Retired U.S. Army lieutenant general follows his son to World Wide Technology
Posted by The St. Louis American on November 30, 2017:
World Wide Technology, Inc. has a new vice president of Federal Strategy, one whose previous position involved reporting directly to the secretary of the U.S. Army. Retired Army Lieutenant General Robert (Bob) Ferrell spent 38 years in the military, retiring in March 2017 from his position as the army's chief information officer.
While deciding what he could do to make a difference in the private sector, Bob Ferrell got some advice from another WWT employee – his son, Michael Ferrell.
Michael Ferrell was a third-generation serviceman; Bob Ferrell's father, Howard Ferrell, spent 23 year in the Signal Corps, the communications and information systems arm of the U.S. military. Six of Howard Ferrell's seven children served in the military. Michael enlisted in the same branch as his grandfather. He served for six years, including a deployment to Afghanistan, before switching to the private sector.
When his father asked Michael whether he should consider working for Michael's employer, Michael wrote his father a note about what a positive experience working at the company had been.
"It turned into a three-page letter," Bob Ferrell said.
Ferrell was spending the summer after retiring from the military trying to decide what his next step would be. He didn't want to just relax. His wife, Monique Ferrell, didn't want him to, either. She is a civilian employee at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., working in sexual assault prevention.
"When we went through that summer and she was going to work and I was saying home, she said, 'This is not going to work,'" Ferrell said.
So Ferrell started looking for a second career.
"I really wanted to work with an industry partner, because it intrigued me, similar to how the Army did, because it provides a service to a very good partner," Ferrell said. "Whether it's the military community or the corporate community, it provides a service that allows them to achieve success."