Captain Dan Willis (ret.) is an international instructor in the areas of trauma, posttraumatic stress, and the process of healing. The founder of First Responder Wellness, he provides wellness training to first-responder agencies throughout North America. He also instructs through the International Academy of Public Safety and the National Command and Staff College and was an instructor at the San Diego Police Academy for twelve years. For nearly thirty years, Captain Willis served as a police officer for the La Mesa Police Department near San Diego, California. He was a homicide, child molestation, sexual assault, and crimes of violence detective for nine years; a SWAT commander; and the developer and coordinator of the police department’s wellness program. He graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor of science degree in criminal justice, and he graduated from the FBI’s National Academy for senior police managers in Quantico, Virginia, where he studied wellness and resilience strategies from the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. Captain Willis was La Mesa’s Officer of the Year twice within four years, was nominated as Detective of the Year for the State of California, and was nominated as Homicide Detective of the Year by the California Homicide Investigators Association. At the time of this writing, Captain Willis has given over three hundred training presentations in thirty-four states and Canada. He lives in San Diego, California.
