Dan has a BA in English from Coe College and a Masters of Fine Arts in English from the University of Iowa. He was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Bronze Star with "V" for valor. He is a novelist, and his novel Glossy Black Cockatoos was the 2010 Colorado Authors' League Award selection for Genre Fiction. Prior to retiring in 2005, Dan spent over thirty years providing process improvement, leadership coaching, team building, and organization development to both government and industry.