Alumni talk about experiences with Civilian Developmental Education

  • Published
  • By Daryl Mayer, AFLCMC Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio (AFLCMC) – As the application period for Civilian Developmental Education Programs approaches, three recent alumni discussed their experiences with the program. 
 
John T. Bailey is the Deputy Director for the Advanced Aircraft Division in the Fighter and Advanced Aircraft Directorate.  He attended the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA program in Boston at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.    
 
Robin M. Harrah is the VC-25B Survivability IPT Lead for the Presidential and Executive Airlift Directorate.  She was selected for the Executive Leadership Development Program. 
 
Kristi L. Evans is the Chief of the Operations Management Division for both the Fighter and Advanced Aircraft and the Bomber Directorates.  She has attended three of the shorter courses offered that ranged from three days to one week. 
 
“This gave me an opportunity to actually sit outside the Air Force environment and culture for 12 months and be immersed with people from all over the world with different experiences, political views,” said Bailey, who moved with his family to the Boston area to attend the course.
 
Harrah on the other hand, traveled to a wide variety of places all over the world during her training. 
 
It’s very different from some of the other trainings, in that it's not a regular eight hour day,” Harrah said.  “We were up doing PT in the dark. We would go and get so much time to shower and get changed for the day.  Then we would go and get briefings or do class work until the end of the day, and then we would break out into breakout sessions and work individual projects for those deployments and or work on your capstone project.”
 
The variety of offerings was the big draw for Evans, who has applied for a course every year. 
 
“I think as a leader you can never stop learning,” said Evans.  “I think the neat part about CDE is you have a list of quite different courses you can take.” 
 
To hear the full conversation, you can watch Leadership Log on YouTube at https://youtu.be/NcAOOHlHvk4.  You can also listen by searching “Leadership Log” on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Overcast, Radio Public or Breaker.