DLA Chief of Staff Portfolio: A Powerful Engine for Change

DLA Chaplain

The agency's small but impactful chaplaincy team contributes to workforce resilience by providing a unique and essential pillar of support during enterprise-wide transformation. A dedicated two-person team, consisting of one chaplain and one religious affairs non-commissioned officer, offers strictly confidential spiritual and emotional guidance to a vast workforce of over 25,000 personnel. This vital function helps staff successfully navigate the heavy friction and uncertainty that naturally accompanies modernization. External events such as supporting real-world combat operations, combined with internal pressures such as the complex merger of two major subordinate commands, have significantly compounded this friction. During this period of intense change within DLA, personnel face mounting stressors that range from severe role ambiguity and increased workloads to deep anxiety about the future of work driven by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.

This pillar provides the governance and procedural framework to achieve modern, agile logistics support. It manages the tension between speed and discipline by ensuring professionals implement change in a structured, legally sound, and accountable manner. Precision in execution requires clear lines of authority and rapid access to accurate data. The CoS Portfolio teamdelivers both of these vital elements to the entire agency workforce.

initiatives aligned with enterprise goals and delivering measurable results. These professionals act as the architects and managers of disciplined change, orchestrating the thought and collaboration process from initial concept through final completion. Their diligent work ensures the agency's evolution remains both ambitious in scope and methodical in execution.

A primary instrument in this effort is the Governance Council, which leaders launched in January 2025 to fundamentally reshape the agency's decision-making structure. Chaired by the Chief of Staff, this council consolidates 12 separate governance forums into a single, integrated entity. The DLA Transformation team designed this strategic consolidation to reduce administrative redundancies, enhance cross-functional visibility, and accelerate informed decision-making, thereby embedding agility directly into the agency's leadership framework.

To execute these changes cohesively, the transformation team works in close partnership with the Director's Strategic Initiatives Group. Transformation specialists leverage a modernized, automated system developed by the SIG to collect significant actions. This system provides a centralized, searchable internal repository of operational highlights, equipping headquarters with near-real-time visibility into mission progress and helping institutionalize decision advantage across DLA. By utilizing internal command frameworks, progress trackers, and strategic execution guidelines developed in conjunction with the SIG, the transformation team ensures headquarters staff offices and regional commands remain synchronized, which prevents operational silos from forming.

The transformation specialists also lead "Vector," a dynamic initiative that aligns the agency's efforts directly with the National Defense Strategy through a "Rolling Horizon Framework." This model replaces the traditional five-year planning cycle with a system of continuous adaptation, which helps the agency workforce respond more quickly to global security threats. By leveraging data-driven insights, Vector ensures the agency's Strategic Plan operates as a living framework for achieving decision advantage rather than a static document.

Additionally, these transformation professionals drive major structural reforms to sharpen the agency's focus on its core logistics mission. Recently. this included creating a new DLA MSC, DLA Weapons Support, which consolidates mission sets previously held by the legacy DLA Aviation and DLA Land and Maritime commands. Concurrently, the transformation team leads the evaluation of the agency's physical footprint and facilitates divestiture of non-core programs.

This broad portfolio requires deep collaboration with the agency's operational directorates. As transformation specialists design future workforce structures, they partner with human resources professionals, who develop and implement strategies to build that workforce by advancing the career brand and creating a Talent Intelligence Hub. Similarly, while the transformation team sets the overall vision for digital modernization, they rely on information operations specialists to provide the technical infrastructure guided by the DLA Digital Strategy.

Because transformation initiatives depend heavily on resources, a tight partnership with financial managers remains essential. The transformation team champions initiatives for which financial managers build solid business cases, ensuring that all DLA modernization remains fiscally sound. Together, these professionals create a more focused and agile agency, placing the workforce in a better position to support the warfighter.

General Counsel

The agency's legal team ensures the workforce can move at the speed of relevance while remaining anchored in a sound legal foundation. Agency attorneys actively partner with leaders to identify legally compliant pathways for rapid modernization, successfully shifting the traditional legal approach from a restrictive "no" to a collaborative "how." This proactive approach allows the agency to move fast without breaking rules, balancing the urgent need for enterprise transformation with strict statutory and regulatory compliance.

The legal team plays a pivotal role in helping clients navigate DoW's Adaptive Acquisition Framework to deliver logistics capabilities with greater speed. Agency attorneys provide critical guidance on leveraging Middle Tier of Acquisition pathways for rapid prototyping and fielding, as well as Software Acquisition Pathways that accelerate iterative code development. The legal team also supports the use of Commercial Solutions Openings and Other Transaction Authorities. These flexible legal tools streamline how the agency engages commercial technology startups and non-traditional vendors, cutting procurement timelines from years to months while ensuring agreements remain legally sound.

