Introduction
Hello everyone,
My name is Douglas Edwards, and I'm joining this cohort from Spring, Texas (just north of Houston).
I'm a financial and program management professional with over 25 years of combined military and federal civilian experience. My military career began in the U.S. Marine Corps, where I served as a Disbursing Technician and Field Artillery Cannon Crewman, including time stationed in Okinawa, Japan, and a deployment to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I later transitioned to the U.S. Army, where I spent nearly 13 years in financial management roles across Germany, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq before retiring as a Sergeant First Class (E-7).
Since transitioning to the civilian side, I've worked as a Budget Analyst at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a Senior Resource Analyst supporting the Pentagon, a Senior Consultant at Ernst & Young, and most recently as a Financial & Resource Manager with KBR supporting the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center.
I hold an MBA (Summa Cum Laude), a PMP certification, and DoD Financial Management Certification Level 3. I also recently completed LinkedIn Learning courses in Excel and Power BI Desktop to stay sharp on the analytics side.
What motivated me to join this program is that I've spent much of my career doing process improvement work without the formal credential to back it up. While stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany, I developed an audit and compliance program called the Personnel Readiness Review that improved military pay document submission timeliness by 80% and saved over $1.2 million in delinquent payment fees. At Ernst & Young, I built standardized testing templates and continuous-monitoring cadences that improved audit control testing speed by 40%. More recently at KBR, I drafted decision-tree process improvements that streamlined how Program Managers submit funding requests. Earning the Lean Six Sigma Green Belt will give me the formal methodology and language to complement what I've been practicing throughout my career.
I'm currently in an active job search, targeting both federal government and defense contractor opportunities — including potential roles supporting U.S. military operations in Europe. Adding this credential will strengthen my competitiveness in both arenas.
My goal for this course is to formalize my understanding of DMAIC methodology so I can apply it more deliberately to financial process improvement and internal controls work, and to connect with fellow professionals who are navigating similar career transitions.
I'm looking forward to learning with all of you and hearing your stories as well.
Best regards,
Douglas Edwards
Spring, TX
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/douglascedwards