Michael G. Dana

Lieutenant General Mike Dana, USMC retired after thirty-seven years of service on 1 September 2019. He was commissioned in 1982 after graduating from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. During his career he commanded aviation support units in the Southwestern United States and Iraq. These organizations provided construction, engineering, fuel, firefighting, and airfield operations support to Marine Corps aviation units. He also commanded a logistics unit in Afghanistan that provided construction, engineering, maintenance, supply, and transportation support to 20,000 Marines in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. As a Lieutenant General, he served as the Deputy Commandant for Installations and Logistics (DC I&L) and as the Director of the Marine Corps staff (DMCS) from 2015-2019. As DC I&L, he and his team led and managed the operation and upkeep of 24 Marine Corps bases and stations in the United States and overseas. His team implemented measures that increased the materiel readiness of the Marine Corps’ multi-billion-dollar ground equipment inventory. As DC I&L he formed a Next Generation Logistics Team (NEXLOG) focused on innovation. This team was instrumental in the fielding of additive manufacturing into the Marine Corps. NEXLOG also spearheaded experimentation with unmanned air, sea and land logistics delivery platforms. This team was the incubator for the first ever Marine Corps Innovation Challenge, an event that provided Marines around the world a venue to express their ideas and develop solutions for tough logistical problems. NEXLOG made in-roads into the private sector to capture best practices in data analytics, predictive maintenance, and optimization of supply chains. As DMCS he was third-in-command of the Marine Corps, a premier military force of 186,000 personnel and $43B dollar budget.