Retired Army Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford joined Jacobs’ Critical Mission Solutions leadership in November, bringing more than 34 years’ leadership, executive management, national and international security, enterprise IT and cybersecurity experience.
Prior to Jacobs, Crawford served as the Army’s chief information officer and senior IT official, most recently as the principal enterprise IT and cybersecurity policy adviser to the secretary of the Army and the Army chief of staff.
In February 2020, Crawford was honored to have been named the Black Engineer of The Year Association’s 2020 Black Engineer of the Year, for his contributions as the Army CIO and initiatives related to mentoring and creating opportunities for the nation’s next generation of leaders.
“This was especially an honor given the fact that in the 34-year history of the BEYA award, only three active duty military leaders have received this honor,” Crawford said. “At the time of the award, who knew the unprecedented times that would challenge this great nation.”
Crawford also spent 2020 leveraging data as a strategic asset. He and his team stood up a first-ever Army Enterprise Cloud Management Office and secured almost a $1 billion to fund it.
This initiative included his closest partner Lt. Gen. Steve Fogarty (commanding general, Army Cyber), Lt. Gen. Charlie Flynn (the Army G3) and Dana Deasy (Defense Department CIO). But the hero was Greg Garcia (deputy CIO) and Paul Puckett (ECMO director), Crawford said.
Crawford also worked with the Defense Department’s CIO-led COVID-19 IT Task Force.
Great lessons were learned about the future of work, the strategic training value of the virtual space and an opportunity to think differently about the value of IT in what Crawford’s consider to be an adaptive “New Now” verses the static “New Normal”-tech enabled operating environment.
“My sense is 2020 came with an awakening that perhaps the next ‘disruptive technology’ was not a technology at all, but the realization that it will be the ‘collaboration’ that illuminates and brings together various technologies that enable our ability to win in this Era of Great Power Competition,” Crawford said.
Why Watch
Having retired from the Army in October 2020, Crawford says he’s honored to join the Critical Mission Solutions team of Jacobs Engineering Group who, he said, are literally “challenging today and reinventing tomorrow” by solving the world’s most critical problems.
“Given the global reach, recent acquisitions and vision of the company, excited about the endless opportunities to continue to serve the nation in a different way, after 34 years of service in uniform,” Crawford said.