An Evening with Admiral William H. McRaven

Coronado Public Library, Coronado Cultural Arts and Bay Books present An Evening with Admiral William H. McRaven, USN (Ret.) on Thursday, August 3 at 7 p.m. at the Coronado Performing Arts Center, located at 650 D Avenue in the Coronado School for the Arts. This event is free and open to the public, and seating is general admission. 

NOTE:

- There will be no book sales at this event. Admiral McRaven will sign books owned by attendees from 6:15-6:45 p.m. 

- Admiral McRaven's books area available for purchase prior to the event at Bay Books.

Admiral McRaven is the author of Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life ... and Maybe the World, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple (But not Easy), The Hero Code: Lessons Learned From Lives Well Lived, Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations, and the children's book Make Your Bed with Skipper the Seal. 

After graduating from high school in San Antonio, McRaven entered the University of Texas, Austin on a track scholarship, joined Navy ROTC, and majored in journalism. He enjoyed writing and found the training in concise communication extremely useful in his military career. He met Georgeann Brady in college. The couple married shortly after graduation and have raised three children. Their marriage has lasted through a 37-year military career requiring constant relocation and deployments around the world.

On entering active service in the Navy, McRaven sought and achieved admission to the training program of the Sea, Air, Land Teams (SEALs), the Navy’s elite special operations force. SEALs are trained to operate in all environments including the most extreme climatic conditions. The athletic McRaven took to the exacting demands of SEAL training, a process he likens to “a lifetime crammed into six months.”

After completing Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL Training, McRaven was assigned to the newly formed SEAL Team Six. The young lieutenant was given a squad to command, but soon ran afoul of the team’s controversial commander, Richard Marcinko. Their leadership styles clashed and McRaven was relieved of his first command. Faced with this setback, the young lieutenant was determined to prove himself. He was assigned to SEAL Team Four, where he was given command of an entire platoon. McRaven succeeded in his new position and began his ascent through the ranks. In the mid-1980s, the administration of President Ronald Reagan supported a major buildup of U.S. military forces, including an expansion of the SEALs and other special forces. As the special operations community grew, McRaven’s career advanced with it.

During the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, McRaven served as a task unit commander in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Following the war, he was task group commander in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.

McRaven earned his master’s degree at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He had entered as a student of the National Security Affairs program, but soon saw the need for a graduate-level program in special-operations limited warfare, not just for the Navy, but throughout the armed services. He helped create the school’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict curriculum and became the program’s first graduate. His master’s thesis, The Theory of Special Operations, was published in 1996 as Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice. It has been reprinted numerous times, has been translated into several languages, and is studied around the world.

In addition to his command experience and academic work, McRaven compiled an impressive record of service in administrative positions, as chief of staff at Naval Special Warfare Group One, with the Chief of Naval Operations, and as assessment director at Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). McRaven’s reputation had spread beyond the Navy and throughout the special operations community. He was named deputy commanding general for operations at the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

McRaven was at home recovering from a parachuting accident on September 11, 2001, when he saw the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. When he had recovered sufficiently to report for duty, he returned to Washington to serve as Deputy National Security Advisor and director for strategic planning in the National Security Council Staff’s Office of Combating Terrorism. The remaining ten years of his military career would focus almost entirely on counterterrorism operations and strategy. He was the principal author of the government’s 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism.

In 2006, he was tapped to lead the Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR), based in Stuttgart, Germany. He served simultaneously as the first director of the NATO Special Operations Forces Coordination Centre, enhancing and integrating the efforts of all NATO Special Operations Forces. In 2008, now a three-star admiral, he became the 11th officer to serve as commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). McRaven spent much of his time in Afghanistan, where operations intensified on his watch. In the decade following the attacks on the United States, McRaven commanded hundreds of night raids on suspected terrorist targets.

In the first months of 2011, CIA Director Leon Panetta summoned McRaven to a meeting at CIA headquarters to describe the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan that Panetta believed might be harboring Osama bin Laden. Panetta asked McRaven to prepare plans for an attack on the compound. The effort was dubbed Operation Neptune Spear. President Obama promoted McRaven to four-star admiral and nominated him to serve as the ninth commander of the USSOC, with responsibility of the entire special operations community. While the Senate considered the appointment, McRaven quietly proceeded with plans for the operation to eliminate Bin Laden.

On the night of May 1, 2011, helicopters carried Seal Team Six from their base in Afghanistan into Pakistani air space. Admiral McRaven, linked by secure video from Jalalabad to the White House, briefed the president in real time as the operation progressed. Within 15 minutes of the SEALs’ arrival in Abbottabad, all resistance had been overcome and Bin Laden was dead. 

In 2014, Admiral McRaven announced his retirement from the United States Navy after 37 years of service. In May of that year, he delivered a commencement address at his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin. When posted on the Internet, the address drew millions of viewers in a matter of weeks. McRaven was invited to apply for the position of chancellor of the entire University of Texas system. The Board of Regents announced his appointment in July 2014, and retired Admiral McRaven assumed his duties the following January. As chancellor, he presided over a system comprising nine university campuses and six medical centers, employing 87,000 faculty and staff, with an enrollment of 216,000 students.

Chancellor McRaven expanded on the themes of his celebrated commencement address in his 2017 book, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life… and Maybe the World. In this book, McRaven applied the lessons of his career as a Navy SEAL to the challenges of everyday life and work. McRaven retired from the University of Texas in 2018, having served four years as chancellor. The following year, he published a memoir, Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations.

Admiral McRaven’s new book, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple (But Not Easy), coming out in April 2023, is his treatise on the leadership qualities that separate the good from the truly great. The title “Bullfrog” is given to the Navy SEAL who has served the longest on active duty. Admiral McRaven was honored to receive this honor in 2011 when he took charge of the United States Special Operations Command

(Biographical information taken from Academy of Achievement, https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/)