USMC veteran, author, and entrepreneur Bob Darling retired from the Marine Corps in 2007 after more than 20 years of distinguished active duty service. An attack helicopter pilot in both Desert Shield and Desert Storm during the first Gulf War, Lieutenant Colonel Darling also supported the Somalia effort Operation Restore Hope. 

In 1998, he was selected to fly as a presidential pilot with Marine Helicopter Squadron One and in 2000, was chosen to work for the White House Military Office, Airlift Operations Department charged with organizing logistical aspects of all travel for The White House. It was in that capacity that Lt. Col. Darling supported President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) on September 11, 2001. Drawing upon his eyewitness account of the unprecedented actions that took place within PEOC on 9-11, Bob authored the book 24 Hours Inside the President’s Bunker, 9/11/01: The White House.

As an entrepreneur, he established and later sold Quantitative Analytics LLC, a Virginia-based consulting firm focused on helping organizations streamline business processes and report meaningful metrics aligned to measurement of strategic goals. He is a sought-after speaker in crisis leadership and decision making and founded Flash Emergency Management LLC, a crisis training and communication tech firm and developer of FLASH-RTC, a business continuity application designed to help business leaders lead their people and their organizations through critical events.

Bob holds a Bachelor of Science degree in aviation from Liberty University; a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Iona College; and an MBA in financial management from the Naval Postgraduate School.