Chuck Ridgway was born and raised in Eagle, Colorado on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains and graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993, when he was also commissioned in the United States Navy. He served on active duty for 10 years as a nuclear-power trained surface warfare officer, with tours on a Aegis cruiser, the aircraft carrier Nimitz, and through the Navy's Personnel Exchange Program as Navigator aboard the German frigate FGS Lübeck (F 214).
After leaving active duty in 2003, Professor Ridgway affiliated with the Navy Reserve and was fortuitously assigned to a newly established Maritime Partnership Program reserve unit that supported US Naval Forces Africa's maritime security cooperation activities. In the years since he has deployed over a dozen times to numerous coastal African countries and participated in several major African maritime exercises under the Africa Partnership Station banner. This experience eventually led to his redesignation as a Navy Foreign Area Officer for Africa.
Professor Ridgway's civilian experience is focused in the field of military operations research and organizational learning. He worked as the Editor at NATO's Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre in Lisbon, Portugal from 2005 to 2015. Since leaving NATO in 2015 he has been active with a number of Denver-area international development non-profits, consulting primarily on monitoring and evaluation topics with Engineers Without Borders, SCOPE International, and Africa Development Promise, and on maritime security issues with One Earth Future Foundation's Oceans Beyond Piracy and Stable Seas programs. He is a graduate of the US Naval War College's Joint Professional Military Education curriculum and holds a Master's in Public Administration from the University of Colorado at Denver. Professor Ridgway joined Regis University's MDP program in 2019, where he teaches Monitoring and Evaluation.
