JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas (June 29, 2023) --A Mission and Installation Contracting Command contracting professional is among 10 winners of the Army Materiel Command’s 2022 Louis Dellamonica Award for Outstanding Personnel of the Year.
Sgt. 1st Class Lenise Pilcher, a 51C contracting NCO assigned to 418th Contracting Support Brigade at Fort Cavazos, Texas, was nominated while assigned to MICC-Fort Liberty in North Carolina for multiple accomplishments in 2022.
“I am really honored to receive this,” Pilcher said, adding she is proud to represent the MICC, Army Contracting Command and AMC with this recognition. “It’s a blessing.”
Award winners were announced May 23 by Maj. Gen. Walter Duzzny, the AMC chief of staff.
The Dellamonica award was established to recognize outstanding work accomplishments that have significantly contributed to AMC’s mission and overarching goals and objectives. Each year, AMC selects deserving employees, both military and civilian, below the rank of general officer and senior executive service level, who meet the established criteria. Nominees are judged on how their initiatives measurably improve their work environment and AMC’s mission; how they motivate and inspire fellow employees to improve or increase the quality of their own work; and how well they are viewed by peers, subordinates and supervisors.
The award was named after Louis Dellamonica, an AMC employee who retired in 2007 at the age of 94. With more than 65 years of government service, Dellamonica was both the oldest and longest-serving Department of Defense employee at the time.
In Pilcher’s nomination, Wade Cole, MICC deputy to the commanding general, described her as a phenomenal contracting representative who, “was undoubtedly at the fulcrum of contracting support success to Forces Command, XVIII Airborne Corps and the 82nd Airborne Division through 152 contract actions resulting in over $30 million obligated.”
Pilcher, originally from Chicago, enlisted in the Army at age 20 after a chance encounter with an Army recruiter who was recruiting her family member. She was working at a local grocery store and taking classes toward an associate degree, but she prayed for something more. Taking the recruiter’s unexpected visit as the sign she was looking for, Pilcher was open to hearing about service opportunities in the Army.
“The Army just offered me so many options,” Pilcher recalled. “I was hooked when they told me about all of the education benefits without having school loans.” She subsequently used her Army education benefits to earn undergraduate and Master of Business Administration degrees.
Though her initial military occupational specialty was a 92A automated logistical specialist, she has been in contracting for 10 years. Over nearly two decades, Pilcher says she has enjoyed many rewarding assignments and five deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Poland and U.S. locations supporting the FEMA flood mission. Instead of preparing for retirement, for which she is eligible in 2025, Pilcher would like to pursue continued service as an instructor or a contracting branch manager, where she can best share her skills.
“I love this job,” Pilcher explained. She said nothing motivates her more than seeing new enlisted, officer or civilian contracting professionals who are eager to learn the specialty. “To be able to instruct the new people coming through and help guide them through their own personal 51C journey would be a continued blessing.”
Pilcher will join other Dellamonica winners for a formal award ceremony hosted at the AMC headquarters in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama later this year.
For more about AMC’s 2023 Dellamonica Award for Outstanding Personnel of the Year, visit https://www.army.mil/article/267431/.
About the MICC
Headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas, the Mission and Installation Contracting Command consists of about 1,300 military and civilian members who are responsible for contracting goods and services in support of Soldiers as well as readying trained contracting units for the operating force and contingency environment when called upon. As part of its mission, MICC contracts are vital in feeding more than 200,000 Soldiers every day, providing many daily base operations support services at installations, facilitate training in the preparation of more than 100,000 conventional force members annually, training more than 500,000 students each year, and maintaining more than 14.4 million acres of land and 170,000 structures.
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