Executive Mosaic is honored to present Dr. Stacey Dixon, deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as an inductee into the 2020 edition of the Wash100 Award for her efforts to diversify the agency’s workforce and develop new education platforms for future employees.
Those objectives have led to Dixon’s first Wash100 Award. She became NGA’s deputy director on June 23, 2019. She assists the director, fellow 2020 Wash100 Award recipient Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, in leading the agency and managing the National System for Geospatial Intelligence.
“Dr. Dixon is a proven leader who has a deep understanding of NGA and the entire intelligence community, its current challenges and the bright opportunities that lie ahead,” said Sharp.
Dixon continues to address the shortage of potential employees with the necessary expertise to implement NGA’s initiatives in 2020. NGA will increase the level of geospatial expertise in the workforce and combat the problem through those initiatives, including the use of online, on-demand training for its workforce to fill the gap left by industry and academia.
With the NGA, Dixon helped create and develop a new program to build six courses, four of which will be recorded and made available on-demand. That on-demand programming will allow the NGA to reach more people. It’s also less disruptive than sending employees to universities to learn, although the agency uses that tactic as well.
“We’re actually working with universities to create that curriculum so that we can actually have our workforce learn and prove their skill sets and then develop that talent from within,” said Dixon. “We think that’s going to help us with some of these niche skills.”
Additionally, NGA has been successfully using its internship program to build a young, skilled workforce. Over 250 interns served the agency last summer in 2019 with as many as 80 percent of them staying with the NGA full-time, according to Dixon.
Dixon has also been a strong supporter and advocate for gender equality and diversity within the NGA as well as in the national government. During a recent press conference in Aug. 2019, she revealed that less than a third of the agency’s overall workforce, approximately 14,500 employees, are women. Dixon will work to increase that number dramatically in 2020 and beyond.
“One of the reasons I accepted the role as deputy director is that I plan on working on diversity and inclusion along with the rest of our senior management,” said Dixon.
“To understand the world, we need intelligence professionals with diverse perspectives that come from varied backgrounds. By adding cultural context to our global data, we’re able to…bring static information to life… and create more effective and reliable products,” she added.
Dixon is also heavily involved in the development of space research. During a recent event, she emphasized the need for the intelligence community to create an individual division for space research and initiatives, in Sept. 2019.
She expressed the importance for the intelligence community to dedicate its assets and procedures to provide vital information about space-based operations and potentially harness the government’s capabilities and how federal agencies to influence the future of space exploration.
Executive Mosaic congratulates NGA and Dr. Stacey Dixon for her 2020 Wash100 Award selection. Her commitment to the advancement of NGA’s educational programs, diversity initiatives and future space exploration will be an integral addition to the GovCon sector throughout 2020.
About Wash100
The Wash100 award, now in its seventh year, recognizes the most influential executives in the GovCon industry as selected by the Executive Mosaic team in tandem with online nominations from the GovCon community. Representing the best of the private and public sector, the winners demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement and vision.
Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2020 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2020.
