Edited By Alex Knapp and Michael Noer, Forbes Staff
Reporting by Sydney Goitia-Doran and Jessica Jacolbe
Military service has been embedded into the fabric of American history since the beginning. Many Founding Fathers, including Washington and Hamilton, fought in the Revolution, and generations of great Americans have followed in their footsteps. In that spirit, for America’s 250th anniversary, we’ve ranked the entrepreneurs, politicians and cultural icons who all have one thing in common: They wore a uniform in defense of our nation.
In compiling the list, we consulted with veterans groups and retired military officers. They unanimously cautioned us against judging the quality of someone’s service—after all, whether someone fought on the frontlines or doled out paychecks in peacetime is largely beyond any individual’s control. Additionally, we were urged not to differentiate between active duty, reserves and National Guard service. Many combat infantry who served in the last Iraq war, for instance, were drawn from National Guard units. Only in cases of ties or close calls did we give a slight edge to people who served in combat, were wounded or committed acts of unusual heroism. Instead, we focused as much on the veterans’ achievements after they left the military, and because we’re Forbes, we gave extra weight to entrepreneurial accomplishments, wealth creation and philanthropy. This explains why, for example, Phil Knight and Bob Parsons outrank George W. Bush, the only living U.S. president to have served. It’s also why former Secretary of State John Kerry and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito don’t crack the top 25, although both are on the full list.
FORBES 250
AMERICA’S GREATEST VETERANS
#1-50
#1. Phil Knight, 88
Knight served six months of active duty in the Army and seven in the Army Reserve. In 1964, while still in the Reserve, he co-founded what became Nike with his former University of Oregon track coach, World War II veteran Bill Bowerman. Unable to afford airfare for early business trips, Knight, who is now worth $25.5 billion, would “load a duffel bag with [shoes], put on my crispest army uniform” and hop on the next military transport plane to California, “no questions asked.”
#2. Bob Parsons, 75
A decorated Marine, Parsons returned from Vietnam with a Purple Heart and channeled his PTSD into building businesses. He sold software outfit Parsons Technology to Intuit for $64 million in 1994, then founded web hosting firm GoDaddy in 1997 and grew it into one of the most recognizable names in tech before cashing out. Parsons (net worth: $4.1 billion) has donated more than $170 million to groups supporting veterans and first responders.
#3. Bill Gross, 82
“The Bond King” captained boats to transport Navy SEALs into combat during the Vietnam War. In 1971, he founded Pimco, which pioneered active and aggressive bond investing, the basis of his $2 billion fortune. He credits his military service for his success on Wall Street, especially for teaching him the value of clear and direct communication.
#4. George W. Bush, 80
Bush enlisted in the Air National Guard in 1968, serving as an F-102 fighter pilot during his six-year term. He founded oil company Arbusto Energy in 1977, was part-owner of MLB’s Texas Rangers from 1989 to 1998 and Texas governor before becoming president. He has spent much of his retirement painting, including a series of 66 portraits of veterans.
#5. Mel Brooks, 100
During World War II, the future Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner was a combat engineer, defusing landmines and booby traps after the Normandy invasion. He went on to create comedy classics like The Producers (1967) and Blazing Saddles (1974). His company Brooksfilms also produced more serious titles like the Bafta-winning The Elephant Man (1980).
#6. Thomas Frist Jr., 88
After two years as a flight surgeon during Vietnam, Frist (net worth $30.1 billion) co-founded Hospital Corporation of America. Now one of the country’s largest health care providers, HCA has hired more than 65,000 veterans and their family members.
#7. Daniel D’Aniello, 79
Before co-founding private equity giant Carlyle Group, D’Aniello (net worth $4.7 billion) served aboard the USS Wasp in the Navy from 1968 to 1971. He has announced $50 million in donations since 2018 to Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families, which supports veterans transitioning into civilian careers.
#8. Stephen Schwarzman, 79
The co-founder of Blackstone (net worth: $41.6 billion) served in the Army Reserve during Vietnam, and has made his alternative-asset giant a leader in training and employing veterans, their spouses and caregivers. It hit its goal of 100,000 hired in 2021; its military internship program supports active-duty veterans transitioning to the next phase of their career.
#9. Warren Buffett, 95
In the 1950s, when a young Buffett was selling investments at his father’s brokerage firm and analyzing securities for his mentor Ben Graham, the future billionaire was also distributing paychecks as a pay specialist in the Army National Guard. He is now worth nearly $140 billion.
#10. James Clark, 82
The high school dropout joined the Navy at 17 and credits his three and a half years in the military with giving him discipline and structure. He went on to found Silicon Graphics and then Netscape, amassing a fortune of $7.6 billion.
#11. John Paul DeJoria, 82
DeJoria had no money for college, so he enlisted in the U.S. Navy after he graduated from high school in 1962 and served two years on the USS Hornet. During his service, the future billionaire hopscotched across Asia. “It was one of the best experiences of my life,” recalls DeJoria, who is now worth $3.1 billion, but was homeless twice before co-founding the hair care outfit John Paul Mitchell Systems in 1980 and co-founding tequila maker Patrón Spirits nine years later. “The Navy taught regular people like me how to work together as a team and achieve extraordinary results.”
#12. Al Gore, 78
After graduating from Harvard in 1969, Gore deployed as a military journalist to Vietnam. He was later elected to the House of Representatives, the Senate and the vice presidency. After losing the 2000 presidential election, he pursued multiple business ventures but is best known for the environmental activism that won him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
#13. Ralph Lauren, 86
The fashion designer (net worth: $14.5 billion) left Baruch College in New York City to enlist in the Army, where he served for two years in the early 1960s. Inspired by an American flag across the street from his Bronx childhood home, he donated $10 million to the Smithsonian in 1998 to preserve the original flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
#14. Richard Kinder, 81
The co-founder of energy giant Kinder Morgan was deployed during the Vietnam War as a legal officer after earning a JD at the University of Missouri in 1968. Through his Kinder Foundation, he has pledged to give away 95% of his $12.9 billion fortune.
#15. Vincent Viola, 70
The West Point graduate served in the 101st Airborne division from 1977 to 1980. He later backed the Combating Terrorism Center at his alma mater to research counterterrorism policy and strategy. The founder of electronic trading firm Virtu Financial and owner of the NHL’s Florida Panthers, Viola was Donald Trump’s first nomination for Secretary of the Army but withdrew his name due to business conflicts. His net worth currently stands at $7.4 billion.
#16. Neal Blue, 91
The billionaire served in the Air Force as a nuclear weapons custodian after graduating from Yale in 1957. In 1986, he bought a small nuclear energy company from Chevron with his younger brother, Linden. The Blues went on to build defense firm General Atomics into one of the U.S. government’s largest private contractors and the basis of Neal’s $5.5 billion fortune.
#17. Richard Schulze, 85
The retail tycoon (net worth: $4.6 billion) skipped college to join the Air National Guard in 1958. He then took a job as a manufacturer’s representative for electronics components before founding what became Best Buy in 1966.
#18. Morgan Freeman, 89
The Oscar-winning actor (for 2004’s Million Dollar Baby) spent four years in the Air Force specializing in radar repair. His Revelations Entertainment has produced such films and TV shows as Invictus (2009) and Madame Secretary (2014-19).
#19. Willis Johnson, 79
The founder (net worth: $1.7 billion) of vehicle salvage and auction giant Copart was drafted into the war in Vietnam, where he was wounded in combat, earning a Purple Heart.
#20. J.D. Vance, 42
Vance enlisted in the Marines out of high school and spent four years as a military journalist, at one point deployed to Iraq. Afterward, he obtained a law degree from Yale and became a venture capitalist before being elected as a U.S. senator from Ohio in 2022 and vice president in 2024.
#21. Tom Monaghan, 89
In 1956, Monaghan joined the Marines by mistake—he intended to enlist in the Army. He served three years, then enrolled in college on the G.I. bill before dropping out to buy a pizza joint that became Domino’s. He sold the chain in 1998 and gave much of his fortune to Catholic charities.
#22. Kathleen Hildreth, 64
The West Point graduate flew Army helicopters for five years in the 1980s before co-founding aviation maintenance company M1 Support Services. She sold a controlling stake to private equity firm Cerberus in 2024 and is now worth more than $500 million.
