A Call to Serve

Decorated Navy SEAL Jonathan Bertera ’04 draws on 20 years of experience to teach ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy. 

On the crisp September morning in 2001 when two hijacked jetliners crashed headlong into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, Jonathan Bertera was in the first month of his sophomore year at Seton Hall. From atop Xavier Hall, the tallest dorm on campus, known for its views of the New York City skyline, he watched smoke and flames engulf the upper floors of the towers before they cascaded to the ground. His experience on 9/11 would play a role in Bertera’s decision, shortly after graduating with a degree in political science, to enlist in the Navy with a dream to become a member of the elite SEALs special operations forces.  

“I think part of it was to prove something to myself,” he says. “Part of it was curiosity. I definitely know I had this desire for service, and doing something that might be difficult for other folks. I think it was a combination of all those things. I was just kind of looking for that next experience.”  

A two-time captain of the Seton Hall swim team, Bertera did indeed make it in the SEALs, rising to the rank of command master chief, the senior enlisted leader of a Navy command. His 20-year career has taken him on nine overseas deployments, each lasting at least six months, including three assignments in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Along the way, he earned a Purple Heart, a Defense Meritorious Service Medal and a Meritorious Service Medal.  

In 2024 he also earned an M.B.A. from the University of Virginia, although his 22-month master’s program was interrupted by an overseas deployment. Earlier this year, shortly after returning home from the last of his five deployments in Somalia and reuniting with his wife and three young children, Bertera took on a new assignment: teaching ethics courses to midshipmen at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.  

“I found a tremendous amount of fulfillment coming up here,” he says of this newest phase of his Navy career. He is one of only six SEALs teaching at the academy. “And I’m the only SEAL master chief,” he says. “The SEALs, they walk around campus and they look like space aliens. I walk around campus and I’m a purple-headed space alien.”  

Bertera’s career as a SEAL — part of the Sea, Air and Land force — began with a two-month boot camp at the Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School in Great Lakes, Illinois. Later, in San Diego, he embarked on the mentally and physically rigorous six-month program known as BUD/S, for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. Bertera’s class consisted of 187 aspiring SEALs. Only 13 graduated.  

“You’re constantly wet, you’re constantly covered in sand,” Bertera recalls of this training. “The chafing on your body from the sand and the water … your body is completely torn up. I got a ton of photos of me, and I look like an alien because I’m just so swollen and chewed up.”  

Bertera’s first deployment was in 2008, to Iraq. He would spend the next 16 years ferrying between additional training at home and more deployments to the most dangerous corners of the globe.  

“They all had very different feelings,” he says. “Iraq was much more in the urban environment. Afghanistan, more mountainous, open spaces. Iraq, you knew where you were being shot at from. Afghanistan, sometimes you never even saw the guys shooting at you, it was from such long distances.”  

Two decades later, Bertera looks back on his decision to pursue a military career with no small sense of wonder. “Honestly,” he says, “at that point in my life I was like, Hey, let’s give this a try and let’s see what happens. And that’s kind of also how I’ve done my whole career. I never went in with the intention of, Hey, I’m going to do 20 years. It was always, Let’s just see how this is going. And every time I’ve come up for a re-enlistment, I do a re-evaluation: Am I still having fun? Do I still feel like I’m providing value? Next thing you know, it was 20 years later.” 

Christopher Hann in a freelance writer and editor in New Jersey.