Joshua Peterson spent years in environments where preparation was survival. As an 11B Infantry Staff Sergeant with multiple combat deployments to Afghanistan, he learned firsthand that the difference between those who come through difficult situations and those who don’t comes down to one thing: who prepared before the moment arrived.

Back home, he served as a leader in the Connecticut National Guard’s Homeland Response Force — one of only ten nationally designated units built to respond to mass casualty and CBRNE events. That experience gave him an operational understanding of large-scale emergency response that very few civilian trainers can claim.

After the military, he brought that same discipline into executive protection, firearms instruction, youth development, and trauma-informed safety education — eventually leading programs at the director level inside the inner-city nonprofits, schools, and community organizations that now form EDS Training’s core client base. Working alongside young people in high-stress urban environments taught him something most safety trainers never learn: how to build confidence without creating fear.

EDS Training is the result of all of it: combat experience, homeland emergency response, trauma-informed practice, and a decade of community work — brought directly into your building, your conference room, and your community. There is no other trainer in Connecticut with this combination.