Retired U.S. Army lieutenant general follows his son to World Wide Technology

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.”

Ferrell sent out many job applications and interviewed with several companies, but had not yet decided on his next career. Then he remembered a conversation with WWT co-founder and chairman David Steward, whom he knew through the BEYA STEM Conference, which named Steward the 2012 Black Engineer of the Year. Steward had told Ferrell that if he needed advice on what to do after leaving the military, he should give Steward a call.

Ferrell sent Steward a list of the companies he was considering working for, hoping Steward could help make the decision. A few days later, Steward called with his advice.

“He said, ‘Hey, Bob, I saw your list. Did you ever think about World Wide Technology?’” Ferrell recalled.

That’s when Ferrell started talking to his son about the company.

Michael Ferrell had also recently left the Army when he began working for WWT. He told his father that the culture, leadership and mission of the company would make it a good fit and encouraged him to take the job.

“WWT has a figurative ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality, in the sense that a welcoming and jovially social work environment promotes a comfortably lateral leadership chain when expressing opinions, new ideas, or just naturally socializing throughout the day,” Michael Ferrell wrote to his father.

“But that environment is only possible because the underlying expectation of each individual is you come in every day being the absolute best you can be. I feel that I’m treated as a valued contributing member of a professionally social environment, rather than just being a technical production agent paid to produce deliverables by deadlines.”

Bob Ferrell said his son was absolutely right.

“It was the best decision I’ve made, except for asking my wife to marry me,” Ferrell said.

Ferrell now works at WWT’s office at Reston, Virginia.

“It’s really about treating people with dignity and respect, providing them the opportunity to grow, to learn, to lead, and to provide solutions for the customer,” Ferrell said. “Everybody I talked to – regardless of their position, the secretaries, the office people – every one of them said, ‘I love WWT. This is the organization that I plan to retire from.’”

There are new challenges for the career military man.

“In the military, you don’t have to think about what you wear,” Ferrell said. “You get up and there’s a uniform, and it doesn’t change throughout that whole 38 years. The first challenge I faced was figuring out what to put on the next day.”

Also, a private company is always considering how it can grow and expand. This is something Ferrell has been able to help with; coming from the other side of military contracts, he can help WWT identify gaps in their service and ways to expand.

WWT recently secured a contract to help the Department of Defense improve its cybersecurity. Ferrell said that with his experience, he plans to help the company development “next-generation” strategies to meet the needs of future customers in the changing cybersecurity field.

Ferrell said WWT is providing important solutions, and he’s grateful for his son’s good judgment.

“He followed me into the military,” Ferrell said, “and now I followed him into WWT.”

Jessica Karins is an editorial intern for the St. Louis American from Webster University.