Who we are
Sean was commissioned as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army after completing the ROTC program at Northeastern University. Deploying to Afghanistan in 2006, he led a Rifle Platoon in combat operations in the Korengal and Pech Valleys of Kunar Province. During a 17-hour firefight to capture a high-value Al-Qaida target, he was awarded the Silver Star. Sean was later selected for an Army Special Missions Unit, working alongside the Intelligence Community on sensitive operations addressing Great Power Competition. He continued his career as a Military Attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Bogotá, Colombia, and Budapest, Hungary. In Colombia, he served as the Assistant Army Attaché to the U.S. Ambassador, providing critical intelligence and defense insights during heightened regional tensions. His intelligence procurement strategies strengthened U.S. Government situational awareness and bilateral defense relations. In Hungary, Sean advised the U.S. Ambassador on Department of Defense, intelligence, and security matters, playing a key role in strengthening strategic relationships with Hungarian military leaders and facilitating over $1 billion in U.S. military hardware acquisitions. As Russia prepared to invade Ukraine, he led the creation of a U.S. military intelligence team delivering daily reports to senior leaders, including the Secretary of Defense and the President. Sean concluded his military career as a Senior Military Advisor at the Defense Intelligence Agency, overseeing operations across 140+ countries and ensuring intelligence platforms critical to national security remained effective and operational.
During his transformation from the military, Sean drew deeply on a network of organizations committed to the well-being of service members and Veterans, including Home Base, Walter Reed’s National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), the USSOCOM Warrior Care Coalition, Warriors 2 Wilderness, and the Vail Veterans Program. Experiencing these programs firsthand gave him a profound understanding of the challenges Veterans face and the healing power of community-driven, multi-day retreats. These insights now guide his leadership as Director of the Moral Injury Network, Moral Compass Federation, where he strengthens partnerships, advances research-informed approaches, and supports organizations delivering transformative, group-based healing experiences for Veterans and first responders focused around moral injury. Sean has collaborated with programs such as Gulf Coast Valor, Surf Brigade, and the William Joiner Institute at UMass Boston and has facilitated national conversations, including the Healing Through Experience panel at the UCLA Next Mission Summit - to elevate best practices in moral-injury recovery.
This journey of service, healing, and community impact naturally evolved into Sean’s next chapter as Co-Founder & CEO of Waves of Honor Foundation. Drawing on his lived experience navigating Veteran transition and his deep engagement with moral-injury work through the Moral Compass Federation, Sean helped establish Waves of Honor to further support Veterans, Intelligence Professionals and First Responders in finding purpose, connection, and resilience. Centered around the restorative power of water, Waves of Honor creates immersive, water-based experiences that help Veterans reconnect with themselves, build community, and heal through movement, reflection, and the calming rhythm of the ocean and waterways. Through these programs, the Foundation empowers participants to thrive holistically by harnessing the natural therapeutic environment of water, providing a unique and deeply healing pathway for reintegration, well-being, and renewed purpose.
Who we are
Dan Sheffer is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of the Waves of Honor Foundation, a Maine-based nonprofit dedicated to reconnecting and rebalancing veterans through water-centered healing, fishing therapy, and community support. Dan leverages a lifetime of leadership, operational expertise, and personal resilience to help veterans rediscover purpose, connection, and stability beyond the uniform.
Dan’s dedication to service began early. He joined the United States Air Force just two weeks after graduating high school in 1994, starting his career in Transportation and deploying to Norway and Italy from his duty stations at RAF Mildenhall in England and McGuire AFB in New Jersey. Influenced by his mentor, he cross-trained into aircrew and served seven years as a C-130 Loadmaster, flying missions throughout Europe and South America.
Following the attacks of 9/11, Dan prepared to separate from military service and pursue a career in law enforcement, until the Air Force offered him a new path. He reenlisted for a position on the Talon II mission in England, a role that placed him at the center of demanding, real-world special operations. Shortly after arriving at the 7th Special Operations Squadron, he deployed to Iraq, where he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor for heroism in flight. Over the course of his career, Dan also received the Combat Action Medal, multiple Air Medals, Aerial Achievement Medals, the Meritorious Service Medal, and several Air Force Commendation Medals, among other honors recognizing his exceptional service.
