Former Navy SEAL Speaks of Humanitarian Efforts

Eric Greitens is many things: a former Navy SEAL, a photographer, a Gold Glove boxer, a Rhodes scholar, an author, and a humanitarian. Now, he can add Chambers Lecture Series speaker to that list.

Greitens spoke to a group of Boston College faculty and students, including ROTC members and Carroll School of Management (CSOM) students, in the Yawkey Center's Murray Function Room last Thursday. The lecture series, organized by CSOM's Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics, invites one speaker each year who "offers perspectives and guidance … to shape ethical leaders of the future," according to its web page.

Greitens offered that and more in his talk. Though his naval career included tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, it isGreitens' philanthropic efforts that proved most inspiring to the audience. He talked about his experiences in Bosnian and Rwandan refugee camps and how here he saw many of the refugees "find a way to be of service and step outside [their] own pain." Later, after he completed his military service, he said he found that the one thing many injured service members wanted to do was return to their units. Greitens realized that though their injuries would make this impossible for most of them, there were still ways for them to serve their communities.

"It's not a charity, it's a challenge," Greitens said of The Mission Continues, an organization he and two friends started with their combat pay and disability checks, respectively, in 2007. The Mission Continues matches former military members with what Greitens calls "service fellowships" that help them "become citizen leaders and reconnect with their purpose."

"They needed someone to believe in them enough to challenge them," Greitens said. "It's difficult, but not complicated."

He illustrated this through the story of Anthony Smith, a service member who suffered intense injuries to his right side, including the loss of his hand, and had to be put in a medically induced coma for 62 days. Thanks to The Mission Continues, however, Smith is now a martial arts teacher for children. Other notable fellowships given to injured service men and women included becoming tennis and ski instructors, training to become nurses, and working with physically handicapped children. Many of these new citizen leaders are often handicapped themselves, making their ability to serve again even more remarkable.

During his talk, Greitens described what he called "the hardest moment, of the hardest week, of the hardest military training in the world," at the SEAL training school. Greitins spoke about the end of the second grueling day, and every SEAL in training lined up on the beach to watch the sun set as their commanders yelled into bullhorns and tried to "get inside [their] heads," Greitens said. "I saw more people quit that night than any other time, when they thought about how hard it was going to be."

Greitens said, however, that "there is no way to transform who I am in one minute, one day, or one week. To transform, you need the courage of perseverance: the willingness to do the hard thing that has to be done to rebuild my family, transform myself, and to be of service. Amazing transformations in us lead to hope in others."

At the end of his talk, Greitens was met with a standing ovation. He is the author of The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL, which tells his story and explains his ideas of combining strong leadership with love and service.