I believe the workforce crisis is not a people problem. It is a structural problem. And I have spent 30 years proving it.

From the deck of a Navy destroyer to the FBI Academy, the Defense Intelligence Agency, IBM, and Johns Hopkins University, and as co-author of the National Strategy to Combat Identity Theft for the U.S. Department of Justice, my career has been built on one discipline: diagnosing what everyone else misses and prescribing what actually fixes it.

I am the host of the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast-published weekly- 167 episodes, ranked #3 on Matchmaker.fm, where 18 expert practitioners independently confirmed the same structural failures showing up across every industry and sector. That field intelligence became the foundation of my 2026 field report, Throttle Up from the Field Volume 1: Canaries in the Coal Mine, The Workforce Crisis Gen Z Is Exposing, synthesizing Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace, DDI's 2025 Global Leadership Forecast, and 18 practitioner interviews into an irrefutable diagnosis of why the workforce crisis exists, and what the canary has been trying to tell us all along.

I am also the author of Throttle Up: How to Accelerate the Impact of 21st Century Leadership, described by readers as "a master's degree in leadership in one book," and the creator of the LeadSimm Leadership Impact Simulation methodology and the TSWG Strategic Thinking process. I hold a Doctorate in Leadership Studies from the University of San Diego and am a certified AI Management Professional.

Leadership is Action. This Lightning Lesson is where that action starts.