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Carole Mahoney |
First-Rate Career, Second Time Around for Working Mom
Carole Mahoney
December 2009
Things seem to happen in twos for Carole Mahoney. For example, Mahoney, a software systems engineer, is enjoying her second stint at MITRE. "I was originally at MITRE for 11 years. Then I left for six years to pursue other engineering opportunities during the dot-com era—but I always knew I was coming back," she says. "I wanted to gain some outside experience and bring that home to the corporation."
Mahoney, who has been employed at MITRE for a total of 16 years, currently helps lead a department of 70 software engineers who lend their expertise across a variety of projects and customers at MITRE. "With a strong hands-on emphasis, we address data, software systems, integration technology and workflow and mobile computing engineering challenges, with a goal of improving capabilities for our sponsors' software systems," she explains.
She currently wears two professional hats at MITRE: In addition to leading the aforementioned software engineering department, she provides technical leadership for the Air Operations Community of Interest (AO COI).
"The AO COI is a collaborative group of stakeholders who seek to enable the current and evolving collaborative air operations command and control [C2] business processes. Membership of the AO COI spans multiple branches of the military and consists of user representatives, acquisition agencies, and systems developers who collaborate on a common vocabulary and interaction specifications employing the air operations vocabulary. Ultimately, the goal is to enable improved air operations processes," Mahoney says.
The AO COI is a significant part of Mahoney's responsibility. "I look at it as an opportunity to take the lessons the COI has learned from enabling collaboration across two planning communities and apply those lessons and best practices across a broader community for true collaborative C2," she says.
Last year, she collaborated with other MITRE engineers to strive to improve information sharing for real-time command and control of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets. "The Improved C2 of ISR initiative raised awareness of the need for a shared view of planning factors and mission information among all the teams engaged in the planning and dynamic tasking of assets. We brought together existing capabilities and conducted an in-house experiment to demonstrate information sharing gaps and proposed integration solutions," explains Mahoney. Some of the ideas generated by this initiative have influenced sponsors' technical work programs as well as MITRE's research program.
Double Time
Mahoney's two-stage, evolving career at MITRE has provided not only professional satisfaction, but personal fulfillment as well. During her first MITRE chapter, she met her husband Brian at the corporation, where he works as a senior software application development engineer. Thirteen years ago, the Mahoneys were blessed with—you guessed it—twins.
"Like many parents, my hobby is my kids!" she laughs. And as with all working parents, the Mahoneys juggle daily family tasks. "We have a balance of one of us dropping off our girls at school, and the other picking them up after school activities," she says. "Over the years, my daughters have seen me working at home at night, but that's okay because it has provided a positive example for them—they see me doing my homework, so they do theirs at the same time. They have become quite adept at handling their own school workload."
Mahoney's educational background is in computer science and technical communications. During her first turn at MITRE, she earned her master's from Boston University in systems engineering with a software engineering focus.
"I've had a wonderful career here at MITRE. Through my technical work program and responsibilities, I have been presented with many opportunities for personal and professional growth," she says. Today, as part of a leadership team, she is in a position to extend those same chances to shine to others.
"In my department, we work hard at having the right balance of skills on our staff and empowering all of our staff to act as technical consultants to help shape the technical work program and deliver innovative software solutions to address our sponsors' most challenging problems."
—by Cheryl Scaparrotta
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