The idea pollinators: DARPA Service Chiefs Fellows | Ep 88

Intro Voices
Coming to DARPA is like grabbing the nose cone of a rocket and holding on for dear life.

DARPA is a place where if you don't invent the internet, you only get a B.

A DARPA program manager quite literally invents tomorrow.

Coming to work every day and being humbled by that.

DARPA is not one person or one place. It's a collection of people that are excited about moving technology forward.

Tom Shortridge
Hello and welcome to Voices from DARPA. I'm your host, Tom Shortridge. Pollinators, like bees, don't just serve one plant. 

The process of moving from flower to flower can spark growth wherever they land. Without pollination, ecosystems would collapse. Food chains would break. Growth would stop. In this episode, we're not actually going to be talking about bees. Rather, we'll explore a program at DARPA that attracts pollinators of ideas. Just like in nature, the real magic happens when ideas move. 

This is DARPA Service Chiefs Fellowship program. Through this program, we bring in participants from varying backgrounds from across parts of the DOD and other U.S. agencies. They partake in a 12 week immersive experience that serves two core purposes. First, help future leaders get to know DARPA, so when they go back to their organizations, they can infuse some of the DARPA magic into their home base.

The second goal is for the fellows to inform DARPA program managers and performers, many of which don't have military and/or government backgrounds, to help them understand the mission. And in that process, a sort of alchemy occurs through the blending of ideas and making new connections which can often bring people back to the agency. 

And that includes our current deputy director, Rob McHenry, who owns the unique title of being DARPA's first Service Services Fellow.

Rob McHenry
I was in uniform in the Navy. I was a lieutenant on the Chief of Naval Operations staff. I was a special assistant for science and technology, which was a great job. I basically got to follow the CNO around all over the world and explain complicated technical things to him.

He received a letter from the DARPA director at the time, Tony Tether, that basically said, hey, I'd like to, you know, in Tony's words, I'd like to invite mid-grade officers from the services to come over and learn what our part is and try to improve kind of that connectivity and educate future leaders in the services about DARPA and what it can do for the military.

So the CNO got this letter. You know, I was his technology guy. He turned to me and said, hey, Rob, you want to go to RPA? I had kind of heard it DARPA, but really didn't know anything about it, but, you know, saluted smartly and said, okay, I'll go and spend three months here.

So basically I just shadowed the DARPA director for three months, sat in on all the new program pitches, all the all the program decisions, traveled with him. Just basically got to see the agency from the director perspective as my very first introduction to what it is.

And it was awesome. And I fell in love with it. And that changed the course of my whole career. I actually got out of the Navy so that I could come work at DARPA.

Tom Shortridge
Over the years, that single participant has grown to a quarterly joint cohort of 12 fellows from across the military services. But while the size of the program has changed, the goals have not. Another former fellow, Bob Roland, is now heading up the program.

Bob Rowland
Each 90 days, the cohort reconvenes, so they get rapidly onboarded, and they're off shadowing programs that matter to the service or aligned with their educational background, their experience, their training, or the unit that they come from. We even encourage them to follow programs that are just aligned with their interests or are challenging to them. So it's from these programs that some of our best accomplishments actually derive from, because it comes out of their personal interest and their personal motivations, and they get more involved in some of those.

The fellows provide program managers firsthand knowledge about combat training and other topics that ground the technologies in the agency in the needs of the current warfighters. These insights and the program strategies and artifacts that the fellows contribute to, are essential to the success of program managers aross the agency. 

In the words of one current program manager, he said that the Service Chiefs Fellows program is the magic at DARPA that he didn't see coming before his arrival, and he credits the success of his program to his interaction with the Service Chiefs Fellows.

Tom Shortridge
Don't just take it from DARPA personnel. We spoke with two fellows from a cohort from earlier in 2025. Meet Commander Kelly Donovan, a Medical Service Corps officer for the U.S. Navy, and Chief Warrant Officer Trey Graves,air and missile defense systems integrator for the U.S. Army. They share their motivations for applying to the fellowship program, starting with Tray.

Travon Graves
For me, it's about bringing critical capabilities to my branch, more specifically to the Air Defense Artillery branch, right, and bridging the gap between “fight tonight” capabilities while posturing our force for modernization of the future. Right. So my battle cry has consistently been, “I'm in a fight tonight. Don't tell me how you're going to save me tomorrow.” Let's bridge the gap and be able to do both.

