Project Vanguard Podcast

When Andy Davis first heard “energy security,” he thought what most people think. Oil. Nuclear. Geopolitics. A problem that lived somewhere far away, between governments. He had more reason than most to think that way. As an Army Ranger, he parachuted into Iraq on the night of the invasion and later spent ten days in a firefight on top of the Haditha Dam, one of the largest power-generating facili...

Most service members start thinking seriously about life after the uniform six months out. Jim Purekal started two years out. He networked, he sat down with people who had nothing in common with his career, and he treated the whole thing like a mission with a deadline. That discipline is how a retired Marine Corps major with twenty years in aviation ended up running Virginia legislative work for A...

About seven percent of Americans have served in the military. The number who actually make it from a uniform into a career that fits is smaller than it should be, and the people who fall through the cracks most often are not the officers with MBAs. They’re the junior enlisted. That’s the gap Marcus Barnes works in every day. Marcus is a Marine Corps veteran and the Energy Program Manager at NextOp...

Laura Gardner enlisted in the Army Reserves at 17. She was one of 11 kids, seven of whom served. She didn’t have a grand plan. She needed one. Her parents kept sending recruiters to her job at a pool supply store until she finally said yes. She started in postal operations, then switched her MOS to chemical warfare when she moved to Houston. After the military, she went into oil and gas, managing...

Energy has a messenger problem. Not a technology problem, not a cost problem, not even a policy problem at its core. The people doing the work and building the projects are winning. The people telling the story are struggling. Frank Macchiarola has spent 20 years on the advocacy side of energy, first at the American Petroleum Institute and now as Chief Advocacy Officer at American Clean Power. He...

Lourdes Spurlock spent six years in the Navy running nuclear reactors. She was one of a handful of women on board, trained by male mentors who held her to the same standard as everyone else, and she came out the other side with thick skin, dark humor, and zero idea how to have a normal conversation with civilian women. So she entered a pageant. Not because she wanted a crown. Because she needed to...

A lot of talk about energy stays stuck in the clouds. This conversation stays closer to the ground. I sit down with Nick Martocci, a Marine turned Army National Guard pilot turned renewable energy trainer, to talk about the part of the industry people often miss: the actual workforce behind it. Not the slogans. Not the social media food fight. The work. What comes through in this episode is how na...

The problem is not that America lacks energy resources. The problem is that we keep treating a long-horizon infrastructure challenge like a short-term political argument. In this conversation, Joshua Bice helps put a finer point on something Project Vanguard keeps coming back to: energy security is national security. Not as a bumper sticker. As a practical reality. When Josh talks about the projec...

A lot of veterans do not struggle because they lack discipline, grit, or work ethic. They struggle because the structure disappears, the signal gets noisy, and nobody gives them a clear map for what comes next. That is the real center of this conversation with Ken Webre , the Director of Business Development for W-Industries. Ken has spent decades in the electrical and power world, but what makes...

A lot of veterans leave the military knowing they can lead, solve problems, and operate under pressure, but not always knowing where those skills fit next. That is the center of this conversation with Jon Powers , the Co-Founder of Clean Capital. This episode is not just a walk through one man’s resume. It is a look at how military experience can turn into energy leadership, and why that matters f...

Most people argue energy like it’s a scoreboard. But the work lives somewhere else, out in the counties, across kitchen tables, inside contracts that feel longer than a deployment. In this episode, Rickey Stuchell breaks down the side of the industry that decides whether anything ever gets built. The land side. Energy parks are the new chess move Rickey describes a model that feels like a next-pha...

Most people think clean energy is about technology. It is not. Or at least not only that. It is about who understands systems, who can navigate policy, and who can bring unlikely groups into the same room. In this episode of Project Vanguard, I talk with Michael Dunn , a veteran who stumbled into clean energy through necessity, curiosity, and a relentless habit of saying yes. Michael did not set o...

Most energy arguments start in the wrong place. They start with identity, not systems. With labels, not failure modes. With confidence about outcomes, without much curiosity about what actually breaks when demand spikes or assumptions fail. In this episode, Kevin Doffing talks with John Szoka about energy from a less fashionable angle: how power systems really behave under pressure, and what that...

