Unique past helps Light soar to top

By Liz Adrian, Army Contracting Command-Rock IslandMarch 11, 2016

Unique past helps Light soar to top
1 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL
Unique past helps Light soar to top
2 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Melissa Light and her family - father Kyle Harris, mother Kathy Harris, and brother Tim Harris - lived in a three room hut for seven of the 10 years they lived in the village of Pasinkap, Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and 1990s. Light was recently na... (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. - "I've been on more airplanes than I could ever imagine counting."

Melissa Light, a branch chief in the Reachback Contracting Division at Army Contracting Command-Rock Island, based at the Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois had a particularly unique upbringing that cultivated a robust worldview and work ethic that has served her well in her professional life. In November, she was named the Secretary of the Army Outstanding Contracting Officer of the Year.

Light is a Quad Cities native, but between the ages of 5 and 15, she, her brother and their parents were enveloped within a wholly different culture from the American Midwest. Growing up as part of a missionary family in a 200-person village in Papua New Guinea was like living in the pages of National Geographic.

There were no roads, no electricity and no running water. Her family lived in a bamboo hut in a very remote part of the jungle. In order to restock supplies, the family spent two days going in and out of where they lived to travel to the city, doing so only every six months or so.

"We either had to go by helicopter, or we had to hike half a day through the jungle, through the swamps and then take a dugout canoe 14 hours down a river to a grass airstrip where a little tiny plane would come pick us up and take us to the city. We would go into town and usually stay about three weeks, restock supplies, and then go back out."

For 10 years, Light and her family lived with the Nend tribe in the village of Pasinkap, Papua New Guinea. Her parents are Bible translators who specifically chose to live within a tribe that had no written language.

In her current role, Light directly supports the field through base life support service contracting. The work she and her employees do affects the day-to-day lives of Soldiers, contractors and civilians deployed to Southwest Asia.

"I think that there are a lot of things that I took from my experience growing up and living in that environment that I apply to who I am, and how I do my job now."

Light's parents' path to learning the language began with finger pointing. Her parents would work with tribespeople, pointing at objects and write out phonetically what they were told.

"Once they were fluent in the language, which took a number of years, they then created a new alphabet and created a dictionary and started figuring out the grammatical structure of the language. Once they had a fairly decent foundation on all of that, which probably took about the first five years that we were there, they started translating the Bible into that language."

During this process, Light learned the importance of accuracy in documents.

"As a kid observing -- and sometimes helping my dad with the literacy and translation projects -- everything he did is kind of like what we do in contracting, both having massive volumes of words and documents. I've seen first-hand that if a comma is in the wrong place, it's going to throw the meaning off, so that's part of the reason I'm so driven to make sure that our documents are correct."

In her position as a contracting supervisor, Light is responsible for creative problem solving and conflict management, both between governmental customers and their supporting contractors, as well as within her own ranks.

Growing up in an extremely close-knit environment, Light learned quickly that if you had an issue with someone in the tribe, you had to work it out. The walls of bamboo huts are thin, which meant no hiding from problems with others.

"I think that has helped me realize you have to work together, have to sort through things. I grew up in a culture where we had to work together to survive, and I don't know if contingency contracting is much different at least for a work environment. Everybody has to play their part, because we're not going to be successful in that fast-paced, crazy environment without everyone pulling their weight."

Above all, Light said her leadership philosophy centers on recognizing that people are the most important part of the job, and relationships need to be nurtured.

"People are the most valuable thing. All the work that we do, it's just going to come and go. You don't hear people talking about how they love the contract that they wrote, but they do either love or hate the people that they work with. It makes or breaks your work environment."

In working with Light for the past five years, Jake Adrian, Reachback Division Contracting chief, said his decision to nominate Light for the Secretary of the Army Outstanding Contracting Officer of the Year was easy.

"What makes Melissa such an outstanding contracting officer is she cares about the people on her team, her customers and their missions," Adrian said. "My opinion is this is attributable to her time spent growing up with a tribe in the jungle of Papua New Guinea and her extensive travels to the Middle East. This has given her a worldly perspective the most people could only dream about."

Living for so long within an environment so completely different from America, Light said she loves to travel and see different cultures.

She travels extensively for work and typically travels to Kuwait four times a year. The value of face-to-face interaction with customers and contractors in theater became starkly clear to Light during sequestration when she and her employees were unable to travel to Kuwait for almost two years.

"I think it becomes very easy for the assumption to be that we don't understand or we don't connect or we are in our cushy jobs back in the states and we don't really get it when we can't meet in person," said Light. "When we are able to go there and sit down with them, the whole dynamic changes and it makes our work so much easier."

Whether hopping the globe for business or pleasure, Light has stepped foot on every continent except South America and Antarctica. She does have a strong desire to check both places off her list.

"I would love to go to Antarctica," said Light. "I don't want to go live there or on an expedition for a year or anything, but I would love to go on the cruises that take you there. Unfortunately, I don't think there are any contracting jobs in Antarctica where you could go for a couple weeks, but if there was, I'd be on the first plane."

Related Links:

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