Kellye Donovan
So the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab has a pretty long history of participating in this program. I didn't know that I am the only medical and only naval officer in the building. And so when I came to the warfighting lab in August, my current colonel, immediate superior, my chain of command was actually stationed here at DARPA. And him and our general, our flag officer basically told me about the fellowship and said I would be doing it.

They said, hey, we submitted your name. We need all of your pertinent artifacts to actually submit. So I didn't know what it was, and they just kind of told me I was going to do it. But it's been amazing.

My hope coming here was to actually have other domains, information, cyber, more tactical stuff. Look at medical and expeditionary medicine and help us, right, Because our goal in the end is to save each individual life and bring the most people home. We have a phrase in medical planning that we want to be different, not unique or special. We have special considerations, but we aren't so special we need to be bucketed elsewhere. 

So my goal was to maybe go to other offices that weren't necessarily under BTO and see what they could look at, our needs and our gaps that we have clearly identified, and how could they help us?

Tom Shortridge
I know we love our acronyms. BTO is the biological technologies office here at DARPA.

Kellye Donovan
It's been a super warm welcome. Tray can probably tell you that people heard I was coming. They don't get a lot of experienced clinicians here. And so I had a lot of PMs that heard I was coming, wanted to pick our brain, wanted to ask me, wanted me to come speak to performers. So it's been busy, but a really warm reception for tactical medical officers to participate in.

I've also been able to participate in some of the I2O programs as it relates to modeling, but in bringing that to the casualty modeling space.

Tom Shortridge
And I2O is the Information Innovation Office.

Travon Graves
I think for me, from a macro perspective, the cross collaboration between a multitude of offices and my overall overarching intent is to build that collaboration between the air defense enterprise and some of the exquisite capabilities that DARPA brings to bear. I've had a chance to interact with a lot of programs, specifically, MINC, which is a C2 fusion tool.

That capability has specific utility for me as an air and missile defense systems integrator, because that is a current concern or constraint limitation across the ADA enterprise - data fusion and command and control. Right. And so with this novel or exquisite technology that is developing, I'd look to integrate that or both on into future modernization efforts such as Army Integrated Air Missile Defense from an ADA perspective.

So that's just one example of some of the technology that I've been exposed to here at DARPA. And I think it has significant utility for air defense. The list could go on. I'm having a blast here. The learning environment is phenomenal. And again, going back to that battle cry of, I'm fighting tonight while posturing for modernization. And in that space in between is where I have an inherent responsibility as a warrant officer to live and bring back those capabilities and build that situational awareness across the enterprise, because they may not simply know, and that's my overall intent.

So it's been a phenomenal experience. I've learned a lot. DARPA, to this point, has changed the way that I think and approach problems. And I'll take that back to my home command. 

I'm also the lead for our innovation committee, where we go out and look for hard problems and we solve them. Right. And this experience has essentially given me more of a model to replicate to get after those solutions.

Tom Shortridge
As you heard earlier, the fellowship is a two way street. The participants get to learn and bring back that knowledge to their home institutions, but they are also contributing to the success of DARPA programs by offering their unique perspectives about the mission and making crucial connections. Here's Commander Donovan again.

Kellye Donovan
I like to think I've been extremely helpful. So like week two here, I was asked by Doctor Feasal to go speak to the performers at Stanford Medicine and a couple others for two of his programs to give them some tactical input at the start or the early parts of a program on, like, what it would need to look like if it actually got into warfighters hands.

And we got a lot of feedback that they want that at every performer update meeting. Now, the scientists hadn't really seen across that gap to what would actually need to be in a medic's hands. So that was really fun to do. And then the other big one is I've been working a lot with BTO and the commercialization office.

BTO has a challenge through regulatory channels, and I've been able to set them up with getting FDA liaison. I put them in connection with the warfighting lab and other transitional meds and research commands to hopefully get stuff, outline a more regulatory pathway at the start of programs. It's been super fun to be able to, like, get stuff off the shelf, because DARPA's doing all these amazing things and discovering all these amazing things for medicine, and I think that's where I've had the most is jus,t sending people to transition offices, acquisition offices, medical offices for requirements that they're building stuff for, that they just didn't have those points of contact.

Travon Graves
To Commander Donovan's point, and more specifically for an example, working on materials that support an innovative approach to CBRN in the uniforms.

Tom Shortridge
CBRN refers to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats and protections against them.

Travon Graves
There was a program here on a material solution where you could essentially get rid of the CBRN kit that we wear today and have a readily available or worn uniform that already encompasses the protection capabilities of the previously mentioned CBRN.