Most energy debates focus on the loudest question. This conversation focused on the one that actually matters. In my latest episode of Project Vanguard, I sat down with Ken Young to talk about how the grid really works when it’s under pressure. Not the headlines. Not the culture war version. The systems underneath it all. We talked about why grid failures don’t come from one bad decision or one ba...

Most people talk about veteran transition like it is a single leap. One decision, one résumé, one magic network connection, then the new life locks in. In the newest Project Vanguard episode, Kevin Doffing and John Broschak say the quiet part out loud: transition is a rough road, and the people who do best are the ones who stop waiting for perfect conditions and start building real momentum. John’...

Most energy conversations start with one assumption: we need to build more. More generation, more megawatts, more infrastructure. That matters, but it skips over a quieter truth hiding in plain sight. The fastest way to strengthen the grid isn’t always adding supply. It’s reducing waste. On the Project Vanguard Podcast, Air Force veteran and energy entrepreneur Alex Mouton explains why energy effi...

Renewable energy did not start as a partisan issue. And it does not need to be one now. That was one of the clearest messages from Jim Adams, a Coast Guard veteran and President of North American Operations at Natural Power, during his conversation on the Project Vanguard Podcast. Energy is infrastructure. It is reliability. It is national security. And when the conversation drifts into ideology i...

When I went on Ben Wilson’s Energy Right Podcast, he asked where my view of energy security comes from. For me, it started in Iraq, standing next to small generators and handing out diesel so families could keep food and medicine cold for a few hours. That experience changed how I see every conversation we have now about power plants, renewables, and the grid. Energy stopped being abstract. It bec...

Hydrogen was supposed to be the breakout tool of the clean energy boom. Then the rules landed. Hard. The “three pillars” froze major projects almost overnight. Capital paused. Developers hit the brakes. Monarch Energy felt the headwind like everyone else, but instead of waiting on Treasury, they pivoted to something more fundamental. Load. This week’s guest, Kevin Boudreaux , has spent his career...

If you only read headlines, you would think electric vehicles are collapsing. Sales are “slowing.” Chargers “do not work.” The “transition” is over before it began. Army veteran and EVgo Senior Vice President Marcy Bauer sees a different reality. “There are more EVs on the road than there are public fast chargers to serve them.” That is not a collapse. That is growth outpacing infrastructure. The...

Picture a 193 megawatt solar site with roughly 1,200 sheep on patrol. Each one needs three to seven gallons of water a day. If you treat that as free grazing, it fails. Treat it as a service with checklists, water logistics, and predator defense, it works. My guest is Brad Quigley , an Army veteran who served nearly 26 years. He went from missile defense and aviation to ranch foreman in West Texas...

If you only read headlines, you might think clean energy is stuck. Higher rates, tighter capital, and a lot of noise. Then you look at the load curves, data center growth, and the simple reality that America needs more power, faster. The truth is quieter and more durable. We need every electron we can responsibly build. That is where veterans come in. On this week’s Project Vanguard, I sat down wi...

The grid is no longer a background utility. It’s the front line. Explosive load growth from AI, data centers, and new manufacturing is colliding with a system built for a different era. At the same time, cyber and physical risks are converging in ways that stress every assumption we’ve made about reliability and resilience. In this conversation, Army veteran and energy security leader Jonathon Mon...

This week on Project Vanguard Podcast, I sit down with Jason Fabre , a Houston utility leader who built a Special Response Team that treats hurricanes, heat waves, and winter storms like missions. The conversation is straight talk about reliability, not politics. If you have worn a uniform, the cadence will feel familiar. Field lessons from Winter Storm Uri We get an inside track on what actually...

Most people don’t break into clean energy project development by asking, “Can I work for free?” But that’s exactly what Landon Redmon did. An Army National Guard veteran and self-proclaimed “intern,” Landon’s story isn’t about having the perfect résumé. It’s about persistence, cold-calling thousands of strangers on LinkedIn, and showing up to veteran happy hours until doors opened. That grit turne...