Col. LaVon Purnell
SPRINGFIELD — Greenon High School and West Point graduate Army Col. LaVon Purnell is serving as commander of NATO Communications Information System Services Agency, Headquarters of Supreme Allied Transformation sector, Norfolk, Va.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, helps to look after Western security concerns and is currently involved in operations in Afghanistan.
In her job, Purnell supervises 107 military and civilian employees under the agency’s American sector, helping to support ongoing NATO communications for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and doing strategic planning for future communications needs NATO-wide.
The 47-year-old career officer and 1982 Greenon High School graduate said working in a multi-national cooperative organization like NATO is “a real game of gentlemanship.”
It involves working with 23 member nations and 60 others in a way that ensures the United States meets its goals and the NATO mission.
“Each member (nation) has its own national interests and its own national objective,” she said.
The job also involves “integration of actual IT systems” for communications, she added. “What we have in the United States is not what they have in Italy.”
The issues can be more complex in more recent Eastern European partners whose systems are not state-of-art.
Purnell is the first woman and first black to serve in the position, a three-year assignment she called “a rare opportunity for a signal corps officer in the Army.”
When the position comes open, “you don’t even know if the Army is going to fill it,” she said, and the nominee is not informed of her nomination until the position is offered.
The job she officially assumed May 19 comes 25 years into an Army career that can go 30.
Although Purnell said working through issues and finding compromises is a challenge, she called it “a lot of fun” and said she’s been impressed with the “really professional people that I’ve run into.”
Purnell is the daughter of Clark County residents Jeanette and the late Walter Purnell, who was an Army veteran.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.
About the Author