A Veterans Day conversation with Bryan Stern, founder of Grey Bull Rescue
In honor of Veterans Day, the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston welcomes a man who never stopped serving.
Bryan Stern is a combat veteran and crisis response leader with more than 25 years of service in the U.S. Army and Navy. He is a Purple Heart recipient, 9/11 survivor and first responder who has led special operations, hostage rescues, and evacuation missions behind enemy lines in some of the world’s most dangerous places, with expertise in counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, critical technology protection, and unconventional warfare.
When he left the military, he kept doing the same work: getting people out of places no one else can reach.
Last December, weeks after being named the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was in hiding inside her own country. After the 2024 presidential election, the opposition published the tally sheets proving its candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, won by a wide margin. The regime-controlled electoral council still declared Nicolás Maduro the winner and denied the elections were rigged. Machado had spent nearly a year evading authorities who were searching for her. When an earlier attempt to get her out failed, her team called Bryan Stern.
That mission is one chapter in the story of Grey Bull Rescue, the veteran-led nonprofit Stern founded and leads. Grey Bull works in what it calls the “grey space,” where the U.S. government has little or no presence. Its teams have rescued and evacuated Americans and allies from behind Russian front lines in Ukraine, from war-torn Syria, Gaza, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and from natural disasters at home and abroad. Its cases include hostages, kidnapping victims, and political figures at risk. Its mission is simple: save lives anytime, anywhere, under any conditions, at the “speed of need.”
