Drew Laboon
Chief Operating Officer
Drew LaBoon is an operator, strategist, and advisor who has built his life and career the hard way; through pressure, failure, and rebuilding from the ground up. His work today focuses on helping organizations scale, operate effectively, and align mission with performance, particularly in healthcare and high-impact environments.
Drew spent 17 years as a Special Operator in the U.S. military, completing multiple combat deployments and leading teams in some of the most demanding conditions imaginable. After leaving active duty, he transitioned into defense contracting, but like many veterans, the shift out of the military came with its own set of challenges.
What followed was a period of struggle that nearly cost him everything. His drinking escalated to the point where he found himself living out of his car, cycling through instability, and searching for a way out. He attended multiple residential treatment centers before finally getting sober in 2019. That turning point didn’t just change his life. It redefined it.
Today, Drew is in long-term recovery and an active member of a 12-step program. Recovery is the foundation of everything he does. It shaped his discipline, his honesty, and his approach to leadership. It also drives a deep passion for helping others, especially fellow veterans and warriors find a path forward.
After getting sober, Drew rebuilt his life from the ground up, starting in frontline roles and working his way into executive leadership. He has since led organizations through growth, acquisitions, and operational transformation, with a focus on building strong teams, improving outcomes, and creating systems that actually work. He is especially focused on the role of technology and data in driving better performance and more meaningful impact.
Drew lives in Oklahoma City with his family and remains grounded in his recovery, his family, and his mission to help others, especially those who have worn the uniform, find their way back.
My Why:
My why is not something I read in a book or learned in a boardroom. It came from hitting the ground hard.
I have done hard things my entire life. Seventeen years as a Special Operator. Combat. Leading people when the stakes were real and failure had consequences. I knew how to push. I knew how to perform. I knew how to carry weight.
And then I came home and damn near lost my life.
Post traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, alcohol, and the slow unraveling of who I was took me to a place I never thought I would go. I drank to shut it off. I drank to sleep. I drank to not feel. And it got to the point where I did not care if I woke up. Suicide was not some distant idea. It was real. It was close.
I felt like a failure. Not just struggling. A failure as a man, a leader, a human being. After everything I had done in uniform, after everything I had pushed through, this was the thing that almost took me out. I was “persona non grata” in my own life!
I went from leading at a high level to living out of my car. I could not look people in the eyes. I could not look myself in the mirror. I bounced through multiple treatment centers trying to figure out how to stay alive, let alone how to live.
In 2019 I got sober. Not because I had it all figured out, but because I ran out of options.
That is where my why was born.
Today, my purpose is simple and it is personal. It is the next warrior.
It is sitting knee to knee with someone who is right where I was. Angry, ashamed, checked out, convinced they are too far gone. It is being able to look them in the eye and say I have been there and actually mean it.
What gets me out of bed in the morning is watching that shift happen. That moment when the light comes back on. When they start to believe they might actually make it. When they lift their head, look someone in the eye again, and start to take their life back one decision at a time.
That is it for me. That is the fuel.
Helping the next warrior find their feet gives my life purpose in a way nothing else ever has. Not the military. Not business. Not titles.
Just one person helping another get back up.
Because I know how close I came to not being here. And I know there are others standing in that same place right now.
And I am not willing to let them fall if I can reach them.