In 2005, Dan’s life changed irrevocably when his crew perished in a training accident in Albania while he was home on leave. The loss of his brothers; his family; sent him into one of the most difficult chapters of his life. After transitioning into a new role as a C-130 Flight Engineer and completing 14 years of active duty, Dan entered civilian life carrying the emotional weight of that tragedy. It affected relationships, disrupted stability, and pushed him to search for a way forward.
Dan eventually found support through veteran-focused programs, the same kind of compassionate, peer-driven environments he now strives to build. Inspired by their impact, he co-founded the Waves of Honor Foundation to give back, share his story, and create a community where veterans can heal, decompress, and rediscover connection through nature, water, and shared purpose.
Beyond his military career, Dan is deeply committed to personal growth and education. He holds two associate degrees, a bachelor’s degree, and is currently completing his Masters in Cybersecurity. He has earned four ASE certifications, maintained a teaching certification for nearly a decade, and brings a wide range of technical, operational, and instructional experience to the organization.
Dan now lives in York, Maine, with his wife on their horse farm, where he continues to build Waves of Honor into a powerful network of leaders dedicated to healing, resilience, and community.
Waves of Honor Foundation
Why we exist
There is something the ocean does to a person that nothing else can replicate. It does not ask what happened over there. It does not require an explanation of why you are carrying what you are carrying. It simply moves, and in its movement, it gives permission for something in the human body to remember how to do the same.
That is where Waves of Honor begins.
The wound that does not show on any scan
Some wounds are invisible. They do not appear on any scan, and they are not classified in any diagnostic manual with language that quite captures what actually happened. We call this moral injury, and the word injury is exactly right.
Moral injury is what happens when a person acts, witnesses, or fails to prevent something that violates their deepest sense of what is right. It is not the same as PTSD, though they often share the same address. PTSD is rooted in fear. Moral injury is rooted in meaning. It is the fracture that forms when what a person had to do in service of their country, their community, or their duty cannot be reconciled with who they believed themselves to be.
Veterans carry it home from places the rest of us will only ever see on maps. First responders carry it home from the calls they cannot forget. Intelligence professionals carry it in the weight of decisions made in the dark, with consequences they are not permitted to discuss.
These are the people Waves of Honor was built for.
Why the water
The Maine coast is not a backdrop. It is not scenery. It is the reason.
Salt water has a particular relationship with the human nervous system. The rhythm of waves, the physical work of sailing, the undeniable reality of the horizon; these are not metaphors for healing. They are the mechanism. The water makes the body present before the mind is ready to be. And once the body is present, the work of rebuilding meaning can begin.
We did not choose the water because it is beautiful, though it is. We chose it because it works.
What we believe
Hardship, when met with purpose, tends to produce exactly the kind of people a nation actually needs.
The men and women who come to our retreats have already proven that. They answered the call when most did not. They carried what could not be set down. They held the line. And then they came home to a culture that, despite its gratitude, did not always know how to hold the weight they brought back with them.
Waves of Honor exists because that gap is real, and because purpose is not something that can be prescribed. It has to be encountered. It has to be felt in the body. And sometimes, it has to be found on the water, and in the company of people who understand exactly what you are carrying without needing you to explain it.
What we do
Several times a year, along the coast of Maine, we bring small groups of Veterans, First Responders, and Intelligence Professionals together for immersive maritime therapy retreats. The groups are intentionally small. The work is intentionally real.
We do not offer easy answers. We offer the ocean, the company of peers who have served, evidence-based therapeutic programming designed specifically for moral injury, and the rare gift of extended time in a place that is profoundly, uncommonly beautiful.
Some participants arrive skeptical. They leave changed.
Waves of Honor was built by people who understand what it means to carry something invisible for a long time; and who chose, instead of setting it down, to turn it into a door for the next person.
Come find us on the water.