Admiral McAllister recently retired from the U.S. Coast Guard after 36 years of active duty service. His culminating flag assignment was as Commander of the Coast Guard’s Pacific Area where he oversaw all U.S. Coast Guard missions from the U.S. West Coast to the Indo-Pacific region, including both the U.S. Arctic and Antarctic. As a Vice Admiral he previously served as the Deputy Commandant for Mission Support where he led all human resources, engineering and logistics, C4I, acquisitions and procurement, training and education, and security functions for the Coast Guard. Earlier flag assignments included duty as Commander, Seventeenth Coast Guard District in Alaska; a joint assignment as the Deputy Director of Operations for United States Northern Command; and as the Director for Coast Guard Enterprise Strategy and Management.

Earlier in his career, Admiral McAllister served in a variety of operational assignments, both aboard multiple Coast Guard cutters and at shore-based units conducting search and rescue, law enforcement, aids to navigation, port and vessel inspections, icebreaking and other missions. He has extensive experience in contingency and interagency operations. He led maritime response and security operations in New York City following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and prototyped the Department of Homeland Security’s successful Interagency Operations Center Program following 9/11.

His staff assignments reflect broad experience in critical Coast Guard supporting functions including civil engineering, budgeting and program review, and personnel assignments. He has led capstone organizational efforts relating to diversity and inclusion, training modernization, C4I service delivery, international affairs, strategy development and achieving unqualified financial auditability.

He received a Master of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1991 and a Masters of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a member of the Sloan Fellows Program in 2004. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Washington.