Samuel Parks works directly for the DAU Office of the President in a variety of roles. He is the Associate Director for Public Affairs and is responsible for creating, curating, and managing the university’s content across multiple social media platforms and external, web-based communication channels. Parks specializes in content marketing, corporate communication strategy, strategic planning, and digital communication.

Prior to this, Parks served as the Mission Assistance Coordinator for a DAU regional office. In this position, he was responsible for managing a portfolio of approximately $4 million in consulting services and a customer base of more than 1,500 organizations. Mission Assistance, DAU’s product line of consulting services, pairs organizations with the university’s acquisition subject matter experts to help successfully complete complex tasks. This position developed a unique and comprehensive, customer perspective in Parks that continues to serve him in his current role.

Parks holds a bachelor of the arts in political science and foreign languages from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and a certificate in marketing communications from Georgetown University.
 

Vance Gilstrap serves as the Dean, Capital and Northeast Region, for Defense Acquisition University (DAU). As the Dean, he is responsible for directing DAU’s training, consulting, and acquisition leadership support to acquisition programs in the greater National Capital Region and throughout the Northeast US, including nearly 50,000 acquisition workforce members. He directs DAU’s training, credentialing, and acquisition consulting missions to PEOs, PMs, acquisition programs and Agencies, and workforce members, to implement Presidential, Congressional, & SECDEF guidance for training certification and to improve acquisition outcomes.

• Responsible for DAU’s training, consulting, and acquisition leadership support to DoD Acquisition
• Directs DAU’s training, credentialing, and acquisition consulting missions to PEOs, acquisition and services programs, Defense Agencies, and 50,000 DoD Acquisition Workforce members
• Leads over 100 faculty and staff in delivery of training and consulting in every acquisition functional area and many specialty knowledge areas such as Agile development, project management, cyber protection, cloud migration, DevSecOps, risk analysis, and source selection
 

Steve Minnich is the Dean, Mid-Atlantic Region for the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). He directs a portfolio of learning programs and mission assistance that provides a global learning environment for acquisition professionals across the DoD. He leads a regional campus workforce in providing education and performance development in the functional areas of program management, engineering, lifecycle logistics, contracting, financial management, test and evaluation, and cybersecurity.

Prior to this assignment, Mr. Minnich served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the Mid-Atlantic region. He was responsible for all regional curriculum development projects and delivery of all regional course offerings in both resident and virtual classroom formats. Mr. Minnich also served as the Department Chair for Acquisition/Program Management and Professor of Program Management since joining DAU in March 2009.

Mr. Minnich has a B.S. degree in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering from Virginia Tech, and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Florida Institute of Technology. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, Defense Systems Management College, Federal Executive Institute, and is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.