This partnership extends to internal programs that modernize acquisition and broaden the industrial base. Agency attorneys actively support acquisition professionals in executing the Acquisition Modernization Program, which empowers contracting officers to exercise disciplined initiative. The legal community also provides necessary guidance for Small Business Innovation Programs, mitigating legal risk while helping innovative small businesses integrate into the federal contracting environment. Through this comprehensive legal support, the attorneys enable the agency to innovate securely and maintain a resilient, modern supply chain.

Operating under the motto "partners in the process, not roadblocks at the end," the legal team works alongside transformation specialists and enterprise risk managers as an early strategic partner. This collaboration ensures the agency can respond quickly and cohesively to major policy changes, such as the surge of executive orders that often accompany a new presidential administration. The legal team helped ensure that the acquisition workforce could adapt rapidly without risking operational disruption.

In addition, agency attorneys supported crucial legislative proposals aimed at modernizing the Berry Amendment, which requires DoW to prioritize domestic procurement for essential military supplies. This serves as a critical compliance standard for the DLA workforce that directly shapes supply chain sourcing and domestic industrial base support. By clarifying statutory boundaries and offering strategic legal counsel, DLA attorneys preserve acquisition flexibility and empower the agency to maintain a resilient supply chain while adhering strictly to domestic sourcing requirements.

Enterprise Risk Management

The agency's risk management specialists shift the organizational perception of risk from a routine compliance exercise to a powerful strategic enabler. As the workforce navigates widespread modernization, the risk management team embeds risk analysis directly into the agency's overarching decision-making framework. By actively participating in the Governance Council and leading the Enterprise Risk Working Group, these specialists ensure that senior leaders rapidly review the strategic risks associated with transformation. This allows DLA leaders to proactively address vulnerabilities without adding administrative burdens that could stall modernization efforts.

To manage the inherent friction of adopting new technologies and operational models, the risk management team applies a rigorous, lifecycle-based approach through its Enterprise Process Management function. As the agency transitions away from legacy systems and realigns its physical posture, DLA's process management specialists provide structured oversight to map new workflows, identify operational bottlenecks, and ensure continuity of support to the warfighter.

This partnership is particularly crucial in the digital realm, where risk managers work hand-in-hand with information operations specialists to mitigate risks associate with adopting new technology to ensure digital transformation remains secure and resilient. Risk managers also deploy standardized Risk and Control Matrix workbooks to evaluate new and existing processes. These specialized tools enable managers across the agency to rigorously assess their internal controls against established Government Accountability Office (GAO) standards. By standardizing how the workforce measures and reports risk, these specialists provide leaders with a dynamic, enterprise-wide picture of the agency's risk posture. This gives leaders the clear data they need to make smart, risk-based decisions as the agency undergoes major changes.

Pillar 3: Guiding the 'Posture' Transformation

This pillar serves as the key mechanism for tying logistics support and operational performance directly to military service and combatant command requirements. The professionals driving these efforts actively assess agency capabilities, resourcing, and processes to deliver unmatched logistics support. Their work remains vital to the ongoing strategic realignment of DLA's global footprint. The CoS Portfolio experts in this section help resolve the inherent tension between near-term operational demands and long-term strategic investments by providing leaders with a risk-based framework for making posture decisions.

Installation Management

Nearly 2,000 installation management professionals across the nation and around the world manage the critical physical and logistical aspects of the DLA's posture transformation. They ensure the agency's global footprint aligns precisely with rapidly evolving warfighter requirements. These dedicated professionals directly support the Strategic Plan's posture objective to "Strengthen Agency Global Resilience."

They achieve this by ensuring the workforce not only maintains the infrastructure but actively modernizes it, making facilities more resilient, secure, and capable of supporting operations in a contested logistics environment. The DLA Installation Management team deliberately balances the tension between funding immediate, near-term operational demands and making long-term strategic investments necessary to build the enterprise of tomorrow.

