ARMY AL&T
As he is mindful of setting boundaries for himself, he encour- ages others to take an active role. “Now, it’s much less about me being the hero,” he said. “Now, it’s about setting the conditions so that my organization, the members of my team, can be the hero.”
What advice does he give to junior acquisition workforce members? “Be patient,” he said. “My take on career progression now is that it occurs at the perfect intersection of opportunity and preparedness. You can only directly impact one of those, so make yourself as ready as possible for when an opportunity presents itself.” And then, when presented with that perfect opportunity, he says to jump. “Te majority of the opportunities that my super- visors and mentors have steered me toward were ones that I wasn’t necessarily looking for and, honestly, a few were ones that didn’t really appeal to me at first,” Cowperthwait said. “I was content in my comfort zone and not looking to move, but in hindsight that’s exactly what I needed to do.” He had to learn to welcome change—to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. “When you’re comfortable, you’re not growing,” he said.
“I’ve been extremely blessed to have worked for supervisors and mentors who have all made a practice of plucking me out of my comfort zone to expose me to progressively challenging oppor- tunities.” One such experience came in 2012, when he had the opportunity to take on a high-visibility, high-priority foreign mili- tary sales (FMS) effort involving the United Arab Emirates. “Tat opened the door to some truly remarkable FMS assignments in another PEO Aviation program office a few years later,” he said.
Because of those experiences, he now recommends the interna- tional acquisition certification under the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act to others in the Army Acquisition Workforce. “ ‘Standard’ acquisition is hard enough, and the inter- national acquisition program introduces the added complexities of the security assistance operation,” he said. “I would absolutely recommend the program to anyone in the workforce, not just those directly working FMS programs. Trough the course of their careers, everyone is eventually going to touch or work in support of an FMS program, and I think it would help build the awareness and context of what those programs are and how they fit into the big picture.” In other words, embrace the challenge, learn new skills and get comfortable being a little uncomfortable. Sage advice from someone who walks the walk.
—ELLEN SUMMEY FOREIGN ASSIGNMENT
Cowperthwait in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 2018 when he worked on the Afghan Air Force Mi-17 program.
TOP HONOR
Col. Matt Mingus, USA (Ret.), left, and Col. Rick Bowyer, USA (Ret.), right, present Cowperthwait with the 2020 Association of the United States Army Redstone-Huntsville Chapter Department of the Army Civilian of the Year award. (Photos courtesy of Mike Cowperthwait)
https://asc.ar my.mil
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