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Highly decorated former career combat Green Beret Colonel John Fenzel, who served as a White House Fellow during and subsequent to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, will discuss crisis leadership under perhaps the most trying circumstances of a lifetime.
Resilience in the Face of Adversity & Opportunity from Crisis
What was it like to be in the White House on September 11, 2001? In the 20th Anniversary year since that terrible day, John will give his first-person account from the White House. What happened? What followed in the weeks and months ahead, on the ground, for our Army Green Berets? What does it take to not just overcome adversity, but to conquer it, so that, in the end, you and your team come out better and stronger for the experience? How have others used adversity to their advantage, and how have they taken advantage of the challenges confronting them in the most challenging circumstances? How training for adversity is not only possible, but recommended as a means to promote resilience, trust, perseverance, and teamwork. How adversity is our greatest opportunity to become stronger and more successful—through resilient culture, bold action, realistic training and innovation.
Green Beret Colonel John Fenzel (USA, Ret.)
John Fenzel is a senior Army Special Forces officer who has served on our nation’s battlefields around the world. He has served as a military assistant on the personal staff of the Secretary of Defense, as a Special Assistant to the Vice President and as a White House Fellow during the Clinton and Bush administrations.
He commanded the Special Forces Training Battalion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and an Army brigade at Fort Knox, Kentucky. In the wake of the September 11th attacks, he served as Staff Director for Tom Ridge in the Homeland Security Council. He was the principal architect of The Homeland Advisory System, our nation’s color-coded alert system.
In his 30 years of military service, John has served in numerous command and staff positions around the world. During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, he commanded a Special Forces “A-Team,” training, equipping and advising a Kuwaiti Battalion and accompanying them during the liberation of Kuwait. He has commanded three Special Forces companies, leading the first Army deployments to Pakistan and the Baltic States. In Bosnia he commanded the special operations teams in the U.S. and British sectors, working closely with the United Nations to secure the indictments and convictions of those responsible for war crimes in Srebrenica. He is the only active duty American military officer to testify at The Hague in support of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
John is a graduate of the Naval War College and the National War College. Born in Iowa and raised outside Chicago, John lives with his wife and three children in Annapolis, MD. John is the author of three acclaimed novels, The Lazarus Covenant (2009), The Sterling Forest (2016) and The Fifth Column (2018).