#23. Donald Bren, 94
America’s richest real estate developer (net worth: $19.2 billion) graduated from the University of Washington in 1956 and then spent three years as a U.S. Marine Corps officer. A conservationist and philanthropist, he has donated some 58,000 acres to be preserved as parks and wilderness.
#24. William Foley II, 81
The billionaire founder of title insurance company Fidelity National Financial and owner of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights graduated from West Point, then cross-commissioned into the Air Force. He chairs the Folded Flag Foundation, which supports families of fallen service members, and is worth some $2.6 billion.
#25. Bill Draper, 98
The pioneering Silicon Valley venture capitalist served in the Korean War before, in 1965, co-founding Sutter Hill Ventures, which has backed companies like Nvidia and Snowflake.
#26. Thomas Hagen, 90
Before becoming chairman of Erie Insurance Group, Hagen (net worth: $4.6 billion) served as an active duty and reserve officer in the Navy for a combined 34 years.
#27. Jennifer Pritzker, 75
The Hyatt hotel heiress (net worth: $2.8 billion) is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and founder of private wealth management firm Tawani Enterprises.
#28. Yvon Chouinard, 87
The founder of outdoor retail giant Patagonia was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1962. In 2022 he donated his $1.2 billion fortune to environmental nonprofit Holdfast Collective and put Patagonia under control of a charitable trust.
#29. Brian Lamb, 84
Lamb spent four years in the Navy as a public affairs officer, using that experience to found C-SPAN in 1979, which gave Americans unprecedented coverage of the workings of the federal government.
#30. George Joseph, 104
America’s oldest billionaire was a flight navigator during World War II before he founded insurance company Mercury General in 1962. He is currently worth some $2.9 billion.
#31. Herbert Wertheim, 87
After running away from home and facing truancy charges in 1956, Wertheim was given a choice: reform school or the Navy. He chose the latter, which set him on his eventual course of becoming an optometrist turned inventor turned investor, amassing a $4.6 billion fortune.
#32. Rick Scott, 73
Scott served for three years in the Navy as a radar operator during the Vietnam War era. Afterward, he used the G.I. bill to earn a law degree, later co-founding Columbia Hospital Corporation in 1987. In 2010 he became governor of Florida, serving two terms before being elected to the Senate in 2018.
#33. Bill Marriott Jr., 94
Marriott was a Navy supply officer from 1954 to 1956 and used that experience in the more than 40 years he served as CEO of his family’s hospitality business, growing it into one of the largest hotel chains in the world.
#34. Berry Gordy Jr., 96
Gordy was drafted into the Army during the Korean War, where he served as a chaplain’s assistant. Afterward, he founded Motown records in 1959 and helped launch the careers of musicians like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5.
#35. Carl Icahn, 90
The legendary corporate raider and founder of Icahn Enterprises dropped out of the New York University School of Medicine in 1960 to enlist in the Army.
#36. Bradford Parkinson, 91
While in the Air Force, Parkinson led the project that developed the first GPS satellites. After leaving the service in 1978, Parkinson worked for multiple aerospace companies, served as CEO of GPS pioneer Trimble Navigation and led a NASA mission that tested Einstein’s theory of relativity.
#37. William Franke, 89
After spending three years of active duty in the Army, Franke was an executive at multiple companies, including Circle K and America West Airlines, before founding Indigo Partners in 2002, which invests in budget airlines like Frontier.
#38. Herb Alpert, 91
Drafted into the Korean War, Alpert played trumpet in the 6th Army Band. Starting in the late 1950s, Alpert penned multiple songs that became top 20 hits both for himself and others, including Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World” (1960). In 1962, he co-founded A&M Records, which produced albums for the likes of Quincy Jones, The Police and Janet Jackson before its $500 million acquisition by Polygram in 1989.
#39. Arthur Rock, 99
The Intel co-founder and venture capitalist who backed tech giants like Fairchild Semiconductor and Apple served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
#40. Mike Pompeo, 62
The co-founder of Thayer Aerospace and former Congressman, CIA Director and Secretary of State graduated from West Point in 1986 and served as an Army officer for five years.
#41. Mark Kelly, 62
As a Naval aviator, Mark Kelly flew 39 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm. Afterwards, he was selected as an astronaut by NASA, going to space four times, including on the space shuttle Endeavour’s last mission. After NASA, he joined stratosphere exploration company World View Enterprises in 2013 where he helped develop aircraft and procedures and was elected as a United States Senator from Arizona in 2020.
#42. Maurice Greenberg, 101
The Wall Street legend who ran finance and insurance giant AIG from 1968 to 2005 participated in the Normandy invasion on D-Day and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp.
#43. Burton Malkiel, 93
One of the leading proponents of the efficient-market hypothesis, Malkiel used his bestselling book A Random Walk Down Wall Street (1973) to argue that individual investors are unlikely to beat the market and are generally better off with passive strategies. His ideas helped inspire index investing pioneer Jack Bogle to build Vanguard’s first index fund. Prior to his career in academia and finance, the Princeton economist served for three years in the Army Finance Corps.
#44. Louis Argenta, 83
Navy Medical Corps veteran Argenta is the co-inventor of Vacuum-Assisted Closure, a wound healing device that’s been used on more than 20 million patients since it was introduced to the market in 1995.
#45. Charles B. Johnson, 93
The former CEO of investment management firm Franklin Templeton (net worth: $6.8 billion) was part of the Army ROTC program at Yale, from which he graduated in 1954.
#46. Rupert Johnson Jr., 85
The former Marine serves as vice chairman of investment firm Franklin Resources and is worth some $5.9 billion.
#47. Duncan MacMillan, 88
He served four years in the Marines before co-founding Bloomberg L.P. with Mike Bloomberg in 1981 and designing many of its computer systems. His fortune is estimated at $1.8 billion.
#48. Alan Gerry, 96
After his time in the Marines, Gerry founded what became Cablevision in 1956. The company started as a TV repair business before becoming a major cable operator that Gerry (net worth: $1.5 billion) sold to Time Warner in 1996 for a reported $2.7 billion.
#49. David Green, 84
The Hobby Lobby founder and Christian evangelist served in the Air Force Reserve during the Vietnam War era.
#50. Bobby Ray Inman, 95
Inman was the first naval intelligence specialist to achieve the rank of four-star admiral and served as director of the National Security Agency from 1977 to 1981. After his government service, he was the CEO of a couple of tech firms, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. (MCC) and Westmark Systems, both based in Austin. He was also chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 1987 to 1990.
#51-100
#51. Norm Asbjornson, 90
The founder of HVAC manufacturer AAON was a tech mechanic in the Army and is worth $1.2 billion.
#52. William Goldring, 83
After serving in the National Guard, Goldring (net worth: $6 billion) joined his father’s liquor business and helped grow Sazerac into a major market player with brands like Pappy Van Winkle, George T. Stagg and Fireball.
#53. Stephen L. McKnight, 76
McKnight served on a tank crew in the Army during the Vietnam War. Afterward, he went into biochemistry, pioneering techniques used in modern understanding of genetics. He has co-founded multiple biotech companies, including Nura Bio, Peloton Therapeutics and Tularik.
#54. Ken Langone, 90
After a two-year stint in the Army, Langone went to Wall Street, where one of the defining moments of his career was taking Ross Perot’s company Electronic Data Systems public in 1968. A second such moment came in 1978, when he provided investment capital to Arthur Blank and Bernard Marcus to start Home Depot.
#55. Alan Miller, 88
Miller served in the U.S. Army before founding hospital system Universal Health Services in 1979, the success of which enabled him to build a net worth of $1.6 billion.
#56. Herb Chambers, 84
When he was 18 in 1959, Chambers dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Navy. After his service, he borrowed $500 from his mother to found his first company, copier distributor A-Copy America which he sold to Alco Standard Corporation for $80 million in 1983. He then built a New England car dealership empire that is the basis of his $2.8 billion fortune.
#57. Mitch McConnell, 84
Kentucky’s longest-serving senator (1985 – present) and former Senate majority leader briefly served in the Army Reserve in 1967 before being honorably discharged for medical issues.