In recent efforts, these facility experts focused heavily on enhancing energy resilience to guarantee mission continuity during a crisis. The team achieved a major milestone by executing the agency's first-ever "Black Start" Energy Resilience Readiness Exercise at the Defense Supply Center in Columbus, Ohio. During this exercise, the installation professionals demonstrated their ability to operate the facility completely independent of the commercial power grid. They proved unequivocally that the agency can sustain critical support functions even if adversaries compromise primary power sources. This demonstrated capability forms a crucial component of the agency's ability to "fight tonight," providing massive assurance in the face of growing threats to domestic infrastructure. Since that initial success, the installation management team has conducted similar readiness exercises at other primary agency population centers.

In addition to driving future-focused resilience projects, DLA's installation management professionals aggressively manage the agency's existing infrastructure needs. In Fiscal Year 2025, the team achieved an exceptional 170% spending rate for their sustainment, restoration, and modernization budget, which allowed facility experts to eliminate a significant backlog of critical facility repairs, such as completing vital electrical upgrades at Defense Distribution Center Susquehanna, Pennsylvania.

By strategically managing physical assets, the installation professionals ensure the agency's posture perfectly aligns with the Strategic Plan whileremaining physically robust enough to meet the challenges of strategic competition.

Intelligence and Security: DLA Intelligence and Security (J2) provide leaders with a clear, actionable understanding of the global threat environment and how it affects logistics operations. As the agency modernizes processes and realigns its global posture, these intelligence analysts assess critical threat data to anticipate, understand, and mitigate risks. They ensure DLA leaders base strategic decisions on a realistic, unvarnished assessment of the operational landscape, which leads to more secure and resilient execution of agency missions.

To keep pace with rapidly evolving threats, the DLA J2 team maintains a punishing operational tempo. In Fiscal Year 2025 alone, intelligence analysts produce numerous topical summaries and provide regular, tailored intelligence briefings to senior leaders. These updates provide a continuous, near-real-time picture of threats targeting global supply chains and logistics operations, empowering leaders to make rapid, informed decisions regarding the agency's physical posture and strategic initiatives. These security professionals are actively implementing a new "Program of Analysis," modeled closely after the intelligence program used by the Army's former Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). This new model transforms intelligence reporting into a two-way street, allowing leaders across the enterprise to share specific priorities and help analysts build a more comprehensive intelligence program.

A cornerstone of the intelligence mission involves collaboration with information operations specialists to safeguard the agency's digital transformation. The Counterintelligence Cyber Team acts as a key partner in this critical effort, working as a fully integrated member of the agency's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) fusion cell. By bridging the gap between actionable intelligence and active network defense, DLA's intelligence and security professionals ensure the agency adopts new technologies within a hardened, resilient cybersecurity posture, successfully protecting the integrity of modernization efforts.

Pillar 4: Managing Stakeholder 'Partnerships' Through Change

This pillar serves as the primary mechanism for managing external relationships that are critical to the success of the agency's transformation efforts. The professionals driving these efforts secure essential buy-in and active support from Congress, industry partners, and the American public.

Legislative Affairs

Legislative affairs professionals serve as the strategic bridge between the agency and the U.S. Congress. They expertly manage critical partnerships with lawmakers and their staffs to ensure Congress properly funds the agency and grants legal authorities necessary to execute the mission. DLA's legislative specialists synchronize messaging between the agency's internal subject matter experts and Capitol Hill, building mutual understanding to advance overarching transformation goals. They achieve this through a highly deliberate and proactive engagement strategy. This team relies on tailored briefings, daily correspondence, and immersive Staffer Day events, all specifically designed to translate the agency's complex operational realities into clear, compelling legislative priorities.

This proactive engagement directly enables critical missions and modernization efforts. The legislative team actively engages with lawmakers to shape provisions of the annual National Defense Authorization Act. Through persistent collaboration and by providing expert technical assistance, the team successfully secured legislative language that provided significant audit relief for the Defense Working Capital Fund. They also preserved essential acquisition flexibility within the Berry Amendment by protecting small-dollar purchase thresholds and they streamlined the complex process for disposing of materials from the National Defense Stockpile. These notable legislative successes protect the agency from operational risk and provide statutory agility for leaders to execute missions effectively.

The success of these legislative affairs professionals relies entirely on deep collaboration with other experts across the Chief of Staff team. Their close partnership with the legal team remains critical for parsing the exact legal ramifications of legislative language and for launching formal legislative proposals. Likewise, legislative specialists work in lockstep with financial managers, whose tireless efforts toward achieving a clean audit actively establish the agency's reputation for fiscal reliability on Capitol Hill. Financial managers achieved a significant milestone by receiving a 'clean' audit opinion on a major fund's financial statements. This monumental success proved to Congress that fiscal accountability remains central to modernization, which rapidly builds legislative trust. This deep synergy allows the combined teams to build a unified, highly compelling case for budget and authority requests, enabling the agency to secure robust funding for strategic priorities.

