How I Got Here: Lessons from Rear Adm. Michael E. Platt

In another life, Rear Adm. Michael E. Platt might have been an artist. The military was not a part of his plans—until his college roommate recommended what is now known as the College Student Pre-commissioning Initiative (CSPI). The first CSPI graduate to become a flag officer, Platt is a seasoned leader and student of leadership. He knows firsthand the value of the service’s Senior Education and Fellowships Program (SEFP). 
 
This article is the first in a series of interviews with Coast Guard senior leaders on their careers and how their experiences with SEFP have shaped their time in the service. All interviews have been edited for clarity and length. 
 
MyCG: Let's start with your background and what drew you to the Coast Guard.  
 
Rear Adm. Michael Platt: It was a confluence of things that made me realize that the Coast Guard was the best option. In college, I was studying aviation while working as a waiter at a movie theater.  
 
It appeared that my roommate at the time was not working at all, but he was wearing a uniform once a week. One day, he said, “hey, why don't you consider joining the Coast Guard? You could be a pilot in the Coast Guard since you're studying aviation.” 
 
I didn’t want to join the military. He said, “the Coast Guard is different.” And he started talking to me about it and suggested I meet with a recruiter. As my roommate told me about the Coast Guard, I started to think about growing up in Boston and the opportunities I had to see the service in action. 
 
My grandfather once took my brother and me to see a parade of tall ships during our Nation's bicentennial, including the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle. He was pointing at the Eagle and talking about it, but I was looking up in the sky at a Coast Guard H-3 helicopter, and I was fascinated by it.  
 
Back to my time in college, I talked to the recruiter and was satisfied with our conversation. And I knew that military flight training is perhaps the best type of flight training you can get—and you don’t have to pay for it. They pay you as an officer while you're getting the training. So, I knew that's what I wanted to do.  

You're the first alumnus of CSPI to become a flag officer. Can you reflect on the program and its influence on your career? 
 
It started out as the Minority Officer Recruiting Effort (MORE) and was initially a partnership between the Coast Guard and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). I was at Hampton University, a private HBCU in Hampton, Va.  
 
The program was a perfect gateway to opportunity. The timing of many things and the coincidence of having a roommate in a program was a confluence of events that aligned perfectly.  
 
You mentioned that the Coast Guard was not initially on your radar. Did you have another career in mind before you joined the service? 
 
I always had an interest in aviation. My father was enlisted in the Air Force, but I had other interests as an adolescent, including architecture, art, and photography. I wanted to go to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and study some type of art, but my mother, a career Massachusetts State Police Trooper, encouraged the pursuit of additional interests I had. She was from a different generation that believed in getting a job and keeping it for 30 years. She wanted me to pursue my other interests, something that I could make a career out of. She got me a summer job as a dispatcher for a small airline that flew to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.  
 
In college, I was studying to be an air traffic controller. I didn't think I could be a pilot. Perhaps I didn't see a pilot who looked like me. My roommate encouraged me to pursue being a pilot in the Coast Guard. 
 
The dynamic of going to an HBCU—where I had African American men and women from across the country who were there to make something out of their lives—also played a role. That's not what you see in the press and in the news—certainly not from the community that I grew up in. So, the dynamic of an HBCU helped me realize that I could do whatever I want in this world, and then the Coast Guard opportunity came along.  
 
I’d like to pivot to your graduate experience and to SEFP. Why did you decide to go to graduate school, and how did you settle on the American Military University and the National War College? 
 
I went to the American Military University (AMU) because I knew that I needed to improve my promotability in the Coast Guard. I enrolled based on a recommendation from a pilot friend of mine who was studying at AMU. I think tuition assistance paid for all of it. I specialized in homeland security because of its relevance to the Coast Guard’s work.  
 
Years later, I got an opportunity to apply to SEFP. I had a boss at the time who I consider a mentor, then-Capt. Kevin Lunday. He attended the National War College and recommended I add the school to my list of SEFPs for consideration while applying. He even arranged a meeting for me with a National War College professor which gave me a better understanding of the school and curriculum. I feel blessed to have had his mentorship to guide me to an exceptional educational opportunity. 
 
You’re also an alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Seminar XXI program. What drew you there? How was the experience, and how has it shaped your career? 

I took her advice, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in the program. They have experts speak to the cohort about geopolitical issues, and then you have the opportunity to engage with them at evening social events. It was fantastic.  
 
Is there any discussion, session, or reading that still sits with you?  
 
The seminar opened my eyes to new topics, including food security. I never realized the challenge of food security across the world. The program made me realize how blessed and fortunate we are in our country. It inspired me to learn more about different regions of the world. 
 
On the subject of leadership, I'm curious what great leadership means to you. 
 
Leadership is one of those things that we know when we feel it. We can feel great leadership. But I would say that leadership can be an individual who through their actions inspires people to dream better, to learn better, and to want to become better at what they do.  
 
Has your understanding of what defines great leadership evolved over your career? 
 
It’s evolved a little bit; I’ve realized that the leadership that you exercise sometimes must be adjusted depending on who you're leading. I learned that later in my career. As I got older, I realized that there's a generational divide between me and the younger workforce. And I had to figure out how to communicate to a younger workforce.  
 
I realized that it is important for me to hear from them. They want to be more involved in some of the decision making than I ever did. When I was in their place, I took orders from the boss and carried them out. I’ve learned that there are ways to involve people and let them have a voice in some processes and decisions. That way, they feel valued and that they're being heard. Sometimes, they have good suggestions on how to handle an issue. 
 
How do you reflect on the way mentorship has shaped your career at the Coast Guard? 
 
There have always been people in the Coast Guard who were willing to help me, from my very first commanding officer in Puerto Rico in the 1990s. He demonstrated a strong interest in supporting me to achieve my goals. I still think about him. 
 
He's since passed away. His name was Capt. Greg Magee, and I'll never forget him. I'll never forget the way that he made me feel and how supportive he was. 
 
You’ve mentioned key decisions that have had big impacts on your career. What’s the best piece of career advice you've ever received? 
 
In my senior years, a piece of advice that I've really leaned on is not career advice, it's just general leadership advice. Adm. Lunday once told me, “You need to trust your instincts.”  
 
I had never had anybody say that to me before. I was a little shocked by it because I thought, that must mean that he trusts my instincts. And he knows that I've had enough experience that I need to trust my instincts. 
 
I've followed that advice many times. I look back at times when I realized my decision was heavily influenced by my instincts, and I can see that I made the right choice. 
 
As you reflect on your time in the service, is there a piece of career advice you wish you received? 
 
I don't have any regrets in my career, so I can't think of any advice that I wish I had received, but one piece of advice that I got later in my career is that you can be replaced. As officers in the Coast Guard, we feel like we're the ones to make the difference. I think that for the sake of our ability to have work-life balance and to be able to have self-care, we have to realize that we can be replaced. We need to take care of ourselves; we can't drive ourselves into the ground every day. 
 
I think that a lot of folks probably need that advice.  
 
I would say, though, going back to the best piece of career advice I’ve ever received—one of the things that Adm. Linda Fagan says is, “you have to leave some gas in the tank.” I like that a lot; I saw her do that as a leader. We can't drive ourselves into the ground every day because we don't know what's around the corner that's going to require us to be up for 18 hours at a time. You have to keep yourself well rested.  

-USCG-