Wisconsin Farmer Becomes Spy

Patrick Campbell shares his journey from a humble Wisconsin farm upbringing to working in intelligence and eventually tech.

"I grew up in Wisconsin, literally milking cows as a kid. My dad has no idea what I do - he's just confused, he thinks I'm being a tax evader moving to Puerto Rico. We were blue collar.

After school, I moved to DC and worked in NSA as an intel analyst. Best way to put it is that was like Jack Ryan's desk job - none of the cool stuff. I did have weapons and defensive driving training, which is kind of cool. The defensive driving training is actually so much more useful than the weapons training in my real life.

It was the best career start in first principles thinking and thinking about targets. Then I worked in tech in Boston, and that's when I got into the business space."