Rear Admiral Arex Avanni serves as the Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) Northwest District in Seattle, Washington. He is responsible for all USCG operations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, which encompasses more than 4,400 miles of coastline, 600 miles of inland waterways, and a 125-nautical mile international border with Cananda.
Rear Admiral Avanni most recently served as Deputy Director of Operations for Headquarters, U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). In this role, he was the principal advisor to the Commander of USNORTHCOM on all operational matters.
His other operational tours include Deck Watch Officer, USCGC MORGENTHAU (1994-1996), Marine Inspector and Federal On-Scene Coordinator Representative, Marine Safety Office Morgan City (1998-2001), Command Center Chief and Chief, Incident Management, Sector San Francisco (2004-2008), Commanding Officer, Gulf Strike Team (2010-2013), Deputy Sector Commander, Sector Honolulu (2013-2016), and Commander, Sector Honolulu (2019-2022).
His staff tours include Commanding Officer, Naval Academy Preparatory School (1996-1998), the Northeast District (formerly District 1) Regional Response Team Coordinator and Port Security and Waterways Management Program Manager (2001-2004), USCG Congressional Fellow, Senate Committee on Appropriations (2008-2010), Senior Operational Advisor to the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security (2017-2019) and Chief of Staff, Heartland District (formerly District 8) (2022-2024).
Throughout his career, Rear Admiral Avanni has been involved with and/or led many major national-level incident responses. Most notably, he managed the Northeast District’s (formerly District 1) Incident Management Team, which coordinated all USCG port security efforts in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City. He also served as the Operations Section Chief for the State of Louisiana and then as the Gulf Coast Deputy Incident Commander and Federal On-Scene Coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of America (formerly Gulf of Mexico) from July 2010 to December 2011.
Rear Admiral Avanni is a 1994 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy and holds a Bachelor of Science in Management. He also holds a Masters’s degree in National Security Studies from the Naval War College. In 2016, he was the USCG’s Federal Executive Fellow at the Brookings Institution.