John D. Wohlford
OPERATIONS
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS · BUSINESS OPERATIONS · CHIEF OF STAFF

Program operations, export compliance, and the reporting leadership turns to during an attack or disaster. On a $1.2B Department of Defense program, moving export-controlled shipping onto a government route saved the customer over $500K a year. On a $1.8B program, standardizing travel across 11 task areas produced more than 10,000 authorizations at a zero percent rejection rate.

START A CONVERSATION SEE THE RESULTS
HOUSTON, TX · REMOTE OR HYBRID ACTIVE TS/SCI 19 YEARS
Portrait of John D. Wohlford
$0K+
SAVED FOR THE CUSTOMER
EACH YEAR
0+
TRAVEL AUTHORIZATIONS
AT ZERO REJECTIONS
0 to 1
TASK AREAS PUT ON
ONE METHOD
$1.2B
PROGRAM CURRENTLY
SUPPORTED
0
EXPORT LICENSES WRITTEN
ZERO VIOLATIONS

The cheapest route was already inside the building.

FINDING IT MEANT PRICING THE GOVERNMENT'S OWN TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT AGAINST COMMERCIAL QUOTES, THEN MAKING THE CASE UNTIL BOTH COMPANY LEADERSHIP AND THE CUSTOMER ADOPTED IT.

ABOUT
Building the machinery that lets large programs execute.

Nineteen years across Army and Department of Defense operations, five of them fully remote, have gone into one kind of work: standardizing how distributed teams get things done, keeping the compliance clean underneath, and turning program priorities into reporting leadership can act on.

The current seat is DTRA Decisive Action, a $1.2B contract that peaked just under 1,000 personnel. Promotion to P5, the second-highest of six professional grades at CACI, came in that role. Before it came five years on Focused Support / Decisive Effort, a $1.8B program deploying roughly 800 people worldwide in support of Combatant Commands, and four years running the daily coalition operations brief and the tasking system at JIEDDO and JIDA.

Before CACI came an Army commission: company executive officer for 120 soldiers and a $2.4M property book with zero loss, deputy program manager on a $5M-plus Army program, and movement coordinator for about $330M in Task Force equipment across Afghanistan with zero loss.

What carries across all of it is a preference for systems over heroics. When 11 task areas each run travel their own way, the fix is not more oversight. The fix is one method, one page, and an approval that catches the problem before the customer ever sees it.

Director of Operations Director of Business Operations VP Business Operations Chief of Staff Director of Logistics & Deployment Operations
John D. Wohlford
OPERATIONS SPECIALIST, SENIOR
CACI INTERNATIONAL INC
THE METHOD

Eleven ways of working, and one that never got rejected.

ONE METHOD APPROVAL SUBMISSION AUDIT
STATION 01 OF 04
One method
Eleven task areas had each built their own way of raising travel. Standardizing them put every task on one method and one page, so a request looked the same no matter which corner of an $1.8B program it came from.
11 TASK AREAS, ONE PAGE
SELECT A STATION TO FOLLOW THE REQUEST
WHAT I RUN

Three functions, run as one operating system.

Program operations

Standardizing how work gets done across distributed teams, then approving at program level so the customer sees clean requests.

  • Travel and deployment processing
  • Letters of authorization and extended work periods
  • Above-forecast funding requests
  • Operational Readiness Review to the customer
  • SPOT contractor deployment tracking

Compliance

Export compliance authority for a program and its line of business, with the trackers, business rules, and training behind it.

  • 12 export licenses written across FS/DE and DA
  • Zero violations across one limited audit
  • Five programs of $100M or more onboarded
  • Framework shown to the Department of State as the company model
  • ITAR and EAR execution

Reporting systems

Owning the Common Operating Picture leadership turns to during an attack or disaster as a project, and directing the technology teams who develop it.

  • Power BI and Power Apps direction with technology teams
  • Dashboards, portals, and workflows
  • Three-tier reporting cadence to general officer level
  • SharePoint tasking and suspense tracking
  • Deltek Costpoint and labor forecasting
SELECTED RESULTS

Four decisions that changed the number.

DTRA DECISIVE ACTION · $1.2B

The half-price route

Export-controlled equipment was moving commercially. Pricing the customer's own transportation department against those quotes showed it ran at about half the rate. Making the case took company leadership and the customer both, and the route was adopted.

$500K+SAVED FOR THE CUSTOMER
EVERY YEAR
DTRA DECISIVE ACTION · POWER BI

A roster into a picture

What existed in December 2021 was a rudimentary unclassified roster. Owning the rebuild as a project meant setting what the picture had to show and directing the developers who delivered it. The result is a live Power BI Common Operating Picture with significantly more information and no crossing into classified territory, and leadership turns to it during an attack or disaster.

LiveCOMMON OPERATING PICTURE
FOR PROGRAM AND CUSTOMER
FOCUSED SUPPORT / DECISIVE EFFORT · $1.8B

Nine hundred hours back

Records were being transferred by hand into a customer system the program did not otherwise use. Assembling the technical help, securing leadership and customer approval, and running it from November 2018 to full operating capability in March 2019 automated the whole transfer.

~900LABOR HOURS RETURNED
EACH YEAR
JIEDDO / JIDA · PRE-DEPLOYMENT

The tracker that moved the meeting

Analysts, operations integrators, and joint expeditionary personnel were reaching deploying units too late, often not until the unit was already in theater. A tracker mapping each unit's pre-deployment milestones showed leadership where support belonged, and the engagement point moved into training rotations.

In trainingENABLERS JOINED UNITS BEFORE
DEPLOYMENT, NOT AFTER
CAREER

Nineteen years of operations under scrutiny.

