No American left behind: The life of Tampa rescue guru Bryan Stern

Good leaders, according to basic management protocol, give credit to their team and people around them. Even better leaders genuinely mean it.

Then there’s Bryan Stern.

For the last three years, Stern has led a team of highly-specialized people doing unfathomably risky work in some of the world’s most dangerous places. First through an organization dubbed Project Dynamo and more recently through the Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, both based in Tampa, Stern and his cohorts, some 70 people, are essentially last-option rescue all-stars. In three years Stern, 44, and his teams have executed 600 missions and rescued more than 7,000 people, who, due to war, fire, hurricanes and more, can’t get out of where they are. Hotspots Stern and his team have been to range from Hawaii to Haiti, Russia to Ukraine and, of late, the Middle East.