 In 1995 he graduated from Yale Law School, where he received the Scharps and Emerson prizes.Ford served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve during 1994–2011, receiving an honorable discharge at the rank of Lieutenant Commander in December 2011.He was also ordained as a lay chaplain in the first graduating class of the chaplaincy program at the Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he studied with the Zen Master Joan Halifax, a dharma successor of Tetsugen Bernard Glassman in the Soto Zen Buddhist lineage of Taizan Maezumi.