Faces of the Force

Brianna Bazilio

By Holly Decarlo-White

Article published on: January 1, 2025 in the Winter 2025 Edition of the Army AL&T Magazine

Read Time: < 7 mins

Briana Bazilio

Brianna Bazilio’s budding career in Army acquisition as a business management major began with the perfect blend of a family recommendation and a positive internship experience.

Her brother, who is a contract specialist in the Army, encouraged her to pursue a government job while she was attending university. In her junior year, she was accepted to the DOD College Acquisition Internship Program within the Joint Program Executive Office for Armaments and Ammunition (JPEO A&A). With high expectations for the program, she said she soon learned that everyone, although serious about the mission, was also kind and willing to pass the baton.

“I was working with a really great leader who showed me so much and got me so interested in the field—the rest is history,” Bazilio said. She remained in contact with the office and was hired upon graduation. “The JPEO A&A helped me see how essential the everyday civilian is for helping the warfighter on their mission. There is so much behind-the-scenes work that I never realized existed. It is an honor and pleasure to be a part of that.”

As an internal operating budget program analyst for JPEO A&A, Bazilio’s job ensures that the project managers and project directors have everything they need financially in order to do their work to support the warfighter. Her day-to-day consists of fielding requests that come in from the different project managers within the organization and tracking all of headquarters’ internal spending.

“The greatest satisfaction I have in being part of the Army Acquisition Workforce is knowing that the hard work that we put in actively affects the people who are fighting for my freedom,” she said. “I also love being part of my team and the leaders that I get to work under who teach me so much every day.”

As an Army civilian, she said the most important points in her career are the opportunities she has to learn. “The encouragement to continue learning throughout our time there is constant,” she said. “Through the requirement of earning continuous learning points, I am constantly learning and seeking new opportunities to further my team.” Her favorite program she is actively enrolled in is the organization’s mentorship program. “I meet with my mentor every couple of months and we strategize how I can achieve my career goals in the Army,” she said. The last career development program she participated in and would recommend to others, in or outside of the Army, is Emergenetics. She described the training as an interactive and insightful leadership workshop that took individual personality behaviors and taught how they can be applied in the workplace and used to their advantage when working with others in their careers. “It opened my eyes to how I learn and interact in the workplace based on my personality,” she said. “It just helps me be more aware of the best ways to interact with other individuals.”

KEEP IN TOUCH Bazilio remained in contact with JPEO A&A leadership following her participation in the DOD College Acquisition Internship Program. She was hired upon graduation. (Photo courtesy of Brianna Bazilio)

As she continues to learn and grow in her career, she said she would recommend to junior acquisition professionals starting out to be eager and willing to step up to the plate and do what-ever it takes. “You’re not going to get it right the first time and there’s a huge learning curve in the Army, especially with all the acronyms, but there is also so much good that happens if you take your time and give yourself a lot of grace to learn,” she said, meaning that it’s “a journey, not a race, and although the urge is to come into a new job and dominate, it is okay to take it one step at a time when there is such a big learning curve.”

The most important lesson Bazilio has learned is that the best experience is hands-on experience. “Even if you don’t know how to do something, being willing to ask questions and learn is so important to build the trust of others around you,” she said, adding that hands-on experience is also key to learning the job and becoming a vital part of the team. “The goal is to be useful and valuable to the bigger goals of the organization.”

Bazilio’s role in helping to plan, manage and track funding plays a vital part in making those goals a reality. “I am known as a planner,” she said of her hobbies outside of the office, too. While she said the enjoyment of planning travel or birthday parties doesn’t exactly correlate to her current role, being able to have the attention to detail to plan and forecast applies. Planning and managing a budget is important as project managers plan for how they are going to spend their funding in the year ahead and how they plan to set funds aside to ensure they are available whenever needed.

“The best part of the Army is there are so many departments that you can transfer to and experience,” she said, However, her plans are to continue growing right where she is. “In the future I would love to be a team lead and have more responsibility because I love what I do,” she said.

“The hard work that we put in actively affects the people who are fighting for my freedom.”

— Holly Decarlo-White