Director of Communications
Doug Church : dchurc h@natcadc.org ; 301 - 346 - 8245
Associate Director of Communications, Art & Design
Laura Roose: lroose@natcadc.org ; 202 - 220 - 9814
Communications Specialist
Sarah Zilonis : sz ilonis@natcadc.org ; 202 - 266 - 9844.
Multimedia Specialist
Chris Ray : cray@natcadc.org ; 202 - 266 - 9875
Senior Social Media Associate
Meagan Roper : mroper@natcadc.org ; 202 - 220 - 98 13
WEEKLY UPDATE FROM FAA ATO COO TERI BRISTOL
2017 NAS First, People Always Awards
Hi everyone.
One of my favorite parts of leading such an amazing group of people is being able to
recognize and celebrate their work. The ATO NAS First, People Always Awards
recognizes employees, nominated by their peers, who are demonstrating the highest
levels of professionalism, leadership, excellence and collaboration.
In our workforce, we have employees that demonstrate a range of skills – we benefit
from the diversity of these skills and talents that together make us an outstanding
organization. Our future success comes down to how well we can strengt hen our
professional skills, both individually and as an organization.
In his book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that to master a skill, it takes about
10,000 hours of practice. Nobody is born with the necessary talents, or simply inherits
the s kills required to be successful in our line of work. It takes an incredible amount
aviation aptitude to become 'expert' at anything – and I'm grateful to work alongside
36,000 air traffic, technical, mechanical, operational, systems , and business
managemen t experts, every day.
It's also worth noting, that when we received nominations for these awards, one quarter
of all of the submissions were for the category "Collaboration, Partnership and Success."
Whether it was an outstanding manager who encourages collaboration between
technicians and controllers, two groups working closely with other e xperts in their
respective fields to tackle big projects, a team of internal and external FAA stakeholders
who deployed a complex program requiring automation, network, an d avionics
interoperability ahead of schedule and under budget, or a controller who collaborated
with law enforcement to put criminals behind bars - collaboration has becom e part of our
fabric in the ATO.
The 437 recipients of this year's awards have reaffirmed many things for us. They've
reaffirmed the importance of teamwork, dedication and determination to produce results.
