• DALLAS
Alan French, executive vice president (EVP) and chief Logistics officer for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), retires on Jan. 1, concluding a four-decade-plus career.
BEGINNINGS
As a teenager, French worked for AAFES for three summers as an intermittent associate.
When he was about 20, French was trying to find full-time employment when his father — a long-time AAFES warehouse manager —suggested that he apply at the new Newport News Distribution Center (NNDC), now known as the Dan Daniel Distribution Center (DDDC).
A little more than a year after Dan Daniel held its grand opening in 1988, the Waco Distribution Center (WDC) opened and French became a member of its crew.
French worked his way up in Waco, becoming an inventory management specialist, acting as a liaison between the DC and buyers, addressing inventory issues.
He did that for about three years, then the position was eliminated and he went back to working directly for the DC as storage manager.
After nine years at Waco, he made a bigger move — to the Giessen DC in Germany. French served as transportation manager for Europe.
In August 2001, French received orders to return to the States. During the first week of September, he arrived in Dallas for a headquarters-based logistics position, and less than a month into his new role as a logistics analyst, French traveled to California, where he spent October at the West Coast DC in French Camp to help open yet another new distribution center.
THE EXECUTIVE ERA
In 2013, Logistics Senior Vice President (SVP)/Chief Logistics Officer Karen Stack asked French if he would like to fill a vice-president (VP) vacancy and he became VP of Logistics operations, the first in a series of VP roles until he was named supply chain SVP in 2020.
When Stack retired at the end of 2023, French moved into the role.
RETIREMENT
His retirement will end a long run for his family working at the Exchange — but the Exchange will always be his family.
“I’m an AAFES brat,” he said. “My dad helped me see the light and I took a job at the Exchange that turned out to be a career.
“You develop outside relationships with Exchange teammates who have the same lifestyle and mission. Supporting them, or being assigned someplace with them, they turn into life-long friends.
“And the military is our family as well. And we want them to know that they’re part of our family. It’s incorporated into the mission. As our CEO Tom Shull says, the Exchange is ‘family serving family.’”
Source: AAFES
Edited by Larry Lapka
