Submitted by Jim McManus
It was my honor to work closely with Julie (Mehta) Russell when we both served as U.S. Coast Guard officers in Honolulu in the mid-1990s. We partnered on a very high-profile initiative to fundamentally change the way the USCG operated administratively. A lot of this was through executive training and professional materials that led people through the basics of systematic improvement, but a lot of it was also redesigning complex high-level processes and facilitating policy discussions at the Admiral/Captain level. Our office had a reputation for professionalism that extended nationally and much of our work was adopted service-wide.
I’m proud of the part I played in these change but frankly it was Julie’s creativity, intellect and energy that drove the program forward. The cornerstone of the program’s success was a comprehensive guidebook that was conceived through her vision and understanding of what needed to be communicated. She translated strategic needs into tangible action with a kind of imagination I haven’t seen since. Julie knows what to do and how to get things done. Any organization would be lucky to have her.
Jim McManus,
US Coast Guard Academy, Class of 1989
