Jeremy Cantrell

Jeremy grew up in Mississippi and never set foot outside the South until he was 20 years old. After graduating college, he left for his first assignment in the Air Force and hasn’t stopped traveling since.

Education and Internship

As an undergraduate, Jeremy studied political science at Mississippi State University. While working toward his bachelor’s degree, Jeremy was a cadet in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) detachment on campus.

After serving four years of active duty in the Air Force, he returned to State to complete a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Administration. During his graduate studies, he took part in the White House Internship Program for a semester working in the Office of Presidential Correspondence.

Beyond processing thousands of pieces of presidential correspondence as well as being a semi-regular friendly voice on the White House Comment Line as an intern, Jeremy also served as co-lead for the Fall 2011 White House Internship Foreign Policy Professional Interest Group where he organized weekly meetings featuring key members of the Administration providing discussions ranging from cyber security to space policy.

Jeremy’s Education and Internship

Jeremy to be a Space and Missile officer.

Active Duty: Nuclear Deterrence

After commissioning as an officer in the Air Force, Jeremy was assigned to be a Space and Missile officer. He completed the Air Force Space 100 course and Missile Initial Qualifying Training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Jeremy was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, where he served many days underground carrying out duties as a Missile Combat Crew Member (commonly known as a Missileer). In that role, he provided command and control over a flight of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and associated personnel while on alert status.

The National Guard and Reserves: Security Cooperation

After leaving active duty and going back to Mississippi State University to be a full-time graduate student, I joined the Mississippi Air National Guard to continue military service part time. In my role as a Space Operations officer, I alternated between augmenting the Space Cell at the First Air Force Air and Space Operations Center at Tyndall Air Force Base and conducting space planning at Key Field Air National Guard Base in Meridian, Mississippi.

Shortly after completing my graduate studies, I was selected to serve as the Bilateral Affairs Officer in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, through the National Guard State Partnership Program. In this role, I coordinated military-to-military contact Subject Matter Expert (SME) exchanges between various elements of the Department of Defense and the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Jeremy’s time in Uzbekistan

Security Cooperation Continued: Africa and Europe

Jeremy’s time in Uzbekistan opened the path to further work in the field of security cooperation–working with partner militaries to address shared defense challenges. For three years, he served on active duty orders at United States Army Africa developing proposals for funding train and equip cases for partner militaries and coordinating training focused on supporting counter-terror capabilities as well as peacekeeping missions in a number of countries.

In late 2020, Jeremy switched to a civilian position in Eastern Europe focused on new problem sets while continuing to work Africa issues part time during his Army Reserve duties. Recently, he served as the temporary Office of Security Cooperation Chief at the US Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique, where he coordinated a number of training activities and equipment deliveries to assist Mozambique to build up capabilities in counter-terror and maritime counter-narcotics trafficking operations.

Jeremy’s Passion Project: VHS Tapes (Really?)

Well, it’s more than just VHS tapes. Jeremy has always had a nostalgic streak. And his reverence for the past has only grown as he grew older. A recent episode where he learned about the existence of a VHS tape having the only video footage of his grandfather and simultaneously the decision of his grandmother to throw it away spurred him to disbelief and then to action.

After sharing this story with a number of friends who then recounted similar episodes in their family, Jeremy realized that what his grandmother did was more a rule than an exception. There were too many people that saw VHS tapes and film reels with home movies as useless simply because they no longer owned a VCR or film projector to play them. There had to be a way to create incentives to encourage tape owners to not just digitize them but also share them so these bits of personal video history weren’t lost forever. This idea coalesced into Autumn Rewind, a company focused on licensing content to filmmakers and advertising companies needing video vintage content for their projects.

VHS Tapes

Videos

These Videos Would Have Been Lost Forever…But Then I Came Along

Autumn Rewind Logo

About Autumn Rewind

The mission of Autumn Rewind is to create added value and a new life in the digital world for old home movies currently trapped in an analog state. We provide incentives such as one-time payments or license revenue sharing for video creators, collectors, and others in order to encourage them to transfer their tapes to us. Once we receive ownership of the tapes, we digitize and make available for viewing for non-business purposes as well as licensing for professional and business projects.