Photo By Erin Sherwood | 1st Lt. Karlee Harris, a data analyst for the Force Shaping Directorate at the Army...... read more read more
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Fort Knox, Ky. – 1st Lt. Karlee Harris did not grow up in a military Family, and serving in the U.S. Army was not something she had initially planned to do after high school.
The Columbus, Ohio, native was looking for a way to pay for college when she received a letter from West Point inviting her to attend their summer leadership experience, or SLE.
“I really didn't think anything of it, but my dad happened to walk by when I was reading the letter and was like, ’Oh, that's a prestigious institution. You should consider going’,” Harris said.
She attended SLE hoping it would provide some direction and insight into careers she might want to pursue.
“I got to meet a lot of people who were in a similar situation as me and I really found a community there,” Harris said. “I liked the purpose it gave me and I decided I wanted to serve as an officer in the Army.”
Harris was admitted into West Point where she continued to develop her skills as a future Army leader.
“When I began at West Point my mindset changed to more team oriented, like wanting my team to do well, not wanting just myself to do well,” she said.
Harris thrived as a cadet, which she attributes to her focus on teamwork.
“If the team you're a part of does well, it kind of just falls in line that you end up doing well,” she explained.
While at West Point, she met her husband, and biggest supporter, who is also a West Point graduate.
She selected the Quartermaster Corps as her branch, and graduated with a bachelor of science degree in operations research. Her first assignment took her to Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, where she served as a platoon leader, executive officer and maintenance control officer.
During her time there she attended Georgia Institute of Technology where she earned a master’s degree in computational data analytics.
Following her first assignment, she received an opportunity to participate in a lieutenant broadening assignment focusing on research systems analytics at the U.S. Army Human Resources Command.
“I had this opportunity come up at Fort Knox to be an analyst, which wasn’t my area of concentration [or AOC] at the time, but I was very interested in the opportunity,” she said.
While at HRC, she enjoyed her time at the command working alongside operations research/system analysis, or ORSA, officers. Six months into her new assignment, Harris applied for the Voluntary Transfer Incentive Program, or, VTIP, which allows officers to transfer to a different functional area or branch. In September 2024 she was selected for an early transfer into Functional Area 49 to serve as an ORSA.
While working at HRC she contributed to improving the Army Marketplace, a system Soldiers use to select future assignments.
Harris was assigned to the Officer Plans and Analysis section that manages officer assignments across the Army. While she was part of this section, she contributed to the officer Marketplace becoming more efficient and effectively managed.
“One of the projects I worked on was Year Month Available to Move [or YMAV] automation for officers,” she said. “In our older, officer management legacy systems a Soldier’s YMAV would normally update automatically, but with the shift over to the Integrated Personnel Pay System [or IPPS-A] for assignments, the talent managers were having to go in and change it directly.”
This was a time-consuming process for talent managers, who sometimes oversee thousands of Soldier assignments. Harris assisted in integrating the automation for the YMAV calculation into IPPS-A. removing the necessity for talent managers to change it manually.
She also created the distributed management sublevel (or DMSL) active component manning guidance (or ACMG) dashboard that projects officer strength by combining data from Toolkit and IPPS-A. This was a new and useful function for the IPPS-A team.
“Currently, her tool is the most accurate tool to see officer current and projected strength across all DMSLs,” said Maj. Jesse Lansford, ORSA officer, and Harris’s supervisor while at HRC.
She also created a new Distribution Requirements List that captures all Toolkit requisitions and IPPS-A job openings for each marketplace cycle. This tool creates manning guidance codes to enable identification of positions that should be filled. Lastly, she created one- and two-sided slating tools for the IPPS-A officer Marketplace.
“All of these changes can better assist with transparency at the personal level for Soldiers in terms of being able to see all upcoming assignments, etc., and then transparency at the unit level with what they can expect strength-wise to receive and who they expect to lose,” Harris said.
As an officer, it was rewarding for Harris to make these changes to Marketplace for her peers, she said.
“On numerous occasions, I gave Karlee challenging tasks with a brief outline on how she should accomplish these tasks,” Lansford said. “With little guidance, she completed the research, collaboration and background development [sometimes learning new coding techniques necessary for a task] to develop a way ahead and then solve the problem. I hope Karlee is placed in a position that allows her to continue making vital positive enterprise-level impacts on the Army.”
Having contributed to the HRC mission in a positive way, Harris is on to her next adventure- participating in advanced civil schooling to earn a doctorate in operations research.
Harris is the first lieutenant FA49 to be awarded doctoral funding, and she is excited about continuing to make a difference.
She looks forward to doing operations research and improving systems at the enterprise level.
“I could also see myself serving in division roles in the future, seeing how my husband is an armor officer,” Harris said. “We both want to support each other’s goals.”
Although Harris did not initially plan to serve long term, she is enthusiastic about the opportunities that have been afforded to her, and she is now looking forward to a career with the Army.
“When I first joined, I was a little hard on myself and just felt like I had to know everything, but I’ve learned to be more patient with myself and being part of the Army has really helped me grow as a person” she said. “My advice for anyone who is thinking about joining, or who is already in the Army is don’t set yourself in a box. You really can do anything you set your mind too.”
| Date Taken: | 02.26.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.26.2025 09:38 |
| Story ID: | 491534 |
| Location: | US |
| Hometown: | WORTHINGTON, OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 65 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Army Lieutenant Shapes Smarter Future for Officer Assignments, by Erin Sherwood, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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