#58. Arturo Moreno, 79
The owner of the Los Angeles Angels (net worth: $5 billion) was drafted into the Vietnam War and afterward used the G.I. bill to get his education.
#59. Pitch Johnson, 98
Johnson was a pioneering Silicon Valley venture capitalist who co-founded Draper and Johnson (see #25 – Bill Draper) in 1962 and in 1965 founded Asset Management Company, whose investments included Amgen and Teradyne. He served for two years in the Air Force between 1952 and 1954.
#60. John Kerry, 82
Kerry served in the Navy during Vietnam, where he earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. After the war, he was a prosectuor before being elected Lt. Governor of Massachusetts in 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1984. In 2013, he was appointed Secretary of State by Barack Obama, a position he held until 2017.
#61. Walter Loewenstern, 90
Loewenstern completed two years in the Navy before launching a career in Silicon Valley. In 1969, he founded ROLM Corporation, which developed digital phone exchanges and rugged computers for the military. It was acquired by IBM in 1984, after which Loewenstern moved into venture investing.
#62. Hugh McColl, 91
McColl enlisted in the Marines after graduating college for a two-year tour of duty. Then, in 1959, he joined a small regional bank and spent decades methodically merging it with others to form NationsBank, which eventually merged with BankAmerica to form the modern Bank of America, the nation’s first coast-to-coast bank, in 1998.
#63. Edward Roski Jr., 87
His Majestic Realty is one of the largest developers of business parks in the U.S. which has allowed him to become a part-owner of both the L.A. Kings and Lakers. Roski (net worth: $7 billion) served in the Marines during the Vietnam War.
#64. Michael Novogratz, 61
Novogratz graduated from Princeton in 1987 as part of the Army ROTC program and was a helicopter pilot before becoming a partner at Goldman Sachs. He founded crypto-investment firm Galaxy Digital in 2018 and is worth $4.9 billion.
#65. Carl H. June, 73
The Naval Academy graduate is the inventor of CAR-T cell cancer immunotherapy, which has saved tens of thousands of lives since first approved by regulators in 2017.
#66. John Mars, 90
The heir to the Mars candy fortune (M&Ms, Snickers, Twix; net worth: $43 billion) served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1956-58.
#67. Richard Schatz, 74
Schatz did his medical training while serving in the the U.S. Army. Afterward, he co-invented the Palmaz-Schatz coronary stent, which helps hold blood vessels open for heart patients. Millions of patients have been treated with this device and its derivatives.
#68. Victor Vescovo, 60
The former Naval intelligence officer is the co-founder of private equity company Insight Equity Holdings, but he’s better known for his adventuring. He’s traveled to both the North and South Pole, visited the deepest part of every ocean, climbed the highest mountain on every continent and been to outer space.
#69. James Stavridis, 71
After retiring from service, the four-star admiral became a managing director-partner at global investment giant The Carlyle Group ($485 billion in assets under management) and is the chair of Rockefeller Foundation.
#70. Dino Mavrookas, 45
After 11 years in the Navy, including time as a SEAL, Mavrookas co-founded drone ship company Saronic in 2022. The company sports a $9.3 billion valuation, and its ships began being actively deployed by the U.S. military this year.
#71. Ivan Sutherland, 87
From 1963 to 1965, Sutherland was an Army officer and military computing pioneer at the NSA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s famous skunkworks. While an MIT student on a ROTC scholarship, he invented Sketchpad in 1963, widely considered to be the first computer graphics program. It enabled users of the TX-2, an early transistor-based computer, to use a light pen to draw directly on a CRT screen. After leaving the service, he co-founded graphics company Evans & Sutherland in 1968, which employed the likes of Adobe co-founder John Warnock and Netscape co-founder James Clark (see #10).
#72. Bill Cummings, 89
The real-estate billionaire and veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve has pledged to give away much of his fortune. So far Cummings has donated the majority of his properties to his namesake foundation, which has awarded more than $650 million in grants to date, mainly to Boston area nonprofits that provide local community support.
#73. Don Levin, 74
The founder of rolling paper giant Republic Brands (net worth: $2.9 billion) did a stint in the Marine Corp Reserve in the Vietnam War era.
#74. James France, 81
The chairman and CEO of NASCAR served in Vietnam from 1969-1970. He is worth $1.8 billion.
#75. Peter Lynch, 82
Lynch managed Fidelity’s Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, where the champion of value investing garnered huge returns and grew Magellan from $20 million to $14 billion. Prior to that, he served in the Army during the Vietnam War.
#76. Donald Friese, 85
After a three-year stint in the Army, Friese (net worth: $1.8 billion) got a job in the warehouse of glassmaker C.R. Laurence. He rose through the ranks, eventually becoming its CEO and buying it, before selling it for $1.3 billion in 2015.
#77. Pete Hegseth, 46
After graduating from Princeton in 2003, Hegseth was commissioned as an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, and deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. He joined Fox News in 2014 and co-hosted Fox & Friends Weekend until 2024. He was appointed Secretary of Defense by President Trump in 2025.
#78. Martin Cooper, 97
The leader of the team that invented the cell phone at Motorola in 1973, Cooper served as a submarine officer during the Korean War. He went on to found multiple companies providing the tech infrastructure for mobile devices including Dyna LLC in 1986 and ArrayComm in 1992.
#79. Samuel Alito, 76
The Supreme Court Justice graduated from Princeton’s ROTC program in 1972 and served in the Army Reserve until 1980. He earned his law degree at Yale then served as a lawyer in the Department of Justice and was a U.S. Attorney when he was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1990, where he spent 16 years before being appointed to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush in 2006.
#80. H. Ross Perot Jr., 67
Perot was a fighter pilot in the Air Force before founding real estate development company Hillwood in 1988 and building an inland port called AllianceTexas, both of which contribute to his $6.5 billion fortune.
#81. Clint Eastwood, 96
Before he was the Man With No Name and Oscar-winning director of Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. During his service a plane he was on crashed in the ocean, forcing him and the pilot to swim 2 miles to safety.
#82. Robert Lee, 38
The Air Force Academy graduate founded Dragos in 2016. The company, a majority stake in which was acquired by Accenture this year for $3.3 billion, focuses on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure.
#83. Stephen Breyer, 87
Breyer joined the Army Reserve in 1957, and his service included a six-month stint during the Vietnam War performing intelligence duties. He made his name in legal circles as part of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force and he was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1980, then to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1994.
#84. John Williams, 94
The composer of iconic scores for movies like Star Wars (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Jurassic Park (1993) spent his three years of military service between 1951 and 1954 as a pianist and brass player with the Air Force Band.
#85. Ralph L. Brinster, 94
Brinster volunteered for the Air Force during the Korean War. Afterward, his pioneering work led to the development of genetically engineered mice, which are now a vital part of disease and drug research. He won the National Medal of Science in 2010.
#86. Frank Butler Jr., 67
Butler was a Navy SEAL before he transitioned to military medicine in 1976. He pioneered Tactical Combat Casualty Care, which is now the gold standard medical protocol for treating battlefield injuries. Its principles have since made their way into civilian emergency medicine as well and are credited with saving thousands of lives.
#87. Paul Fireman, 82
After serving in the Vietnam War era, Fireman (net worth: $1.5 billion) bought U.S. distribution rights for a British shoe company in 1979, which he turned into Reebok. He left the company in 1996, returning in 1999 to revive the business before selling it to Adidas in 2005 for $3.8 billion.
#88. Michael Saylor, 61
The billionaire Bitcoin evangelist attended MIT through the Air Force ROTC program and served in the Reserve. In 1989 he founded consulting firm MicroStrategy (now Strategy) which trades on the Nasdaq and focuses on cryptocurrency. He is worth $3.3 billion.
#89. Kyle Hanslovan, 40
The founder of cybersecurity unicorn Huntress (recent valuation: $1.55 billion) spent six years on active duty in the Air Force and nine years as a cyber warfare operator in the Air National Guard before leaving the military in 2019.
#90. Thomas J. Sargent, 83
The Nobel Prize-winning economist (2011) was commissioned as an officer in the Army in 1968. His research helped shape the modern economic theory of “rational expectations” which holds that ordinary individuals are like policymakers: They use all available information to make informed predictions about the future. This can make things like monetary policy less effective as people proactively adjust their behavior to fit expected changes in policy.
