In September 2013, Nathan B. Nelson was serving as an intelligence officer for Air Force Special Operations Command on his third deployment to Afghanistan. His loving wife Jennifer was back home, six months pregnant with their first child. While on a remote location with a 7^th Special Forces ODA, Nelson was catastrophically injured from a massive Taliban attack on the unit’s position. A 107mm rocket exploded mere feet behind him with the blast breaking his spine and littering his body with shrapnel. With both his lungs collapsed and rapidly losing blood, the team worked feverishly to keep him alive. Over and over, his body began slipping away into death, but the team fought to bring him back. Weeks later Nelson woke up at Walter Reed Medical on a ventilator and paralyzed from the chest down. Despite the physician’s hopeless prognosis on his future quality of life, Nelson, with dedicated support from his wife, persevered through spinal cord rehab at the VA hospital in Tampa, FL. For nearly a year and a half, Nelson overcame the massive challenges of life with a spinal cord injury, defying the grim prediction his doctors initially gave. Since rehab Nelson took on a new mission in life: continuing to serve the active warfighter’s needs and tackling organizational obstacles to veteran care within the VA. Nelson’s unique lived experience, teamwork approach, and enthusiastic drive is what makes him the go-to connector for military and veteran related matters. Nelson naturally became an arbiter of organizational improvement for the Veterans Affairs system due to his intimate familiarity navigating the system following his extensive inpatient rehab.  His inherent credibility with veterans made him a natural resource not only for voicing issues, but identifying solutions. As a result, Nelson became highly sought after for veteran service organizations and nonprofits with his ability to attract donors to the right mission and connect resources to those in need.

Drawing from his background as an intelligence professional for both conventional and special operations warfighters, Nelson served as the Director of Military Affairs for Congressman Matt Gaetz. In this capacity, Nelson worked to align local, state, and federal efforts to build and strengthen the military mission in Northwest Florida. In this disproportionally military-heavy district, the scope of effort encompassed every service branch and included training and operational units, both conventional and special operations, as well as research, development, test, and evaluation missions. Nelson spearheaded efforts to dramatically increase collaboration between the defense industry and the warfighter fostering innovation and reduced costs to the taxpayer. He worked closely with major research universities to explore high-skilled STEM workforce development pipelines to feed the mission growth.

Currently, Nelson has been serving the warfighter from the private sector focused on strategic growth opportunities for a small defense contractor. Nelson enjoys public speaking, sharing his inspiring and emotional testimony of faith and resiliency to a wide range of audiences. Nathan lives in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida with his wife Jennifer and his two children Eva and Silas.