Maj. Stephanie Radford arrived in the San Francisco District only four months ago and has already concluded that this assignment will be one of the most beneficial in her Army career. Perhaps that could be because, as she admits, being second in charge in the small San Francisco District has come with a steep learning curve. “I see the commander’s mission as my top priority, making sure that he has what he needs and then taking care of our people, making sure we are staffed to meet the programs and missions we have,” Radford said, which is really another way of describing how she oversees the daily functioning of the District, including “making sure we are properly following processes and meeting regulations and making sure the Corps is meeting the standards that the Army sets out for us.”
Quite a workload for a district that now has its largest budget in years to go along with an expanding list of high profile projects affecting hundreds of thousands of residents across the Bay Area and being closely watched by those in the highest reaches of government. All of which requires the ability to “balance the needs of each chief while figuring out how much work you have this year to balance with how many people you need to keep the business model going.”
After graduating from West Point, Radford began her Army career in the 36th Engineer Group at Fort Benning, GA, then went on to serve as an engineering planner in South Korea as well as a lead civil design engineer in Iraq. Of course life and work in San Francisco is much different than being deployed overseas, but she said the basics are the same, except “I don’t have the same abilities I had in the Army of being able to knock on someone’s door but the same care is there for wanting our team to feel they want to come to work and that we are all part of the same family with a wonderful mission.”