#91. Bud Selig, 91
After two years of service in the Army, Selig bought the bankrupt Seattle Pilots in 1970 and moved them to Milwaukee as the Brewers. His leadership of Major League baseball as commissioner between 1992 and 2015 ushered in innovations like revenue sharing, wild card playoffs and interleague play.
#92. Dick Portillo, 86
After his service with the Marine Corps, the billionaire turned a small suburban Chicago hot dog stand called Portillo’s into a restaurant empire.
#93. Edward Bass, 80
The oil billionaire and Coast Guard veteran backed the Biosphere 2 project in the 1990s, an experimental enclosed system aiming to show humans could live in space. He is worth $3 billion.
#94. John Fogerty, 80
The Grammy-winning rock singer and songwriter best known as the leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival began his music career before serving in the U.S. Army Reserve during the Vietnam War era.
#95. John Boehner, 76
Boehner enlisted in the Navy at the peak of the Vietnam War in 1968 and was honorably discharged for having a bad back. After graduating from Xavier University in 1977, he took a sales position at Nucite Sales, a Cincinnati-based plastics company, rising the ranks to become its president before resigning to run for office. After being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990, he served for 25 years, the last four of which were spent as Speaker.
#96. Robert Ballard, 84
The oceanographer who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985 was in Army intelligence before transferring to the Navy. He spent 25 years in the Reserve after completing his active duty in 1970.
#97. Martin Selig, 90
Selig did a stint in the Army before building his first Seattle-area shopping center in 1962. At one point the Pacific Northwest real estate mogul reportedly owned around one-third of Seattle’s downtown business space.
#98. Dave Liniger, 81
The Air Force veteran co-founded international real estate giant RE/MAX with his wife Gail in 1973.
#99. Andy Lowery, 56
After retiring as a Lieutenant Commander from the U.S. Navy in 2008, Lowery worked for defense contractor Raytheon for six years before co-founding a series of tech companies, including augmented reality company Daqri in 2010, industrial wearable company RealWare in 2016 and defense tech company Epirus in 2018.
#100. Willie Nelson, 93
The country music legend served in the Air Force during the Korean War before beginning a music career that has seen him produce more than 150 albums and win more than a dozen Grammys.
#101-150
#101. David McCormick, 60
After graduating from West Point in 1987, McCormick served in combat operations in the Army during the Gulf War, earning the Bronze Star. After leaving the military, he became president and CEO of Connecticut-based hedge fund Bridgewater Associates before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2024.
#102. Joseph Chen, 49
Chen enlisted in the National Guard in 2011 as a paratrooper before co-founding defense tech startup Anduril in 2017, which was recently valued at $61 billion.
#103. Pat Neal, 77
The billionaire real estate developer (net worth: $1.2 billion) is a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve and served in the Florida legislature from 1974 to 1986.
#104. John Baldeschwieler, 92
Baldeschwieler served in the U.S. Army at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, which tests munitions and equipment. Afterwards he became a chemistry researcher, founding pharmaceutical company Vestar in 1981, which was eventually acquired by Gilead Pharmaceuticals, and Combion, which was acquired by Incyte Genomics in 1996.
#105. Alan Kay, 86
Kay was a programmer in the Air Force for three years before embarking on a career at companies like Xerox PARC, Atari and Apple. Among other things, Kay is credited with developing the modern “desktop” computer interface (think Windows or MacOS) that billions of people use every day.
#106. William S. Boyd, 94
In 1953, Boyd was drafted into the Korean War, which concluded while he was still in basic training. In 1975, he built his first casino with his father in Las Vegas. More casinos entered the Boyd Gaming empire after that, ranging from Atlantic City to Louisiana to Missouri.
#107. Sidney Kimmel, 98
Kimmel did two tours of duty with the U.S. Army, including during the Korean War. The billionaire later founded apparel company the Jones Group and Kimmel Entertainment, which produced movies like Crazy Rich Asians (2018). He is worth $1.6 billion.
#108. Brandon Tseng, 39
Tseng graduated from the Naval Academy in 2008 and served for seven years as a SEAL and surface warfare officer before founding defense drone unicorn Shield AI, which was recently valued at $12.7 billion.
#109. Chuck Wallace, 62
Wallace graduated from the Air Force Academy before co-founding insurance company Esurance in 1999, which was acquired by Allstate in 2011 for around $1 billion.
#110. Gregg Popovich, 77
The winningest coach in NBA history, who has led the San Antonio Spurs to five championships, Popovich graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1970 and during his active service he played with the U.S. Armed Forces Basketball Team.
#111. Jim Mattis, 75
Mattis retired as a four-star general from the Marines in 2013 after 40 years of service. He was Secretary of Defense during Donald Trump’s first term and is on the board of General Dynamics, which booked $53 billion in revenue last year.
#112. Gordon Getty, 92
After his oil tycoon father died, the U.S. Army veteran led the sale of Getty Oil to Texaco for $10.1 billion in 1984. Since then, he has composed classical music and co-founded PlumpJack Winery in 1995 with Gavin Newsom, now California’s governor.
#113. Lonnie Johnson, 76
Johnson worked on engineering the stealth bomber in the Air Force from 1975 to 1979. Afterward, he worked at NASA before inventing both the Super Soaker water gun and Nerf dart guns, which he licensed for 2% royalties (making headlines for scoring a $73 million arbitration judgment for underpayment in 2013). Johnson has more than 150 patents, many in clean energy, and founded startups JTEC Energy in 2020 and Johnson Energy Storage in 2021 to further develop and commercialize them.
#114. Elwood Norris, 86
Norris, an Air Force veteran, invented a precursor to sonograms, the cell phone headset (which was licensed to Jabra corporation) and other inventions related to sound. He’s founded multiple companies, including Genasys (1980) which makes directed sound products for governments and Parametric Sound (2010) which merged with gaming company Turtle Beach in 2014.
#115. Frank J. Cepollina, 89
The Army veteran is known as the “godfather of satellite servicing” for his work at NASA developing techniques making it possible to make repairs and upgrades on spacecraft like the Hubble Space Telescope while in orbit. The technology developed for those missions was later used commercially in chip manufacturing and healthcare applications like mammograms.
#116. Tammy Duckworth, 58
Duckworth was a helicopter pilot during the Iraq War when she survived a rocket-propelled grenade attack that left her a double amputee. Afterward, she served at the Department of Veterans Affairs before being elected to the House of Representatives in 2012 and the Senate in 2016.
#117. James Gunn, 87
Gunn was a captain in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory between 1966 and 1968. He later helped develop specialized cameras for the Hubble Space Telescope and led the Sloan Sky Survey, which created a 3D map of the universe.
#118. Chris Gardner, 72
The self-made financier who is the subject of the 2006 Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness served in the Navy as a hospital corpsman from 1970 to 1974.
#119. Tim Sheehy, 40
Sheehy served as a Navy SEAL in both Afghanistan and Iraq, earning the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He then founded Montana aerial firefighting company Bridger Aerospace before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2024.
#120. Lee Trevino, 86
The legendary golfer and winner of six major championships completed four years of active-duty service in the Marines between 1956 and 1960.
#121. David Robinson, 60
The two-time NBA champion (1999 and 2003) and Olympic Gold Medalist (1992 and 1996) was nicknamed “The Admiral” for the Naval service he completed before his basketball career. He’s now a minority owner of the San Antonio Spurs, the only team he ever played for.
#122. Jasper Johns, 96
The abstract expressionist known for paintings such as Flag (1954-1955) and 5 Postcards (2011) was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War.
#123. Oliver Stone, 79
The future Hollywood filmmaker requested combat duty during the Vietnam War, where he earned both a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. His experience of the war informed his movies, including Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), both of which scored him Oscar wins for Best Director.
#124. Gordon Logan, 79
The founder of haircut franchise Sport Clips, which has more than 1,800 locations in North America, served in the Air Force before founding the company in 1993.
#125. Dan Quayle, 79
The 44th vice-president of the United States was in the Army National Guard and the U.S. House of Representatives before serving under George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. As chairman of Cerberus Global Investments he helps oversee a portfolio of about $70 billion in assets.
