Thomas Day

Vice President of Engineering
U.S. Postal Service
703-280-7001

T

homas Day's job has changed drastically since he became vice president of engineering for the U.S. Postal Service in February 2001. Day, 48, once focused on retooling processes, technologies, and policies to make the mail move faster.

Then came the anthrax attacks of October 2001, and Day's job was transformed. He now works full-time on improving the Postal Service's defenses against future attacks. He also has become the public face of the USPS, called on regularly to respond to the flood of news media inquiries during the anthrax attacks.

Day has risen to the challenges of his new duties, agency observers say, particularly praising his ability to explain confusing-and often frightening-information in a way that is understandable to the public and to postal employees. "Considering my experience over the last year and a half," Day told a House subcommittee in May 2003, "if there's to be a theme to my remarks, it would be 'lessons learned.' "

The most valuable lesson, he said, is that "deterrence is infinitely preferable to reacting after a system has been breached. No one, certainly not our employees or our customers, should be forced to pay so high a price." Day also warned the subcommittee: "There is no reason to believe that another bioterrorist would choose the same delivery vehicle or the same biohazard. Bioterrorism is not just a Postal Service issue."

Day plays a lead role in USPS efforts to safeguard the mail, helping to oversee irradiation of mail sent to Washington in the early days after the attacks, and crafting the $175 million deal with Northrop Grumman to install biohazard-detection equipment in 238 mail-processing centers across the United States. He played a key role in the environmental cleanup of the Joseph Curseen Jr. and Thomas Morris Jr. Processing and Distribution Center, formerly known as the Brentwood Mail Processing and Distribution Center.

Day hails from Port Washington, N.Y., and is a third-generation postal employee, having joined the service in 1984 as a management associate in the northeast region. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was a Sloan Fellow at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where he earned a master's degree in management.