After 28 years of service in the U.S. Air Force, Avis Dillard-Bullock took her time letting her next chapter unfold. After retiring, Dillard-Bullock took a year off before figuring out her next move. In that year, she traveled across the U.S. and abroad to Korea, Canada and Costa Rica. She toyed with opening a coffee shop/bookstore and set up informational interviews.
She wanted to be less regimented than she was used to. Her service had entailed leadership positions as a paralegal career field manager, including working as the senior adviser to the Air Force Judge Advocate General.
“In my military career, I was able to reach the highest enlisted grade. I became the senior paralegal for the Air Force,” says Dillard-Bullock, who had also received in 2008 the USAF’s Legion of Merit Award for exemplary service to the Air Force.
But the break afterward, she says, was invaluable. “That whole year gave me time to decompress, and to see what it’s like not to have to get up at zero dark thirty in the morning,” Dillard-Bullock says.
Her transition to a new career started from a request to volunteer in 2009. She had initially signed up to help Jan Adams build out the latter’s D.C. federal government management consulting company, JMA Solutions LLC. “I think I was employee No. 8 or 9 when I started at JMA,” she says.
But then a later conversation with Adams, JMA’s CEO, turned into a job offer. “She said, ‘Avis, I think I can pay you,’” Dillard-Bullock recalls, and she told Adams: “‘If you can, fine, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to learn.’”
A decade later, Dillard-Bullock has risen to senior vice president and COO. She has helped develop JMA’s project management office, implemented its contracts department and worked with Adams to establish the company’s core values, mission and goals. She also helped JMA’s business development team land the Federal Aviation Administration’s Small Disadvantaged Business of the Year Award in 2011. The company brought in an estimated $30 million in revenue in 2018.
At JMA, Dillard-Bullock helps develop partnerships with veteran-based nonprofits, including Luke’s Wings, an organization that helps families visit wounded service members during their recovery and rehabilitation.
She also gives back in her personal life too. She’s a longtime volunteer and current board member for the nonprofit Develop Africa. Her desire to learn even took her back to school, where she earned a master’s in divinity from Howard University.
It’s a lot for a second act.
“That is wonderful in that the military offers you an opportunity to retire and still be young enough to start a new career,” she says.
Avis Dillard-Bullock
Chief operating officer, JMA Solutions LLC
Education: Bachelor’s in business and management, University of Maryland; master’s in divinity, Howard University; master certificate in applied project management, Villanova University
Family: Husband Stanley Bullock, daughter Ava King
Military years/rank: 1979-2007, Air Force chief master sergeant
Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/06/27/veterans-in-business-avis-dillard-bullock.html
Permission provided by Avis
