COMMUNICATORS WANTED I ANTOINETTE J. FREELAND
COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Product Manager for Installation Information Infra- structure Modernization, Project Manager for Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems, Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems
TITLE: Product officer
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 20
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS: Level III in program management and in test and evaluation; Level I in information technology; member of the Army Acquisition Corps
EDUCATION: B.A. in psychology, Marymount University
AWARDS: Army Superior Civilian Service Award
nterested in being a product officer? Here’s what it takes: “If I were hiring some- one for my job, I’d look for someone with a variety of acquisition experience, good attention to detail and strong communication and problem-solving skills. Communication is a big part of the job, but often a skill that people overlook,”
said Antoinette “Toni” Freeland, product director for the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS). “Te biggest challenge I face is bringing together the different organizations from different backgrounds and getting them to understand and work toward a common goal—serving as a mediator to ensure that all of a project’s stakeholders, including the product office team, are speaking a common language and working toward the schedule with the same urgency.”
Freeland and her team are assigned to the Product Manager for the Installation Infor- mation Infrastructure Modernization Program (I3MP) under the Project Manager for Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems. Teir job is to support joint warfighters and mission command centers with emerging information technol- ogy (IT) and secure infrastructure systems through life cycle management for Army and joint networks. “A Soldier’s ability to shoot, move and communicate depends on a reliable, unified network, and mission success depends on coordinated communi- cations to ensure that the right level of combat power is at the right place, at the right time,” she said. “All this communication is transported over the Army’s network— nothing works without it.”
When she tells people what she does for a living, Freeland noted, “People are often surprised by how driven the Army acquisition staff is to own and get after problems. For some people, it is a change in mindset from top-down, stovepipe-driven directives to creative, outside-the-foxhole thinking that produces results for our Soldiers. I always remind people that it’s Soldiers who we’re working for.”
She has been with PEO EIS for almost five years, starting as chief of the Acquisition Management Division. Her introduction to defense acquisition came 15 years before that, when a contractor hired her as a software test analyst supporting the Joint Interop- erability Test Command’s work on the Global Command and Control System – Joint.
“I was fascinated by the processes that took a military need from the requirements phase through development into testing, and then deployment to the Soldier,” she said. “Te realization that I could be part of the process that helped Soldiers do their jobs more effectively while also ensuring their safety while they executed their mission was impor- tant to me, and it was something I wanted to contribute to.”
In looking back over those two decades, she noted that the biggest change she has seen is one of perspective. “More people are recognizing that IT programs are not like traditional acquisition programs and do not progress the same way through conventional acquisition
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Army AL&T Magazine
Spring 2019
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