The Progress We've Made; The Progress We Need.

• Author: Punaro, Arnold
• Position: NDIA PERSPECTIVE

As my second tour as the National Defense Industrial Association's chairman of the board comes to an end, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the progress we've made together along the way and address the road ahead.

The world today is more dangerous than at any time in recent memory. Great power competition with China and Russia is the driving force of our defense strategy, while Iran and North Korea remain serious threats. We have new domains of warfare in both the cyber and space realms, and the race is on to harness the emerging technologies that will define the future of warfare and U.S. economic competitiveness. The defense industry remains the essential element of the nation's success in this fight for Western democracy to prevail over autocracy.

In my early work with NDIA in 2006, the defense industry faced a much different dynamic with the Global War on Terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as the main driving factors. After successfully supporting their fight, the defense industry has been able to pivot to address the new threat environment, as well as the unprecedented hurdles of a global pandemic and high rates of inflation.

The defense industry has successfully adapted to face these difficult challenges head on, and I know it will need NDIA's help to do the same moving forward.

The association itself has changed for the better over these last 16 years. In 2006, NDIA had 1,188 corporate members and 27,000 individual members. Today, those have increased to 1,832 corporate and 62,000 individual members. We have 29 divisions and 50 chapters, up from 25 and 30 in 2006, respectively. We rely on our members to provide us with their thoughts and concerns that we can then turn around into productive dialogue with decision makers in the government, which can be challenging.

Since I first became chairman of NDIA in 2013, one of my goals was to promote and draw on the incredible talent in our companies and members to better represent our industry and the country. We implemented diversity guidance policies for the Nominating and Governance Committee. This has led to a marked improvement, from 13 percent of the board and 17 percent of executive committee members to 34 percent and 58 percent--a two-and three-fold increase, respectively. We now rotate close to a quarter of the board every year, which allows for fresh views and new voices to be heard. We emphasize bringing on younger and up-and-coming leaders. We also focused...