• DALLAS
Tom Lozier, for the past five years the executive vice president/chief administrative officer (EVP/CAO) of the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), retired at the end of July.
An Exchange spokesman said that Lozier’s position will not be back filled, and his duties will be assigned elsewhere.
“AAFES has been a good fit for me,” he said. “It’s a feel-good job, in that I know how important it is and what the end result is going to be. I’m so proud to tell people where I work.”
FAMILY BACKGROUND
His family’s military background influenced Lozier’s decision to join the military, but athletics did, too. A star linebacker on his high school football team in Michigan, Lozier was recruited by the Naval and Air Force academies.
Lozier entered the Naval Academy in 1970. As a football player, he didn’t see much action.
“I got injured my plebe year, as soon as we started practicing,” he recalled.
Lozier wasn’t sure if he wanted to make the Navy a career, but he found it fulfilling and enjoyable. “I stayed on active duty for 12 years and then served another 12-and-a-half years in the Reserves,” he said.
NEXT STEPS
Lozier graduated from the Naval Academy in 1974 — a year after Exchange Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tom Shull graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
After graduation, Lozier attended Navy Supply Corps School in Athens, Ga., and was then sent to Iceland. All major service branches were represented there, and one of Lozier’s responsibilities was to move cargo from a Naval Air Station to an Army post with a classified location.
After about a year in Iceland, he was sent to Norfolk, Va., where he served as the supply officer aboard a tank landing ship.
When a Canadian Armed Forces officer was sent to work at a supply center in San Diego, Calif., Lozier moved to Canadian Forces Base Borden, just north of Toronto, and taught leadership and probability and statistics courses at the base’s logistics school.
ENTERING THE CIVILIAN WORLD
Lozier wanted to be a Navy pilot, but a medical issue prevented that. He was offered a choice of going into the Corps of Engineers or JAG Corps. JAG didn’t interest him but logistics did.
“I enjoyed logistics a lot,” he said. “I pretty much stayed in it in my civilian career. I knew how important logistics was and how it was overlooked a lot.
“Nobody really thinks about how items go places and where they’ve been. That’s what made me stay — and the challenges. There was always a challenge — something goes wrong somewhere and it’s got to be fixed. And I liked that.”
After he graduated from Harvard, he went to work at what is now Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM) headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va.
Through the friendship he had with future AAFES Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tom Shull, Lozier made his next move.
“At the time, Tom was working at Sanger-Harris, which was a department store chain in Dallas,” he said. “They had an open position there in logistics. I was recruited and got a job there through Tom.”
A year or so after Lozier’s arrival, Shull left to work for consulting firm McKinsey & Co., where he stayed until 1990.
The same year, Lozier started his own company, Warden West Corp., which provided third-party logistics support to department stores such as Macy’s — where Shull came to work in 1992, serving in a series of executive roles.
“He was at Macy’s headquarters in New York, and I was working at Macy’s West,” Lozier said. “I was an independent contractor running their West Coast distribution center.”
MOVING TO THE EXCHANGE
They both worked in the civilian business world for more than 20 years before Shull was named director/CEO of the Exchange in June 2012.
Lozier, who had been working as an independent consultant at the time, joined the Exchange a few months later as vice president (VP) of logistics.
In 2014, Lozier was promoted to senior vice president (SVP) of supply chain transportation, a role he served in until 2020, when he was named CAO.
RETIREMENT
Even in retirement, Lozier will always carry the Exchange with him.
“It’s all about the people,” he said. “The customers we serve and the teammates we work with. I know how important we are and what we do is. It makes me feel, after having been in the Navy, that I am part of the family.”
Source: AAFES
Edited by Larry Lapka
