Ambassadors

A former U.S. Air Force special operations pilot and a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Nolan Peterson is a conflict journalist and author whose adventures have taken him to all seven continents. He is the author of “Why Soldiers Miss War” as well as several fiction collections.

As a war correspondent, Peterson has reported extensively from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He’s also reported from the flight deck of a US aircraft carrier off the coast of Syria, embedded within a migrant caravan crossing Mexico, and retraced the path of Tibetan refugees on a solo hike across the Himalayas from Nepal to China. His work has been published by numerous news outlets, including CNN, Fox News, the BBC, Newsweek, the Heritage Foundation, Coffee or Die Magazine, and many others.

A Florida native, Peterson graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a minor in French. He attended graduate school at the Sorbonne in Paris, France from 2004 from 2006, where he studied politics and French literature. After leaving the Air Force in 2011, Peterson completed a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism where he was a McCormick Foundation fellow.

Peterson’s unique life experiences are the bedrock of his unique writing and journalism style. In addition to his time in the military and work as a journalist, he ran a marathon across a glacier in Antarctica, swam across the Hellespont from Europe to Asia, climbed mountains in the Himalayas, and completed Ironman triathlons. He travelled to all seven continents before age 30.

Peterson lives in Kyiv, Ukraine, with his wife Lilya.