Program & Operations Management

Dustin LeClair, PMP
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Dustin LeClair, PMP
PMP, Director of Programs

Mr. LeClair’s wide-ranging background from university nuclear operations through policy analysis and development and program management provide him with a breadth of experience in nuclear strategy and program development and execution.  He brings a combined understanding of strategic approaches to policy application and the execution of specific programs and projects that directly support national goals in the control of and maintenance of U.S. nuclear capability.  His educational achievements and certifications enable him to effectively plan, manage and execute complex activities in support of that goal.

Education: Mr. LeClair received a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University, and his M.S. in Defense and Strategic Studies from Missouri State University. Among others, he has also completed professional development courses in Advanced Nuclear Concepts, Nuclear Forensics for the Federal Workforce, Nuclear Expertise Training Course and the Nuclear Weapons Acquisitions Professional Program. He holds certifications as a Nuclear Weapons Acquisition Professional in Project Management and Systems Engineering; Leadership and Development Certificate (Project/Team Lead Level); Contracting Officer’s Representative, Level II; and is a Project Management Professional (PMP). He has also held a Senior Nuclear Reactor Operator’s License from the NRC and holds a current DOE Q Clearance.

Experience: Mr. LeClair’s career includes experience as a Deputy Nuclear Reactor Supervisor at the Texas A&M Nuclear Science Center where he supervised production of radioisotopes for medical and commercial uses and as an Energy Security Policy analyst at the George C. Marshall Institute providing analysis for the formulation of DoD energy policies and technical directions and participating in conference events and activities on topics of interest. While at SAIC, he led a team of researchers in evaluating strategic weapons verification, negotiated with other Federal agencies on investment alignment for radiological detection technologies for national security. He also authored guidance for USAF implementation of the US-IAEA Integrated Safeguards and Additional Protocol agreements. As an R&D Program Manager for Schafer Corp., he performed major program management tasks including managing an R&D portfolio, developing and maintaining project plans, working with operational users to develop well-defined requirements for prevention of radiological and nuclear smuggling, developing program documents including acquisition plans, SOWs and related documents for executing contracts, interagency agreements, and similar agreements. As a Federal program manager for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), he performed oversight of design and construction of line item construction projects, developed strategic plans to guide a $400M annual investment baseline, managed support contracts as the Contracting Officer’s Representative, and directed a project to increase the efficiency of the Earned Value Management process across multiple programs.

Alena Jeffrey
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Alena Jeffrey
Senior Program Manager, PMP, Language

Alena is a motivated and pro-active PMP certified Agile manager, military spouse, first-generation immigrant and graduate with honors from a HBCU with comprehensive education and subject matter expertise in supporting large scale Government and Military contracts, projects and programs, leading cross-cultural teams, managing client and stakeholder relationships, and working as a liaison between the delivery teams and various management layers, seeks position within the qualifying field to become a valuable member of the team. She has a steadfast work ethic and pays meticulous attention to detail, She brings diversity, perspective, unique capability to AAC.


Chad Lowry
Chad Lowry
Chad Lowry
Senior Program Manager, Crane Operations

Chad is currently assigned to a persistent surveillance system ground (PSS-G) US Army contract.  He oversees refurbishment and upgrade activities of surveillance trailers for the US Army. His duties include maintaining staff by recruiting, selecting, orienting, and training employees and developing personal growth opportunities. His staff job is to improve results by coaching, counseling, and disciplining employees; planning, monitoring, and appraising job results; conducting training, implementing enforcing systems, policies, and procedures. He is in charge of complete operations by developing schedules; assigning and monitoring work, gathering resources, implementing productivity standards, resolving operations problems, maintaining reference manuals and implementing new procedures. He ensures quality service by enforcing quality and customer service standards. Mr. Lowry has a Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Computer Technology from Indiana State University.


Steve Ross
Steve Ross
Steve Ross
Senior Program Manager, Savannah River Operations

Mr. Ross is currently a Senior Program Manager at Advanced Automation Corporation. In this role, he is responsible for providing systems engineering support for Savannah River Nuclear Solutions as Project Leader for development of an Integrated Electronic Data Environment (IEDE) for the Plutonium Processing Facility. Mr. Ross also supports Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) located at Oak Ridge, TN and Pantex, TX. CNS projects included Reliability Availability Maintainability – Cost (RAM-C), Lifecycle Cost Analysis (LCCA), Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA), and development of functional and operational requirements with associated system requirements documents for a variety of projects utilizing DOORs Requirements Management, and Analysis of Alternatives (AoA). Additional tasks on other programs and proposal efforts may be required.

