Back in 1996, in the CTSF's first year of existence, the third person hired to fill one of the job slots in the new facility was a man named Tom Wright. Now Wright has assumed the post of chief of the CTSF's Engineering Services branch.
"Yup," Wright said in a recent interview, "I was employee number three, back in 1996. I was telecom."
Wright laughed and said he likes to tell people it has taken a whole department to replace him.
"Yeah," he said, "I was putting in phones and phone lines…crawling under building running wires."
Since June 4, Wright has swapped running wire for running one of the CTSF's three key departments, Engineering Services, formerly known as System of Systems Integration (SoSI).
Wright has been on the CTSF campus continuously since 1996.
He left his job in CTSF telecommunications, to take a post as technical lead for the Maneuver Control System shop in Trailer 16.
From there, he moved to government site lead over a staff of more than 200, for Force XXI Battle Command-Brigade and Below (FBCB2) with offices in the installation yard on North Avenue.
"I've been there for the last six years," he said. One of his priorities as the new head of Engineering Services, he said, is the development and the implementation of what he calls a network academy.
"The idea is to take commercial network engineers, and turn them into CTSF…or Army…network engineers," he said.
Wright, a native of Plano, Ill., is a 1976 graduate of West Point, and saw action in Vietnam. He holds a Masters of Business Administration, and has a Master's Degree in computer science.
Wright succeeds Steve Thompson.
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