USMCCCA Expeditionary Liaison appointed

Lt. Col. Michael Armistead

Lt. Col. Michael Armistead has been appointed to the post of USMCCCA Expeditionary Liaison by national president Keith Oliver. Armistead is stationed at Camp Lejeune as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Communication Strategy and Operations.
The mustanger’s USMCCCA assignment was designed specifically to “help us lean forward in including deployed Marine storytellers in annual awards submissions and correspondence,” Oliver said.

Keith said “his Association duties mean keeping the CC membership apprised of colleagues’ unclassified overseas adventures.”

“Too often, it’s been ‘out of sight – out of mind’ once our warriors leave our shores,” said Oliver. “Now we have an active duty Association member who is making it his business to keep them in the loop regarding our various program deadlines – especially where the awards are concerned.”

Armistead “and a small cadre’ of true believers” are reaching out to “forward-deployed MOS 4500 warriors in all three MEFs,” said Oliver. “If we do this right, it will be a two-way street, filling our USMCCCA website and other Association info venues with those great products that our shooters, writers and artists are churning out every day.”

“I’ve known Michael Armistead for twenty years,” Keith said. “He and Lieutenant Colonel Stu Fugler were the first company grade leaders to head out to the Double Combined Arms Exercise at Twentynine Palms with a greatly-enhanced combat camera/public affairs detachment in the 1999-2000 time frame.”

“Those teams were a boon to grateful regimental landing team commanders,” said Oliver. “Better still were the solid operational relationships that were built … and that aspect paid off when we were ‘boots on the ground’ in both Iraq and Afghanistan not long after.”

Armistead is “enthusiastically committed to exercising that same vigor in making sure our folks overseas, of all people, are not neglected,” Oliver said.

A former enlisted artilleryman in the Army Reserve, Armistead is a Duke University alumnus. His multiple deployments include key public affairs roles in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo as well as during humanitarian operations in the Philippines (Typhoon Haiyan) and West Africa (the Ebola virus).

Stateside postings have included MCRD/WRR San Diego, Expeditionary Warfare School, the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command and the Joint Public Affairs Support Element in Norfolk.