A Message From Tom Portlock

Hello everybody,

Five years ago, after assuming the role of Chief Executive Officer, I made it one of my missions to enhance communications with Odyssey’s employee base. Given the growth we’ve achieved and the geographic distribution of our workforce, it is understandable if employees sometimes feel isolated, “on an island”, or out of touch with what’s happening with the rest of the company. I felt then, and still do today, that it is my obligation, with help from the rest of the leadership team, to better connect every employee in some meaningful way. I think we have come a long way since 2019, but I know we can keep improving.

This is precisely why we launched the employee engagement survey last month. We received 564 responses from the survey, or 44.5% of the employee population—a pretty good response rate to be sure. Our HR Team is compiling the responses to aggregate the information so that we can identify trends, both positive and negative, for further discussion and potential opportunities for emphasis or improvement. Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey. We take your inputs very seriously and will report on our findings over the coming months.

With The Journey, our goal is to convey important news and events from across the company and provide everyone a broader perspective of who we are and what we do. Our regular features include programmatic updates from across the company’s Operational Groups from each of our Program Directors, Employee Profiles and News of major events. These will never change, but we want to keep things fresh as well so we’re always trying to introduce new content. In March, we expanded our Leadership Q&A section to feature some of our Executive Directors so you could get a peek into what makes them tick. In this edition we asked for their favorite quotes. They offer some interesting perspectives, in my opinion.

Something we’re adding this month is a Repping the Swag section at the bottom of the Out & About page, where we’ll highlight the interesting places people travel, whether they’re on-the-job or getting away from the “daily grind” and traveling with friends or family. If you have pictures sporting Odyssey garb while you’re circumnavigating the globe, send them to us and we’ll include them in future editions.

Having been with Odyssey since 2002, I’ve long known we’re a company of talented, dedicated, hard-working individuals. Four such people I’d like to personally recognize for their long-standing (15+ years) support to the Odyssey mission are William Morris (C5ISR), Sharon MacEachern (Corporate Finance & Accounting), Peter Pongratz (Space & Missile Defense), and Scott Stupinski (Corporate Contracts)—thank you all! As I’ve traveled the country over the years, I’ve been tremendously impressed with the level of support you’re providing our growing list of customers in addition to the sheer magnitude of your accomplishments. What we do is critically important, but how we do it, in my opinion, is even more significant. Each and every day, I urge you to hold true to our Core Values of Commitment, Ambition & Respect. These three tenets have been the benchmark of our success over the past 27 years and will serve as the foundation of what we do and where we go in the future.

All my best,

Tom Portlock
Chief Executive Officer