WIESBADEN, Germany – Selecting from quarterly award winners, Installation Management Command-Europe named its Professionals of the Year for fiscal year 2021, at both the region headquarters-staff and the Europe-wide levels.

The region-wide Level 1 Professional of the Year Award went to Susette Mathis, who works in the USAG Stuttgart military personnel division, while the Level 2 award went to Chris Beermann, who is with the IMCOM-Europe Directorate of Resource Management.

As the IMCOM-Europe staff Professionals of the Year, Idalia Leza, a program analyst for the official mail program, was named the Level 1 awardee, while Stefanie Poulsen, leader of the IMCOM-Europe utility procurement team earned the Level 2 award.

At the outset of COVID-19, Mathis identified issues and developed solutions to help the garrison through the pandemic, leading to the digitization of the out-processing system and created systems that saved more than 800 man-hours and became the blueprint for similar out-processing systems across Europe.

“Susette truly embodies the whole IMCOM service culture campaign. She’s positive, she treats everyone with respect, and seems to never have a bad day. She’s definitely the voice of the organization,” said Medreka Davis, her former supervisor.

Mathis, a native of Cape Verde who immigrated to the U.S. when she was 8 years old, joined the Army in 1999 and served for five years as an air traffic controller.

“I love working at USAG Stuttgart because as a veteran and an Army spouse I get to help and support our own military and civilian workforce,” Mathis said.

“She is an impressive, reliable, consistent, and exemplary employee who supports her colleagues, takes initiative, and is an absolute pleasure to work with,” Davis said.

Serving as the IMCOM-Europe chief of financial operations and resource integration for the past two years, Beermann joined the team after roughly 17 years supporting research, development and technology.

“We knew when we hired Chris that he was going to be a difference maker for our team,” said Sam Barnes, IMCOM-Europe’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Resource management. “His experience and broad range of knowledge on core business processes was exactly what we needed, when we needed it.”

Beermann led the Contract Management Review process from the IMCOM Europe headquarters and in support of the garrisons, taking an approach that was later developed was later adopted by IMCOM as the standard for other IMCOM Directorates.

Leading a team and helping his coworkers succeed gives him great satisfaction.

“If you build up the people around you, that’s where the success is. As you build a process, and you see the people around you just pick it up and run, that is the point at which like I get gratification out of it,” Beermann said.

“That’s success. You can build things that outlast you,” he said.

In 2021, Leza oversaw the solicitation, purchase and rollout of new official mail metering systems for 18 locations across all seven garrisons, which simplified the mail metering process, allow for real-time command official mail funding accountability and allowed for remote expenditure visibility and tracking.

“She has essentially transformed the way that IMCOM-Europe garrisons process Official Mail to meet current industry standards,” said Mike Kinstle, chief of the postal operations branch for IMCOM-Europe. “Through modernization of equipment, improved technology and training, IMCOM-Europe has been able to save and repurpose more than $100,000 over the last seven years.”

Leza began working for the Army in 1999 and has been in her current position for six years, following an assignment at Fort Carson and an earlier tour in Baumholder, where she became a mail room supervisor.

“I love taking care of my customers. My customers are the people out there in the field doing postal. They’re the post offices, not just the official mail, but the mail rooms,” Leza said.

“I believe in taking care of them and doing everything I can to help them because if I help them, they can help others,” she said.

For IMCOM-Europe, Poulsen leads a team that provides direct oversight of over 170 utility contracts with a total annual contract value of over $160 million dollars. In that role, in 2021, she worked closely with U.S. Army in Europe and Africa to obtain a formal opinion from the German government that will result in a cost avoidance of over $1.2 million, with gradual increases in the cost avoidance each year.

“Stefanie is extremely diligent. She is very thorough in conducting research to make sure she has the correct answer or resolution to a problem,” said her supervisor, Simon Muench, who noted that she takes a special interest in challenges where cost-savings area involved.

“She constantly strives to identify problems with utilities or utility contracts at garrisons and coordinates with the garrison staff and subject matter experts to better identify the problem and work as a team to develop a solution,” Muench said.

Poulsen joined IMCOM-Europe in January 2018, after working for the Defense Logistics Agency in Germersheim since 2006. An architect by training, she worked on projects in the warehouses there, before turning to her current job.

“The more I dig into these contracts, the more excited I am about that field. Utilities never gets the attention it really deserves,” Poulsen said. “It’s really challenging, developing new contracting methods.”

She welcomes the challenge created by currently rising utility rates.

“That is something that motivates me, to see where we can save money. Where can we probably find a better procurement method or negotiate to save money, even if it’s a small amount,” she said.

* Marcus Fichtl, USAG Stuttgart, contributed to this story.