#126. Robert McDonald, 73
McDonald graduated from West Point in 1975 and did five years of active service. After leaving the Army, he rose through the ranks at Procter & Gamble, becoming its CEO in 2009. He was then appointed by President Obama to serve as Secretary of Veterans Affairs in 2014 and served until 2017.
#127. Tracy “Ice-T” Marrow, 68
The hip-hop pioneer and Law and Order: SVU actor served for four years in the U.S. Army between 1979 and 1983.
#128. Patricia Horoho, 66
The lieutenant general was the first woman to command the U.S. Army Medical Command. After 34 years of service, she retired in 2016 and entered the private sector, eventually becoming founding CEO of Optum Serve, a UnitedHealth subsidiary.
#129. David Petraeus, 73
During his 37-year Army career, General Petraeus led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading the CIA in 2011. In 2013, he joined investment firm KKR (more than $750 billion assets under management) as chairman of its Global Institute and Middle East region.
#130. Don Faul, 50
A graduate of the Naval Academy, Faul served in combat as a U.S. Marine in Afghanistan. Upon returning to civilian life, he became an executive at Google and Meta before becoming the CEO of athletic apparel company Athos and then CEO of CrossFit in 2022.
#131. Robert Rich Jr., 85
The billionaire food mogul leads Rich’s Products (Carvel ice cream, FarmRich frozen snacks, SeaPak seafood.) From 1963 to 1969, he served in the U.S. Army National Guard. He is worth $6.5 billion.
#132. Robert G. Gallager, 94
Gallagher served two years in the U.S. Army Signal Corps developing battlefield surveillance systems. After the war, he developed low-density parity-check codes, which provide the mathematical foundation for high-speed data transmission in Wi-Fi and 5G wireless networks.
#133. Heather Wilson, 65
The retired Air Force officer served for five terms in Congress, was Secretary of the Air Force during Donald Trump’s first term and is currently president of the University of Texas, El Paso.
#134. Nicholas Pinchuk, 79
The current CEO of toolmaking giant Snap-On (2025 sales: $4.7 billion) served as a captain in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the Vietnam War.
#135. John S. Reed, 87
Reed served for two years in the Army Corps of Engineers from 1962 to 1964 before embarking on a career in finance. In 1984, he became CEO of Citicorp, where he’s credited with driving the adoption of automated teller machines (ATMs).
#136. Ron DeSantis, 47
Following service as a legal (JAG) officer and Iraq war veteran from 2004-2010, DeSantis worked as a federal prosecutor, served in the U.S. House, and has been governor of Florida since 2019.
#137. Jen Easterly, 58
Easterly earned two Bronze Stars during deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. After leaving the Army in 2011, she led cybersecurity at Morgan Stanley before becoming director of CISA, the Department of Homeland Security’s office for preventing cyberattacks. She’s now CEO of San Francisco-based RSAC, which hosts the world’s largest cybersecurity conferences.
#138. Stan Herman, 97
Before the fashion designer created iconic uniforms for clients like FedEx and McDonald’s, Herman served in the Army during the Korean War.
#139. Dick Van Dyke, 100
The Emmy, Tony and Grammy-winning actor, known for The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) and Mary Poppins (1964) served in the Army Air Forces during World War II.
#140. Jason Rathje, 40
While in the Air Force, Rathje co-founded AFVentures, the Air Force’s commercial investment arm, and served as founding director of the Office of Strategic Capital, which managed the provision of billions in funding to defense tech startups. He became president of public sector at AI privacy company WebAI in 2025.
#141. Leon Panetta, 88
Army intelligence veteran Panetta served eight terms in Congress before becoming White House Chief of Staff in 1994. He later was CIA Director (2009 to 2011) and Secretary of Defense (2011 to 2013).
#142. George Strait, 74
The “King of Country Music” known for songs like “All My Ex’s Live In Texas” (1987) enlisted in the Army after marrying his high school sweetheart in 1971, serving for four years before launching his music career.
#143. Robert B. Laughlin, 75
Laughlin has credited the structure of his military service (Army, 1972-1974) with providing him the focus needed for his research. He discovered the fractional quantum hall effect, which earned him the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics.
#144. Dale Dye, 81
During the Vietnam War, Dye served with the Marines, earning a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Afterward, he founded Warriors, Inc., which works with Hollywood studios to provide military expertise for films like Platoon (1986) and Saving Private Ryan (1998).
#145. Charles F. Bolden, 79
Bolden flew more than 100 sorties with the Marines during the Vietnam War. He was selected as an astronaut in 1980 and logged more than 680 hours on four spaceflights. After retiring from service, he was selected as NASA Administrator by Barack Obama, where he pushed for greater commercialization of space.
#146. Phyllis Newhouse, 63
After serving for 22 years in military intelligence and cybersecurity, Newhouse founded cybersecurity firm Xtreme Solutions in 2002 and co-founded Athena Technology Acquisition Corp, which merged with solar energy company Heliogen in 2021.
#147. Alex Katz, 98
The famous figurative artist was drafted into the Navy just as World War II was ending. After the war he embarked on a storied art career famous for its large works like his 1977 Times Square mural and 1978’s The Red Band, which sold at auction for more than $3 million in 2020.
#148. Bill James, 76
Before his “moneyball” revolutionized the way Major League Baseball teams recruited, paid and managed their players, James served for two years in the Army.
#149. John Kander, 99
The Tony, Grammy and Emmy-winning composer served in both the Merchant Marines and the Army Reserve before writing classics like Chicago (1975) and Cabaret (1966).
#150. Mike Krzyzewski, 79
“Coach K” is the winningest coach in men’s college basketball history, having led Duke to 13 Final Four appearances and five championships. He also coached the U.S. National Team to gold medals in 2008, 2012 and 2016. Before that, Krzyzewski played basketball at West Point and served for five years as an Army officer before retiring in 1974.
#151-200
#151. Rob Slaughter, 40
After leaving the Air Force, Slaughter founded Defense Unicorns in 2021, a defense software startup recently valued at $1 billion.
#152. Tom Waits, 76
The Grammy-winning rock musician behind songs like “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” (1973) and “Hold On” (1999) served in the Coast Guard after dropping out of high school in 1968 before he made it big singing at L.A.’s Troubadour nightclub in 1971.
#153. Grant Demaree, 35
Demaree was a captain in the Army and was frustrated with the problem of how long it took to update military plans across multiple teams. In his civilian life, this led him to found OneBrief in 2019, which creates a single digital workspace for coordinating plans rather than multiple files being emailed back and forth. The startup is valued at $2.15 billion.
#154. Bobby Muller, 80
Paralyzed while leading an assault in the Vietnam War, Marine Corps veteran Muller founded Vietnam Veterans of America in 1978 and later co-founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.
#155. Mickey Hart, 82
After a three-and-a-half year stint in the Air Force, the drummer joined The Grateful Dead in 1967, the start of a long musical odyssey with the band and his own projects. He has won two Grammys.
#156. Phil McConkey, 69
McConkey played football for the Naval Academy then served for five years before being signed by the Giants as a 27-year-old rookie in 1984. The wide receiver was key to the team’s victory in Super Bowl XXI in 1987. Since retiring from the NFL, he became president and later vice chairman of financial services firm Academy Securities.
#157. Thomas Pynchon, 89
The National Book Award-winning author of Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) served for two years in the Navy before using the G.I. bill to continue his education at Cornell where he had originally enrolled at age 16.
#158. Paul Lwin, 40
The co-founder of defense tech startup Havoc, which is valued at over $700 million and developing autonomous systems for land, sea and air, graduated from the Naval Academy in 2007 and flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
#159. Joe Turner, 42
The former Naval nuclear propulsion officer and co-founder of defense tech startup Havoc also co-founded underwater drone company Exocetus Autonomous Systems in 2016.
#160. Debra Crew, 55
After four years in Army intelligence, Crew served in C-suite positions at PepsiCo starting in 2010, then became CEO of cigarette company Reynolds American in 2014 and CEO of beverage giant Diageo from 2023 to 2025.
#161. Michelle Howard, 66
Commissioned in 1982, Howard became the first Black woman to command a U.S. Navy ship in 1999. She led the 2009 rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates before becoming the first female four-star admiral in the Navy in 2014. Since retiring, she’s joined the board of IBM and taught cybersecurity and international policy at George Washington University.
