Awards given to three 516th personnel

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii -- Three 516th Signal Brigade personnel were honored by LTG John M. Brown, III, commanding general, U.S. Army Pacific, at an award ceremony March 17.

MSG Eduardo A. Zayas, brigade Equal Employment advisor, and David A. Millard, chief of the brigade's Task Force-Active Directory, received the 2004 USARPAC Outstanding Staff Noncommissioned Officer and Civilian of the Year awards.

CPT Kimberly Hamilton, the 516th's plans and exercise officer, was also honored as the runner-up USARPAC Outstanding Staff Officer of 2004.

Zayas was cited for "proactively spearheading and leading programs on behalf of equal opportunity, human rights, race relations, and affirmative action."

In the nomination package, his brigade commander, COL Brian J. Donahue, wrote, "MSG Zayas goes the extra mile in ensuring that our ethnic heritage and affirmative action luncheons are creative, interesting and educational--from dressing women Soldiers in uniforms from various eras of the U.S. Army for Women's History Month, to having volunteers in costumes providing vignettes for the audience to guess their names (e.g., Louis Armstrong, Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver for Black History Month).

"He brings the events to 'life," gets the audience's attention, and in the process he teaches them about the rich heritage of our diverse Army workforce," Donahue said.

Millard was recognized for directing the transformation of the Pacific LandWarNet, USARPAC's computer network. As chief of Task Force-Active Directory, Millard oversaw the migration of the theater's network to the Army's new enterprise Active Directory and Exchange 2003 architecture during 2004.

"This project favorably impacted all 21,000 users of USARPAC computers," Donahue explained. "Theater-wide, we went from 110 admin domains to only one forest and admin domain, and we went from 100 mail servers with decentralized administartion to six fault-tolerant, hardened servers with a new centralized admin management system."

By the Army's Dec. 31, 2004, deadline, the USARPAC migration was 99 percent complete - more than any other theater in the Army, Donahue added.

"This transformation of the Pacific LandWarNet resulted in significant improvements for USARPAC's computer network defense posture and faster, more reliable email service for all 21,000 users within the theater," Donahue said. "Dave and his team accomplished in months what many believed would take years - and their work was recently proclaimed by the Army's Chief Information Officer as a model for the rest of the Army."

Hamilton was cited for her contributions as the lead Signal Corps officer for the planning and execution of 25th Infantry Division (Light)'s Warfighter Exercise, Talisman Saber 05, Terminal Fury 04, and for Joint Task Force WARNET (Wide Area Relay Network).

"As our lead for USARPAC's new JTF-Homeland Defense, Kim extensively planned and executed the JTF's overall command, control, communications, computers and intelligence requirements from the ground up," Donahue said.

"This involved identifying the challenging communications requirements with a wide range of support scenarios across an environment composed of multiple DoD, state and federal agencies with different C4 (command, control, communications and computers) baseline requirements," Donahue added.

"Kim is proactively planning ahead to give JTF-Homeland Defense the very latest and proven interoperable C4 capabilities available in today's market," Donahue said.

Mr. McPherson is with the 516th Signal Brigade.

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