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For someone who has literally stood on top of the world, Brian Dickinson (MBA, 2003) is remarkably down to earth.

“If anyone wants to be put on a pedestal,” he says, “they should probably be kicked off that pedestal.”

While he may eschew the spotlight, Dickinson understands that he is part of a bigger narrative. His experiences have included a miraculous survival on Mount Everest, a military career dedicated to saving lives and, most recently, documenting the experiences of military service members and veterans.

Here’s how Dickinson became a survivor and a storyteller. 

Dickinson’s own story started in a small southern Oregon town where he excelled in soccer and art. Maybe he would’ve pursued a college degree or scholarship along one of those tracks, except that he ultimately chose to follow his grandfather, father and brother’s example and join the military. He enlisted in the Navy out of high school.

Not content with a “normal kind of job,” Dickinson got into Special Operations and embarked on a six-year Navy career as an aviation rescue swimmer. He was deployed twice for six months at a time during his service. These experiences taught him about “commitment, uncomfortableness and grit to push through long deployments” — vital lessons that would serve him well later.   

Dickinson knew, however, that he didn’t want to miss out on family life, and he eventually left the military. Once out, he earned his bachelor’s degree and followed his wife, JoAnna, to Seattle, where she began a master’s program at University of Washington. This ignited Dickinson’s competitive spirit, and he decided to likewise pursue a master’s degree.

“She was getting her master’s,” he says. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he adds, “So, you know, I couldn’t have her one up me.”

Dickinson found ���۴�ý. He was working full time managing a team at an online travel-services provider and found that UOPX’s flexibility made going back to school for his MBA a viable option.

The program took him 2½ years to complete, and Dickinson began to implement the skills he’d learned. He switched jobs, working as a presales engineer with one of the biggest technology companies in the world (and had one of the biggest online retailers in the world as a client).

Even with the success, Dickinson was bored. In his previous life as an aviation rescue swimmer, he says, he’d jump out of helicopters. By comparison, sitting behind a desk felt lackluster. “I was missing something core in my life,” he says. 

Fortunately for Dickinson, the Cascade Range was in his veritable backyard. He started climbing and wanted to keep climbing — up to the highest peaks across the seven continents. His sense of adventure was rekindled. 

JoAnna was an amazing support. 

Naturally, there were difficult days. During those times, when every minute was laced with anxiety about his safety, JoAnna comforted herself knowing that “he always tried to minimize [the risks] and be prepared for everything within his control. For the things out of his control — which was a lot — I had to trust God to protect him, but also our children and myself if things didn’t go as desired, trust that we would be OK,” she says.

On May 15, 2011, their faith was put to the ultimate test when Dickinson summitted the highest peak in the world: Mount Everest. His sherpa friend and fellow climber had fallen ill at 28,000 feet, and Dickinson instructed him to stay behind while he continued the last thousand feet alone. This was a remarkable achievement, but the real miracle came on the descent.

After making a radio call and grabbing a snack, Dickinson began to head down. Then, . He tried to not overthink it, but the reality was grim. “I knew I was probably not going to survive, but I did everything I could to get back to my family,” he says. “If you are going to die, you might as well try to survive.”

Dickinson slowly made his way downward, hand over hand, as he tried to get back to camp. What should have taken three hours took seven. He ran out of oxygen and “witnessed a miracle” as he painfully made his way down the mountain.

As Dickinson puts it, he “never felt alone,” even in the darkness of being blinded on the mountain. At the time, he wasn’t sure what he sensed and tried to keep going as he had been trained. Looking back, he believes it was God’s divine presence alongside him. “He was guiding me to safety,” he says.

Dickinson made it, but by the time he reached safety, he had two black eyes, had lost 20 pounds and still faced a two-day journey to base camp and 38 miles by foot to reach the airport so he could fly home. 

The experience was equally terrifying and wonderful. He had survived the unthinkable and arrived home with celebrity status. Yet it was too much too fast.

“I’m still dealing with the trauma, the PTSD,” he shares. While coping with that, wondering all the while, Why am I alive?, Dickinson was doing the circuit. He appeared on CNN with and photographers were constant and demanding. Dickinson needed to “pump the brakes.”