#162. Michael Naranjo, 82
Naranjo lost both his sight and the use of his right hand as an Army infantryman during Vietnam. After the war, he unexpectedly became an award-winning sculptor, whose works reside in the Smithsonian, the White House and the Vatican.
#163. Brian Elliott, 34
The former Army Ranger founded AI software development unicorn Blitzy (recent valuation: $1.4 billion) in 2023, which helps older companies manage their legacy code.
#164. Paul Madera, 69
The retired F-16 fighter pilot co-founded VC shop Meritech Capital Partners in 1999, which orchestrated late-stage investments in tech giants like Facebook, Salesforce and Nextdoor.
#165. James Baker III, 96
The Marine Corps veteran served as White House Chief of Staff during Reagan’s first term before being appointed Treasury Secretary in 1985. Under George H.W. Bush, he was Secretary of State between 1989 and 1992. He then joined private equity firm The Carlyle Group as a senior partner in 1993.
#166. Jeffrey Martin, 64
The CEO of $58 billion (market cap) energy company Sempra graduated from West Point in 1984.
#167. Jim Taiclet, 66
Taiclet was a cargo pilot during Operation Desert Shield before entering the private sector in 1991. He’s now CEO of defense giant Lockheed Martin, which last year had revenues in excess of $75 billion.
#168. Scott Kirby, 58
The 1989 Air Force Academy graduate is the CEO of United Airlines (2025 sales: $59 billion).
#169. Bill Greason, 101
After serving as a Marine in World War II’s Pacific Theater, Greason—the last living Negro League player—pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons and then the St. Louis Cardinals after Major League Baseball was integrated in 1953. In 1963, the KKK bombed his church, killing four little girls, which drove him into the ministry and civil rights activism.
#170. Lisa Atherton, 51
The CEO of aerospace and defense conglomerate Textron (2025 sales: $15 billion) served for eight years in the Air Force.
#171. Joni Ernst, 56
Ernst served in the Iowa Army National Guard during the Iraq War, where she commanded a transportation company in Kuwait. She became the first female veteran to be elected to the United States Senate in 2014.
#172. Doug Philippone, 54
The co-founder of Florida-based defense VC firm Snowpoint Ventures was deployed in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan during his 18 years of service in the Army. Snowpoint Ventures, founded in 2021, includes among its portfolio satellite communications company Astranis and drone manufacturer Shield AI (see Brandon Tseng, #108).
#173. Gary Peters, 67
Peters joined the Navy Reserve in 1993 at age 34, where he served for 15 years before being elected to Congress in 2009 and then as senator from Michigan in 2015.
#174. Brendan Whitworth, 49
The former Marine spent five years at the CIA before pivoting to corporate America. Since 2021, he has been CEO of Anheuser-Busch, which has $59 billion in annual revenue.
#175. William F. Sharpe, 92
The Army veteran won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990 for co-developing the Sharpe Ratio, which helps define the risk-adjusted performance of an investment.
#176. Fred Haise, 92
Before surviving NASA’s ill-fated Apollo 13 mission in 1970, Haise was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps and Air National Guard. After leaving NASA he managed operations and corporate strategy for aerospace and defense programs at what is now Northrop Grumman.
#177. Johnnie B. “Dusty” Baker Jr., 76
Baker enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1968, the same year he made his debut as an outfielder for the Atlanta Braves. After 19 years as a player, he managed the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, garnering more than 2,000 wins—including a World Series title for the Astros in 2022.
#178. Ken Hicks, 73
The CEO of PetSmart (estimated $10 billion sales in 2025) is a West Point graduate who’s also served as CEO of Foot Locker and Academy Sports.
#179. Shane O’Kelly, 57
The former Army Ranger is now CEO of Advance Auto Parts, which has annual sales of $8 billion across its more than 4,300 locations.
#180. A.G. Lafley, 78
Lafley served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. After his service, he rose through the ranks at Procter & Gamble, eventually becoming CEO in 2000. He stepped down in 2010, only to take the top job again in 2013 before retiring again in 2016.
#181. Charles Phillips, 66
The former Marine served as president of Oracle for seven years before becoming CEO of enterprise software company Infor in 2010, where he is now chairman of the board. The company was acquired by Koch Industries in 2020 in a deal valued around $13 billion.
#182. Anthony Guzzi, 62
Since 2011, the West Point graduate has been the CEO of $30 billion (market cap) construction and building services company Emcor, which booked $17 billion in revenue last year.
#183. Nolan Ryan, 79
Major League Baseball’s all-time strikeout leader enlisted in the Army Reserve during Vietnam.
#184. Wes Moore, 47
Moore was deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 as an information operations officer, and earned a Bronze Star. After his service, he founded TV production company Omari Productions, which produced documentaries for PBS and the Oprah Winfrey Network and BridgeEdU, a startup that helps students transition to college that had raised $3 million in venture backing before being acquired by Edquity in 2019. He was elected governor of Maryland in 2022.
#185. Steve Blank, 73
The Vietnam-era Air Force veteran developed the Lean LaunchPad system used by government agencies to help commercialize research by teaching founders how to build repeatable, scalable businesses. He also co-founded and was an executive for eight Silicon Valley startups, such as customer relationship company Epiphany which was acquired by Infor for $329 million in 2006.
#186. Margarethe Cammermeyer, 84
Discharged in 1992 for sharing she was a lesbian, the Vietnam War vet was reinstated following a landmark 1994 federal court ruling. The case inspired the Emmy-winning 1995 made for TV-movie Serving in Silence. After her service, she was a hospital commissioner for WhidbeyHealth Medical Center.
#187. Tom Selleck, 81
Before becoming an Emmy-winning actor on Magnum, P.I. and Blue Bloods, Selleck was drafted during the Vietnam War and served six years in the Army National Guard.
#188. Tom Cotton, 49
Harvard grad Cotton left his law practice to enlist in Army in 2005, completed Ranger school and was deployed to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 2012, then to the Senate in 2014.
#189. Bob Schieffer, 89
The Face the Nation anchor was an Air Force public affairs officer before joining CBS in 1969 for a 46-year run which included moderating three presidential debates.
#190. Daniel Brillman, 42
As a pilot in the Air Force Reserve, Brillman flew combat missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. After a few years in venture capital, he co-founded digital healthcare infrastructure company Unite Us in 2013 and currently serves as director of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
#191. Taylor Justice, 42
The West Point graduate co-founded healthtech unicorn startup Unite Us (recent valuation: $1.6 billion), which builds software that helps healthcare providers and social services collaborate on patient care to prevent their health conditions from deteriorating.
#192. Bob Lutz, 94
One of Detroit’s most influential “car guys,” Lutz served as a Marine Corps pilot before joining the automotive industry in 1963. Lutz was a top exec at BMW in the early 1970s, Ford from 1974 to 1986, and from 1986 to 1998 at Chrysler before finishing his career as vice-chairman of General Motors in 2010.
#193. William Bratton, 78
Post-Vietnam, Bratton went from a military police officer to serving in the Boston police department, rising to become its commissioner in 1993. He then became commissioner of the New York police department from 1994 to 1996. In 2002, he was appointed Chief of Police in Los Angeles and then went back to New York as its commissioner from 2014 to 2016.
#194. Alan Alda, 90
Best known for his role as Army surgeon Hawkeye Pierce on MASH (1972-1983), for which he won five Emmys, Army Reserve veteran Alda also won an Emmy in 2006 for his role on The West Wing.
#195. Dave Grusin, 92
After serving in the Navy from 1956 to 1958, Grusin became composer for films like Tootsie (1982), The Goonies (1985) and The Milagro Beanfield War (1988) which earned him an Academy Award. He also co-founded GRP Records, a Jazz-focused label which produced albums for artists such as Diana Krall and B.B. King. Grusin also won 10 Grammys as a jazz pianist.
#196. William McRaven, 70
The retired four-star admiral oversaw the 2011 Osama bin Laden raid. After retiring from active duty in 2014, he was the chancellor of the University of Texas and authored bestsellers Make Your Bed (2017) and The Hero Code (2021).
