He’s a Northeastern grad commanding a Coast Guard vessel in Guam
Drew LoVullo’s award-winning Northeastern tenure ended in his appointment as the commanding officer of a fast-response Coast Guard ship.
OAKLAND – Drew LoVullo always knew that he was destined for the sea.
Growing up in Annapolis, Maryland, a global sailing capital nestled in the Chesapeake Bay and home to the United States Naval Academy, spending time on boats was a regular occurrence for LoVullo. His parents began bringing him aboard ships when he was just 6 months old, and encouraged him when he grew older and found enjoyment buying and selling boats. They also drew on their experiences in the Peace Corps to instill in LoVullo, early on, the values of public service and a lifelong yearning for knowledge.
LoVullo’s intersecting passions for sailing, service and leadership meant that he chose to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) in 2016.
“It all blended together to find this path of the Coast Guard, doing more domestic and humanitarian missions, which I found very interesting,” LoVullo told Northeastern Global News from aboard the USCG Cutter Myrtle Hazard, a 154-foot fast-response ship in the Western Pacific waters off Guam.
In the past decade, being a part of the USCG has landed him in far-flung places across the globe, from the Arctic to East Asia. In 2024, it also brought him to Northeastern University’s Oakland campus.
LoVullo entered Northeastern intending to expand his repertoire as a leader and instructor in the Coast Guard. During his two-year master’s program in public administration — which he aligned with a similar sabbatical that his wife, who was also on active duty, was pursuing in nearby Berkeley — LoVullo relished the chance to take off the iconic navy uniform and connect with like-minded classmates, he said.
As part of his curriculum, LoVullo contributed to a number of public service programs in Northern California. He provided consultation to the California Department of Child Support Services on its fatherhood engagement initiatives, studying its messaging strategies against similar programs in other states and recommending advocacy ideas.
He also worked with nonprofits focused on accessory dwelling units (ADUs), which are self-contained homes constructed on the same property as primary residences, in California’s Napa, Sonoma and San Mateo Counties, investigating potential gaps in legislative goals and their implementation at the local level. Though the state’s passage of laws over the last decade has made ADUs more accessible and easier to build, their results are largely unresearched, he said.
Over a tight two-month timeline, LoVullo conducted at least a dozen interviews with architects, designers, construction workers and county representatives to identify the laws’ success and failure points. He and his team ultimately synthesized their findings into actionable recommendations and created a policy flow map for the centers to follow.
“The people that they did the project for were just over-the-moon happy,” said Adam Parker, a professor at the Northeastern School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs who oversaw LoVullo’s capstone project. “This was exactly what they wanted and I think, actually, sort of beyond what they wanted.”
LoVullo said his experiences in the Oakland classrooms provided him with a new set of skills that he could directly translate to the Coast Guard. A budgeting class, for instance, equipped him to handle the Myrtle Hazard’s complex expenses, and crisis management discussions with his classmates made him think differently about the department’s communication style.
LoVullo’s tenure at Northeastern culminated in his appointment as the commanding officer of the Myrtle Hazard, the Coast Guard vessel patrolling the westernmost island territories of the U.S.
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He now leads a rotating 24-person cohort aboard the ship, ensuring its safety and coordination at sea while performing search and rescue, law enforcement, marine environmental protection and other safety operations for Guam, Palau, the Northern Mariana Islands and Micronesia. His education contributed to his vast breadth of professional knowledge, he said, assisting him in carrying out the myriad, high-stakes responsibilities required of a commanding officer.
“He was always extremely well prepared,” Parker said. “He’s very thoughtful about trying to be really involved, but also help foster other people’s involvement.”
An unexpected lesson came during his work as a teaching assistant for Parker’s undergraduate course on American government, he said. Communicating with young students, many of whom were the same age as fresh Coast Guard recruits, gave LoVullo important insight into how to engage them as they embarked on a new chapter in life.
“There’s people that come from high school to join and then two months later, after boot camp, are on our ships and out away from families,” he said. “It was good to see how Professor Parker set up his class … I do that in the Coast Guard, too, now.”
Upon graduating, LoVullo received a Chetkovich Award, which honors outstanding Northeastern graduate students who achieve exemplary scholarship and commitment to public service.
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He and classmate Elizabeth Orcutt were presented with the awards at a celebration in Oakland, said Mark Henderson, professor of public policy and coordinator of the master’s program.
“Both of them appeared surprised, which was touching because we all knew that they put in the extra effort and really were the students that everybody looked up to in the class,” he said.
LoVullo said his current role, which he assumed earlier in July, combines his experiences in the Coast Guard with his Northeastern education, tapping the lessons learned from the curriculum and his classmates to serve effectively.
“Something I’m going to try to implement better is selling what the Coast Guard does,” he said, reflecting on Typhoon Bavi that in early July killed 23 people in the Philippines and left several injured across the region LoVullo now serves.
“I’ve already been in comms with our public affairs specialists sharing the message and building that trust in the public for our agency,” he added. “I think that’s something I took from Northeastern.”
