Sondra Spalding on Building Better Systems—and Helping People Grow

When Sondra Spalding sees a gap in a process, her instinct is not to step around it. She wants to understand the problem, remove the bottleneck, and build a practical way forward. That approach has guided a career spanning more than 27 years, beginning in administrative support and growing into her current position as Deputy Program Manager and Operations Manager at SAIC.

Her progression was not based on a single leap. Instead, Sondra developed her career step by step, accepting unfamiliar assignments and learning how different parts of an organization fit together. Her work has included administrative support, facilities and asset management, health and safety, technical editing, proposal management, staffing, and scheduling.

Choosing to find the answer

Across those varied responsibilities, one principle remained consistent. Rather than responding to a challenge with “that’s not my job” or “I don’t know,” Sondra adopted a different answer: “I’ll find the answer.”

That willingness to investigate and deliver became a method for professional growth. Leaders who encouraged her to stretch helped her see that taking on a challenge does not require already knowing everything about it. It requires accepting responsibility, doing the necessary work, and remaining open to learning.

Her early experience also shaped how she thinks about capability. Starting as an administrative assistant, she encountered assumptions that administrative professionals knew little beyond basic office tasks. Working in a male-dominated environment added another layer of pressure, as she felt compelled to demonstrate that she could perform at the same level as male peers.

Those experiences strengthened her resolve to show that ability is not determined by title or gender. They also gave her a lasting appreciation for employees whose potential may not yet be reflected in their position.

Turning frustration into improvement

Efficiency is one of Sondra’s strongest professional interests—and inefficiency is one of her greatest frustrations. She naturally looks for broken processes, repeated work, unnecessary steps, and points where information or action slows down.

Her broad operational background helps her examine those problems from multiple perspectives. A process may appear reasonable within one function while creating complications for another. Experience across support, editing, proposals, staffing, scheduling, and operations allows her to consider how a proposed change may affect the wider team.

For Sondra, continuous improvement is not simply about making work faster. It is about creating practical systems that support quality, clearer coordination, and dependable execution. In her current role, her responsibilities include developing procedures, supporting operations staff, and contributing to hiring, onboarding, training, inventory, supply chain activities, and planning.

Keeping people at the center

Although Sondra values measurement and performance, she is wary of reducing employees to numbers. As responsibilities increase, she has observed that organizational attention can shift toward metrics and away from the people doing the work. Her goal is to hold both priorities together: pursue efficiency and strong results without losing sight of individual contributions.

That balance is especially visible in her commitment to mentoring. Her favorite part of her work is helping others develop, including pushing people to stretch in the same way influential managers once challenged her. Mentorship is how she pays forward the opportunities that supported her own growth.

Learning is part of that commitment. Sondra often tells her children, “Any day you learn something new is a day not wasted,” and she applies the same outlook to her professional development. She also hopes to connect with other professional women, whether as a mentor or mentee, as she considers possibilities for her own next step.

Recognition rooted in support

In 2022, Sondra received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Patriotic Employer Award after being nominated by an employee. The recognition was particularly meaningful to her because she believes service members deserve support. The experience also included an honor flight during which she watched a mid-air refueling—an experience she found remarkable despite not typically enjoying air travel.

The recognition reflects a theme running through Sondra’s career: effective operations and human support are not competing goals. Better processes can help people perform, while thoughtful leadership can create room for them to learn and advance. Her own path—from administrative assistant to operational leader—demonstrates what can happen when someone is trusted with a challenge and responds by finding the answer.