#197. Rory A. Cooper, 66
Paralyzed in 1980 during his Army service in a biking accident, Cooper won a bronze medal at the 1988 Paralympics and founded Pitt’s Human Engineering Research Laboratories in 1994, where he designed wheelchair technology that helps reduce repetitive use injuries.
#198. Lori Robinson, 67
Logging more than 900 flight hours in her 37 years in the Air Force, Robinson became the first woman to lead NORAD, which monitors North America’s skies and coasts, in 2016. After retiring from the Air Force in 2018, she served on the board of health insurance company Centene (2025 sales: $195 billion) for almost six years.
#199. Mikie Sherill, 54
The Naval Academy graduate (1994) served for four terms in Congress before being elected as New Jersey’s governor in 2025. She’s the first female veteran to be elected governor of a state.
#200. Blake Hall, 43
The former Army ranger founded unicorn tech company ID.me in 2010, which provides digital identity services for federal and state agencies and was last valued at $2 billion.
#201-250
#201. Stanley McChrystal, 71
Former four-star General McChrystal led special operations in Afghanistan before founding management consulting firm McChrystal Group in 2011, which generates an estimated $30 million in annual revenue.
#202. Ann Dunwoody, 73
The first woman to become a four-star general, Army veteran Dunwoody served for 37 years from 1975 to 2012. Since she left the Army, she founded leadership mentoring firm First 2 Four and served on the board of L3 Technologies.
#203. Sonny Perdue, 79
An Air Force veteran and veterinarian, Perdue was governor of Georgia from 2003 to 2011, then served as Secretary of Agriculture in Trump’s first term.
#204. Melissa Stockwell, 46
Deployed to Baghdad in 2004 with the Army Transportation Corps, Stockwell was the first female American soldier to lose a limb in active combat. She turned lemons into lemonade, becoming a four-time Paralympian and bronze medalist (2016), as well as a three-time World Champion para-triathlete.
#205. Rich Blumenthal, 80
Blumenthal served in the Marine Corps Reserve during the Vietnam War era and served as Connecticut’s attorney general for 20 years before being elected to the Senate in 2010.
#206. Wes Studi, 78
A Vietnam vet and Cherokee activist, Studi is known for films like The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Dances with Wolves (1990) and Avatar (2009). He was first Native American actor to receive a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2019.
#207. Kenneth Cooper, 95
Though he’s best known as a pioneer of fitness who founded Cooper Aerobics, a Dallas-based fitness company that generates around $100 million annually, during his 13 years in the Air Force he also developed the “Cooper Test,” a 12-minute running test which is still used to assess the aerobic fitness of servicemembers today.
#208. Rocky Bleier, 80
The running back was drafted into the Army after his rookie season in the NFL in 1968. He suffered severe injuries to both legs during combat but defied the odds and returned to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1971. Bleier went on to win four Super Bowl titles and write a bestselling autobiography called Fighting Back in 1975, which was turned into a TV movie in 1980.
#209. Joe Lombardo, 63
Lombardo served for six years in the Army before embarking on a long career at the Las Vegas Police Department starting in 1988, rising the ranks to assistant sheriff (equivalent to deputy chief of police). He was elected sheriff of Clark County, Nevada in 2014 and 2018, then was elected governor of Nevada in 2022.
#210. Nadja West, 65
West was the first Black Army Surgeon General between 2015 and 2019. She retired in 2019 after 37 years and now serves on the boards of giants like Johnson & Johnson ($94 billion, 2025 sales), Nucor Corporation ($32 billion) and Tempus AI ($9.4 billion market cap).
#211. Ed Markey, 80
Markey spent 37 years in the House of Representatives before becoming senator in 2013. Before that, he was in the Army Reserve from 1968 to 1973.
#212. Jerry A. Hausman, 80
Following his service with the Army Corps of Engineers from 1968 to 1970, Hausman won a Marshall Scholarship and received his doctorate in economics from Oxford. The econometrician, who is a professor at MIT, is best known for the Hausman specification test, which is used to evaluate how well a statistical model correlates to real-world data.
#213. Tim Walz, 62
A 24-year Army National Guard veteran and former educator, Walz spent six terms in Congress before being elected governor of Minnesota in 2018. He was the governor of the state when George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis in 2020 and during the subsequent widespread protests and was the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee.
#214. Roger Wicker, 75
The current chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee is an Air Force veteran who served as a judge-advocate from 1976 to 1980 and then spent another 24 years in the reserves. He was appointed senator from Mississippi in 2007 and has been re-elected four times.
#215. Ventris C. Gibson, 70
Navy veteran Gibson served as deputy assistant secretary for human resources management at the Department of Veterans Affairs from 1998 to 2003 and was chief human capital officer of the FAA before joining the National Labor Relations Board in 2013. She then served as deputy assistant secretary for Health and Human Services from 2014 to 2015. In 2022, she became the first Black Director of the U.S. Mint.
#216. Roger Marshall, 65
While studying for his M.D. at the University of Kansas, Marshall served in the Army Reserve from 1984 to 1991. In addition to being a practicing OB/GYN, Marshall was chairman of the board of Great Bend Regional Hospital and served on the board of directors of regional bank Farmers Bank and Trust for more than a decade. He represented Kansas in the House of Representatives for two terms before being elected senator in 2020.
#217. Sean Lane, 46
After five Air Force combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lane launched three companies: Battlefield Telecommunications Systems, a Maryland-based software and cybersecurity company, in 2008; Olive AI, a digital health administration company which reached a valuation peak of $4 billion before it was sold to Waystar and Humata Health in 2023, and national security tech startup Mission Sciences in 2024.
#218. Jeff Bridges, 76
A child actor born into a Hollywood family, Bridges enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve in 1967 during the Vietnam War. He’s been nominated for an Oscar seven times, winning his first in 2010 for Crazy Heart.
#219. Todd Young, 53
The senior senator from Indiana graduated from the Naval Academy in 1995 and served for five years in the Marine Corps.
#220. Tom Ridge, 80
After returning in 1970 from combat in Vietnam, Ridge served six terms in the House of Representatives (1983 to 1995), two terms as Governor of Pennsylvania, and became the first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in 2001. He founded security consultant company Ridge Global in 2006.
#221. Henry McMaster, 79
McMaster served in the Army Reserve from 1969 to 1975, afterward being appointed U.S. Attorney for South Carolina by President Reagan in 1981. He then served as South Carolina’s attorney general and lieutenant governor before being elected governor in 2018.
#222. Jim Banks, 47
Navy Reserve officer Banks took a leave of absence from the Indiana State Senate to deploy to Afghanistan in 2014. After returning, he served four terms in the U.S. House and was elected senator in 2024.
#223. Jacob Pruitt
Desert Storm Marine veteran Pruitt spent over two decades in managing assets and donor-advised funds at Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, and Fidelity, becoming president of Fidelity Charitable, the investment giant’s nonprofit arm, in 2021 ($86.3 billion in assets under management).
#224. Michael Dukakis, 92
Dukakis earned a Harvard Law degree after serving in the Army from 1955 to 1957. He was the longest-serving Governor of Massachusetts, holding office from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1991, during which time he was the 1988 Democratic nominee for President, losing to George H.W. Bush. After leaving office, he transitioned to academia, teaching at Northeastern, Loyola Marymount University and University of California, Los Angeles.
#225. Sully Sullenberger, 75
After seven years in the Air Force Sullenberger continued flying as a commercial pilot, earning fame when he saved 155 lives in a 2009 emergency water landing in the “Miracle on the Hudson.” He’s also the CEO of safety consultancy Safety Reliability Methods, which he founded in 2007.
#226. Stewart Brand, 87
The co-founder and editor of the counterculture mainstay Whole Earth Catalog served as a parachutist in the U.S. Army after graduated from Stanford in 1960.
#227. Jack Reed, 76
Reed served in the Army as an infantry officer from 1971 to 1979, before practicing corporate law in Washington D.C. and Rhode Island from 1982 to 1990. He was elected as a state senator in 1984 before being elected to the House of Representatives in 1990 and the Senate in 1996.
#228. Roger Staubach, 84
Staubach won the 1963 Heisman trophy while playing for the Naval Academy and served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. He joined the Dallas Cowboys in 1969 and led them to victory as quarterback in Super Bowl VI and XII. After retiring from football, he founded commercial real estate company The Staubach Group, which he sold to Jones Lang Lasalle in 2008 for $613 million.
