CEO & Co-founder @withhonoraction @CFKAfric. Marine veteran and social entrepreneur. Author of Courage Can Save US. Views are my own.

North Carolina
Joined January 2011
Heading back to London next month. Two conversations on courage. One the day after US midterms with @AlistairCarns, @jason_carl_fox and @Scaramucci. One at the Churchill War Rooms with @authordlewis. For tickets, visit couragecansaveus.com/uk. 🇬🇧🇺🇸
1
1
8
6,174
For the last few months, we’ve been talking about Courage Can Save US across America. Now the book is out in the UK, and I’m heading back to London. Join me: Wednesday, 4 November, at @HowToAcademy, with @AlistairCarns and @Scaramucci in conversation with @TheNewWorldmag Editor @MatthewdAncona: tickets.howtoacademy.com/cou… Friday, 6 November, at the @I_W_M: Churchill War Rooms with historian @authordlewis: iwm.org.uk/events/iwm-in-con…. Hope to see you there.
2
1
8
7,186
Proud dad alert 🚨 Today's @NPR @hereandnow interview with Lisa Mullins, CFK Africa’s Siama Yusuf, and my daughter Charlotte Barcott on their book Still, I Rise: Stories of Resilience from Teenage Mothers in Kenya’s Slums was so well done. Informative and inspiring. Check out the recording here, and buy the book on Amazon. All proceeds support @cfkafrica's program to get teen moms back in school. Great job, Siama and Charlotte, and the 28 teen moms with the courage to tell their stories in this remarkable book. wbur.org/hereandnow/2026/10/…
3
120
Looking forward to NPR @hereandnow today for a Lisa Mullins interview with @CFKAfrica Head of Girls Empowerment Siama Yusuf and my daughter, Charlotte Barcott. Together, they co-edited the new book Still, I Rise: Stories of Resilience from Teenage Mothers in Kenya’s Slums. You can tune into the livestream at this link at 1:20 PM ET today, Thursday: wbur.org/radio
1
1
3
168
A spark of service. A common goal. The courage to speak up. @ryebarcott interviewed @IanRoomeMP on what courage looks like - from the moment you sign on the dotted line, to standing up in Parliament when it matters. "Sometimes you have to be brave to actually say things if you know they're going to change people's lives for the better. And I think that is an act of courage." That is why we exist.
1
1
1
216
Thanks, @NDI President @WittesNDI and @IRIglobal President @DCTwining, who traveled with With Honor’s cross-party delegation last month to Kyiv and Kharkiv. A great morning with your talented and dedicated teams helping democracies around the world.
Courage and civility aren’t opposites. They work best together. 🤝 Thank you to @IRIglobal and @NDI for hosting us for a candid conversation about standing firm in your convictions while still treating people across the aisle with respect. For decades, both organizations have worked side by side to strengthen democratic institutions, support free elections, and empower citizens around the world. Their work abroad is a powerful reminder that democracy depends on leaders willing to put country over party, and that starts with how we lead here at home. #WithHonor #Courage #Civility #Leadership #CrossPartisan
1
4
156
Will be a lively one post Election Day across the pond with our allies! Appreciate Anthony blurbing the UK edition of my book, and Royal Marine Al Carns for building a cross-party coalition of veterans in the Parliament as covered in Magnus Linklater’s superb column in the Times here: thetimes.com/uk/scotland/art…
Excited to join @ryebarcott and @AlistairCarns the day after the US midterms to discuss what the results mean not just for the United States but for Britain and their relationship. @howtoacademy Hope to see you there: howtoacademy.com/events/cour…
1
1
192
Spent this morning with @IRIglobal President @DCTwining, @NDI President @WittesNDI, and their teams joining from posts around the world. Born in the Reagan era and bipartisan from the start, these two organizations do the quiet, unglamorous work of defending democracy abroad. They do it by empowering local leaders, not by imposing solutions from the top down. That is the lesson at the heart of our work at @cfkafrica and my first book, It Happened on the Way to War. It is also how I first met Madeleine Albright, NDI's longtime chair, who chaired CFK and supported @WithHonorAction in our early years alongside her friend Secretary George Shultz, a Marine veteran of World War II who helped Reagan establish both institutes. We talked about @SenToddYoung, who is in Courage Can Save US and sits on the @NEDemocracy board, and the courage it takes to stand with our allies across party lines. We also discussed John McCain, who chaired the IRI board for 25 years. This exchange reveals something about how McCain appears in the book. His memory echoes.
1
4
252
What does courage mean to Brits? Last week in London for the UK launch of Courage Can Save US at the Tower of London, With Honor put that question to former Financial Times Editor @lionelbarber, a member of @CityYearUK, and a Yeoman Warder at the Tower. Each had a different answer. Standing up for what you believe in. Speaking truth to power. Service. Different answers, one thread: a choice to serve something larger than yourself.
