Interview with James Brau, Philip H. Knight Professor of Natural Sciences at the University of Oregon. Brau describes his career-long interest in pursuing physics beyond the Standard Model and his consequent campaign to realize the ILC. He recounts his childhood in Washington, and he describes his early interests in science before enrolling in the U.S. Air Force Academy. Brau explains the opportunities that led him to MIT for graduate school before serving at Kirtland Air Force Base to work in the weapons lab before returning to MIT to complete his PhD where Richard Yamamoto supervised his research on high energy interactions. He describes his postdoctoral appointment at SLAC in the bubble chamber group before taking a faculty position at the University of Tennessee. Brau describes his involvement with SLD at SLAC, and he narrates his involvement with SSC planning while he was transferring to Oregon where he established the Center for High Energy Physics and where he became involved in the LIGO collaboration. He explains the origins of the ILC idea and how his research group joined ATLAS at the LHC. At the end of the interview, Brau reflects on the importance of encouraging public support for fundamental science.