Colonel (Retired) Ed Croot was an Army special forces officer, from Long Valley, NJ. He and wife Tracy have two sons, Scout (20) and Zach (19), a daughter Kaylee (17), and live in Fayetteville, NC.
He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh (B.A. Business / B.S. Psychology), Army School of Advanced Military Studies (M.A. Theater Level Operations), and Kansas State University (M.S. Education). Recently as a Fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, he won the U.S. Army War College 2020 Special Operations Research and Writing Award for his work titled “There is an Identity Crisis in Special Forces”.
COL (R) Croot joined the Army in 1995, earning his commission through ROTC. He has commanded at the company and battalion level and served on operational assignments in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Zambia, Iraq, Bangladesh, South Korea and Jordan. He has interagency and policy experience from two U.S. embassy assignments in Sanaa (Yemen) and Dhaka (Bangladesh) and multinational experience on both a UN and NATO staff.
His most recent assignments were as the Operations Officer (SOJ3) for Special Operations Command – PACIFIC (SOCPAC), responsible for all U.S. Special Operations across the Indo-Pacific Theater and the Commander’s Initiative Group Director (CIG) at the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Fort Bragg, NC.
He is a widely recognized expert, and in demand by senior leaders, to guide their organizations through a design methodology that frames the problem, builds a strategy, reorganizes the team, and operationalizes the solution.