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News | Feb. 17, 2021

Troop Support commander speaks at Anheuser Busch Logistics Professional Development Session

By Christian Deluca DLA Troop Support Public Affairs

The Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support commander spoke at an Anheuser Busch Logistics Professional Development Session Feb. 11 to discuss his organization’s logistical capabilities and practices.

Army Brig. Gen. Gavin Lawrence provided an overview of DLA Troop Support and its five supply chains, spoke about his leadership philosophy and answered questions from members of the AB Business Services Center Logistics Team during the virtual event.

One of the highlights of the talk was Troop Support’s role in COVID-19 relief efforts. To date, the organization has provided more than $2 billion of DLA’s overall $3.2 billion worth of support to the national response.

“As a nation, we were not positioned where we needed to be domestically to respond immediately to the pandemic,” Lawrence said. “So the White House COVID-19 Task Force was formed. We aligned ourselves with them and got after the acquisition and procurement of items like N95 masks, respirators, nitrile gloves, and such to ensure hospitals and nursing homes across the nation, as well as the Strategic National Stockpile, had the items needed to provide support.”

On leadership, Lawrence said his philosophy is based on five “pillars” of compassion, character, commitment, competence and courage.

“By focusing on these five pillars, we are able to build trust, which is the bedrock of any organization,” he said.

Lawrence said that mutual trust built between employees, his command team, DLA Headquarters and partner DLA commands as well as trust between customers and industry partners fueled his “high performing” organization. Nate Singler, BSC senior director, said the session was very insightful.

“For everybody in the group, this has been a real eye opener in the amount of work that goes into your organization,” he said. “But it’s something we can all relate too, when you think about the logistics of products. We’re all very tied together from that standpoint.”