College of Education and Human Development

Surfing Through Life: CEHD Alum Dave Horna ’94 Finds Success on the Waves

David Horna

Since he first stepped onto campus more than 35 years ago, David Horna believes George Mason University has helped position him on a path of success.

Or, more appropriately, a wave of success.

A 1994 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in health sciences from the College of Education and Human Development, Horna can be found these days in sunny Cocoa Beach, Florida, teaching surf lessons. Big Wave Dave, as he is known to patrons and students at Ron Jon’s Surf Shop, credits his current occupation to his experience at George Mason.

“In my opinion, being a surf instructor is one of the best gigs you can get in surfing,” Horna said over the phone recently in between surf lessons. “What put me at the top of list was George Mason B.S. Ed. (on his resume). You can see the thread of George Mason, not just the education I got, but how it opened doors.”

Horna grew up in nearby Clifton and spent many of his summers as a teenager competing in boogie board contests in Virginia Beach and Ocean City. So, finding him in the ocean these days is not surprising. But his journey, like the waves, twisted and turned before leading him back to the beach.

Inspired by his mother, who was a third-grade teacher at several schools in Fairfax and Prince William counties, Horna attended George Mason as a commuter student and fondly recalls building friendships while working out at the fitness center on campus. “I would go to school, go to the gym,” he said. “I had a buddy I would run with, lift weights with. It was a healthy experience for me.”

His curriculum and professors at George Mason also left a lasting impression. He remembers taking a women’s health issues course, which he believes was the first of its kind to be offered at the university. He credits now-retired Health Education Professor Richard E. Miller and the department’s faculty for encouraging him to step outside the health education bubble.

While still a student, he served as a guest expert at WJFK Radio (106.7 FM) in D.C. He was on a modern exercise panel with a colonel from the Air Force and with a professor who chaired a research center at George Washington University. This segment sparked Horna to pitch to his health sciences professors the idea of fulfilling his internship requirement at the radio station, where he worked on former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy’s show.

“George Mason was creative enough and open minded enough to give me an opportunity,” he said. “They said, ‘Why don’t you pitch us? Tell us why and how this fits in with health sciences.’ I said, ‘I’m going to create a health segment for the show.’ George Mason let me have that opportunity to prove it. They gave me that opportunity, kind of created a role in the rest of my life.”

His dip into media led him to his first job with then-start-up E&E (Environment and Energy) News. The publication covered policy, government, environment and energy, and business development, and began with just six reporters before reaching a newsroom of 65 across the world when it was acquired by Politico in 2020.

Horna started as an account executive and within a year was promoted to sales director, leading a staff of 10. By 2009, he had become a partner in the firm and was at a crossroads in his career. He was proud of the company he had helped build, playing a large part in establishing relationships with organizations such as the Department of Energy, Heritage Foundation, and Greenpeace. But, at the same time, he was ready for a new challenge in a familiar setting. “I didn’t feel like I was leaving the garden unattended,” Horna said. “I wanted to do something for me, for my soul. I wanted to surf big waves.”

Horna moved to Puerto Rico and spent the next six years surfing, training, and practicing yoga while also working as a sales consultant and freelance writer for several publications. During that time, he spent six months in Hawaii, surfing the legendary North Shore in Oahu. He also made surfing excursions to Ireland, France, and California.

For Horna, surfing has always been a therapeutic getaway that requires both a “macho” and “softer” touch. “It is a romantic endeavor that requires physicality,” said Horna, whose father is a retired Navy Commander. “You have to have courage and passion, but the waves, like life, are different from moment to moment. It can be violent the way you move the board, going with the energy of the wave itself. To me, that’s the romantic part of it. I love that zone where I can match myself up with that wave.”

For nearly a decade, Horna has lived in Cocoa Beach, just five miles south of Cape Canaveral Space Station. Through his consultant work with SOFX, a media and networking company focused on the special operations community, he met Sam Havelock Jr., the CEO and a retired Navy SEAL. “Part of his job is he gets special forces guys who came out of the military, he matches the right company with the right person,” Horna said. Havelock, who was also a surf instructor, suggested to Horna that he look into teaching lessons.

Since 2022, Horna has taught private lessons five days a week in addition to helping at surf camps and working in the Ron Jon’s Surf Shop on the weekends. He has had students as young as 5 and as old as 70. One of his proudest moments was helping a 16-year-old who had just one arm due to a birth defect. By the end of the two-hour lesson, the teenager was up on the board and riding waves. “He was so stoked. I was so stoked. You can’t write me a paycheck big enough to see that guy’s smile,” Horna said. “Surfing makes people’s lives better. It’s healthy, it’s therapeutic. I get to be the person who helps somebody find that.”

Horna believes George Mason opened the door to his surf instructing job, too. When he interviewed for the position, his supervisor was intrigued by his degree in health sciences. Through his education, for example, Horna knows the role dorsiflexion – the backward bending and contracting of the foot or hand – plays in the placement of the toes in the “ready position on the surf board.” “It is one of the most crucial things because when they are in that position, they’ll glide into the waves,” Horna said. “You want to have everybody ready because everything happens so fast out there. So it is my job to get them ready.”

And he proudly displays his alma mater when in the water, often wearing a gray, George Mason shirt during lessons. “I want people to know that they’re getting instruction from a George Mason University graduate,” he said. “I take a lot of pride in that. The school did a lot for me.”