Army Lt. Gen Alan Lynn was named director of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) on July 23, 2015.
Lynn graduated in 1979 from California University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in English. He was in ROTC in college and was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation. Lynn started his Army career as an air defense artillery officer, even going to the Defense Language School to learn Italian before being sent to lead a Nike Hercules special weapons warhead team in Italy.
Lynn transferred to the Signal Corps in 1984 and began working his way up the chain of command. He was a brigade signal officer in the 1st Infantry Brigade, 101st Airborne Division in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990. Then in the late ‘90s he was deployed to Bosnia as commander of the 13th Signal Battalion. In between, along with other assignments, he served for a time as White House social aide for President Bill Clinton.
By 2000, Lynn was in the Network Management Division in the Pentagon. He also earned an M.S. in national resource management that year from the Industrial College of the Air Force.
After the 9/11 attacks, Lynn was made division chief for the Commander in Chief for Operations and Support Division. In 2002, he took command of the 3rd Signal Brigade and was deployed to Iraq. Lynn returned to the U.S. and in 2005 moved into the office of the Army’s Chief Information Officer and became executive officer to the CIO.
Lynn moved to the DISA in 2007 as the agency’s chief of staff. In 2008, he was named commander of the 311th Signal Command, in charge of Army communications in the Pacific. He was named the Army’s Chief of Signal in 2010 when he was made commanding general of the Signal Center of Excellence, the main information technology college for officers and non-commissioned officers. In 2012, Lynn was named commander of the Army Network Enterprise Technical Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The following year, he was named vice director of DISA, where he served until taking over the agency.
Lynn is married; his wife’s name is Brook.
-Steve Straehley
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