TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- View episode one of Chief's Chat here.
Chief Master Sgt. Maribeth Ferrer: Hello everyone, this is your AFSC Command Chief Beth Ferrer, and welcome to our first installment of the Chief's Chat series. Our hope with this series is really to be able to provide a platform where we can hopefully share with you all our AFSC goals challenges, and really just to be able to show you how we will continue to produce that warfighting readiness.
And today is honestly a very exciting first because we are joined by our AFSC commander, my boss, Lieutenant General Stacey Hawkins. Sir, thank you so much for being part of us here today joining us and being able to give us the opportunity to ask you a significant question. I know you've been leading the organization for a little over 18 months now and recently, you made an update to our mission statement, which is forging readiness and accelerating innovation for America's warfighters.
I would just like to know and be able to share with everyone here, what your perspective is and what that should really mean to our personnel.
Lt Gen. Stacey Hawkins: Hey, well thanks Chief. First of all, so humbled to be the first guest on the Chief's Chat and very grateful to be your teammate every day. You've been with us for about six months now and all of us, since the first day you came, you've made an immediate change and impact in our culture. Everybody's fired up, and we're just feeding off your energy. So thank you.
You and I travel around a bit. We traveled all over the nation and we meet a lot of folks both inside the Air Force and outside of the Air Force and civilians from every walk up life. They often asked what do we do? Where we serve? And we say we're a part of the Air Force Sustainment Center. The first question that comes is well, what is that? I've talked about one of my priorities produced a promise. Another question that we get is who is that promise to? And so you mentioned that, we decided to really capture our mission statement in a few words, that really covers the essence of who we are. You're exactly right Forging Readiness and Accelerating Innovation for America's Warfighters. When you think about the word forge, that word means that you're bringing together all different parts of an organization, inside the organization and outside, bringing those folks together to forge toward a common goal. We believe that that forging is about forging readiness, and that's the readiness that our warfighters need today. We've been fighting in multiple theaters for a few years now. Today, we're fighting in multiple theaters. We're competing, we're deterring, and we're even warfighting. We've forged that readiness that our warfighters depend on. Then we accelerate innovation. Every single person in the Air Force Sustainment Center, every single teammate has an innovative spirit inside of them that they bring to their work every day. Whether you're a wage grade mechanic and artisan working on our shop floor. Whether you're an engineer, researching and looking at new technologies, whether you're a planner, or someone working in business operations, you're innovating every day, and we want to accelerate the innovation for the warfighting deterrence and competition that we need to be engaged in to compete, deter, and win against our adversaries if necessary.
So forging and forging readiness and accelerating innovation for our warfighters captures it all. If you can carry that forward, anyone who you come in contact with, and you say you're a part of the Air Force Sustainment Center, they will leave the conversation with you knowing what we do. We Forge Readiness and Accelerate Innovation for America's Warfighter.
Chief Master Sgt. Maribeth Ferrer: Wow Sir, just listening to you, it's very inspiring. Thank you again for being our first honored guest. There you have it, folks, thank you so much for joining us for our Chief's Chat today, and keep leading well.