Over time, he found an outlet blogging about the experience for Climbing Magazine. Eventually, he used much of that work as the outline for his book Blind Descent.

JoAnna was only mildly surprised when he published the first book. He had captured much of his story on the blog, so he had a solid foundation to build upon. “The end result, the core of it, of course,” says Dickinson, “took a while to get out. The process of writing a book is ridiculous,” he says, “because you don’t write a book. You rewrite a book.”

The best writing advice Dickinson received was: “Just write, because you are going to edit no matter what. Just get it out! There is so much in your head.”

Dickinson also started motivational speaking. At first, the presentations were challenging. But eventually, he learned to sculpt his story in a way that was impactful but not retriggering of his trauma.

“I am a sympathy puker and a sympathy crier,” he says. “I could hear someone in the audience gasp, and then that could trigger me.” Through trial and error, Dickinson found his rhythm. He learned to “see a pattern of when I would be triggered” and gave himself permission to pause. “Just take a sip of water or something, then get through it.”

The motivational speaking not only inspired audiences, but it surfaced a recurring question that prompted Dickinson to write another book. The question Dickinson receives most frequently is, “How didn’t you panic up there?”

The answer is complicated and one that Dickinson investigates in his recently published book, Calm in the Chaos: True Tales from Elite U.S. Navy Aviation Rescue Swimmers.

“In the military,” he begins, “our job is never to panic. Our job is to jump out of helicopters, middle of the ocean, whatever the conditions, whatever wildlife is in the ocean waiting for us and rescue someone who has been ejected from an aircraft, or you name the scenario, and they are panicked.”

This time, Dickinson didn’t want to write another book about himself. “I wanted a book about us because there’s never been a book about the Navy aviation rescue swimmers.”

Dickinson spent the next three years interviewing people who were part of the Apollo 13 recovery days, veterans of the Vietnam and Gulf wars, Hurricane Katrina survivors, and others.

He mixed in some of his own experiences and leaned on his wife for input too. She is “intertwined in every chapter, sharing her wisdom,” he says, acknowledging how both her faith and her counseling experience allows for a softer complement to his approach.

One of his most memorable interviews happened early in the process when he spoke with a highly decorated Navy air crewman. The stories were incredible, but when the Navy veteran died of a heart attack just a month later, his contribution became even more poignant. “It was such a gift to have the conversation and be able to share his story with the world,” Dickinson says.

No two stories are the same, and Dickinson was mindful about sharing the heart of each story without unpacking too much of the trauma. In fact, there was an unexpected silver lining for Dickinson in writing this book. It turns out that interviewing helped him work through some of his trauma, experiences and feelings that he’d tucked away in a “mental box.”

“I didn’t really deal with a lot of the trauma I was facing on a daily basis,” he shares. “By doing [the interviews], this was like my therapy as well.”

He paused a few times for medication, counseling and coping with his own PTSD. The results, he hopes, are worth it.  

“In the rescue swimmer community, people are super-pumped,” he says, “because there’s never been a book, and now their stories are being told — and they want another book.”

JoAnna agrees. It is “so rewarding to see the work in a finished product and receive positive feedback once people start to read it and review it,” she says.

Even with two published books and a third nearly done (this one a thriller that he works on every morning), Dickinson doesn’t consider himself an author. Of course, part of that may be due to his refusal to be pigeonholed. He works full time for a tech company, and he’s considering another attempt at turning Blind Descent into a movie. (The first fizzled when he felt like his story was being changed into something else.)

“They are very respectful of me being involved with the script writing,” Dickinson says of the current creative team he’s talking with.

Whatever transpires, Dickinson’s priorities remain steadfast: to pull back the curtain on the sacrifices and experiences of our nation’s heroes with the hope that those stories can shape the overarching narrative.

“If all people get is a cool, entertaining rescue story, then I failed,” he says. Instead, he hopes that his work will help readers “abstract a small something from here and apply it to their own lives and get through their own personal situations.” Healing and helping, after all, have become his life’s work.