Kellye Donovan
It's very hard on the human weapon. It's the longer you wear it, you start to have neurological fatigue, physical fatigue. And so it's already a very hazardous environment to work in. And it gets worse the longer you're working in that gear. So anything that lightens that load, cognitively, physically, very appealing to the medical team as a force preservation tool, but also from a protection standpoint.

Travon Graves
And for the warfighter, the second and third order effects of lugging additional gear, the effects of wearing that gear for an extended period of time. What I was able to do is be a middleman or go-between between the CBRN program office. In that respective PM and write a white paper articulating lessons learned from the field, the current materials, what they're made of, and things of that nature as to why this capability is important moving forward. And quite frankly, it's near and dear to my heart because I've deployed several times and had to lug those additional bags around.

This has changed me as not only a service member or a soldier, but as a human, and expose me to things that, you know, I think a lot of people have no idea exist, and if they did, they'd want to be a part of DARPA.

Tom Shortridge
While there is no perfect candidate for the Service Chiefs fellowship program, there are common characteristics we've seen which Bob Rowland explains.

Tom Shortridge
So for prospective candidates for the program, the processes are different and the requirements are specific by service. For example, the Air Force does an annual battle rhythm of selecting candidates where the Army kind of has a rolling application process. The shorthand for qualifications is we kind of are looking for mid-career officers with a STEM background, science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Others are obviously brought on board, not necessarily all STEM folks. We do have fellows from the social sciences. It's not because we want them to come to DARPA and do science and solve problems. We got plenty of folks in-house that are going to do that, but without some science background, the technical jargon and concept nuances may be lost on some of the folks.

So when they're engaged in those deep conversations, we want them to be able to keep pace and translate that back to the service members. By mid-career, I mean. O4, O5 so, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, depending on what service you're in and GS 13-14 if you're a civilian and we even look for a Chief Warrant Officer 4 or 5, or on the enlisted ranks, E8, sometimes E9.

It depends on your background as far as character traits are concerned. We really want folks that are curious, have a genuine thirst for knowledge. They should be here to learn about DARPA, about technology, and about themselves, but not do so passively. They're not going to be fed the learning that occurs here at DARPA, we also want them to be self-starters.

There's a great deal of flexibility and ambiguity in the curriculum. There's lots of leeway for them to shape the program as it suits them and for them to give back in different ways, for their contributions. Finally, we're looking for folks that are selfless. We want them to put the programs first. We want them to pitch in where and how is necessary for the program to succeed.

Tom Shortridge
And for DARPA programs to succeed, just like the natural world depends on pollinators to keep ecosystems thriving, we depend on idea pollinators: people who carry insights across boundaries, who connect innovation to mission, and who help growth take root in unexpected places. The Service Chiefs Fellowship Program isn't just a professional development opportunity. It's a mechanism for movement. Movement of ideas of people, of perspective.

It's just one part of DARPA's larger efforts to closely engage the military services across all echelons, from support contractors to program managers to the DARPA director’s special assistant military liaisons, several of whom have been alumni of the Service Chiefs Fellowship Program. The operational experience and deep understanding of national security challenges offered by our colleagues in uniform ensures that our technological advancements become breakthrough capabilities, that the DARPA magic doesn't stay siloed in one lab or program, but spreads across the broader defense and national security ecosystem. Because in the end, innovation isn't just about inventing something new. 

Bringing it back now, full circle to the very first fellow, here's Rob McHenry on what it takes to ensure the right ideas land in the right places. So that something vital can grow.

Rob McHenry
If you bristle against the constraints, if you're a little frustrated by the box that you feel put in, then coming to DARPA and seeing an example of a different way to navigate that, I think is the single most powerful motivator that we should be searching for. To get the most out of the program. You should not come in with any assumptions, come in with an open mind and buckle up and go for the ride.

I think if you embrace that, it can be a great experience for anyone in any role within the military. It is all too easy to feel like you're a cog in the machine and somehow unable to go change the direction of this machine that's so much bigger around you. And that's just not true at every level, at every organization.

Organizations are built of people, and people who take action can change those organizations. And so, you know, if there's one thing that I hope comes out of the investment we make in the service, she fellow is that if even one out of ten Hershey fellows walk out of here empowered to challenge assumptions and go make change in their organizations, then I think it's well worth the investment.

Tom Shortridge
That's all for this episode of Voices from DARPA. If the fellowship program sounds interesting to you, learn more about how you can apply by visiting DARPA.mil and searching CFP for Service Chiefs Fellowship Program, or check the show notes for details. Thanks to Heather Dees for producing this episode, and as always, thank you for listening.