BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. – It’s Mission Monday. Capt. Yeoju Kim is deputy chief of the Air Force Installation Contracting Center’s 767th Enterprise Sourcing Flight here.
Kim and the ESF team award and administer all above-wing acquisitions for Air Force Global Strike Command and manage a $1.2 billion portfolio in support of long-range strike operations, including the nation’s bomber fleet and nuclear enterprise.
We asked Kim, who hails from Seoul, Korea, to tell us a little more about the work her and her team accomplish for the enterprise.
What do you love about your job?
The people I work with – teammates and mission partners. I love the mentality of teamwork; we work as a team supporting each other and fulfilling requirements for mission partners.
When it comes to your job, what keeps you motivated?
My teammates motivate me. I am a huge believer in “if you take care of your people, they take care of you and the mission.” I have full trust in my teammates, that they will do whatever they can to support the mission. My job is to take care of them and that motivates me to show up each day to ensure all of them have my support and I am assisting them in any way I can.
Why are you and your team important to the Air Force and your customers?
We are the buying power for the Air Force and our customers. Anything our customers need, we do our best to find best ways to meet the government’s interests. We perform research, communicate with industries, work with the customers to ensure what they want is deliberately delivered to industry, evaluate received proposals, and award contracts so the Air Force and our customers get what they need to fulfill the mission.
Describe a project/event you and your team worked on recently that gave you a great sense of accomplishment:
My team recently worked on awarding a contract for B-1 and B-52 communities. The contract is for training B-1 and B-52 aircrew members as well as for the development and sustainability of their courseware material. Although I didn’t play a role in the project, watching my teammates put in the hard work and having it awarded to a successful offeror gives me a great sense of accomplishment.
How does what you do support AFIMSC’s strategic priorities?
We are mission focused business leaders who exploit innovative contracting solutions to support mission readiness and lethality of long-range strike operations. Everything we do connects to or supports AFIMSC’s strategic priorities … from awarding contracts to training our bomber fleet pilots and aircrew to ensuring AFGSC's helicopter maintenance contract is intact across two unified combatant commands. Simply put, we are mission enablers!
Is there anything else you’d like to add which might help people understand the importance of what you do for the Department of the Air Force?
We call ourselves mission focused business leaders because we fill the business advisory role for all of our mission partners. Anything that needs to be procured from industry – we are involved in it!