SVP Stresses Importance of Telling Exchange Story—And Shares Her Own

In keeping with this year’s Women’s History Month theme of “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories,” special emphasis program POWER presented a lunch-and-learn March 16 featuring two of the Exchange’s top storytellers: Sandi Lute, senior vice president, Brand Marketing, in conversation with Julie Mitchell, vice president, Marketing Customer Engagement.

To Lute, who was interviewed by Mitchell, the Exchange has many storytellers, and they are not all in Corporate Communication and Brand Marketing.

“Our general managers, for example, are storytellers,” Lute continued. “They have an evergreen role in educating command teams about Exchange support, and they do a tremendous job. … Our managers are constantly educating on how we serve. Exchange associates are the brand ambassadors on the ground, and they have an important role in exemplifying the Exchange brand and their service to customers.”

Lute’s own story begins with growing up in an Air Force family: She was born at Keesler Air Force Base and graduated from high school while living on Hickam Air Force Base. She inherited a strong work ethic from her mother, who worked her whole life before illness caused her to stop, and her father, who joined the Air Force in the early 1960s, just before the Vietnam War became a big event in American lives.

Her Exchange story began in 1983, when she was hired as a cashier-checker at the Hickam Shoppette. She learned a lot from that job, Lute said, and had great teammates, some of whom she still keeps up with. She went on to work on at the Aliamanu Shoppette. But she wasn’t expecting it to turn into a career.

“But then I got an opportunity to apply for the visual merchandiser job,” she said. “All my life I had wanted to be part of advertising and marketing. That’s what I dreamed about when I was very young. I’d been an artist my whole life. Getting that visual merchandiser job changed my life.”

That promotion occurred in 1986. In 1991, Lute was part of a group that transferred from Pacific Headquarters in Hawaii to Dallas as part of an Exchange restructuring that year. The transfer came with a promotion to illustrator. Since then, she has held progressive positions in the marketing field. In 2016, she was promoted to Chief of Corporate Communication and Public Affairs and in 2017 was promoted to vice president, Marketing Customer Engagement. She was named to her current position in October 2021.

“The best part of this job is the amazing talent and passion our team has,” Lute said. “Every project, every assignment this team takes on is approached with putting their best effort into it.”

Lute cited the Corporate Communication and Brand Marketing team’s work in helping the Dan Daniel Distribution Center prepare for a recent Board of Directors visit, which included a tour of the DC. She also called out the digital media team for its work in creating TV commercials to reach Veterans and military spouses to air during nationally televised service academy football games.

Lute said that it’s important to tell the Exchange story because it is rich and complex—and the audience is always changing.

“New recruits need to be informed on the value of shopping their Exchange,” she said. “Transitioning troops who are leaving the service need to be informed they still have the Exchange benefit. Military spouses need to know we have career opportunities for them wherever they move to. Commanders need to know how we support them on the installation and deployments. Congressional leaders need to know the impact of Exchange business in their communities. It’s an important story that needs to be shared every single day to so many different audiences.”

Associates, she said, are a crucial element in telling the story about Exchange support for Warfighters and retirees. She referred to how the teams at Fort Myer, Fort Bragg and the Dan Daniel Distribution Center worked together recently to get a uniform ready for the most recent Medal of Honor recipient, Col. Paris D. Davis, who was recognized for his service in Vietnam.

“Those three teams literally scrambled to make sure he had the proper uniform when he got that medal,” she said. “The Exchange Post team told that story, which was shared with the Board of Directors. You just can’t measure the impact of the power of that story.”

Lute said that her proudest moment as a leader was relatively recent: Leading the Corporate Comm team through the pandemic.

“We had to learn a lot of different processes in just days,” she said. “Staying connected and keeping teammates motivated was a real challenge and this whole team really worked well together from the start. I learned it’s OK to trust people to work remotely.”

If Lute had to have a headline for her own story, she said, it would be “Air Force Brat Wins Awesome Career!”

“The Exchange has given me so many opportunities in the last 40 years,” she said. “This is an organization that lives and breathes its legacy every single day. We are driven by what the Warfighters and families need. Those needs change continuously, and we change with them. The legacy I hope to leave is that I supported my teammates and championed the Exchange mission in the best possible way.”

If you missed Lute and Mitchell’s talk, you can view it here.

POWER’s Executive Champions are Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer Karen Cardin  and Western Region Senior Vice President Ronny Rexrode. Sedric Thomas, financial operations manager, is Program Manager, and Jeannie Hall, senior corporate policy specialist, is Assistant Program Manager.

To learn more about POWER and other Exchange special emphasis programs, visit the Exchange HUB here. If you’d like to join a special emphasis program, click here to join.

To learn more about Women’s History Month, click here.