Shanil Meghani

Shanil Meghani enlisted in the Army National Guard on September 11, 2012, in Port Neches, Texas. Port Neches is a river town in southeast Texas, next to Beaumont.

The date was the eleventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In his own account, he was spoiled before the Army, was looking for the easy way out, and had no plans for college.

He had been a volunteer in Ismaili safety and security institutions since he was sixteen. That work had its own routines and its own responsibilities, and he had been doing it for years.

He started as a Bradley mechanic. A Bradley is a tracked infantry fighting vehicle of 27 tons, with a turret, a gun, a crew of three, and a squad of infantry in the back. Keeping one in service means hydraulics, electronics, engines, and armament.

The fault a crew reports is rarely the fault the mechanic finds. The work starts from the symptom and goes back through the systems until the failure is located, and it ends when the vehicle runs and the repair is written down.

His first unit was a mechanics unit in Port Neches, Texas. He spent four years in the Guard and served in two specialties.

Then the unit's mission changed. It converted to military police, and it was called up to take over the garrison duties of Army military police who had gone to Afghanistan. He changed specialty with it, from Bradley mechanic to military police.

Military police work is law enforcement on an installation: a gate, a patrol, a report, and a standing order that covers the case nobody anticipated.

The call-up was the Guard's federal mission arriving in a state unit. When an active unit deploys, a Guard unit moves in behind it and holds the installation for the length of the tour — the gate, the patrol, the confinement facility, the investigations. The work is the same work. The address is different.

He served at Port Neches while the military police he replaced were in Afghanistan. His was the war at home, and it was still the war.

In his own account, boot camp was run by two drill sergeant units, Alpha and Beta, both set on breaking the recruits down. When he graduated, he understood that if he could survive it he could handle anything.

He was a specialist when he separated in 2016.

His grandfather had been an accountant, and the family talked about him. He came home from boot camp and enrolled at Lamar University.

He had wanted to be a computer programmer. Then the accounting classes came easily to him, and that was the end of the programming plan.

A bachelor's degree in accounting and business law. Then a master's in business administration, in accounting and enterprise resource planning.

He went into public accounting. He worked at a CPA firm in Port Arthur, then at BDO USA in Houston, and the work was tax.

Then he went inside a company. He spent time in corporate tax at Grundfos Americas, the water pump manufacturer, in Brookshire, west of Houston.

Then he left to build his own. He co-founded MK Advisors, a tax firm, and he is one of its partners. The tax work runs on a deadline that does not move.

In March 2025 the IRS enrolled him as an enrolled agent. It is the credential that lets a tax practitioner stand in front of the agency for a client.

The volunteer work continued. He has stayed in the institutions he joined at sixteen, long before he wore a uniform. He has argued that the community should be loud about its skills, because an institution can only use what it knows it has.

When the Hazar Imam visited, his Jamat Khana duties came first.

Katy is west of Houston, and the firm is there. He joined the Ismaili Warrior Alliance in November 2025.