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Keeping a balance between practical and purposeful has been a guiding principle in the life of Barbara J. Lombardo '83 since she studied at Lafayette.
“I value efficiency and productivity, but want to be part of the other dimension of making the world a better place?the arts and education,” says Lombardo, who grew up in Malvern, Pa. So far, her balancing act has paid off in a big way, both for herself and her employer, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, where she led the team that won a $453 million, five-year contract with the U.S. Army.
Combining the practical and purposeful, Lombardo played a pivotal role in the launching and growth of Army University Access Online, nicknamed eArmyU. The largest single contract ever won by Pricewaterhouse, it provides distance-learning opportunities to enlisted soldiers.
“Lately, the Army has been more in the forefront of people's minds,” says Lombardo. “It makes me feel even better about what I'm doing, because of the importance of what soldiers do for us.”
The web portal, put in place quickly in early 2001, allows soldiers at five posts so far to pursue degrees from a consortium of colleges. The project's purpose is to meet the unique needs of soldiers seeking an education and help the Army retain more enlistees.
“The men and women in the Army work extremely hard, so keeping them excited about what they do is a laudable goal,” says Lombardo, who is a director in the PwC Consulting e-Learning Solutions Practice and program director of eArmyU.
The soldier-students, who must have three years left in the Army, use the web site to register, search catalogs, receive tutoring, and comb libraries. The Army pays for tuition, books, and course fees and provides laptop computers and Internet access.
Academic and Technical Skills
A consultant and teacher with a doctorate from University of California-Berkeley, Lombardo meshed her own higher-education expertise with the technical skills of other PwC employees and a group of partner corporations to meet the vast requirements of setting up a system that may one day serve 80,000. “Essentially, it's adult learning. The students have a different mindset from younger, full-time students,” she says. “And as soldiers they're a unique community. They have a very demanding, very mobile life style that doesn't lend itself to getting an education. Since we started the program, some have gone to war.”
Before the Army project, first announced in August 2000, Lombardo's more typical, academic client would pay about $200,000 for services ranging from institutional strategic planning to implemention of packaged software. “We do business for colleges and universities. We understand colleges,” she says of her role at PwC. “But we also have a group of people who provide services for the military and a group with expertise in technology. They got together with us. We didn't know anything about each other before that. We put a proposal together and much to our amazement, they awarded it to us. It was so scary.”
Making the challenge even scarier was the timetable for launching the portal: four weeks. “We won the contract in December 2000 and one month later opened our doors,” Lombardo says. “We went from zero to 12,000 students.” PwC built the web site and the software behind it, and integrated it with Army systems, enhancing the portal in March 2001 and making it fully operational in June. According to Lombardo, the Army is projecting 30,000 participants in the next few months, the equivalent of UC Berkeley.
Early Returns Show Success
“One of the main ways the Army tracks a program's success is retention of soldiers, because it costs less to keep current ones than to enlist new ones,” says Lombardo, adding that statistics are showing an impact. In addition, she notes, the program is helping soldiers acquire the technical and computer expertise they need as the business of war becomes more technological.
A mother of two girls whose physician husband, Jeff Romeo, is a stay-at-home father for now, Lombardo considers her involvement in eArmyU as serendipitous since it developed soon after she and her family moved back to the East Coast from Oregon to be closer to other family members. “I was in the right place at the right time,” she says.
Today, Lombardo spends the middle of her work week at Army offices in Virginia, where she can toil late into the evening if necessary, and two days closer to home at PwC in Wayne, Pa. “I work really hard for three days and then come home and focus on that,” she says, adding that PwC deserves its reputation as a good employer for working mothers.
A cross-country runner at Lafayette, Lombardo still jogs about 30 miles a week, including a long run on Saturday mornings with her husband on the country roads near their Chester Springs, Pa., home. She says her personal best was a Top 20 finish in the women's division of the 1984 Philadelphia Marathon, although “there's no way I could do that now.”
While running keeps her “sane,” as Lombardo says, her balance of practical and purposeful endeavors, formulated way back in her Lafayette years, has also kept her soundly on track. In all, she says, “I feel extremely blessed.”
Barbara J. Lombardo ’83