Foreign Area Officer
Association
History
On 17 October 1995, an informal discussion took place between a small group of FAOs
located at the Pentagon. It was an ordinary session, but with an extraordinary outcome. The
problem that was revealed during this pivotal discussion was that the Army had no way to
contact FAOs in the active, reserve, and retired communities. There was literally no database
that captured these highly qualified individuals for the Army. The FAO Proponent was
constantly receiving telephone and fax messages from the retired community seeking qualified
FAOs, who were about to retire themselves or had already retired, for possible job opportunities
in the civilian sector. The old-boy network was neither sufficient nor extensive enough to
answer the volume of requests. To add to the community's comunication problems and to make
matters worse, the FAO Proponent had been recently forced to discontinue the publication of its
only method for "getting the official word out" -- its newsletter -- for lack of funding. The
question was how to solve these problems. Dr. Joseph Tullbane (a retired FAO himself) went
home with a number of interesting ideas from the discussion about how to better tie together the
diverse and fractured Army FAO Community.
Over the next month, these ideas coalesced into the nascent FAO Association, which Sr.
Tullbane founded in concept on 30 November 1995. The first issue facing the army's newest
military professional association was to build up sufficient funds to establish itself. To
accomplish this necessary requirement, he sent out invitations to join in creating the association
to a group of retirees and the active O-6 population in November 1995. The result was enough
capital and founding members to "get the show on the road." Things then began to pick up
speed. The subsequent months were occupied in creating a Board of Governors of former and
current outstanding FAOs; writing an Association Charter, Articles of Incorporation, goals and
aims; and creating such basic elements of an organization as brochures, applications, and initial
data bases. By 1 January 1996, the association was officially incorporated in the Commonwealth
of Virginia. The newly appointed Board of Governors met in February 1996 and validated the
organizational steps taken so far. The Board members also came up with a series of suggestions
for where the association should go, as well as what services it should and should not offer .
Their suggestions ranged from trying to have regular regional FAO social get-togethers to
building a web site for the association. All of these projects are being undertaken, but because
the organization relies solely on volunteers some have been slower in coming to fruition than
others. During spring 1996, membership drives were undertaken to recruit active army FAOs
(all ranks) and reserve army FAOs (all ranks).
The intent of the organization has, from the first, been to band together the officers of the
various FAO regional areas of concentration and to provide an informal social and professional
forum in which members could share ideas and experiences. It is intended to unite active,
reserve, and retired FAOs in a mutually advantageous network, to both further Service goals and
to help the individual FAOs as they advance through their military careers and their subsequent
civilian careers.
At its two-year anniversary, the Foreign Area Officer Association has a total of 750+
members. It has opened the active web site (which you are now accessing) and is beginning a
second year of producing the FAO Journal -- our own military professional magazine. Further,
the membership has expanded farther than ever anticipated at its inception -- we now have
Marine and Navy members, as well as our Army stalwarts, and therefore provide space for
Marine and Navy FAO Proponent news, too.
The future of the Association is bright. We hope to soon expand membership to include Air
Force FAOs, as well as corporate sponsors to help fund our future activities. In the next two
years we also hope to add a scholarship program for worthy FAO family members, continue to
expand the journal more, and start an internet job fair for FAOs.
Foreign Area Association Charter
2006, Foreign Area Officer Association
P.O. Box 295
Mt. Vernon, Virginia, 22121
Maintained by LTC Steve Gotowicki.
http://www.faoa.org