In a back room on March 1, amid U.S. Navy and business dignitaries, friends and family, Navy Reserve officer Douglas Beck was awarded a Bronze Star for service in Iraq and Afghanistan. He served as an intelligence officer with a joint special operations task force charged with capturing or eliminating senior Al-Qaeda and Taliban targets and destroying terrorist networks.
In attendance were naval Vice Adm. (ret.) Philip Quast, Chuck Schwab, founder and chair of Charles Schwab, pub owners Lennie and Christine Mendonca, and others.
  
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His international service began with the Japan Deck of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. In 1994, he joined McKinsey & Company, eventually becoming a partner and co-leader of McKinsey’s global strategy practice.
But in 1995, seeking to serve his country and contribute to public service, he joined the Navy as a civilian, and was commissioned in 1997. “I was trying to think about the best way I could learn and contribute the most in the arena of international affairs and international economy.”
His career in the reserves centered in the Pacific Theater: Hawaii, Asia, Australia and the Pacific Ocean.
He was mobilized with the task force in late 2006 and sent to Iraq, and to Afghanistan twice in 2007. That brought him a Combat Action Ribbon.
Beck acknowledged friends who helped his wife, Kim, who finished her doctorate at Stanford University and raised their twin boy and girl while he was gone.
“I view her as the hero of the situation,” he said, since he’d left her with 14-month-old twins and returned to find “happy, healthy, well-adjusted 2-year-olds” though the family had moved often during his absence and her parents had stepped in to help.
He also credits friends who sent “care packages” to him while he was overseas. “People wonder if that makes a difference” to deployed personnel, he said. “It makes a huge difference. You’re on another planet there, and you open up a box and you can see home for a second.”
Beck feared for both his life and his comrades. “The opportunity to serve alongside the people I served with there was one of the greatest honors of my life,” he said.
Now, a chief strategy officer with Schwab which he joined in 2005, he is a member of Schwab’s operating council and on the boards of the American Association of Rhodes Scholars, Red Cross of the Bay Area, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy and Advisory Board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“I want to contribute however I can,” he said.
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