FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
FORT BELVOIR, Va. – After 10 months in the classroom, three Defense Logistics Agency employees returned to work as graduates of the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security & Resource Strategy.
DLA Logistics Operations employees Anthony Sabatina, Randy Grimm and Hugh Wilson each earned a Master of Science in National Resource Strategy from the National Defense University on June 12. NDU’s mission is to educate joint warfighters in critical thinking and the creative application of military power to inform national strategy and globally integrated operations.
Each year, DLA sends rising senior leaders at the GS-14 and GS-15 levels to the Eisenhower School as part of the DLA Executive Development Program. The program is designed to help current and future senior leaders effectively navigate and manage leadership challenges, and to develop leadership competencies critical for maintaining supply chain excellence.
Selection for the Eisenhower School is selective. Participants must be nominated by their respective commands before being interviewed and nominated by the DLA Executive Resource Board, which includes the DLA vice director and agency SES members.
Anthony Sabatina
Thirteen years ago, Sabatina began his contracting career in DLA Troop Support’s Subsistence supply chain before joining DLA Contracting Services as a contracting officer on the DLA Rapid Deployment Team and the Joint Contingency Acquisition Support Office. Most recently, Sabatina helped launch DLA’s industry engagement analysis and market intelligence team to work with the military services and private sector to improve the defense industrial business.
“While working on the industry engagement team, we would have weekly engagements with our defense industrial base and I got a really good insight into what the private sector was communicating to the agency,” he said. “I found it really interesting that the Eisenhower School would give you further insights into how the broader defense industrial base works across all government sectors, including the military services and the Department of Defense. That really piqued my interests.”
At the Eisenhower School, Sabatina participated in the Senior Acquisition Course. He said DLA brings incredible value to the Eisenhower School because of the breadth and depth of contracting experience. He used prior experience in classroom discussions to contribute and advocate for DLA.
From several hundred page reading assignments and research writing to a global travel assignment in South Korea to visit a shipbuilder, Sabatina described the Eisenhower School as a natural fit to grow personally and professionally. He said his experiences were rewarding, especially being one of the youngest participants in his class selected to serve as a seminar leader and member of the student council.
“I immediately got engaged in leadership opportunities and the ability to work with different individuals from the military services, different agencies and countries. I was able to practice in real time. I was studying strategic leadership and how it directly related to DLA in terms of my future senior level roles where leadership is truly paramount and key,” he said.
Randy Grimm
Grimm served 27 years in the Marine Corps, with seven years at the Marine Corps Headquarters in logistics future force development before joining DLA in 2022. Prior to attending the Eisenhower School, he worked as a Marine Corps customer account manager in DLA Logistics Operations, helping Marines with supply chain support from the agency.
“From a logistician standpoint, Eisenhower is considered the ultimate education in how national resources, the economy, industry, companies and finance come together to allow the military to have the equipment, the training and the people it needs to be effective,” he said.
Subjects like economics, industry study, strategic leadership, war fighting and industrial mobilization help him understand how the DOD brings together the private sector knowledge senior leaders need to know to aid in decision making, he added.
Grimm participated in the Finance Industry Study at the Eisenhower School, where he interacted with venture capital firms focused on startup companies supporting defense initiatives.
“We really got to see how these private companies are motivated to develop tech to support the military and how these venture capital firms are funneling private sector money into those initiatives to develop the innovation needed for the future operating environment,” he said.
Grimm returned to work in the DLA Director’s Strategic Initiatives Group. Grimm said the Eisenhower School prepared him for his next role because it spoke to the breadth and depth of what is required to support the military from an acquisition, innovation and sustainment level.
“At the end of each semester, we did exercises focused on preparing or supporting the military services in contested logistics environments and supply chain security, topics important to effective DLA operations,” he said.
Hugh Wilson
Wilson, a Navy Reserve supply corps officer who worked at DLA on active-duty orders from 2018-2021, previously worked as a warehouse fulfillment operations employee in his civilian role. He brought public and private-sector expertise to the DLA Logistics Operations Director’s Action Group after joining the agency in 2021, something he also shared during his time at the Eisenhower School.
At DLA, Wilson said he gained insights into how DLA operated holistically and engaged with external partners like the military services and its whole-of-government partners. The Eisenhower School taught him how DLA fits into the joint logistics enterprise and the larger Defense Department framework through engagements with his instructors, classmates and guest speakers.
After graduation, Wilson now reports to the DLA Logistics Operations Metrics Team to use data to solve the agency’s unique challenges.
“I learned a lot through my engagement with my classmates about how different organizations, whether it be the services or different federal agencies, or how different individuals approach solving problems,” he said. “It really caused me to question my mindset and be more open to attacking problems with other methodologies.”
“I'm excited about working with the metrics team to get to the facts and gain an understanding to use that information to make better decisions for DLA and for our partners,” he added.
For Wilson, he said his biggest takeaway was a guest speaker stating the nation’s challenges don’t need a whole-of-government approach but a whole-of-nation approach.
“On the civilian side, there are a lot of smart people with great products and great ideas and a lot of those definitely have applicability to the problems we're facing,” he said. “We have to identify what those viable solutions are and help integrate them effectively into a military framework.”