James Johnston

A husband and father of three boys who has spent seventeen years in the Army, thirteen of them in the Special Forces, James completed seven combat tours between Iraq and Afghanistan, serving his last nine years as a Special Mission Unit Medic and Team SGT. James learned a tremendous amount about life, combat and trauma medicine over the last decade-plus of war. James chose to continue his education by becoming a physician in 2005 after a close friend was killed while they were on target in Iraq.

James attended school for seven years at night and in between deployments to get into medical school and is currently on the path to becoming an M.D. at Quillen College of Medicine. John wants to become an emergency physician and stay connected an relevant in military operational medicine. As a Tillman Scholar James wants to create a non-profit organization to help Special Forces (SF) Medics translate their experience into academic relevance. The goal is to document experience, lessons and training that needs to be passed on to all future medics to decrease the mortality of soldiers on the battlefield.