WORKFORCE
personal cheerleaders—always encourag- ing me, challenging me or even ‘bringing me back to my senses’ when I almost made the decision to leave the government,” Lawson said. “At the time, I was young and never envisioned ‘acquisition analyst’ as what I wanted to be when I grew up. I guess you could say I was still trying to figure things out, and I was exploring my options.” It was during this exploration that her mentor convinced her to stay, she said.
“One of my fears is disappointing others,” Lawson admits. “My mentor at the time expressed how proud he was of me and how much he believed that I would go on to do great things if I just stuck it out, so needless to say, I left that conversation with a renewed confidence and decided to stick around.”
Lawson said the guidance of her mentors was so valuable that she would pass along that same advice to junior acquisition personnel and especially “encourage them to never be afraid to ask questions and stick with it.” She said that coming into the world of acquisition can be both intim- idating and overwhelming. “I think I was afraid, for a good six months, to answer emails without asking my mentor if my response was correct and responding with an ‘I’m not sure, let me get back to you’ more times than I can count, but if you stay loyal to this career field, it will become one of the most rewarding positions you will ever have,” she said.
“One of my mentors told me, ‘Always say yes when leadership asks the workforce for volunteers for special assignments [or] deployments.’ Even though I have devel- oped personally and professionally in my career without taking on extended or trav- eling assignments, I do wish I would have said yes a few more times when life was less hectic.”
And she said life can get pretty hectic. When she’s not serving as a team busi- ness advisor at work, Lawson is advising a different kind of team, in a very differ- ent capacity, at home. “People [outside of work] would probably say that I’m a girl mom who lives on a farm,” she said— seemingly the opposite of how she might be viewed at work. “Te only thing this has in common with my work is that both my work and home life are crazy and busy. Between taking care of three hilar- ious, dramatic and into-everything girls under the age of six, along with helping my husband take care of our farm animals, it’s chaos all the time,” she said. But Lawson has figured out how to balance work and family life, and so far it’s working out pretty well.
In addition to juggling work and family, Lawson said a
career development
program called High5!, offered by an outside consulting company, which she completed in 2019, was extremely helpful and the “best class she has ever taken.” Te program promoted the expanded bene- fits of effective team communication and collaboration, she said, and “was geared toward understanding both your unique personality and that of colleagues, and was amazingly accurate at generating your personality profile and displaying details of your possible strengths and weaknesses, effective communication techniques and suggestions for development—my results showed that I like to be involved, but also care about meaningful relationships with people.”
At the end of the day, the most reward- ing part of Lawson’s job is working with cross-functional teams to support a major weapon system, and bringing the 15-years- dormant Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) production line back to life to support one of the Army’s top modern- ization priorities—Long Range Precision
WORK-LIFE, BALANCED
Lawson and her daughter Heidi on “Take Your Child to Work Day” in front of the M270A1 static display at the STORM Project Office. (Photo provided by Lawson)
Fires. “Upon fielding, the MLRS M270A2 Launcher will offer new technology and increased crew protection,” she said, which achieves the ultimate goal of “keeping our nation’s Soldiers safer and equipping them with the most up-to-date capabilities.” And that makes it all worthwhile.
—CHERYL MARINO
https://asc.ar my.mil 109
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