White House Communications Agency

the national anthem and everything went along with it.

And of course, dealing with the Secret Service and the White House Communications Agency was just loads of fun.

Another one, though, was President George H.W. Bush's first public appearance on a Monday night at the Washington Hilton in D.C. after the air war started for Desert Shield Desert Storm.

That had started on a Wednesday.

It was to help with his polio, although They didn't talk about the polio publicly at the time.

That pool is still down there because right now it is filled with equipment used by broadcast networks and the White House Communications Agency.

That's the military organization that helps put out the White House YouTube channel and make sure the president can talk to anyone at any time anywhere in the world.

And the president, according to the New York Times, pitched the idea to Caroline Levitt as her legacy.

In those days, all you could do is basically put up an umbrella and try and capture a signal because I had no way to call him just to wish him a happy birthday.

And they got my son's school on the, on the, on the line and I went up and sat there with, with babies crying, dogs barking and shots being fired all night long on this open roof just to be able to say happy birthday because some brave person from the White House Communications Agency, um, said you gotta be able to say happy birthday.

So the bravery comes in so many different shapes and sizes, but I think every day in our, in our businesses we find a way to stretch ourselves and to do something that is outside of our comfort zone but will yield us something really important, whether it's a particular hire, whether it's, um, taking a risk with a client because we know they're going down the wrong path, whether it's developing a message that's out of the box but may change everything.

We, we take risks every day and it's just a matter of following your North Star, follow- following your gut and letting it guide you.

Former commander of the European Union Command, I think, or I may be saying it wrong.

But then also former commander of the White House Communications Agency.

And that's a misnomer for anyone who doesn't know what that means.

So could you explain those things to me?

what we would call our Air Force Information Network, a pretty large network of about 750,000 endpoints all around the globe, had different units from Hawaii to Germany to Ohio to Texas to Virginia to Colorado, and then also had a fairly large, robust 800-person Enterprise Service Desk where we were tracking trouble tickets around the clock and around the globe.

I did.

As you alluded to, I had the privilege of going to Washington, D.C., where I spent some time as the commander of the White House Communications Agency.

That was a three-year position.