Chair Update - June 2026

Greetings Naval Intelligence Professionals, and a happy summer to you and yours!

I hope you all had a wonderful spring and managed to get some quality time with loved ones. I’ve noted quite a few graduation celebrations from our members in their personal social media posts—a special congratulations to all of you enjoying commemorating those priceless life milestones! The Sharps had some very special joy over the past several months as well. Our sons in Oregon had been seeking a child through an open adoption service for a couple of years now, and on the March 6th they welcomed Jackson Jonathan Lee Ehlers-Sharp into their loving home. I’ll be out there in a couple of weeks (again) to celebrate his second birthday and his legally binding addition to the family. With one grandson in Oregon and one in Florida, “Papi-G” Sharp is logging some frequent flyer miles with a big smile on his face and nothing but pure joy and love in his heart!

I want to start this update by once again thanking everyone who’s involved in supporting ongoing operations. We thank you and your families for your service and sacrifices, and all you do for our nation. There’s a lot going on across the globe, and Naval Intelligence professionals remain involved in every aspect of our nation’s most important operations. We’re extremely proud and appreciative of all those “standing the watch” around the clock!

Turning to our own organization, as you’ll note from this newsletter, NIP has been extremely busy over the past several months. For this update, I’ll highlight some of “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” However, I’ll start with the bad (or not so good), in order to end with some positive notes.

THE BAD

As you may or may not be tracking, we continue to have some ongoing technical issues in our NIP communications preventing us from achieving one of most important objectives—keeping all of us connected and informed. A high percentage of our membership reports not receiving ALLNIP group emails, which is one of our primary means of communications. Our ALLNIP messages are currently sent out with the following sender email account: Naval.Intelligence.Pros@gmail.com. This profile apparently causes Gmail and possibly other receiving email systems to mark much of our correspondence as spam. I take personal responsibility for our current shortfalls and wanted to assure you that we are taking actions to correct our deficiencies. We’ll be changing some of our domain and email address configurations shortly to get ourselves once again communicating, coordinating, and collaborating to our own high standards. While we implement some necessary changes, I wanted to once again share the following notification of the ongoing problem and temporary fixes (included in the latest READBOOK) we’ve been attempting to share with everyone. Help us, help you. 

THE UGLY

A second order effect of our emails not reaching our intended audience has been an increase in the number of individuals not renewing their memberships. Prior to a membership expiring, our system sends out a series of reminders letting the member know that they need to renew. However, we’re pretty sure that many intended recipients aren’t seeing those notifications and their membership is expiring without them realizing it has. When we get our configuration fixed, we’ll conduct a focused operation to notify all whose membership has lapsed. In the meantime, if you’re not sure whether your membership is current, I recommend confirming.

THE GOOD

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I want to end with some positive notes. Despite our challenges in communications and membership registrations, we had a lot of great events during the spring, and we already have plans for many more throughout the summer! 

This newsletter highlights a few activities that occurred in the D.C. area and throughout the chapters—and there were even more events that you can read about on our website. Two of my personal favorites (not captured in this newsletter) that I wanted to highlight were recognizing some of our great sailors during the ONI birthday celebration, and our Red Tie Luncheon. You can read about both of those special events on our website through the links here.  

Additionally, I want to “double tap” a couple of events mentioned in the newsletter:

First, I was down in Virginia Beach last month to participate in a great event hosted by The Headstrong Project focused on providing mental health treatment to our veterans, service members and family members connected to their care—an important, noble, and righteous cause. I provided very short notice to our Hampton Roads Chapter leadership team that I’d be in the area and would love to see people. They quickly tapped into their crisis planning experience and expertise, and organized a phenomenal happy hour made extra special by the participation of some of our current NIOBC students. (Of note, you’ll see in the newsletter and on our website that they have another gathering planned for this month). I’m excited by this renewed activity in Hampton Roads in general, and more specifically the strengthening of our connection to the schoolhouse. In a related note, NIOBC students will once again be doing a tour of Washington, D.C. intelligence commands as part of their curriculum, and our Capital Chapter is looking forward to interacting with them during their visit. Our goal is to increase the number of NIOBC graduates joining NIP as they leave the schoolhouse and getting them active in the Chapter activities where they’re first assigned. These are our community’s future leaders, and having met a bunch of our NIOBC students, I can tell you that our future remains extremely bright!

Second, yesterday morning I signed and mailed congratulatory letters to all our NIP scholarship awardees that you see listed in the newsletter. The talent represented by those selected and the applicants not selected is simply eye watering and gives me great hope and confidence for our future. Although we face a lot of security challenges (job security…perhaps too much job security?), we continue to attract our nation’s best and brightest. And I’m convinced that those who are standing the watch and those we’re attracting to lives of service are up to the task.

Speaking of standing the watch, we are rapidly approaching the 25th anniversary of the attack on our nation and our personal loss of shipmates standing the watch in the Pentagon. As always, we will be coming together in September to remember and honor their service and ultimate sacrifice. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years—seems like such a long time ago…and yet it seems like just yesterday. You would think that the remembrance of that day would get easier with time, but I know for many, including me, it doesn’t. Nor should it. 

We will never forget.

Enjoy your summer, and make time with shipmates, friends, and family a priority. What we spend our time doing matters…or it should. There’s nothing more important than taking care of yourselves and others!