Taylor Q. Lam, U.S. Coast Guard, is a visiting military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He most recently served as the U.S. Coast Guard’s Southwest District chief of staff and principal advisor to the district commander for a workforce of 4,500 members and an area of operations encompassing 3.3 million square miles across four states, extending south to Chile and offshore two thousand nautical miles. His most recent assignment was commander and captain of the port at Sector San Francisco, overseeing all search-and-rescue, maritime law enforcement, pollution response, and commercial vessel safety operations across seven strategic ports. During thirty years of active duty, he has served within the coast guard’s Deployable Specialized Forces, Operations Ashore, Congressional Affairs, and other special assignments. Lam graduated with a BA in psychology from the University of California Riverside and earned two master’s degrees from Boston University and the College of William and Mary.