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News | Sept. 22, 2021

My DCMA: Tobi Beck, strategy director

By Elizabeth Szoke DCMA Public Affairs

My DCMA showcases the Defense Contract Management Agency’s experienced and diverse workforce and highlights what being a part of the national defense team means to them. Today, Tobi Beck shares her story.

My name is Tobi Beck, and I am a strategy director for the planning and governance team within DCMA’s Information Technology directorate, located at our headquarters here. My job duties include building bridges between the IT community and the users of our IT systems, managing strategic plans for the future of IT and making sure we stay within the lines for regulations and performance.

I like working at DCMA because it’s always a challenge and there are plenty of opportunities to make a positive impact. The agency is important to America's warfighters because when we do our job faster, better and sharper, not only are we responsible custodians of our nation’s budget, but we help sharpen the tip of the spear. 

The biggest change I’ve seen with the agency is the overall acceptance and promotion of remote work. I came from the civilian world where adoption of a virtual work environment to make positions more attractive to employees was already happening. It was nice to see DCMA transition to this quickly, in spite of the motivating force.

I’m most excited to see that we have the opportunity to improve how we function and the tools we use.  Our modernization efforts need to focus on what makes our customers more efficient and better able to handle the needs of the warfighter. For the rest of this year, my team has big goals. We are managing a large reorganization. Our team is working to build the bridges to the users that will enable us to make more resourceful and impactful solutions.

My future career goals seizing opportunities to put my IT skills to use. I have a 25-year history in IT and I excel in improving organizations. 20 years ago, I was in the IT world, but located in Japan. Everyone in IT was working the Y2K problem. At midnight of the new-year all systems that recorded time would set to 00:00:00, which was also the ‘reset’ code. It was feared that machines would not know the difference between a hard reset, which would stop the system, and the date change. This is why all systems now have a 4-digit code for the year. I was a manager for a worldwide manufacturer and I knew we were clear when the date changed in Japan based on all the precautions we had taken. We will never know if the work was required, but that is the nature of preventative work. 

Something unique about me is that I was a major party nominee for US Congress. My favorite hobbies include Martial Arts, horseback riding, archery and knitting.

Some of the great things about working at my location includes being close to so many historical sites. Also, the food in and around Richmond is a foodies’ dream.