Looking forward, legislative affairs professionals are focusing on shaping legislation that would fortify global supply chains. A central effort involves clearly communicating requirements for the Global Resilience Initiative (GRI), a program that addresses historical sustainment gaps by strengthening the Defense Industrial Base (DIB).

Small Business Programs

The professionals within the Small Business Programs Office operate as a critical engine for strengthening the DIB and enhancing supply chain resilience. Their work directly supports the agency's partnerships imperative. DLA small business advocates leverage partnerships with innovative small businesses to foster a more agile and competitive supplier network. By passionately advocating for these vital commercial partners, the team ensures supply chains grow robust enough to fully support the agency's modernized posture and meet the demands of strategic competition.

The team demonstrates this commitment to small business engagement through concrete, record-breaking achievements. The agency awarded a significant and record-breaking amount of contract dollars to small businesses, demonstrating a strong commitment to this program. The agency significantly increased its use of socioeconomic set-asides, broadening opportunities for a diverse range of suppliers.

Because they recognize that navigating the federal contracting process often forms a significant barrier for new entrants, DLA small business experts launched proactive initiatives to improve access for a broader variety of companies. A keystone example of this effort is the "Supplier Pathway Program," which provides automated tools that help guide suppliers through the complex contracting process. By collaborating with acquisition professionals, the small business advocates align overarching acquisition strategies with the ultimate goal of strengthening commercial partnerships. They ensure the DIB remains sustainable, resilient, and fully capable of partnering with information operations experts to deliver highly innovative digital solutions.

External Communications and Public Affairs

DLA PA professionals shape and manage the agency's public narrative, serving as a vital bridge to industry partners, the broader defense community, and the American public During periods of rapid modernization and massive strategic shifts, maintaining stakeholder confidence remains paramount. The public affairs team builds and sustains this trust by proactively engaging with targeted media to communicate the precise purpose, progress, and success of transformation initiatives. They collaborate closely with logistics operations specialists to facilitate clear, consistent communication to warfighting customers across all military services.

In recent proactive efforts, DLA's PA professionals successfully arranged high-visibility broadcast appearances for the DLA Director and the Chief Information Officer on programs like Fed Gov Today, while also securing interview spots for multiple leaders on Federal News Network podcasts. The Director's appearance on Fed Gov Today, for instance, allowed him to communicate the agency's vision simultaneously to multiple critical audiences: the public, Congress, industry leaders, and other DoW leaders. By demystifying highly complex logistics operations and clearly articulating how these changes benefit the Joint Force, the DLA Public Affairs team ensures external partners remain informed, engaged, and highly supportive of the agency's strategic direction.

To effectively reach a broad external audience ranging from front-line warfighters to defense industry chief executive officers, DLA communications professionals maintain a core set of plain-language messages focused on topics of wide interest. By translating dense bureaucratic jargon, the public affairs team prioritizes clear messaging alongside compelling storytelling anchored in real-world outcomes. Whether they coordinate media engagements, publish news articles, or develop multimedia social media content, the team ensures the overarching narrative consistently highlights the agency's rock-solid reliability and innovative edge.

DLA's four Transformation Imperatives - People, Precision, Posture, and Partnerships - are direct outcomes of a deliberately managed change process, orchestrated by the professionals within the DLA Chief of Staff Portfolio and enabled through close partnerships with other DLA Headquarters organizations. The CoS Portfolio team acts as far more than a collection of administrative support offices; synergy among these professionals forms a critical change management engine that guides major initiatives and minimizes risks. Their deeply integrated approach creates a system in which leaders thoughtfully manage change, ensure legal compliance, and maintain strategic coherence. This effort results in a more agile and resilient Defense Logistics Agency, capable of adapting to future challenges while delivering improved outcomes for the entire organization.

The CoS Portfolio professionals help the agency strictly follow the rules, carefully manage risks, and stay focused on the DLA Director's long-term goals. However, they absolutely do not achieve this alone. Their success springs from close, ongoing collaboration with the SIG personnel, who ensure the Director's specific priorities stay on track. It also relies on the operational directorates, whose dedicated professionals use deep expertise and resources to bring these plans to life. Collaboration with and support from DLA Human Resources, DLA Logistics Operations, DLA Acquisition, DLA Finance, and the DLA Joint Reserve Force make overarching transformative efforts possible.