#229. Ruben Gallego, 46
After deploying to Iraq in 2005 with the Marine Corps, Gallego served in the Arizona House of Representatives before becoming Arizona’s first Latino U.S. senator in 2024.
#230. Rob Riggle, 56
Before starring in hit comedy films like Step Brothers (2008), The Hangover (2009) and 21 Jump Street (2012), Riggle was featured on Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart after 23 years with the Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserve.
#231. Jeff Landry, 55
The Army National Guard veteran was elected to Congress in 2010 and then served two terms as Louisiana’s attorney general before being elected governor in 2024.
#232. David Goggins, 51
The ultra-endurance athlete served in the Air Force and with the Navy SEALs before competing in over 60 marathons and triathlons, setting the Guinness World Record for most pull ups in 24 hours (4,030) in 2013 and writing the memoirs Can’t Hurt Me (2018) and Never Finished (2022).
#233. Alex Gorsky, 66
After six years of service in the Army, Gorsky joined Johnson & Johnson in 1988, then became chief operating officer at competing pharmaceutical company Novartis in 2004. In 2008, he returned to J&J eventually becoming CEO in 2012. He stepped down a decade later, when J&J’s annual sales hit $79 billion.
#234. Larry Rhoden, 67
The Army National Guard veteran (1978-1985) was elected Lt. Governor of South Dakota in 2018 and became governor in 2025.
#235. Dan Sullivan, 61
Marine Corps Reserve Colonel Sullivan served as Assistant Secretary of State under President Bush from 2006 to 2009, then as Alaska’s attorney general from 2009 to 2010. He was called up for a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2013 before being elected to represent Alaska in the U.S. Senate in 2014.
#236. Sunny Anderson, 51
Before being a radio DJ between 1995 and 2001 in stations across the South, Anderson was an Air Force broadcaster and journalist. In 2003, she founded her catering business Sunny’s Delicious Bites, leading to Food Network shows like Cooking for Real and The Kitchen (which won her an Emmy in 2017) and her 2013 bestseller Sunny’s Kitchen.
#237. Robert J. Stevens, 74
Stevens served in the Marine Corps before entering civilian life, becoming CEO of defense giant Lockheed Martin in 2004, a position he held for seven years.
#238. Jonny Kim, 42
The former Navy SEAL is now a NASA astronaut and widely expected to be selected as one of the Artemis astronauts who will return the United States to the Moon in 2028.
#239. James Hong, 97
After serving in the Army National Guard during the Korean War, Hong co-founded East West Players in Los Angeles in 1965, the first and longest-running Asian American theater company in the U.S. His acting credits include Chinatown (1974), Blade Runner (1982) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and he earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2022.
#240. Elliott Ackerman, 46
Ackerman served for eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he won the Silver Star for his actions in the second battle of Fallujah. He has since earned fame for writing both fiction and non-fiction, including winning a National Book Award for his novel Dark At The Crossing and a Carnegie medal for his memoir Places And Names: On War, Revolution and Returning, in which he wrote about his wartime service.
#241. Ellen Pawlikowski, 70
One of four women to achieve a four-star general rank in the Air Force, Pawlikowski joined the board of defense giant Raytheon in 2020 and has been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of her efforts in developing technology for spacecraft operations.
#242. Micki King, 82
After winning a 1972 Olympic gold medal for the three-meter springboard as an active-duty Air Force captain, she became the first woman to hold a faculty position at a U.S. military academy, teaching physical education at the Air Force Academy, and later served as President of U.S.A. Diving, which governs competitive diving in the United States, from 1990 to 1994.
#243. Mel Pender Jr., 88
The 1968 gold medal winner (for the 4x100m relay) enlisted in the Army in 1960 before he became West Point’s first Black track and field coach in 1970 and designed track shoes for U.K.-based sports equipment manufacturer Mitre Sports in the 1970s.
#244. Harvey Keitel, 87
After dropping out of high school to enlist in the Marines in 1956, Keitel went on to star in classics like Taxi Driver (1976) and Pulp Fiction (1994) before co-founding production company The Goatsingers in 1995, which produced films like Three Seasons (1999) and The Grey Zone (2001).
#245. David Rocker, 83
After serving aboard the light cruiser USS Little Rock, he made a name on Wall Street at hedge fund Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co. before founding Rocker Partners in 1985, a short-selling hedge fund which surpassed $1 billion in assets before he retired in 2007.
#246. Jordan Blashek, 39
The former Marine Corps Captain and venture capitalist has worked at venture firms like New York-based Schmidt Futures and New Mexico-based Roadrunner Venture Studios. He’s now a general partner at Overmatch Ventures, which specializes in deep tech startups such as space propulsion startup Impulse, defense satellite company True Anamoly and drone ship manufacturer Saronic (see Dino Mavrookas, #70).
#247. Drew DeWalt, 44
Following nearly seven years as an officer on a nuclear submarine, DeWalt co-founded renewable energy firm Valhalla Energia and Rhumbix, a startup that develops management software for construction firms that was acquired by Autodesk this year.
#248. Jim Hagedorn, 70
The fighter pilot turned CEO spent seven years in the Air Force before joining fertilizer outfit Miracle-Gro in 1988, helping orchestrate its $200 million merger with Scotts in 1995. He is still an active pilot who owns private jets and vintage warbirds.
#249. Mitchelene BigMan, 60
Born on a Crow reservation in Montana, BigMan spent time working as a dockworker in Billings and a firefighter before enlisting in the Army in 1987. She was deployed to Iraq twice during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Afterward she founded the Native American Women Warriors in 2010, a color guard that has performed at major events, including the inaugurations of Obama and Biden.
#250. Zach Bryan, 30
The country singer signed his first record deal in 2021 while he was still in the Navy, having earned fame uploading songs to YouTube. Since he left he’s topped the Billboard charts and won a Grammy for the song “I Remember Everything” with Kacey Musgraves. In 2025 he was one of the highest-paid musicians in the country with around $70 million in earnings from concerns and a new agreement with Warner Records.
CREDITS
Edited by: Alex Knapp and Michael Noer
Veterans Judges (Living): Leanne G. Caret, Board Member, John Deere and RTX, and Former President & CEO, Boeing Defense, Space & Security; Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Founder, Invictus Games Foundation; Rich Karlgaard, Former Publisher, Forbes; Shelley Lyford, CEO, West Health; Phebe Novakovic, Chairman & CEO, General Dynamics; Kathy Warden, Chair, CEO & President, Northrop Grumman
Veterans Judges (Historic): Todd Duso, Chief Operating Officer/Chief Financial Officer, Bob Woodruff Foundation; Kenneth Fisher, Partner, Fisher Brothers, and Chairman & CEO, Fisher House Foundation; Shelley Lyford, CEO, West Health
Methodology Consultants: Brigadier General (Ret.) Harrison “HB” Gilliam, U.S. Army; Commander (Ret.) Michael C. Perkinson, U.S. Navy
Veteran 250 reported by: Sydney Goitia-Doran and Jessica Jacolbe
Additional reporting: Matt Durot, Monica Hunter-Hart, John Hyatt, Jeff Kauflin, Brett Knight, Brandon Kochkodin, Luisa Kroll, Randall Lane, Katherine Love, Chase Peterson-Withorn and Giacomo Tognini
Thanks to Garen Staglin, Terri Tanielian, the U.S. Naval Academy, Indiana Historical Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, North Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs, West Virginia Historical Society and Wisconsin Historical Foundation
Editorial Operations: Justin Conklin, Francesca Walton
Creative Director: Alicia Hallett-Chan
Director of Photography: Robyn Selman
Art and Design Direction: Fernando Capeto
Art Director, Editorial Operations: Charles Brucaliere
Editorial Design: Philip Smith, Yunjia Yuan, Macy Sinreich
Photo Research: Gail Toivanen
Product Enablement Lead: Dania Hamed
Product: Traci Kalamajka, Sophie Richards
Product Design: Adrienne Michalski, Sara Amato
Engineering: Tay Buley, Diab Al Sadi, Ahmad Abdelraheem, Ahmad Alshawakri
QA: Kristine Karapetyan
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