Greetings all. Well, it's now been over 100 days since I was honored
with the opportunity to be your Executive Director. And now that the
"Honey Moon" period has passed I wanted to email all so that I may
provide a "report" on our first 100 Days together: what I found, what
I'm thinking, where I believe we're going, and what we need to do to get
there. To the Chairs and FC ED's, please ensure each of your committee
members have access to this message.

First, as many of you have heard already, I'm very proud to say that the
ESGR of today is a superb organization with totally dedicated staff and
volunteers who believe in the mission. Each day I am thankful for the
many hours of hard work and devotion all of you provide to our Guard and
Reserve, and as importantly, those employers of these Reserve members.
We have great support within DoD, especially with Secretary Tom Hall and
his staff at OASD (Reserve Affairs). Having that strong relationship
and support is directly attributed to the success of you, the
volunteers.

Regarding resources, I've looked at two areas: Funding and Personnel.
Today we are still working hard to finalize our budget for the FY09
budget. Your NCESGR staff is ensuring our justification documents
accurately "tell the tale" as to why we need the funds we're requesting:
$20M for FY09 and out (with increases for inflation). I'm very
optimistic that we'll be successful in gaining a solid funding level
without supplemental funding as we continue to gain visibility and
acknowledgement within DoD and the RC of our important mission.

Personnel issues are a challenge, especially since the Army is pulling
the Active duty positions out of NCESGR and no replacements are
forthcoming. But we understand and support the Army as it carries the
lion's share of the GWOT. In the meantime we're working with the
leadership at OASD (RA) and the Defense Human Resource Activity (DHRA)
to identify and fill personnel positions that not only support our
current operations but also positions ESGR for the future. My major
focus here is to ensure that we're relevant for those requirements that
we can best identify today which will require support operations within
the coming 18-24 months and beyond. Bottom line with regards to
Resources is that I am committed to ensuring that our capabilities and
support strengths are positioned, our people are qualified, and our
funding is more than just adequate to support our various operational
requirements in both the near and far terms.

Employer AND Employee Outreach are critical to our support efforts. As
I visit the FC's, it seems that we're not all working towards the same
objectives as some committees are more focused on employers and some on the RC Units/employees. Our support efforts must be focused towards
both as we're supporting the American people as a whole. It is
imperative that we talk to the leadership among the various
organizations and businesses in the local community to educate and
sustain their knowledge base on RC employee support. At the same time
we need to ensure we're telling the same storyline to the RC units
within those same communities. My desire is to place a greater emphasis
on the Strategic Outreach coordination effort to assist the FC to
enable us to more effectively communicate with those who either employ
RC members or are the RC employee. This approach includes working
directly with the various Services' RC Chiefs and their staff so that
we're fully integrated with their outreach efforts too. While NCESGR is
the recognized DoD lead for Outreach Support Operations, we can not
operate in a vacuum but must provide a full spectrum of outreach support
across the military services and industry.

Training. A major support area within NCESGR is training. As part of
our internal support initiatives I've asked the staff to look at how we
can best structure NCESGR to provide a fully functional, totally
operational Training Directorate. This Directorate will be lead by a
military Colonel/Captain with a support staff that is focused on
providing Staff and Volunteer training support. We must insure that
when we ask our volunteers to perform a unique, high-visibility mission,
that they are as fully prepared and trained as possible. To that end
we're working to stand up a Training Directorate by FY09, and earlier if
at all possible.

Please be aware that ESGR is coming under a new personnel evaluation
system within DoD called the National Security Personnel System. NSPS
is now driving much of our Mission Statement, Vision, Strategic Plans
thought processes, even our own personnel evaluation goals and
objectives, etc. We can't change it, only support it. As such, when
you see different ideas, new Vision Statement, etc., just know that
we're working hard to ensure that we can accurately communicate our
goals and objectives through the NSPS as well as ensuring that we're
keeping the full intent of ESGR and why we do what we do! Believe me,
nothing here is done in a vacuum and we're not keeping secrets.

This coming week our Strategic Planning Subcommittee will meet. As the
"umbrella" Subcommittee they will assist NCESGR in developing a sound,
logical, supportive, requirements driven and measurable Strategic Plan
that will lead NCESGR in the future. I look forward to working with
this Subcommittee and all the Subcommittees as I feel they are an
integral part of NCESGR's overall success in shaping our future. As the
members to these Subcommittee represent you, the ESGR volunteer, please let them know your thoughts and desires towards ensuring ESGR remains a viable and fully functional support organization. And to all of the
volunteers who participate on these important committees, "Thank YOU!"

Today, ESGR is a robust, energetic organization fully supported by over
4200 volunteers who are dedicated to the mission. To date I've visited
12 States, the District of Columbia and even the United Kingdom where I
attended an international conference on employer support. With each
visit I enjoy meeting our great volunteers as I participate in your
events and meetings. At each gathering I'm reminded of the outstanding
support, devotion and untiring hours many of you provide to ESGR which
ultimately results in support for the employer and the RC employees. I
want to encourage each of you to bring on one more volunteer this year.
I strongly feel that we, ESGR, need to be as diverse as possible,
somewhat reflective of our RC force structure while maintaining a
balance of membership that is also reflective of today's work force and
industry leadership. So, that's your individual challenge, to bring one
more person to your committee this year. And, as always, I continue to
say, "I'm excited to be here, to be "YOUR" Executive Director. As some
of you know, I can't give you a day off, I can't give you a pay-raise,
but I can say "Thanks", and so enjoy doing so on my visits to your
committees!

To close... We must focus our efforts in ensuring that every deployed
service member never has to look back with an ounce of concern about
their job. They need to know that NCESGR is working to help protect
their rights as we educate, inform and support their employers and
themselves. To allow anyone to be looking backwards instead of on the
mission means we have failed that individual. This is unacceptable as
it puts that individual and their units mission in jeopardy. Let's
steel ourselves to this promise that this will not happed to the best of
NCESGR's ability.

To each of you, Thanks for all that you do.. I look forward to seeing
each of you as soon as I can!