Ms. Leigh Ann Watts was appointed Acting Chief Human Capital Officer for the Military Health System (MHS) on February 4, 2011. In this capacity, she reports to the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) and is responsible for the implementation and execution of the MHS Human Capital Strategy. The role of the Human Capital Office (HCO) is to integrate efforts to support the more than 140,000 military and civilian medical/support professionals that form the MHS. The HCO examines and adjusts policies so MHS employees and members of the military benefit from better marketing of job opportunities, increased compensation, improved quality of work and more informed leaders.
Ms. Watts has twenty-seven years of experience as a Human Resource professional in the DoD and the Department of the Army. She has worked on the development of new policy in HR areas such as recruitment, military spouse and veteran’s employment issues and strategic human capital. She is an expert in recruitment, reduction in force, voluntary early retirement authority, separation incentives, outplacement programs and other human resource issues.
Prior to being named to this position, Ms. Watts led a task force dedicated to exploring authorities provided to the Secretary of Defense in title 38 chapter 74 pertaining to the appointment, retention and compensation of healthcare professionals. The task force is comprised of members from Army, Navy, Air Force and DoD Civilian Personnel Management Service. This assignment came as a result of her work with the DoD Civilian Personnel Management Service developing policy and legislation affecting the MHS.
Ms Watts has served in a variety of leadership positions within DoD and Army to including Civilian Personnel Director for the Army Test and Evaluation Command and Civilian Personnel Advisory Center Director at Fort Myer, Virginia. She also served in leadership roles overseas in Heidelberg and Darmstadt, Germany during the military drawdown. She helped implement the transition to a regionalized human resources service concept within Army and helped set up the last regionalized personnel operations center in Fort Huachuca, Arizona upon her return from Germany.
Ms. Watts graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from North Carolina State University. She is also a graduate of the Army Management Staff College Sustaining Base Leadership Management Course.
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