Meet Your Army: Building the next generation of IT and Army leaders

By Army News ServiceDecember 6, 2017

Meet Your Army: Building the next generation of IT and Army leaders
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Meet Your Army: Building the next generation of IT and Army leaders
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Meet Your Army: Building the next generation of IT and Army leaders
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COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Soldiers require capabilities to fight, shoot, move, communicate, protect and sustain. Lieutenant General Bruce T. Crawford, the Army's Chief Information Officer/G-6, ensures they have the ability to reliably communicate anywhere, anytime, across all domains and in any environment.

To support this network, the Army must build, train and retain a robust information technology (IT) workforce, comprised of both soldiers and civilians, who work in coordination with industry partners to help it accomplish its missions.

Lt. Gen. Crawford traveled to his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina recently to speak to community leaders, academics, CEOs and CIOs from businesses in Columbia at Midlands Technical College and discuss the importance of building the next generation of IT workforce leaders and innovators. Following this engagement, Crawford spoke to students from the college. To both groups, Crawford remarked, "Unprecedented connectivity and access has given birth to an unquenchable thirst for information, anywhere, anytime…and we must all contribute to building a workforce prepared to meet that demand. A workforce that challenges assumptions and is willing to take prudent risk to drive innovative solutions."

Crawford also visited his high school alma mater, Lower Richland High School, where he met with Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) cadet commanders and then conducted an assembly with more than 350 JROTC cadets and students from the athletics program. His message was clear: "Believe in yourself and be humble. Have dignity and respect for yourself and those around you. Being a leader is not about being good or great at something. It's about being able to get everyone around you to be good and making a team better. Be a person people can count on."

He recounted the story of how a teacher at his high school took a bet on a kid from South Carolina who no one thought would make something of himself and mentored him through admissions to SC State University and through ROTC to become the man and leader he is today.

Crawford has had a distinguished 31-year career that currently puts him in the position to set the strategic direction and objectives for the Army network, oversee the Army's $11 billion IT investments, manage enterprise IT architecture, establish and enforce IT policies, and direct delivery of operational C4 (command, control, communications, and computers) IT capabilities to support warfighters and business users. As the CIO and G-6, he advises the Secretary of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army on the network, communications, signal operations, information security, force structure, and equipping.

Crawford maintains strong ties to the JROTC Program at Lower Richland High School and sees this as an opportunity to give back.

Crawford knows better than anyone else the importance of mentoring and shepherding the next generation of IT and Army leaders, but also of not losing sight of the contributions of those that came before him. During this trip, he also made a visit to the William Jennings Bryan Dorn Veterans Affairs Medical Center where he learned about several expansion projects they are partnering on with the US Army Corps of Engineers to expand the facility and the services provided. Crawford concluded his time visiting with veterans and emphasized that "as a Nation, we must never forget the debt we owe all veterans for securing the many freedoms we enjoy today."