Mr. Ross worked for InGenics Corporation as a consulting engineer for process development. He was responsible for selecting equipment for processing parts to build the Solar Array. He compared various manufacturers to meet production expectations and determine costs, and worked within a LEAN manufacturing layout.

Mr. Ross worked for KA Hamilton and Associates and Sub Contract by Ansaldo Signal He was a consulting engineer for new product manufacturing and a construction contractor for manufacturing operations. As a consulting engineer, Mr. Ross provided on-site factory support for the first 80 units of Car-borne Controller for Communication Based Train Control (CBTC), built in Shenyang, China. He facilitated design changes, correct specifications, troubleshooting, quality audit, and LEAN introduction. As construction contractor, Mr. Ross was responsible for light commercial renovation projects in support of LEAN objectives, including systems wiring area, surface mount assembly expansion, vital relay encapsulation relocation, and to service and repair the facility.

Mr. Ross worked for Ansaldo Signal (formerly Union Switch & Signal), Railway Signaling and Train Control Systems, located in Batesburg, SC. Mr. Ross was a Quality Manager for manufacturing and global supply chain.

Mr. Ross worked for General Electric Company (currently Lockheed Martin), located in Syracuse, NY from 1984 to 1989 and again from 1990 to 1992 as part of the Aerospace Group: Ocean and Radar Systems Division. From 1990 to 1992, Mr. Ross was a component/hardware design engineer for product engineering.

Dalton Lorenz
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Dalton Lorenz
Systems Engineering Program Manager

Mr. Lorenz is currently a Systems Engineering Program Manager for AAC, responsible for overseeing business within our joint venture, Heritage Systems Engineering. In this role, he is responsible for providing Total Lifecycle Systems Engineering support for AAC Prime contractor customers such as Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS). Additionally, Mr. Lorenz supports tasks on other programs and proposal efforts as required.

Prior to advancing to the role of Program Manager, Mr. Lorenz was a Systems Engineering Specialist for AAC. In this role, he supported pre-planning projects as a Portfolio Manager between various CNS sites, which encompassed being the primary customer interface with customer Project Managers to evaluate project scope and project logistics, requirement definition, conceptual design, and project estimation activities. In addition, Mr. Lorenz was responsible for schedule and budget execution, quality, and reporting of key program metrics within his portfolio of projects.

Mr. Lorenz earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical and Aeronautical engineering from Clarkson University, located in Potsdam, NY. He is currently in the process of earning his Master of Science degree in Analytics, with a concentration in Business Analytics, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, located in Atlanta, GA. Mr. Lorenz has relevant analytics coursework experience in business, financial modeling, data visualization, regression, machine learning, and optimization.

Mr. Lorenz is experienced with project management, creating automation scripts, finite element analysis modeling, and analyzing data to deliver solutions to complex business problems. His expertise includes structural analysis and data processing softwares (ANSYS, HyperMesh, NX, Teamcenter, Excel), presenting technical data, leading project teams, scripting languages (Python, R, MATLAB, APDL), as well as team collaboration and problem solving.

From 2017 to 2020, Mr. Lorenz served as a Mechanical Engineer for Pratt & Whitney, located in Middletown, CT. In this role, he obtained systems-level engineering insights through the engineering development program as a static structures, kinematic design, and rotating structures engineer for the A320 NEO PIP High Pressure Compressor (HPC) commercial aircraft engine. He integrated innovative solutions through design, structural analysis, and engine program reviews for the HPC Split Case, Stator Vane Actuation System, and three stages of integrally bladed rotors. He ensured parts met program requirements while also minimizing the weight through design iterations to hit key durability and reliability metrics. Mr. Lorenz created automation routines for structural analyses using ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL) and MATLAB to improve solution turnaround times as much as 80 percent. He developed a tool for the preliminary design phase using Python which reduces the iterative design feedback loop as much as 50 percent, while sacrificing about 10 percent in accuracy, for faster parts development, Additionally, Mr. Lorenz oversaw, mentored and aligned engineers as a team lead to ensure deadlines were met.

In the fall of 2014 and the summer of 2015, Mr. Lorenz served as Product Engineer Co-Op for Moog Space and Defense, located in East Aurora, NY. In this role, he designed, fabricated and assembled an orbital weld purge gas delivery stand and a hot water flush system, to progress the manufacturing capabilities of space products, He also conducted failure prevention via fault tree analysis for the EM Hellfire Missile and aided in failure investigations for critical space hardware.

Additionally, as an extracurricular activity, since 2019, Mr. Lorenz has been working on a business valuation and screener tool. He developed web scraping tools to pull financial data from all S&P 500 companies back to their inception. He also implemented valuation strategies such as discounted cash flow analysis by using regression and exponential smoothing models to determine probable long-term growth rates.

