I want to be the father my daughter deserves.
I want to be a husband that my wife is still excited to see come home.
I want to be a leader who inspires others to try harder, go farther, and do better.
I want to be a citizen that upholds the values of our nation, even if our nation forgets what those values are.
I want to be an old man who looks back on his life without any regrets, surrounded by the people he loves.
Jake Wood is cofounder and CEO of Team Rubicon, a nonprofit organization that utilizes the skills of military veterans to deploy disaster response teams. Under Wood’s leadership, Team Rubicon has launched over 650 operations in response to natural disasters and humanitarian crises since the 2010 Haiti earthquake and grown from eight to 120,000 members. Team Rubicon has been finished in the top three of the Nonprofit Times’ “Top Nonprofit To Work For in America” lists three years in a row. Wood is a leading veterans’ advocate who has briefed President Obama on veterans’ issues, met with former Presidents Bush and Clinton on disaster response and testified before the Senate. As a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, Wood deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as a Scout Sniper and earned the Navy-Marine Commendation Medal.
