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Erik Dean Prince (born June 6, 1969) is an American businessman, philanthropist, and former U.S. Navy SEAL officer. Prince was best known for founding the government services and security company Blackwater USA. He served as its CEO until 2009 and later as chairman, until Blackwater Worldwide was sold in 2010 to a group of investors. Prince currently heads the private equity firm Frontier Resource Group and is chairman of Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group Ltd. He lives in both Virginia and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. ==Early life and education== Prince was born on June 6, 1969, in Holland, Michigan, to Edgar D. Prince and Elsa Broekhuizen, the youngest of four children.〔(Ready for battle ) by Jim Schaefer, M.L. Elrick and Todd Spangler, The Detroit Free Press, October 7, 2007.〕 Both his parents share Dutch heritage (the family name, Prins, was at some point anglicized to Prince). He graduated from Holland Christian High School. Prince's father had started as a salesman making 40 cents an hour, who founded a die cast machine manufacturing firm, Prince Machine Corporation, in 1965, which became a supplier to the automobile manufacturing industry and eventually a billion-dollar company;〔http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/dutch_americans/edgar-d-prince/ accessed 11-20-13〕 As business "exploded" Prince began to invest some of the profit through the Prince Group into other types of car parts and shopping malls, creating a network of companies and real estate worth a billion dollars. In the early 1970s, Edgar Prince's company patented a sun visor that could light up and sold 5,000 to General Motors. In the '90s, the company produced 20,000 a day. Prince and his father toured the world together, visiting the German concentration camp Dachau, a divided Berlin, and Normandy. According to his mother, these trips "made a big impression" on the young Prince. Prince was accepted into the United States Naval Academy and attended it for three semesters before leaving, citing that he loved the Navy but disliked the Academy. He went on to receive his B.A. in economics from Hillsdale College in 1992. During his time at Hillsdale, Prince served as a volunteer firefighter and as a cold-water diver for the Hillsdale County Sheriff's Department.〔()〕 Prince eventually became an emergency medical technician. In 1990, Prince secured a low-level internship in the White House under George H.W. Bush,〔(White-Collar Mercenary Under Fire ) by Marc Pitzke, Der Spiegel, October 3, 2007,〕 but soon left to intern for California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, President Ronald Reagan's former speechwriter. Rohrabacher described Prince as "a bright, driven young man." At the age of 21, Prince volunteered to search for a mass grave in Nicaragua, to expose killings under President Daniel Ortega and later claimed in an interview in Men's Journal that he found "a mass grave: bones sticking out of the ground, hands tied with wire at the wrists." After college, Prince was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy via Officer Candidate School in 1992. He went on to become a Navy SEAL and deployed with SEAL Team 8 to Haiti, the Middle East, and the Balkans. He credits the SEALs for being an outlet for his entrepreneurial spirit. In his autobiography he states that it was during the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s that he realized the need for private training facilities for special operations.〔Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror Hardcover by Erik Prince.Portfolio Hardcover (November 18, 2013) ISBN 978-1591847212〕 Prince ended his U.S. Navy service prematurely in 1995 when his father died. Erik assumed control of daily operations at Prince Machine Corporation for a year until 1996 when his mother sold the company for $1.35 billion in cash to Johnson Controls. Prince moved to Virginia Beach and personally financed the formation of Blackwater Worldwide in 1997.〔The Virginian-Pilot, Hampton Roads, ("Blackwater's top brass" ), July 24, 2006.〕 He bought of the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina and set up a school for special operations.〔"The Man Behind Blackwater". ''Newsweek,'' October 23, 2007, pp. 36–9.〕 The name "Blackwater" comes from the peat-colored bogs in which the school is located. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Erik Prince」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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