About the Team
Chris Hossfeld | Founder & CEO
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Chris began his Army career after graduating from Washington State University in 1996, drawn to a life of service, leadership, and continuous learning. Over the next 24 years, he led across the institutional, force-generating, and operational Army—culminating in four combat deployments and a deep understanding of how teams perform under pressure. His final assignment at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, brought his passion for learning full circle. He savored this last assignment helping senior leaders think critically about history, leadership, and the art of decision-making. Many of his leadership insights were refined walking the ground at Gettysburg, exploring how terrain, time, and human choice converge on the battlefield.
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After retiring from the Army, Chris joined the University of Texas at Austin, where he supports world-class faculty in developing research proposals to strengthen national security through greater contextual awareness and collaboration. His role has also connected him to the next generation of leaders through work with the Army and Air Force ROTC programs, as well as with the Clements Center for National Security. He often returned to the field to guide staff rides and share lessons that link history to modern leadership challenges.
Barrel Strength Leadership grew out of Chris’s enduring belief that leadership is forged through reflection, humility, and growth. It represents his lifelong commitment to mentoring others, teaching through the lens of history, and helping individuals and teams find the steady strength needed to lead with character in complex environments.
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Megan Williams | Operations & Logistics
Megan Williams is a planning-focused leader who thrives where missions are complex, partners are diverse, and clarity matters. As she transitions from a 21-year Army career, she is currently serving in a Hiring Our Heroes fellowship with Barrel Strength Leadership as part of her SkillBridge transition, bringing fresh energy, operational rigor, and a wicked sense of curiosity to every project. She is known for orchestrating interagency teams, especially across law enforcement and security stakeholders, to translate competing requirements into workable plans, shared understanding, and coordinated execution that holds up under pressure.
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Her professional and personal research interests sit at the intersection of conflict, decision-making, and human endurance: she studies prisoners of war as a lens on leadership, ethics, and resilience, and she explores the Napoleonic era for its enduring lessons on coalition warfare, operational art, and the realities of command. Megan has a knack for turning history into something you can feel, see, and argue about over coffee, striving to challenge modern leaders to think more deeply about power, responsibility, and what it really means to take care of their people.