JUL 2021 TO PRESENT
HOUSTON, TX
REMOTE / HYBRID

Operations Specialist, Senior

CACI International Inc · DTRA Decisive Action Program · $1.2B contract value · just under 1,000 personnel at peak · promoted to P5, second-highest of six · fully remote Mar 2020 to Apr 2025
  • Saved the customer over $500K a year in shipping by finding that DTRA's own transportation department moved export-controlled equipment at about half the commercial rate, then making the case to company leadership and the customer until it was adopted.
  • Owned the Common Operating Picture program and customer leadership turn to during an attack or disaster as a project, taking a rudimentary unclassified roster from December 2021 to a live Power BI picture with significantly more information, setting the requirements and directing the development rather than writing it.
  • Carried the travel portal originated on the prior program through corporate development, working with developers on layout, content, and approval order. First portal live, the model for every portal after it, 600+ users at peak.
  • Export compliance authority for the program and line of business. 12 export licenses written across FS/DE and DA, zero violations across one limited audit. Onboarded five programs of $100M or more onto a framework showcased to the Department of State as the company model.
  • Absorbed data calls and request rework at PMO level to relieve line managers as the program drew down and the technology team fell from four developers to one. Took on SPOT contractor deployment tracking.
  • Approve letters of authorization, extended work periods, and above-forecast funding requests at program level for compliance with federal regulations, and brief the Operational Readiness Review to the customer.
OCT 2016 TO JUL 2021
CACI, THE WEXFORD GROUP
CACI AS PRIME

Program Analyst Lead

Focused Support / Decisive Effort Program · $1.8B contract value · about 800 personnel deploying worldwide in support of Combatant Commands
  • Standardized travel processing across 11 task areas that had each run their own way, putting every task on one method and one page. More than 10,000 government travel authorizations and amendments processed at a zero percent rejection rate, with none ever failing audit.
  • Managed the travel process and program-level approvals for $50M in travel spend over five years, working actuals with finance.
  • Led the automation of record transfer into a customer system the program did not otherwise use, November 2018 to full operating capability March 2019, returning about 900 labor hours a year.
  • Rebuilt export compliance for a program running hundreds of deployments a year, replacing a bare-bones function run by one person offsite, and brought the prime-side programs onto one export method as each rolled into the consolidated contract.
  • Originated the travel portal before a technology team existed and pitched it to leadership as an innovation.
  • Approved timecards for 450+ subcontractor personnel across a dozen-plus vendors, an estimated $90M a year in labor, and ran a monthly travel training meeting for team leads and managers.
FEB 2013 TO OCT 2016
ARLINGTON / RESTON, VA
TWO TOURS

Program Analyst Lead, Command Information Center

CACI International Inc · JIEDDO / JIDA · Feb 2013 to Dec 2015 and Apr 2016 to Oct 2016
  • Ran and facilitated the daily coalition operations briefing attended by a three-star, a two-star, SES civilians, and O6 and GS-15 department heads, personally briefing Iraq coalition operations every day.
  • Stood up and ran a three-tier reporting cadence for the Afghanistan report: an action officer meeting feeding a senior-level meeting of GS-14/15 and O5/O6 leads across intelligence, operations, and materiel, feeding the general officer meeting chaired by a two-star.
  • Built Action Tracker, a SharePoint page open to the whole organization showing every tasking, its source order, tasked departments, action officer, suspense date, priority, and stoplight status, and drove taskings to completion across departments outside any command authority.
  • Built the pre-deployment tracker that moved enabler engagement into training rotations instead of in-theater arrival.
  • Led Afghanistan support-cell operations keeping deploying units resourced, built the inbound requirements tracking system, maintained the global counter-IED Common Operating Picture, and authored Operations Orders directing organization-wide tasking.
JAN 2016 TO APR 2016
CRYSTAL CITY, VA
BRIEF INTERVAL

Associate Capture Manager

Leonie Industries · brief interval between CACI tours
  • Briefed pursuit opportunities directly to the chief executive.
  • Coordinated operational readiness planning with government and industry partners.
MAR 2007 TO OCT 2012
FORT BENNING, GA
FORT CAMPBELL, KY
AFGHANISTAN

Infantry Officer

United States Army
  • Deputy Program Manager, Performance and Resilience Enhancement Program, 2011 to 2012: stood up a new Army program on a multi-year contract over $5M, wrote and executed the contracts, completed the sole source justification and budget analysis, and briefed return on investment to senior leadership to secure continued funding.
  • Company Executive Officer, 2008 to 2010: chief of company staff running day-to-day operations and readiness for 120 soldiers, 10 vehicles, and a $2.4M property book with zero loss across monthly sensitive item and cyclic inventories. Ran the life support area for 650 personnel. Assumed command of the company multiple times in the commander's absence, stateside and in Afghanistan.
  • Directly led a 30-person Pathfinder team and coordinated movement of about $330M in Task Force equipment from Kandahar Airfield to forward bases and back to Fort Campbell with zero loss.
  • Assistant Operations Officer, 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 2011: planned and executed 100+ airborne operations. Contracting Officer Representative for local labor and equipment procurement in a deployed environment.
CREDENTIALS

Cleared, credentialed, and promoted on the record.

CLEARANCE

Active TS/SCI

Reinvestigated 2025.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Arts, History

George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.

GRADE

Professional grade P5

Second-highest of six professional grades at CACI.

Ready to put your operations on one method.

Open to Director of Operations, Director of Business Operations, VP Business Operations, Chief of Staff, and Director of Logistics and Deployment Operations roles. Remote, or hybrid in Houston.

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