Wade Zirkle is a retired U.S. Marine lieutenant and Purple Heart recipient originally from Edinburg, Virginia. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of South Carolina in 2000. As an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps, he served two combat tours in Iraq: in 2003 as a Light Armored Vehicle platoon commander with the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion during the invasion, and in 2004 as a rifle platoon commander with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines in the First Battle of Fallujah, where he was severely burned in a suicide bomb attack on his convoy. He left the Marines in 2005. He is the co-founder and leader of Vets for Freedom alongside Pete Hegseth and also founded and served as former executive director of the Vets For Freedom Action Fund, a PAC supporting combat veteran candidates committed to success in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terrorism. He advocated for a troop surge in Iraq, appearing on CBS Evening News in October 2006 to promote an increase of 30,000 troops (criticized by media watchdogs for receiving free airtime as a campaign organization), and co-authored op-eds including 'A Fifth Star for General Petraeus' with Pete Hegseth in The Wall Street Journal. Professionally, he worked as a freelance journalist in 2006, embedded with the Iraqi Army in Ramadi and reporting on counter-insurgency in Anbar Province for outlets including The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Weekly Standard; he embedded with U.S. troops and Afghan commandos on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in 2009 for Fox News. He also worked at Lehman Brothers Asset Management on Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. He serves as managing partner of StrongPoint Capital, LLC, a financial services firm in Woodstock, Virginia, and is president of BluePoint ATM Solutions, providing ATM management and cash logistics for financial institutions, retail, hospitality, and government, based in Denver, Colorado (founded around 2009). Additionally, he is the managing partner at Zirkle Family Farms.