Chris Woodcock
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Chris Woodcock
Program Manager, SWORD

Mr. Woodcock supports the business development efforts of Advanced Automation Corporation (A.A.C.) and Special Weapons and Ordnance (S.W.O.R.D.) by providing subject matter expertise in support of proposal creation.

Mr. Woodcock holds a Bachelors’ Degree in Political Science from the State University of New York.  He has over 30 years of managerial experience and has held senior leadership roles within the retail energy industry.  He is also the Principal/Chief Instructor of Trident Personal Defense, a firearms and tactics training provider.  Trident Personal Defense serves both civilian and military customers.

Mr. Woodcock served in the United States Navy and the United States Coast Guard. He has experience in corrections, nuclear security, facility security and force protection.


Jolene Miller
Jolene Miller
Jolene Miller
Director of Human Resources

Ms. Miller is currently AAC’s Director of Human Resources, responsible for inter-office communication and coordination. This includes processing of all incoming and outgoing employees and their associated human resources issues. Ms. Miller is in charge of all aspects of bringing new employees on board, including running background and reference checks, as well as sending out offer letters. As part of this responsibility, she manages AAC’s Workable Platform, an online recruiting system. Within Workable, Ms. Miller posts new jobs, removes outdated jobs, and calls potential candidates for an initial telephone screening. Prior to an employee leaving the company, Ms. Miller is responsible for performing exit interviews. Ms. Miller is a Society of Human Resources Management Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) and licensed Notary Public in the state of New York.


Tracy Armstrong
Tracy Armstrong
Tracy Armstrong
Facility Security Officer

Ms. Armstrong has a history of military experience and administration which she brings to Advanced Automation Corporation (AAC). Under Ms. Armstrong’s direction, AAC was registered as an Economically Disadvantaged Woman Owned Small Business (EDWOSB) and obtained its Department of Defense (DoD) Facility Clearance. Ms. Armstrong has eight years of experience as the FSO/security specialist for AAC. All personnel requiring security clearances are cleared through her. Ms. Armstrong also deals with ITAR and foreign employment and tax issues for AAC’s outside the continental United States (OCONUS) efforts. Additionally, Ms. Armstron provides project management duties, to include tracking contract requirements deliverable lists (CRDL) and management of deliverables. She also provides research and assistance with certificates need for the growth and development of the company.

Prior to joining AAC, Ms. Armstrong was the Office Manager at Ashley Home Furnishings. In this role, she met with manufacturing representatives and sales personnel; provided inventory management and control for the store; and was responsible for the management of all sales and financing documentation for the staff. Ms. Armstrong was also responsible for store layout and window displays and general appearance. Ms. Armstrong worked as an Office Manager for ARBRO Inc., located in Keeseville, NY. She was the supervisor of customer service employees to include hiring and evaluation. She provided oversight on all accounts receivable, accounts payable, invoicing, and purchase orders. Ms. Armstrong was also responsible for all customer service, including dozens of daily phone calls, mail correspondence and e-mail correspondence, and she coordinated directly with manufacturers, along with DHL, UPS, USPS and all shipping billing and claims. Additionally, Ms. Armstrong was responsible for inventory data management and is proficient in Quick Books, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook and other software programs.

Jeremy Tyler
Jeremy Tyler
Jeremy Tyler
Business Strategist, Logistics Analyst, and Mobile Apps Developer

In his informatics and logistics role for AAC, Mr. Tyler is leading the development of streamlined, agile sustainment application technologies for mobile phones. Mr. Tyler also actively teaches across the U.S. in the areas of systems engineering, program acquisition, production, quality, and manufacturing and logistics all in the context of long term sustainment. His DoD Secret clearance is currently pending.

Mr. Tyler has developed an asset tracking system that is being used in the current war fighting efforts in Afghanistan and throughout the world. Mr. Tyler has assisted in the development of sustainment models for the U.S. Navy that helped architect the logistics and supply plans for long and short term deployments. Mr. Tyler helped develop the requirements for the first Prognostics Health Management (PHM) module for the U.S. Navy based on an Applications Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chip. Once the chip was developed via the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Mr. Tyler helped test and evaluate the first chips accepted by the U.S. Navy. These chips are part of add on modules that are connected to deployed systems world-wide. The ASIC Modules collect data on temperature, humidity and shock the system experiences. Once the systems have been deployed, the U.S. Navy collects their individual data and analyses it to determine use case induced failures. This data yields insight to how to design and maintain better systems.

Mr. Tyler has more than 10 years of experience in the sustainment and depot support for military systems fields. He has been at the technician level to help maintain and sustain systems for more than 8 years.