One community. Three organizations.
ERETAI is one community served by three organizations, each answering to someone different.
ERETAI (AIR-ih-tie)
In ancient Greek, the eretai were the oarsmen of a trireme: unseen, synchronized, and essential. Nobody rowed for himself. The oarsmen lived to serve the ship, and the ship carried all of them.
That is the posture the schools teach and the one their graduates carry: head down, blade in the water, pulling for the team. Our closing words come from it.
Row well and live.
Put any two under one roof and one bends the other.
So each has its own job, its own reason to exist, and its own answer to whom it serves.
The ERETAI Foundation
A community forged in shared discipline should not be set adrift after graduation.
The Foundation connects military-educated operational planners and strategists to each other, through ERETAI Connect and ERETAI Chapters, and to the world, through ERETAI Commons.
Answers to the community it serves and to the public that educated it.
The ERETAI Institute
No planner’s talent should go to waste.
The Institute will expand the planner-strategist’s impact beyond national defense, by enhancing already impressive skills (Calibrate) and introducing planners to opportunities outside the familiar (Continue). A body of industry professionals who know and support this talent (Compass) will guide its work to keep it relevant.
Answers to the mission.
VisitThe ERETAI Group
No worthy vision should fail for want of planning.
The Group brings military-educated operational planners and strategists to organizations, so that leaders’ vision becomes plans their people can actually execute (Consulting), partnerships with experts in national security (Conduit), and new ways for leaders to think about wicked problems (Coaching).
Answers to its clients. Separately owned. Operates ERETAI Connect for the community today.
VisitWe built this because we lived it.
From the founder
Eric Fowler, PhD · Founder, The ERETAI Group · Colonel, US Army (Ret.) · SAMS and JAWS graduate · Former Director, Joint Advanced Warfighting School, 2023 to 2026
I was one of the school directors. I could not muster an alumni association. There was no way to resource one with the time, talent, or finances to make it work, and in uniform I was part of the Department of Defense, officially part of the problem. Volunteers and spreadsheets were what we had, and I fault no one for it. The Department has other priorities. The cards are simply stacked against us.
It wasn’t until I was out, and could form proper legal entities, that I could build the infrastructure we needed. The Army’s strategists had already shown it can be done: the Army Strategist Association has served Army strategists for years, and it is the inspiration for this Foundation. To really solve the problem, I had to stop thinking of it as a JAWS problem, or even a JAWS-related problem, and see it as a problem above any one program, any one service, and any one community. It is a we problem, and the most damning part of it is that we don’t know who each other are. So we had to make it bigger. Someone with a vision for a support structure with staying power had to build an institution, three of them in fact, that could keep investing in this national treasure so that we, the public, keep getting the most out of it.
All it takes is a little competence, character, and commitment.
He speaks for himself, not for the Department of Defense or National Defense University. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense, National Defense University, or the U.S. Government. The Army Strategist Association is an independent organization and is not affiliated with ERETAI.
The vision is three. The organization, today, is one.
The ERETAI Group, LLC operates today. It runs ERETAI Connect and hosts this site.
The ERETAI Foundation is in formation: a Virginia nonstock corporation being organized by its founder and an interim board, independent of the Department of Defense and of the schools. It is not yet accepting contributions. A foundation, governed by the community and answerable to it, is how the community outlasts its founder, any one school, and any one class.
The ERETAI Institute is planned for 2029.
Questions: info@eretai.org
Your seat is waiting. Come home.
Now row well in a new direction.
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