Rear Admiral John T. Tozzi assumed his current position as Director of Information and Technology of the Coast Guard in July 1996. He is a 1968 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy. His operational tours included a one year assignment to Coast Guard Squadron Three in Vietnam aboard CGC Winnebago and shipboard engineering billets aboard CGC Bering Strait and CGC Kukui. Since then, he has served afloat as Engineer Officer in CGC Chase, Executive Officer in CGC Boutwell, and Commanding Officer in CGCs Rush and Sherman. Most recently, he commanded Joint Interagency Task Force West, the U.S. Pacific Command’s counterdrug joint task force.
Rear Admiral Tozzi has completed assignments ashore at Coast Guard Headquarters (Offices of R&D, Naval Engineering, and Personnel), in the former Twelfth Coast Guard District and in the Maintenance and Logistics Command Pacific (Naval Engineering), as the first Deputy Commander of the Military Personnel Command, and as the Chief of Staff of Coast Guard Atlantic Area. His postgraduate academic accomplishments include Master’s Degrees in Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering and in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also earned a Ph.D. in Fluid Mechanics from the Catholic University of America.
Rear Admiral Tozzi’s military awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (Operational Device, three awards), and the Coast Guard Commendation Medal (Operational Device, four awards).
He and his wife, Mary, reside in Vienna, Virginia. Their son, Gregory, is a cadet in the class of 1998 at the Coast Guard Academy.