Kevin Kinkade served as a Marine officer with 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, leading a Force Recon platoon through deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2011, in Afghanistan, his platoon fought through the hardest days of his life — including the loss of three of his Marines when a team was overrun.

He started writing about it in country. Sixty pages in, when the story reached that day, he stopped. The pages sat for more than a decade.

Some stories take time to be ready to tell. This one took fifteen years.

In 2013 Kevin transitioned out of the Marine Corps into corporate America. What he found there surprised him: the same leadership problems, wearing different clothes. Teams that needed trust before they'd follow. Decisions that had to be made with incomplete information. People who deserved leaders willing to put them first.

High Ground is the book those sixty pages became — a memoir of combat leadership and an honest accounting of what it translates to (and what it doesn't) when the stakes change from lives to livelihoods.

Kevin lives and works in corporate leadership today. He writes and speaks about resilience, accountability, and leading people through the days that test everything.