I build infrastructure for communities that aren’t supposed to exist.
Disabled veteran. Former nightclub owner. Systems thinker. I spent thirty years trying to figure out why the solutions we need already exist but never seem to reach the people who need them. Turns out it’s a logistics problem. I build the missing logistics.
What brings you here?
Three kinds of people find this site. If you know which one you are, start there. If you don’t, read the story first — it sorts itself out.
You wore a uniform
You left the military with skills nobody gave you a manual for, entering a world that doesn’t speak the same language. There’s a field guide for this transition. I wrote it for myself first.
Get the Veterans Guide →You design systems
Municipal planner, regenerative practitioner, NGO builder, impact investor — you understand that the problem isn’t resources, it’s coordination architecture. The Edge Runner path is yours.
Fellowship of Living Systems →You build movements
Community organizer, burner, cooperative founder — you’ve felt what’s possible when people coordinate without gatekeepers. There are communities in Kenya that need exactly what you already know how to build.
Regenerative Impact Alliance →The longer version
I enlisted as a 37 Fox — an Influence Specialist operating in Special Operations. I wasn’t supposed to be a logistics person. But a parachuting accident in 1995 changed that. The Army declared me disabled and moved me to the arms room of my own battalion.
From the arms room I could see everything: how coordination failures killed readiness, how the same influence strategies I’d used in the field translated directly into keeping a unit combat-capable. That pattern — influence, coordination, infrastructure — turned out to be portable.
I took it into small business. Built nightclubs in Reno. Got good at aligning business and community goals, building turnkey operations that empowered staff as leaders. Then the disabilities caught up with me. I had to put systems and people in place to run the business, which made it vulnerable. I eventually sold.
By then I’d watched my community slowly die inside a food desert my own bars were located in. Friends. Neighbors. People who couldn’t access basic nutrition in the same zip code where I was serving drinks. That pulled me into food systems, advocacy, and eventually nonprofit work — trying to solve from the inside what I’d watched fail from the outside.
The through-line held: every community I’ve worked with had the resources it needed. What it lacked was coordination infrastructure — the missing logistics that make those resources visible and accessible. That’s the gap I work in now. In Kenya. In Colorado. In the veteran transition pipeline. The problems are the same. The solutions transfer.
Ecosystem
Speaking & Collaboration
I talk about coordination infrastructure, regenerative food systems, veteran transition, and what burner culture got right about community resilience. Available for podcasts, panels, and workshops.
shannon@livingsys.org →