Dr. Edmond V. Gray, DBA
Decorated former U.S. Air Force Major. Global supply-chain executive. Scholar-practitioner. Service-disabled veteran-owned.
Thirty years of being handed things that were too heavy
Dr. Gray's first real leadership test came in the late 1980s at the USAF Regional Hospital at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska — young, inexperienced, and responsible for work where accuracy was not optional.
At the 60th Aerial Port Squadron at Travis Air Force Base he directed passenger services, cargo movement, and air terminal operations, leading a 250-person cargo loading operation. Processing time went from twelve hours to under four. Safety mishaps fell by twenty percent.
As Director of Logistics Plans and Programs at Morón Air Base in Spain and Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, he managed a $300 million operations and maintenance budget and commissioned a $37 million underground fuel hydrant system that doubled base storage capacity. He closed his military career at the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he built a fourteen-course logistics program for Iraqi Security Forces.
In the civilian sector he has held senior roles at CVS Distribution, Rolls-Royce, SMC Corporation of America, Roche Diabetes Care, and Infosys Consulting. At SMC he built the company's first corporate supply chain function and moved delivery performance from 65% to 99.5% in under twelve months.
Led where failure had consequences
Every lesson in the book came out of work like this.
Why he wrote the book
Because he has watched too many capable people get promoted on a Friday and start drowning on a Monday, with nobody to tell them which part of the problem to look at.
He was one of them. Somebody eventually told him a story.