Software Engineer | Featuring Senior U.S. Military & American Leaders on Danny Li Podcast | Guest Lecturer, UC Berkeley | 35K+ YouTube
Pensacola, FL
Joined April 2020
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I am deeply honored to be invited to give a guest lecture to the undergraduate students at @UCBerkeley.
I will share my journey of starting the podcast, growing my network, and ultimately turning many setbacks into opportunities.
One question can change the direction of a life.
Years into his Navy career, Dr. Calvin Nobles / @DrCNobles was considering a transition out of military service. Then a two-star admiral asked what happened to his goal of becoming a naval officer. Calvin said he would still love to do it. The admiral answered with a simple question: “Then why don’t you?”
Calvin had to finish school after work, build his application, schedule interviews, and compete for a limited opportunity. But it reminded him of a path he had almost walked away from.
Calvin went on to become a Navy commander, serve for over 25 years, and today leads the School of Cybersecurity and Information Technology at the University of Maryland Global Campus.
The next step is not always about finding a new direction. It can be about returning to an ambition you already had, then deciding whether you are willing to do the work it requires.
Watch the full conversation with Dr. Calvin Nobles on the Danny Li Podcast - link in the comments.
(These views are personal and do not represent the DoW)
Military service gives duty a very clear shape.
There is a mission, a standard, a brotherhood, and a responsibility to the people beside you. For those who serve, that structure can become inseparable from identity. The difficult question comes after the uniform is gone: where does that sense of duty go next?
Calem Harris described returning from Afghanistan with about a month to transition out of the Marine Corps, followed by a two-week class focused largely on resumes, interviews, and job applications.
But the real transition took much longer. It took Calem a year and a half to rediscover who he was outside the uniform, what he valued, and what kind of work could give him a renewed sense of purpose.
That is an important part of service we do not always see. Serving the country can shape a person’s standards for life. The next chapter is not about leaving those values behind, but finding a new place for them to serve.
The full conversation with Calem is coming out soon on the Danny Li Podcast.
Ross Guieb had a path to college and an officer’s commission.
Instead, he enlisted in the Army.
The decision went back to his grandfather, whose service in World War II helped bring their family to the United States.
Ross had told him that he planned to go to college, become an officer, and lead soldiers.
His grandfather gave him a piece of advice that stayed with him:
“You have to learn how to take orders before you give orders.”
Ross took it seriously.
He enlisted, served three years, and only then went back to college, joined ROTC, and commissioned as an officer.
It was not the path he later recommended to his own sons. He believed they were more mature at that age and had already seen military life up close through years of moves, deployments, and watching their father serve.
But for Ross, enlisting first gave him something he carried into his years as an officer: perspective.
He understood more clearly what life looked like for the soldiers he would later lead. He learned to trust the noncommissioned officers around him and to seek their judgment, because he respected the experience behind it.
Years later, even as a brigade commander, he still remembered those early lessons.
One decision at the beginning of Ross Guieb’s career shaped how he thought about authority for decades afterward.
Before giving orders, he chose to learn what it meant to receive them.
The full conversation is out soon.
More on The Danny Li Podcast.
You often find your path by learning what isn’t for you.
Scott Aaronson first discovered programming at eleven and worried that other kids had started earlier and he might never catch up.
He later realized he was not going to be the strongest software engineer either.
But he later realized his real advantage lay in using mathematics to think more deeply about what computers could and could not do.
Scott is a theoretical computer scientist and founding director of @UTAustin's Quantum Information Center, whose work has helped shape the field of quantum computing.
That shift eventually led him toward some of computer science's hardest questions, including P versus NP and the limits of quantum computation.
Early on, it can be easy to think you need to be great at everything.
Scott’s story shows that real progress can come from recognizing your strengths and having the confidence to follow them.
His full story is coming soon on the Danny Li Podcast.
Not every fear deserves the same amount of respect.
Brian Muka has spent years studying fear, informed in part by his experience in Navy Special Operations, where risks could be immediate and potentially fatal.
Today, he is the founder of Freedom Sherpa.
In our conversation, Brian said that terror and fear are not the same thing.
Terror was being 150 feet underwater, searching for mines, knowing the consequences of a mistake; fear was posting a video online.
For a long time, he said, he gave both the same weight, and that is an easy trap to fall into.
A hard conversation can feel dangerous. Speaking up in a serious room can feel dangerous. Taking a visible risk can feel dangerous.
Discomfort is not always danger - learning to tell the difference can change how much power fear has over a decision.
Brian’s point was not to eliminate fear - it was to stop treating every fear like an emergency.
The full conversation with Brian Muka is available now on the Danny Li Podcast - link in the comments.
A kind of ambition that deserves respect is to become deeply useful.
Money and achievement matter - but there is another form of wealth that compounds over decades. It comes from choosing mastery even when the rewards are less immediate.
Joe Reddix describes that choice as two doors: one represents greater economic gain; the other leads toward knowledge. He chose the second, and more than half a century later, that decision has shaped the way he builds companies, studies technology, and works with others.
He entered IT before much of the modern technology industry existed. At 76, he is still studying artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and emerging systems.
A strong career is measured by the judgment, capability, and understanding a person accumulates along the way.
I respect ambition that leaves a person more capable of serving, building, and contributing with every decade.
In Afghanistan, Ken Ekman was 10 years senior to many pilots in his squadron.
He still flew as many missions as they did.
As commander of the 79th Fighter Squadron, he led a 24-aircraft F-16 squadron with about 35 pilots. He later took the squadron to war in Afghanistan.
Squadron command is the last point in a fighter pilot’s career when the commander remains fully immersed in the tactical mission. When the squadron went to war, he led them.
