about the host

Michael McNamara was born and raised in Sacramento, California. Father (John McNamara) managed in Major League Baseball for over twenty seasons, and mother (Kathleen) was a “stay-at-home” mom. Three adoring sisters completed the McNamara family. Catholic educated from kindergarten to college, he was awarded a BA in Economics from the University of San Diego in 1981.

Worked for Merrill Lynch Inc. in Los Angeles as a bookkeeper and later as an account executive. Enlisted in the US Marine Corps and was commissioned as a 2ndLt in December 1983. After assignments at 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Light Armored Infantry Battalion, Marine Detachment USS Ranger CV-61, The Basic School, and 3rd Light Armored Infantry Battalion, he left active duty in 1994.

After working and residing in San Diego, he moved to Grand Forks, ND, in 1998 to become the Director of Sports for Special Olympics North Dakota. In 2000, he launched his broadcasting career as the host of the talk show entitled “MacTalk,” a role he held until 2010. Mac was the recipient of the National Association of Broadcasters’ prestigious Marconi Award in 2007 as the nation’s “Small Market Personality of the Year.”

Mac returned to active duty in 2004, was promoted to the rank of Major, and deployed to the city of Ramadi, Iraq, with the 1st Marine Division Headquarters Element in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He returned to the United States in December 2004 and was demobilized in February 2005. He mobilized again in January 2006 for duty with the 5th Marine Regiment in the city of Fallujah, Iraq; returning to the United States in October of 2006 and demobilizing. While in Iraq, Mac was elected to the City Council of Grand Forks, ND, defeating four other candidates.

In June of 2010, after completing his four-year term on the Grand Forks City Council, Mac was mobilized in support of Operation Enduring Freedom for duty with the 1st Marine Regiment and deployed to the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. Mac remained on active duty with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton until he retired from the Marine Corps in October 2015.

Currently, Mac is the Founder and President of The Post-Traumatic Winning Company, LLC and ALL MARINE RADIO, an internet-based podcast which is dedicated to the culture of the Marine Corps and the concept of reducing veteran suicide through greater post-combat related mental fitness awareness. ALL MARINE RADIO began broadcasting on June 2, 2016.

In May 2018, Mac began consolidating what he’d learned from over two years of interviews about post-traumatic life into a presentation entitled “Post-Traumatic Winning,” which was presented for the first time in January 2019 to Marines at Camp Lejeune, NC.

Post-Traumatic Winning is a presentation based on common lessons learned from over six years of interviews and seven years of public presentations to both military and civilian audiences. These “live presentations” have generated thousands of conversations about living a great life after traumatic events occur in one’s life. In the past seven years, Post-Traumatic Winning has been presented in the United States, Japan, Hawaii, Alaska, and Europe, and is part of an approach to dealing with destructive behavior (including suicide) in multiple organizations of over 10,000 people that actually impacts those numbers in a positive way — the bottom line for leaders of those organizations is that it works.

The formula for Post-Traumatic Winning’s success is: (1) present people whose lives have been impacted by traumatic events with the truth about what life after traumatic events will entail; (2) show them a path that leads them from those traumatic events to a place where joy dominates their lives — a path that is real and based on those truths; (3) challenge them to help others as a part of their “post-traumatic life.”

In January of 2021, the first seminar of the “Post-Traumatic Winning Weekly Seminar” series was held. The seminars have been a wonderful vehicle to bring this important message to audiences far and wide. You can find the latest information on upcoming Post-Traumatic Winning Seminars by clicking HERE.

In March of 2025, Mac published his first book, FROM TRAUMA TO JOY: Life-changing lessons that fellow US Marines taught me after traumatic events occurred in my life… Lessons that apply to ANYONE, in an effort to communicate the ideas contained in Post-Traumatic Winning to a broader audience.

In October of 2025, Mac is scheduled to publish his second book, a children’s book he co-wrote with his youngest daughter, Colleen. COLLEEN CAN’T FORGET is a book intended to be read by parents with a child whom they could not protect from a traumatic event. The book lays out the same path that is laid in FROM TRAUMA TO JOY, but in the context of a story about a young girl who sees something she cannot forget. The story is a beautiful story about how a young girl (Colleen) is taught a series of lessons by people in her family when her dad gives her an “assignment” after she had experienced something traumatic… something she could not unsee or get out of her head. Wisdom and transformation are the twin themes of this wonderful book.

Mac is the father of four children; his two sons are officers in the US Marine Corps, and his two daughters are professionals who reside in Southern California.

Now that you know all that stuff… let’s go change someone’s life!