1
1
585
Few writers have chronicled Scotland, and Britain, with the depth and grace of Magnus Linklater. From Lockerbie to the Falklands, from editing @TheScotsman to decades at @thetimes, his reporting has set a standard for honest, humane journalism. It was an honor to sit with him at the Reform Club on Pall Mall, the grand street near Buckingham Palace that has been home to London’s private clubs for two centuries. Founded in 1836 out of a fight to expand the vote, the club was the first of London’s traditional clubs to admit women on equal terms, in 1981, and is where the French novelist Jules Verne set the wager in Around the World in Eighty Days. A fitting place to talk about courage. Magnus’s piece in The Sunday Times is about my friend @AlistairCarns for Birmingham Selly Oak. Al is one of only two sitting Members of Parliament to hold the Military Cross, his for actions leading Royal Marines in Afghanistan, which he steadfastly refuses to discuss. What he does reflect on is courage itself: what it demanded in uniform, and what it demands now in the political arena. Magnus recalls the murders of Jo Cox, a Labour MP, and Sir David Amess, a Conservative—a sobering reminder that political violence respects no party line, and that it is on the rise across our democracies. Two Scots—one born in Orkney, the other in Aberdeen—on what it means to serve. Magnus ends on service itself, and on the cross-party effort to give more young Britons a way into it. Great piece, grateful to both. 📸 Andrew Parsons thetimes.com/.../07b14df1-f9…...
1
2
1
8
3,220
Young Britons are ready to serve. The enthusiasm is cross-party. Six in ten 18–24-year-olds say they'd sign up for a paid year of service with charities, schools, the emergency services or the armed forces. 53% see it as an opportunity, not an obligation. A national year of service shouldn't belong to one party. Veterans sit on every bench in Parliament. They could lead the way. New @focaldataHQ polling, commissioned by With Honor, in @thetimes today 🇬🇧 thetimes.com/article/3db989f…
1
133
When I started Courage Can Save US, I didn't expect one of its most important chapters to be about an FBI agent and the man he arrested. Then I met Brian McLaughlin — out of prison, now training electricians, and calling the agent who put him away one of the best things that happened to him. Thanks @RepBrianFitz and @JenGriffinFNC for this moment at our book launch event in the @librarycongress. The soundtrack is perfect.
Nearly twenty years ago, I was the FBI agent who put Brian McLaughlin behind bars. Today, he says meeting me was one of the best things that ever happened to him—that I changed his life for the better. The remarkable thing is, he changed mine, too.
2
2,008
Service is an opportunity, not an obligation. Courage Can Save Us profiles American leaders who served in uniform and then ran for office. Two of them went to university in the UK: Maryland @GovWesMoore, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and Indiana @SenToddYoung, who studied at the University of London and was a student representative to Margaret Thatcher. I wrote this book for students on both sides of the Atlantic. 🇺🇸🇬🇧 couragecansaveus.com/uk/
16
29
3
145
358,379
Try the pork scratchings, they said…
37
40
7
822
463,743
Day two in London ✅ ☕ Sunrise on the @SkyNews sofa with @SophyRidgeSky & @WilfredFrost 📰 Talking courage with @AlistairCarns and Magnus Linklater for @thetimes 🏛️ College Green, Parliament behind us, @GBNEWS and @otrapnellmedia in front 🏰 And tonight we launched Courage Can Save Us at the Tower of London Thank you @TomTugendhat, @lionelbarber, Al Carns, General Gordon Messenger, and Admiral Sir Tony Radakin for hosting, and every cadet and student who joined us and asked questions tonight. You are why this book exists. And a final thank you to everyone who came.
1
4
662
A @TheTimes of London interview on Courage Can Save Us with Royal Marine @AlistairCarns MP, conducted by Magnus Linklater, a superb writer and reporter. We spoke about physical courage in uniform and moral courage in politics. Al's definition: politics is leadership. I agree, and that's why it so often fails us. The 10 I profile don't always succeed, but they always strive to lead with service before self. We also talked about Magnus's father, Eric Linklater, whose tin helmet saved him from an enemy bullet as a private in the British Black Watch at Flanders, WWI. Eric Linklater's novel Private Angelo examines how courage can be held, lost, and regained.
2
381
77% of Britons say their country is divided. Sound familiar? New @focaldataHQ polling by With Honor shows Britain and America share the same challenge. The answer on both sides of the Atlantic is the same: we need people with the courage to put country over party.
1
82
It might not be a great hair day. But damn the torpedoes. Today is the day: Courage Can Save Us is now out in the UK. OohRah 🇬🇧🇺🇸
2
12
659
Great to join @SophyRidgeSky and @WilfredFrost on @SkyNews this morning. Sophy wrote a superb book on British women breaking into politics across party lines, The Women Who Shaped Politics. Before going on air we talked about Mikie Sherrill, the first woman veteran ever elected governor in the United States and one of the ten leaders profiled in Courage Can Save Us. Wilf's father, David Frost, famously conducted the Frost/Nixon interviews that drew the former president's first public admission of regret. Courage Can Save Us launches tonight at the Tower of London.
18
33
1
303
334,015
Wrapped day one in London on @TalkTV with @petercardwell, who asked why military service matters and what it gives you. My answer is common ground. Service gives you that no matter who your parents were, what your faith is or, for God's sake, what party you're in. That's why we're calling for more courage in public life. Courage Can Save Us launches today in the UK 🇬🇧🇺🇸
2
6
675