Tucker named one of federal government's "Rising Stars"

Defense AT&L, Jan-Feb, 2007 by Stephen Larsen

WASHINGTON -- Kyle Tucker, a project leader with the Project Manager Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems (PM DCATS) Product Manager, Defense Wide Transmission Systems (PM DWTS) at Ft. Monmouth, N.J., was honored as one of only 53 "Rising Stars" in the entire federal government for 2006 by Federal Computer Week magazine during an awards banquet at the JW Marriott hotel on Oct. 12, 2006.

Christopher Dorobek, editor in chief of Federal Computer Week, presented the award to Tucker and the other Rising Stars before an audience of more than 300 people from the federal information technology community.

Dorobek explained that the awards were created by Federal Computer Week and the Young AFCEANs--a chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) International for members under 40, located in Bethesda, Md.--as a way to recognize the work done by exceptional younger people in the federal IT community who might otherwise go unrecognized.

Tucker, who started his federal career in 1998 at Ft. Lee, Va., as a Department of the Army logistics management intern, was honored for his work in providing strategic/enterprise transmission systems for warfighters in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. He has deployed to war zones multiple times, interacting with his customers and implementing projects, where he has faced indirect fire from mortars and rockets on a daily basis and has occasionally faced direct fire from automatic weapons, as well as danger from improvised explosive devices and land mines.

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From 2005 to 2006, Tucker managed 27 IT projects in Afghanistan for PM DWTS, including cleaning up cabling and providing raised flooring for a Joint Operations Center in Kabul; providing an intercom system at the Bagram Tertiary Internment Center; and conducting site surveys to provide NIPRnet, SIPRnet, and CEN-TRIXS (a coalition secret data network) capabilities at a variety of locations. He is also currently planning to redeploy to Iraq and Kuwait to support the Coalition Land Forces Component Command to identify their upcoming strategic IT requirements.

Tucker earned an associate's degree in paramedicine from the College of Health Sciences, Roanoke, Va., in 1993, a bachelor's degree in emergency management systems from Hampton University, Hampton, Va., in 1996, and a master's degree in business management from the Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Fla., in 2002.