Q&A: Captain David Cox, MBA’00, MPP’00, on His Nautical Career, Leadership Lessons, and Advice to Harris Veterans

Captain David Cox, MBA’00, MPP ’00, a 25-year officer of the United States Navy, works as the commander of Submarine Squadron 7 in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. After earning degrees from the Harris School of Public Policy and the Booth School of Business, the Carrollton, Texas, native embarked on a nautical career that has sent him around the world—as a commander, a mentor, and a teacher. He currently commands five submarines and roughly 750 sailors. We chatted with him about his time at Harris, his leadership lessons—and, of course, submarines.

How did you end up at UChicago after graduating from the Naval Academy?

Most midshipmen go straight into the Naval service and gain their commission as an ensign or a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. And they immediately go learn whatever it is they're going to do in the Navy—whether it's driving a ship or flying an airplane or driving a submarine in my case. And they had a select few opportunities for someone to go to graduate school for two years before you start the normal career path. I connected with another midshipman who was at the University of Chicago studying financial management and that individual got me interested in this incredible opportunity.

Were there courses at Harris with lessons that really stuck with you?

The course that stands out the most in my mind was Formal Models of Policy Analysis. It's about policy frameworks for thinking about big problems, whether it's a prisoner's dilemma or a game theory or a collective action problem or a NIMBY problem. That course was really impactful for me. The University of Chicago is famous for putting a number to everything and trying to put some analytical rigor to whatever we're looking at. Whether it suits itself to analytical rigor or not, we can usually find a way to measure it to run a regression on it. So those skills have very much come in handy.

Did Harris make you a better leader?

Yes, I think it did. At both Booth and Harris, while there was this underlying curriculum of either policy or business, there was an overarching theme of leadership. You're working across financial issues, you're working through policy issues, you're working through technical issues, and all the while people who are doing analysis for you are bringing you data that you have to be able to interpret. There are very few issues that can be brought to me that I don't have some sort of framework that I can use to at least wrap my head around what's being brought to me—and that’s thanks to my UChicago education.

What is your leadership style?

The most successful leaders spend as much time taking care of their sailors as they can. They will exceed your wildest expectations if they know that you care about them as a person and that you're invested in their success. There are certain things that our sailors presume that the commodore doesn’t have time for—then I'll show up, and just my mere presence is one way to show my investment. I had a sailor last week who had a problem with his barracks room, and running the base barracks is not part of my job. But I got involved, and we got it fixed relatively quickly. Little gestures like that really speak volumes to the people who are working for us. It pays huge dividends.

What advice would you offer to Veterans studying at Harris?

I encourage Veterans at Harris to lean forward in sharing their military experiences and give voice to the human element of national security and veterans policy issues.  A deeper understanding of how policy impacts military operations, active duty and reserve families, and the all-volunteer force will help all Harris students generate better policy outcomes after graduation.

Were you interested in being a submarine commander from an early age?

I had a strong interest in military service. I'm cursed with being interested in just about everything I encounter. So, for me, submarines were one of many great choices and it was the one I felt was the best fit. As far as being a submarine commander and staying in this occupation for 25 years, I did not dream of staying this long. I've been able to live all over the world, lead some great people, and be led by some great people. It's been a really rewarding career.

What’s the best part of the job?

The opportunity to mentor the people coming behind me. I talk to every new group of sailors that are in Submarine Squadron 7. Every week I get a new set. My office is actually a historic office. Admiral Husband Kimmel watched the attack on Pearl Harbor from the office that I currently work from. So, there's a really historic point to bringing new sailors in and explaining to them what we do in the Indo-Pacific as submariners. And then to see those sailors come back only months later, learning their jobs and then years later and talking about things they learned from me. That's really rewarding.

Is there a great burden of responsibility in commanding a submarine?

Absolutely. I think in many occupations and many walks of life, there's a lot of shared responsibility in running an organization. And the Navy is unique in that the sanctity of command at sea is a really important part of our job. Command can be a really lonely job because you don't have many people to talk to about what it's like to be in command.

Do you enjoy the opportunity to be back in the submarine when you get the chance?

It is very comfortable to be on board a submarine. I spent a good portion of my life on submarines, so there's a fair amount of nostalgia. But you need to ride often to stay current because things change over time and the personalities of our sailors change over time. It's a young person's profession, and I'm in my late forties, so I'm one of the oldest people doing it. At some point, you turn the reins over to the younger generation.

How have the sailors changed?

One thing that's really different is connectedness. When I was on board submarines in the late nineties, the idea of disconnecting from the world and going underway on a submarine for 60 days was a little bit different than disconnecting from the world today when everyone has a mobile device in their hand. So that's a slightly bigger challenge for them than it is for me. Commanding officers today have to work harder to help their sailors connect to each other. Those connections really matter.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about life on a submarine?

The movies do a pretty good job, but to keep someone interested for an hour and a half, usually whatever's happening on the submarine's a lot more exciting than a typical day on a real submarine. One thing in movies that makes me wince is when they show something that looks like a radar screen that says the enemy is exactly here and he's this far away. That is not how submarining is. Submarining is much more like a chess game match to figure out what's going on in the ocean around you with the sounds that are coming in around you. There's very rarely the type of certainty you see in a movie.

Why are people fascinated with submarines?

That undersea environment is so foreign to what we see day to day. Just the fact that you really can't see very well, there are no windows, it's all sonar. So, I think the sensory deprivation. “How exactly does this work?” is what's fascinating to people. We're going to drive around in something that doesn't have any windows, and we're going to pop up where we expect to pop up and actually figure out what's going on above the surface? It’s counterintuitive. I think for that reason it's fascinating to people—and it's fascinating to me to this day.