Colonel Adam “AC” Coyne
Chief, Contingency Contracting Policy
Office of the Undersecretary Secretary of Defense, Acquisition and Sustainment, Defense Contracting and Pricing (OUSD/DPC),
Pentagon
Colonel Adam “AC” Coyne has been awarded the ISOA Lifetime Achievement award for his extraordinary work building partnerships with the industrial base to support U.S. national security interests.
Colonel Adam V. Coyne serves as Chief, Contingency Contracting Policy, Office of the Undersecretary Secretary of Defense, Acquisition and Sustainment, Defense Contracting and Pricing (OUSD/DPC), Pentagon. He is responsible for shaping DoD contracting policies and operational issues covering a workforce of 30,000 acquisition professionals in support a $385 billion global portfolio of contingency, disaster relief, emergency procurement, and humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.
His career includes operational, system, enterprise, and department-level contracting assignments as well as four contingency deployments in support of NATO, Defense Contract Management Agency, and Air Expeditionary Wing operations. He is a two-time graduated contracting squadron commander with staff assignments at Air Force Materiel Command, Headquarters, Pacific Air Forces, DCMA Boeing-Seattle, Secretary of the Air Force (Contracting), and OUSD Acquisition and Sustainment (DPC).
He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the College of Charleston, SC, a Masters of Business Administration, Naval Postgraduate School, CA, a Masters of Political/Military Affairs, Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, AL, and a Masters of Science, National Resource Strategy, Eisenhower School, DC where he was both an Honor & Distinguished Graduate.
Leslie Schweitzer
Chair and Founder
Friends of the American University of Afghanistan
Leslie Schweitzer has been awarded the ISOA Lifetime Achievement Award for her courageous and tenacious work enabling education for young women and men in Afghanistan.
Schweitzer founded the Friends of the American University of Afghanistan in 2008, a 501c3 that supports not-for-profit, private, co-educational, non-sectarian higher education in Afghanistan, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of AUAF.
Over four decades, Schweitzer has accumulated a unique combination of founding businesses in emerging and post-conflict markets and facilitating capacity-building projects throughout the world. She has amassed on-the-ground experience in over 20 countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, China, Turkey, Chile, Russia, the Caribbean, and Central America.
Schweitzer pioneered U.S.-China trade beginning in 1977 as a co-founder of Noble Trading Company. After selling her company, Schweitzer served as the Senior Trade Advisor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Schweitzer’s responsibilities included: founding a private-public partnership to promote trade between Turkey and the US; creating Trade Roots, the first and only sustained national grassroots international trade education program, promoting support for Congressional passage of China PNTR, TPA, trade agreements with Chile, Singapore, Australia, Morocco, CAFTA, Peru, South Korea, Panama, and Colombia; and working on the Iraq Business Initiative to re-energize U.S. investment in Iraq.
Schweitzer is a member of the U.S. Afghan Women’s Council, Advisory Board of International Programs-University of Kansas, International Stability Operations Association Advisory Council, Advisory Board Four Star Global Security, Board of Trustees of the Command and General Staff College, and IWIU.