Years later, Ken Ekman would retire as a Major General in the United States Air Force. But at the squadron level, leadership meant taking the field with the people he commanded.
You take the field and practice every day. If you are off your game, the team suffers.
As his responsibilities grew, General Ekman became accountable for more people and decisions.
At this stage of his career, though, rank did not remove him from the work. He was still expected to be ready to fly, lead, and perform alongside his pilots.
The full conversation is out soon on the Danny Li Podcast.
It is unbelievably hard when much of your identity is shattered at once.
Wes Carrington's path into the U.S. Marine Corps was anything but planned.
After combat, the death of a close friend, and a career-altering leg injury, he had to be medically separated from the brotherhood he loved.
Then another plan fell apart. Wes rebuilt himself and was preparing to become a physical therapist until he learned he wasn't accepted into the doctoral program.
He had to adapt again. His discipline, accountability, and sense of responsibility yet again drove him toward a new frontier - this time, the corporate world, which he had to understand and conquer. He persevered, and he won.
You shouldn't see yourself as a title - your discipline, strength, and experiences are the foundation that will carry you forward.
Watch the full conversation with Wes on the Danny Li Podcast - link in the comments.
Sometimes leadership begins when your body is telling you to panic, but other people still need you to think.
Dr. Dick Thompson / @HPS_CEO is a retired Green Beret and Ranger who led classified reconnaissance teams on deep penetration missions during the Vietnam War.
On one of his first missions, his team flew into an ambush. Bullets were hitting the helicopter. A man beside him was wounded. His hand was covered in blood.
Then Dr. Thompson noticed something unsettling.
His hands were shaking. His fine motor skills were disappearing. He could not focus on the sights of his rifle the way he had thousands of times in training.
Pressure had changed what his body and brain were capable of doing.
That experience started an education that went far beyond combat. He learned to study fear, train through it, and prepare his team for what stress would do before the next crisis arrived.
Most people will never face that kind of pressure.
But responsibility has a way of arriving before we feel completely ready for it. The question is not whether fear shows up. It is whether we have prepared enough to keep thinking, moving, and taking care of the people depending on us when it does.
Watch the full conversation with Dr. Dick Thompson on the Danny Li Podcast - youtu.be/1h9LakS3Fao.
Some moments test whether a leader can remain grounded when no one knows what comes next.
For @BradyPyle, one of those moments came after the Space Shuttle Columbia accident in 2003.
Brady is now Chief HR and Inclusion Officer at Space Center Houston and spent 30 years at NASA, eventually supervising HR leaders across the agency's field centers.
At the time of the accident, he was supporting NASA's engineering organization. The loss of the crew and shuttle created enormous uncertainty around the future of human spaceflight.
His role was not to have every answer.
It was to help people keep moving when the answers were not yet clear.
Over time, Brady became known for bringing a calm presence during difficult periods, whether NASA was recovering from tragedy, facing budget reductions, or changing how work was done across the agency.
That matters far beyond NASA.
Early in a career, leadership can look like having the right answer. But responsibility often arrives before clarity does. In those moments, what people remember is often how someone carried themselves when the path forward was still uncertain.
Brady's full story is coming soon on the Danny Li Podcast.
This podcast will be available on the Danny Li Podcast YouTube channel - youtube.com/@dannylipod
Sometimes leadership begins when the adventure stops feeling like an adventure.
Dr. Dick Thompson (@HPS_CEO) entered the Army expecting a three-year detour before returning to chemistry. Instead, he became a Green Beret, Ranger, and MACV-SOG reconnaissance team leader during the Vietnam War.
On his second day in SOG, he was asked to inventory the belongings of men who had been killed.
The first bag belonged to a friend.
That moment forced him to see the cost of the mission before he had even gone on one himself.
Soon after, under enemy fire, he learned what extreme pressure does to the body and mind. His hands shook. His vision changed. Skills that felt automatic in training became difficult when lives depended on them.
He did not respond by pretending fear was gone.
He studied it.
After each mission, he looked at what failed, what could improve, and what his team needed to practice before the next one. Leadership became less about appearing fearless and more about preparing people to act when fear arrived.
Most of us will never face the pressure he faced. But responsibility often comes before readiness, and the habits built before a hard moment shape what happens inside it.
His full story is coming soon on the Danny Li Podcast (link in the comments).
This podcast will be available on the Danny Li Podcast YouTube channel - youtube.com/@dannylipod
After conversations with hundreds of American leaders, one lesson has stayed with me: leadership is measured by what a person strengthens in others and in the institutions they serve.
This essay reflects on the tension between responsibility and recognition, and on what enduring leadership requires.
linkedin.com/pulse/responsib…
Sometimes the next step is not proving that your ideas are different.
It is becoming disciplined enough to make them impossible to dismiss.
@robinhanson is an economist and associate professor at George Mason University whose work spans prediction markets, institutions, AI, medicine, aliens, and hidden motives.
At 34, with two children, ages 0 and 2, he went back to pursue a PhD at Caltech. He already believed he had meaningful ideas. What he lacked were the tools, language, contacts, and credentials that would help others take those ideas seriously.
That decision did not make him less independent.
It gave his independence a stronger foundation.
Robin’s path offers a useful lesson for anyone trying to think differently. Originality matters, but so does learning the established work well enough to challenge it clearly. The goal is not to stay inside accepted frameworks forever. It is to understand them deeply enough to see what they miss.
For people early in their path, uncertainty can make preparation feel like delay. Sometimes preparation is what gives a future idea the strength to survive serious rooms.
Watch the full conversation with Robin Hanson on the Danny Li Podcast - youtu.be/eN1n1s6xx9Q
