Bruce A. Casella

Bruce A. Casella
CEO and Commanding General, Army & Air Force Exchange Services

Headquarters: Dallas, Texas
Website: www.shopmyexchange.com
Primary Business: Multi-channel Retailer
Revenues: $9-10 billion
Employees: 44,000

2011 CEO in Action

Diversity and inclusion are so essential to the Army & Air Force Exchange Service’s success that both are incorporated into the military command’s overall strategy. The Exchange’s five year strategic plan has a key goal to build a culture of loyalty, ownership, sustainability and continuous improvement, including the key strategy of growth in diversity representation. To further strengthen this culture of loyalty and inclusion, the Exchange is reaching out to all associates by supporting nine associate resource groups that provide opportunities, partner with and give back to communities, network with senior management and attain career building skills.

The Diversity Leadership Council works to strengthen diversity at all management levels to more closely reflect the overall workforce. The Exchange is focusing efforts to grow management diversity numbers, through strategic recruiting, mentoring associates, as well as career development, assignments and promotions.

The organization’s strategic plan also includes being a premier collaborative partner that both “identifies and develops new businesses to close the innovation gap.” A key performance measure of this goal is to increase spending with minority, veteran, disabled veteran and women-owned businesses. This isn’t new for the Exchange supplier diversity program which has been at work for more than 20 years; results indicate the effort is gaining momentum as minority spend increased 81% in the third quarter as compared to last year, providing increased business opportunities while serving a diverse customer base of 12.3 million people worldwide.

The Exchange is an organization that cares to get it right. The result is a great organization full of opportunity for people, products and partnerships.

Education: BS, US Military Academy; MS, Systems Management; MS, Electrical Engineering
First Job: Military – Army 2nd Lieutenant, Signal Corps, Republic of South Korea
What I’m Reading: Wooden on Leadership, by John Wooden
My Philosophy: Work hard, live by high set of values.
Best Advice: Look at organization from several levels. Use metrics to make senior leadership aware of diversity challenges.
Family: Daughter (Heather)
Interests: Racquetball, golf, history
Favorite Charity: Combined Federal Campaign.