ADC members and defense decision-makers gathered at the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C., Tuesday for the first installment in the ADC Connect series.
Tuesday’s discussion, moderated by ADC Vice President Karen Holt, featured each military service’s top official for energy, installations and environment: Assistant Navy Secretary Meredith Berger, Assistant Army Secretary Rachel Jacobson and Acting Air Force Assistant Secretary Edwin Oshiba.
They discussed strategic partnerships, energy resilience, readiness and other priorities for DOD and defense communities.
Here are some of their remarks.
- “Anytime that we are putting a footprint of the Navy or the Marine Corps, we are becoming part of that community,” Berger said. “We are investing in that community. It’s something that we take really seriously…. It is very important that we continue to ensure that we have maritime dominance, and we do that through these partnerships, through empowering our people and making sure that overall we maintain our presence.”
- “One of the objectives is to put the Army on a sustainable, strategic path for the future. For us, that means taking our installations management plan and putting those into real concrete actions – taking our climate strategy… and putting it into an implementation plan so that it’s enduring – and making sure that we are institutionalizing the strategic path that we’re on. We don’t want it to evaporate. Another one of [Army Secretary Christine Wormuth’s] objectives is to become more data-centric. This is the place where we really can work with communities, particularly when we are exchanging data about managing our collective resources, the resources that don’t know a fence line.”
- “Our workforce – how we take care of them, how we retain them, how we recruit them – is really important,” Oshiba said. “And like all of the services, we are part of your community. We work, live, play in your community…. Yes, there is a fence line, but it should be seamless how we work at our installations and our partnerships with you…. Everything we do starts and ends at the installations.”
ADC Connect is a way to keep defense communities engaged and part of the national dialogue between ADC’s larger-scale events.
ADC photo by Ainura Johnson
