INSIDE: LIFE LESSONS / INFRASTRUCTURE
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LYNNE DALEY She marched (and jumped) through a 22-year Army career—and uses what she learned to help other veterans at Bank of America BY NIKKI CAMPO
RICK HOVIS
LYNNE DALEY, a senior business support manager at Bank of America, spent 22 years as an Army officer before she retired in 2006 and joined the bank through a program that recruits veterans in search of civilian careers. Daley supports a team of 240 in the bank’s Global Human Resource Technology organization. She also serves as an adviser and mentor in the same program that led to her post-service profession. Daley grew up in a military family in Philadelphia. She says her father, a World War II veteran, taught her the value of hard work and pushing through discomfort to achieve a goal. Though Daley didn’t set out to follow in her father’s bootsteps, she joined an ROTC program in college and ended up serving in Germany and South Korea, among other countries with Army posts. A Black woman and an officer, she was a rarity: Even today, only 11% of active-duty officers are Black (compared to 71% white), and only 16% of the total active-duty Army is female. Before she retired as a lieutenant colonel, Daley led soldiers during Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom, jumped from airplanes, set up a communications hub in a desert, answered to Dick Cheney (literally), and, eventually, became a mother. Now, she says, she’s committed to helping other veterans achieve what she has in civilian life. Here she is in her own words, which have been edited for clarity and space: I WAS THE BEST SURPRISE EVER for my parents. I grew up in Philadelphia as the youngest of five siblings. We had modest beginnings and two loving parents. My father was my biggest champion. Maybe I was a daddy’s girl.
AUGUST 2021 // CHARLOTTE
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