LEARN BY EXAMPLE Christopher Waltsak is no stranger to Army acquisition.
Both of his parents worked for the Army in some capacity—his father last served as an integrated logistic support manager for Project Manager Warfighter Information Network ‒ Tactical in a career that lasted 47 years, and his mother worked as an administrative assistant at the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) Software Engineering Center—at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. In his younger years, he worked at Denny’s across the street from the now-closed Fort Monmouth military base and can recall “always running into [and being recognized by] senior acquisition and military personnel” in and around town. For most of his life, government personnel were his role models, and he learned by their example. So no one was too surprised when he pursued a career with the Army—first as an active duty Soldier and later with the Army Acquisition Workforce.
CHRISTOPHER L. WALTSAK
COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (PEO IEW&S) Project Manager Intelligence Systems and Analytics
TITLE: Product support manager YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 12 YEARS OF MILITARY SERVICE: 4
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS: Advanced in life cycle logistics, Practitioner in program manage- ment
EDUCATION: B.S. in business administration from University of Management Technologies, associate degree in business administration from Brookdale Community College
AWARDS: Commanders Award for Civilian Service (2018), Civilian Service Achievement Medal (2018), PEO IEW&S Army Superior Unit Award (2015)
“I walked out of the Army and into the JCALS [Joint Computer-Aided Logis- tics System] Program Manager Office in 1998,” said Waltsak, ending four years of active-duty service and beginning his new program manager role as a govern- ment contractor lead fielder addressing special projects for the Air Force’s Program Manager JCALS. “Tey hired me because I was leaving the military and the company valued Soldier professionalism and work ethics.”
Waltsak gained and applied most of his logistics knowledge and expertise during his years as a program manager. He worked on programs like the CECOM Gener- ator RESET Program and, as a logistics management specialist in 2006, he set up the logistics branch for Distributed Common Ground System-Army—the Army’s primary system for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance processing and exploitation of data from all sensor modalities and dissemination of intelligence information about the threat, weather and terrain at all echelons.
Eight years of experience as a project manager and then being in the right place at the right time prepared him for his next position as a government civilian. “When the Readiness Management Division chief was on a special task for three months and the LOG [logistics officer] chief position was vacant, I covered all RMD [research management decisions] and LOG business while he was away,” said Waltsak. “When he returned, he offered me the LOG chief job with an eventual plan for me to take his place once he retired.”
In 2010, Waltsak entered the acquisition workforce as a government civilian logistics branch chief and said the best part about working as an acquisition professional in a project manager office is that he never has the same day twice. “Tere is always a new challenge, and a problem that is outside the lines that I have to figure out,” he said of the complexities he faces daily. Waltsak transitioned to Readiness Manage- ment Division chief and product support manager (PSM) in 2012, and then assumed
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Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2023
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