I'm Dave Winsett, Founder and CEO of Mission Forged Institute (MFI). After Navy Officer Candidate School (OCS) in 1995, I reported to NAS Pensacola — the Cradle of Naval Aviation — to train as a Naval Flight Officer (backseater “Goose,” not “Maverick” the pilot). I served eight years flying the E-2C “Hawkeye” — the Navy’s airborne command-and-control aircraft — off the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) with my squadron, VAW-113 Black Eagles, on two deployments to the Persian Gulf in 1998 and 2000, flying combat missions over Iraq for Operation Southern Watch.

Navy flight school is where I learned what elite training actually produces. Naval aviation training is world class. Navy and USMC aircrew, pilots and NFOs, are trained to make decisions in seconds, minutes, and hours because the “office” is an aircraft catapulted off a carrier flight deck, anywhere in the world.

In 2004 I became an FBI Special Agent, based in the Los Angeles Field Office (LAFO), specializing in Counterintelligence (CI) for twenty years. I ran complex double agent and undercover operations against hostile intelligence services where every detail mattered. Especially in CI, precise execution was the standard I was held to.

Based on my prior military experience and reputation, I was selected for two Counterterrorism deployments in 2010 and 2011 with the LAFO Extraterritorial Counterterrorism Squad to a hazardous duty zone in the southern Philippines — a known haven for Al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates. Our two-agent unit was embedded with the Joint Special Operations Task Force – Philippines, working alongside special operations forces from every branch. As a deployed, armed agent, I trained and advised our Filipino counterparts (NBI) and coordinated joint investigations with the Philippine DOJ. In 2011, I was specifically requested to help recover two kidnapped Filipino-Americans held by Abu Sayyaf — Gerfa Lunsmann, released after 82 days, and her fourteen-year-old son Kevin, who escaped after five months.

For my last five years, I served in a collateral role as a Counterintelligence Profiler in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU-2), deploying to field offices nationwide to provide threat assessments, interview strategy, and real-time behavioral analysis for ongoing national security operations. BAU-2 agents were sought after to consult on the most difficult national security operations, bringing decades of operational experience.

The behavioral methodology I used as a BAU profiler and CI special agent to hunt hostile spies is the same methodology I’ll train your team to use — reading people and situations accurately, and executing under pressure with an incomplete picture.