization afterward that the mind and body were never built to absorb that alone. The full conversation is in the comments. More on The Danny Li Podcast.

Early in his Army career, Brigadier General Robert S. Cooley, Jr. learned something that stayed with him for decades. He was a young officer in his first platoon in Hawaii. He had rank. He had responsibility. But he also had something more important: non-commissioned officers who cared enough to pull him aside. Rob still remembers their names. Smoke Ramirez. First Sergeant Lingoria. He said he remembers and cherishes every one of those conversations because they were foundational. That detail matters. Not because it is dramatic. Because it is honest. A young officer does not become a leader by title alone. He becomes one when the people closest to the work are willing to tell him the truth, and when he is willing to listen. Those early conversations helped shape how Rob thought about leadership for the rest of his career. Years later, after 37 years in uniform, after serving as Chief of Staff of the Army Reserve Command with oversight of 200,000 soldiers, civilians, and families, he still pointed back to those NCOs. Not a promotion. Not a command ceremony. Not a headline moment. Two leaders taking him aside and helping him understand the job. That is one of the quiet truths of leadership. The people who form you are often the ones who do not ask for credit. They correct you before the stakes get too high. They teach you what the handbook cannot. They show you that authority without humility is fragile. Rob carried that lesson from the military into business, startups, and now Nuream. Leadership is still a human business. Communication matters. Trust matters. The ability to learn from the people around you matters. And sometimes the most consequential leadership moment is not when everyone is looking at you. It is when someone pulls you aside early enough to help you become worthy of the responsibility you have been given. The full conversation is in the comments. More on The Danny Li Podcast.

After 23 years in the U.S. Army, Richard Comitz entered his transition with a record of service, leadership, and responsibility that few careers can match. What he discovered was not that his experience lacked value. It was that civilian employers often needed help understanding the language of that value. Richard had gone to West Point. He had served for more than two decades. His final Army assignment was teaching at West Point, which made higher education feel like a natural next step. But when the time came to transition, he found himself applying to jobs. A lot of them. In his words, probably a few hundred. The feedback was limited. One of the hardest parts was not the absence of experience. It was the challenge of translating 23 years of military responsibility into a resume that a hiring manager outside the military would immediately understand. Inside the military, certain responsibilities are understood without explanation. Mission accomplishment, discipline, leadership, teamwork, pressure, standards, and accountability are part of the operating environment. Outside that world, those same qualities often need to be reframed. Not exaggerated. Translated. Richard’s story honors both sides of that reality. A veteran can have deep experience and still need guidance entering a new system. A hiring manager can be looking for talent and still not know how to read the full meaning of a military career. For Richard, that gap became part of his next mission. After moving into higher education, he eventually joined American Corporate Partners, where he now helps transitioning service members, veterans, and active duty spouses figure out what comes next. The silence after those applications gave him a deeper understanding of the people he now serves. It gave him credibility with the veteran, wondering why their resume is not landing. It gave him empathy for the service member who knows they have led, sacrificed, and carried responsibility, but cannot yet explain it in the language of a new world. Your experience matters. But your ability to communicate that experience matters too. Richard Comitz did not leave service behind when he left the Army. He found another way to continue it. The full conversation is in the comments. More on The Danny Li Podcast.

So proud of my son, Ryan, giving the student address at the UW-Madison commencement last weekend. Speaking in front of 65,000 people is not for the faint of heart. Great job, Ryan!