Captain Scott Wolland has served in the Coast Guard Reserve for over 29 years, beginning his career as an enlisted Port Securityman and Marine Science Technician. Captain Wolland currently serves as the Senior Reserve Officer for the Fifth Coast Guard District and is responsible for advising the District Commander on all Reserve Component affairs and the readiness of over 660 reservists supporting Coast Guard maritime safety and security missions throughout the Mid-Atlantic region from central New Jersey through North Carolina. Captain Wolland previously served as the Executive Officer of Coast Guard Reserve Unit Joint Staff South and the Joint Staff Reserve Unit’s U.S. Southern Command Reserve Exercise Coordinator. This was his second tour on the Joint Staff, previously serving as a defense operations and planning officer in the J7 Joint Force Development Directorate, where he worked on the U.S. Northern Command Exercise Support Team and in the Multi-national/Allied Command Transformation Integration Division. Before coming to CGRU Joint Staff South he was the Senior Reserve Officer at Coast Guard Sector Charleston, where he advised the Sector Commander on all reserve related activities and led two-hundred reservists in conducting all Coast Guard missions in the states of South Carolina and Georgia. Prior to that assignment he served on active duty as the Deployment Training Detachment Chief at the Coast Guard’s Special Missions Training Center, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, detached to Portsmouth, Virginia. There he led the pre-deployment training program for the Patrol Forces Southwest Asia and Maritime Infrastructure Protection Force Training Advisory Group, providing expeditionary warfare preparation to Coast Guard personnel deploying to the U.S. Central Command area of operations.
Captain Wolland’s early career included tours in prevention and response operations ashore across the Gulf of Mexico and on the Western Rivers, as well as serving as an analyst and the command reserve advisor at the Coast Guard’s Maritime Intelligence Fusion Center. His first reserve mobilization was on September 17, 2001 in support of security operations in southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. Additionally, he had active duty staff tours in the Office of Compliance - Foreign and Offshore Vessel Division, and the Office of Port Security Policy and Planning at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC as a mobilized reservist. From 2003 to 2004, he was recalled to active duty as a member of the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) implementation team where he developed policy and procedures for enforcement of the MTSA regulations and the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code. From 2004 to 2005, Captain Wolland was a U.S. representative to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Maritime Security Experts Working Group where he developed maritime security capacity within the Asia-Pacific region. In 2010, he deployed in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and served as the liaison officer to public officials and citizens in Baldwin and Mobile counties in Alabama. In 2001, he was the Reserve Officer Association Outstanding Junior Officer of the Year for the Eighth Coast Guard District.
As a civilian, he is an international port security specialist with the Coast Guard Atlantic Area Command. In this position, he works closely with U.S. government interagency partners, U.S. Embassy country teams and foreign governments to coordinate a global port security capacity-building and technical assistance program for U.S. maritime trading partner nations. A designated Head of Delegation for International Port Security (IPS) missions, he has led assessments in over 60 countries on five continents to identity risks to the U.S. marine transportation system. Before coming to the IPS Program, he directed industry and public outreach for the Office of Port and Facility Activities at Coast Guard Headquarters. In that position, he built partnerships with the private sector and citizen groups to protect critical maritime infrastructure, receiving the Coast Guard Commander’s Award for Civilian Service for developing national policy for Area Maritime Security Committees and the America’s Waterway Watch program. Captain Wolland has been an invited speaker at conferences sponsored by Homeland Defense Journal, the Maritime Security Council, and the International Maritime Organization.
A native of Peoria, Illinois, Captain Wolland is a graduate of Eureka College (B.A. Social Science, Philosophy & Religion) and has graduate degrees from the American University (M.A. Philosophy) and Fordham University (M.Phil. Political Science). He has completed additional graduate work at the University of Oxford (UK) and at the National Intelligence University, as well as courses at the National Defense University, Joint Forces Staff College, and the U.S. Naval War College, where he earned the Command and Staff Diploma.