Founder | Executive Director Email: stephen@stackup.org BRIEF INFO: Stephen “Shanghai Six” Machuga is a 1998 graduate of Purdue University with a degree in Russian linguistics on an ROTC scholarship. Captain Machuga is a former Army Infantry/Military Intelligence officer and Airborne Ranger, having spent the majority of his service at Fort Bragg with the 82nd Airborne Division. In 2003, he deployed to Iraq with 2nd Infantry Division and whittled through the seemingly endless 13-month deployment with the help of video games. Machuga left the service in 2006, where he spent 10 years in Washington DC as a government counter-terrorism analyst across a variety of agencies, doing charity work on the weekends. Over time, the weekend charity work was where he realized that he had found his true calling, and has since picked up and moved the entire organization to Los Angeles, where the opportunities in the games and entertainment industry are everywhere.