Our first speaker this month is Rear Admiral Kent Davis, U.S. Navy, Retired. Kent is currently the CEO of Vets Recover, a non-profit corporation that provides comprehensive mental health services to military service members, veterans, first responders, and their families in Alabama. A native of Montgomery, Kent also grew up in Atlanta and New Orleans. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Louisiana State University and a Juris Doctor degree from Georgia State University, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of Law Review.

Kent completed nearly 31 years of active and reserve military service in 2016. He began his Navy career aboard the World War II battleship USS Missouri, which was recommissioned in the 1980s. He has had a long and varied career. His assignments included: Naval Air Station Atlanta, aboard the aircraft carrier USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, at the U.S. Navy Office of Information, at U.S. Central Command Headquarters, Tampa, and U.S. Joint Forces Headquarters, Norfolk, Virginia. Further, he was assigned to the U.S. Sixth Fleet in Italy and at the Pentagon. He completed an interservice transfer to the U.S. Army in the 1990s, where he served as a military attorney. In 2006 and 2012, he completed lengthy combat deployments in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, before retiring in 2016 as the Vice Chief of Information for the Navy.

Prior to his current position, he served as Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs for five years. Other civilian employment includes serving as the first civilian Director of Communication and Outreach at Air University, as well as Director of Economic Development and External Affairs, and later as City Manager of Anniston, Alabama. He has also worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and as an attorney at the law firm of King & Spalding in Atlanta.

Kent and his wife of 36 years live in Montgomery. His wife, Lisa, is also a retired Navy veteran. They have two adult children.