HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. -- Joe Bradley joined the Senior Executive Service Sept. 27, and now leads the engineering workforce and cyber resiliency office at Air Force Life Cycle Management Center-Hanscom.
Bradley served as an engineer in government, including Hanscom, and private sectors, with only a five-year stint of his 35-year career spent away from New England, where he was born and raised. He’s also a member of Mensa International, a high-IQ society. In his latest assignment, he’s dual hatted as director of the Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapons Systems and associate director of Engineering and Technical Management.
“Every weapons system in the inventory can have improved security with better cyber hygiene,” said Bradley. “Through the responsibilities of this position, I can help with that, not just by working with the personnel in the weapons system program offices, but by ensuring that our engineers are trained and equipped to provide the best cyber security to their systems.”
The CROWS office stood up in 2017 and its funding is now more predictable, allowing for better planning. As a result, CROWS now provides cyber resiliency training and lessons-learned databases for the acquisition workforce. Bradley sees his CROWS role as challenging, but possible because his approximately 400-strong engineering workforce has diverse contacts across major commands and Air Force components.
"There is a misperception that there is delay when applying lessons learned, but the acquisition workforce is at the forefront of every mission the Air Force is executing," he said. "My goal is to make sure the engineers here see lessons learned as an opportunity to improve every mission going forward. The entire Air Force can benefit from our people being permitted to learn and grow.”
Bradley, during his SES induction ceremony, offered his four rules of the road that he believes will help his people do just that. They are:
- Never say no to opportunity
- Always be willing to work
- Never be afraid to work outside your comfort zone
- Embrace change and make change happen
The Office of Personnel Management defines Senior Executive Service members as serving in key roles linking presidential appointees to the rest of the federal workforce.
According to the OPM website, SES leaders possess well-honed executive skills and share a broad perspective of government and a public service commitment grounded in the Constitution. The SES was designed to be a corps of executives selected for theirleadership qualifications, not their technical expertise. It is the keystone of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, and the SES flag reflects that by featuring an architectural keystone.
“The SES selection process is exacting, formal and structured,” said Steven Wert, program executive officer Digital here, also an SES member. “That process ensures that Joe is someone who has the ability to walk into this job and lead people and lead change. This will pay dividends for our Air Force as we own more and more of the technical baselines."