QUANTICO, Va. – The six Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) senior executives who won Presidential Rank Awards were officially recognized at a formal ceremony at DCSA headquarters on May 9.
 
“It's an honor to be here today to celebrate you and really – to present you with the highest and most prestigious award for career senior executives and senior professionals in the federal government,” said Dustin Gard-Weiss, performing the duties of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. “All of today’s recipients achieved critical results while consistently demonstrating exceptional leadership, strength, integrity and a relentless commitment to excellence in public service.”
 
The Presidential Rank Award recognizes career members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) for exceptional performance over an extended period and senior career employees with a sustained record of exceptional professional, technical or scientific achievement recognized on a national or international level.
 
“Thank you for your expertise, your leadership, your dedication. You are part of the most capable intelligence and security enterprise the world has ever known. And because of you, we'll continue to be in that position for many decades to come,” said Gard-Weiss.
 
DCSA Director David Cattler joined Gard-Weiss in presiding over the ceremony and congratulating PRA recipients.
 
“At this moment, during a period of significant changes in the federal workforce, it is even more important to recognize the accomplishments of the best and brightest leaders,” said Cattler. “I want everyone to consider how impressive this moment is for our agency as well. We are a small organization with a relatively small number of senior executives. This group made it not only through our internal valuation criteria, the DOD criteria, but they also made it through the federal level competition across the entire government. The fact that three of our senior executives in fiscal 23 and fiscal 24 are recognized, speaks volumes to the quality of these leaders – who they are individually and what they have accomplished. It also highlights the recognition of our security mission [at the] federal level and what the teams are accomplishing collectively.”
 
The fiscal year 2023 and 2024 PRA program’s Meritorious Executive Award and Meritorious Senior Professional Award recipients comprise two SES special categories: Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service (DISES) and Defense Intelligence Senior Level (DISL).
 
FY 2023 SES recipients of the Meritorious Executive Award

• Zack Gaddy, DCSA chief financial officer (DISES)
• Kevin Jones, DCSA assistant director for Security Training (DISES)

 
FY 2024 SES recipients of the Meritorious Executive Award

• Heather Green, former DCSA principal deputy assistant director of Adjudication and Vetting Services (DISES)
• Matthew Redding, DCSA assistant director for Industrial Security (DISES)

 
FY 2024 SES recipients of the Meritorious Senior Professional Award

• Wallace Coggins, formerly DCSA chief strategy officer; currently chief digital and artificial intelligence officer (DISL)
• Erika Ragonese, DCSA deputy assistant director for Security Training (DISL)

After the ceremony, the PRA award winners took a moment to reflect and share their insight about the awards while speaking on camera for an internal agency video newscast.
 

• “I have an appreciation for what the Presidential Rank Award means, both for the people who receive it and those that you hope will receive it. And really, it's a reflection of the team around you and how well you do the things that you're asked to do,” said Gaddy, who was awarded with his third PRA. “Like a fine wine – it gets better with age. You appreciate it more. You know how much it took to get it and how fortunate you are to be recognized because, as they say, only 5% of executives get this type of award.”

 

• “I'm the culmination of all the efforts of the people that have worked with me over the years, and I so much appreciate that,” said Jones, after receiving his second PRA. “The privilege of getting another one is a testament to our teams at Security Training. The people that work for me and the people that I've worked for have seen a consistent contribution of my efforts to pay back the agency that that has given me so much over the years.”

 

• “We absolutely had to have an entire team supporting the implementation of continuous vetting. A huge initiative. Very transformative and collaborative with all the individuals and different stakeholders,” said Green. “Continuous vetting truly is the transformative aspect of personnel security reform and without the amazing team and the Personnel Security Directorate to continue looking at how we're going to implement the innovative measures of continuous vetting, we wouldn't be where we're at today. Continuous vetting really is that future, transforming personnel security into the next protection of national security.”

 

• “What the team has done here at DCSA is remarkable in and of itself,” said Redding, who led an interagency taskforce to source and deploy interagency and national Federal Emergency Management Agency assets totaling over 7,000 emergency response and medical personnel to execute the nationwide mass vaccine program during the COVID pandemic. “It was remarkable to be part of that in FEMA. And it just translates to what we do here as Gatekeepers – trying to protect our industrial base and our cleared individuals from adversaries seeking to steal their secrets and their expertise.”

 

• “We've got DCSA on the verge of becoming the agency that was envisioned when it was created in terms of the integration of the different mission sets and the ability to bring all those together to improve security for the trusted workforce, defense industrial base, and our nation’s critical technologies. I feel like we're at the forefront of making that happen now,” said Coggins. “The role of the Chief Strategy Office and the great work by the team pulling that together was a fantastic accomplishment for the team and I was lucky to be a part of that.”

 

• “I am fortunate to be part of the team and within Security Training, we have dedicated folks across the board, so I'm just one small piece,” said Ragonese. “We have the National Center for Credibility Assessment that trains the polygraph examiners and the Center for Development of Security Excellence that trains security professionals across the Department of Defense. We have the new DCSA Security Academy that trains DCSA and industry security professionals. Their dedication and what they do day-to-day is why we got this award. Collaboration is critical for us. We always say at Security Training that we need to stay current, accurate and relevant. To do that, we must collaborate with our stakeholders and customers.”