Never stop serving: JoAnne Bass, 19th Chief Master Sergeant of the United States Air Force

I've heard many times that the US military is the ultimate meritocracy.

And I think this is proof of it.

But in your mind, what made you kind of stand out that you were able to kind of keep rising through these different roles? Like what separated you that really enabled you to do this?

You know, I appreciate the question.

I don't know that anything separated me.

I will break it down to really simplistic, you know, kind of principles.

My mom taught me many, many, many years ago, do your job and do it well.

And I would offer that that applies to everybody, whether you're a service member joining the military and you're in your first couple of years, or whether you're serving as Chief Master Sergeant in the Air Force, or whether you're President of the United States, you've got to do your job and you've got to do it well.

And I think that that is, you know, having that mindset throughout life really did help me.

That doesn't mean that you don't have challenges and things like that, but the mindset that I had to have during all of life's challenges, professional challenges, was really that those challenges help grow you, help shift you, and help you develop into the person that you're supposed to develop.

I will also say that You know care and persistence matter too.

I care a lot about our Air Force and I always have and and as a young service member.

I had an opinion about everything and I don't know that that was helpful, you know, and and I always had an opinion on how how our military needs to be, and it's interesting to look back at.

Wow, now I have an opportunity to help impact the policies that impact our service members and so now.

again, through the thoughts of, you know, and kind of the reps and sets you get as a leader, I'm now in a position where I can actually do something about it.

It almost sounds like as a new enlisted, though, you're looking like, how can we do things better? How can we keep improving? Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

And also having phenomenal teammates and coaches and frontline leaders who allowed me to The grace to kind of voice my opinion, even when it wasn't asked for, and to help show me ways to constructively be able to get after fixes toward those things.

One last on that is, again, I always love to... continually mention, you know, every job you have sets you up for the next one.

And one of the things that was also very helpful is I served in some positions where it taught you how to change organizations really at scale and at the enterprise level.

And so those things really were helpful, having those kind of competencies before I got into my final position in uniform.

That's great.

And you and your leadership style, you speak a little bit about the mentors and the leaders that you served behind and had in your life.

And you preach so much in such a beautiful way how mentorship is so important to the generations coming behind us.