Major Stephen Buchanan

“It’s Thanksgiving and Steve Buchanan’s two young children are half-heartedly debating what a cranberry is while engrossed in Wii games. It’s warm, it’s festive, and it’s almost perfect; but he’s not there. Instead, Steve is on the opposite side of the world living in a tent on an airbase in Afghanistan, sleeping on a bunk which he visits roughly six hours a night. Luckily, his Forward Operating Base rarely gets shelled and his 15 roommates sleep soundly.”

With three combat tours as an Army Ranger under his belt, this scenario is common in the life of Major Steve Buchanan. Most recently, Steve led a team of NATO and Afghan officers in a difficult effort to secure Afghanistan’s 5,529km border region, during which his team sacrificed personal safety to bring democracy to this war-torn country.

But Steve has always been a soldier. Like most of his West Point peers, he was the high school student body president, a boy-scout and 3-sport varsity athlete. And now, after 10 years in the military, he is going back to school to earn a law degree from the University of Washington. Passionate about government service and eager to represent the values of veterans and servicemembers, Steve intends to one day enter public office as a community leader at the local or state level.