The Disciplined Professional
Don't React. Respond.

Dan Edwards has spent his career doing two things simultaneously that most people consider incompatible. For thirty-three and a half years he served as a reserve police officer with the Garden Grove Police Department in Orange County, California — working patrol, gang suppression, bicycle patrol, background investigations, and field training. At the same time, he built a career as a CPA, Managing Director, and business consultant, working with organizations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies across multiple industries.

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Not sequentially. At the same time.

 

What he discovered across those parallel careers became the foundation of his book, Don't React. Respond.: A First Responder's System for Business Leadership. The discipline that makes first responders unshakeable under pressure — the training, the planning, the communication protocols, the partnership structures — is the same discipline that makes business professionals perform at their best when everything is on the line. That system is learnable, buildable, and available to any professional willing to invest in it before the pressure arrives.

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Dan is a three-time Reserve Officer of the Year with the Garden Grove Police Department and the recipient of the Lifesaving Medal — awarded after he and his partner applied a chest seal to a stabbing victim on a hotel parking lot, saving the man's life. He retired from the department on March 31, 2022, after thirty-three and a half years of service. The first responder in him did not retire. It found a new assignment through volunteer work with the City's Community Emergency Response Team and disaster relief with Team Rubicon.

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In his business career, Dan is a Managing Director at a large national CPA and consulting firm, a licensed CPA in California, and an adjunct professor of business at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa, California, where he teaches accounting and business leadership principles. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Accounting from Vanguard University and a Master of Arts in Management and Leadership from Liberty University.

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He has delivered presentations at technical and professional development events across the country. He lives in Southern California with his wife Lisa. They have four adult children and grandchildren.