USAFA Class Histories

John is an entrepreneurial manager-scientist who had an original career goal to become a test pilot.  Raised in the south his parents were a chemist-educated executive for DuPont Corp. and a South Carolina-teacher-of-the-year mother.  He was a high school football athlete and was accepted to the Academy in 1959 before he started into the Georgia Tech aeronautical engineering program.  (John's brother Stephen graduated later from the Naval Academy and was a commissioned U.S. Marines helicopter pilot.)

John was a member of the Academy gymnastics team for four years.  While at the Academy his career goals changed and though still pilot training qualified at graduation, he accepted instead an Air Force sponsored graduate school assignment to Oklahoma State University for a Masters-of-Science education there.  His first duty assignment thereafter was to the think tank MITRE Corp. north of Boston that manages federal R&D Centers for DOD and other agencies, (notably DARPA's ARPANET, backbone of today's Internet).  Later he was assigned to nearby Electronics Systems Division working on industry-contracted airborne modification programs (the AWACS system).  John enjoyed hazardous duty flying status for that entire tour, but assigned a TS/SCI-Q level security clearance in his work, the Air Force could not send him into combat theatres.  He was offered an Air Force sponsored, Harvard Ph.D. degree in solid state physics, but decided instead to pursue private graduate level management education, resigning his Captain commission after six years and studying instead for an MBA at Boston University.

Thereafter he entered industry and over 30 years built and ran numerous successful high technology businesses including two public companies, one of which he took public and ran as President and CEO of that NASDAQ-listed company for 7 years, building annual sales to $500 million before it was sold to a multinational.  Since 2000 he has been starting and building new technology businesses for his own account together with a loose network of close business colleagues and investors in Los Angeles, Houston, and New York.  There are currently four active development stage entities in the incubation process, all high tech, each addressing major unserved world markets; retirement is not on the horizon.

Beyond his formal educational credentials (BS/MS/MBA) John is self-taught in cellular biology, organic chemistry, and high energy photon physics.  He is a graduate member of the Young Presidents Organization, Northern California chapter, where he spent most of his public business career (San Francisco area).

He has lived in Sarasota, Florida for the past 20 years.  John and his wife Becky have six grown children between them, and six healthy grandchildren, all boys.  They are both active athletes in tennis, jogging, and physical fitness.