SVP/General Counsel Discusses His Exchange Career and More as He Prepares to Retire

By the time Dale Harbour arrived at the Exchange in August 2014, he had already had a successful career as a lawyer in the civilian business world. The Exchange offered him something he couldn’t find in that world.

“I had gotten fairly senior in my career and had done a number of things in the commercial sector,” says Harbour, who has been the Senior Vice President and General Counsel since April 2018. “I was looking for a better work-life balance than my current job was affording me. So that led me to begin searching for an alternative.”

Harbour, who served on active duty in the Army from 1981 to 1984, found that alternative at the Exchange.

“When the opportunity with the Exchange came up, it took me back to my Army days,” Harbour says. “I loved being in the Army. It felt like the most important thing I ever did, more important even than practicing law. The opportunity to combine practicing law and benefiting the military was great. I also knew there would be a much more reasonable work-life balance than I and my family had become used to.”

The work-life balance is about to lean even more toward life than work: After 10 years with the Exchange and a legal career that stretches back to 1988, Harbour will retire at the end of August.

The Army days

Harbour graduated from Texas A&M University, where he was a member of the Corps of Cadets, a student-led, military-style organization. Although about half the people who join the Corps don’t go on to the military, Harbour decided to during his Corps experience.

“I had always wanted to serve my country, so that was the overlying theme and decision-maker for me,” Harbour says. “I’ve always felt like giving back to our country in some way, whether it’s through military service or some other means, is important. For me, it was the right decision. I look back on my three years of active duty and can’t think of anything I would rather have done at that time in my life.”

During that three years, Harbour was a field artillery officer in the U.S. Army, serving with the 27th U.S. Field Artillery Detachment in Erzurum, Turkey (now Türkiye), and the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty), North Carolina. In Turkey, he got a taste of how the Exchange goes where the troops go.

“I served on a nuclear missile site in northeastern Turkey,” he says. “It was a little Field Artillery Detachment and there was a small imprest-fund store. It didn’t have Exchange employees. People on the detachment, military members, were paid extra duty money to operate the store, and we’d get shipments from AAFES.”

Weather in that part of Turkey was always questionable, particularly in the winter, when conditions made it difficult for supply planes to land.

“We’d go for periods when they had no ability to bring in new supplies,” Harbour says. “We’d have to buy food from a local market. But the lifeline that was provided by the resupply of the AAFES store whenever the planes could land in Erzurum was huge. I didn’t necessarily associate it with AAFES at that time, but AAFES was benefiting me by creating a connection to home.”

The legal life

Harbour’s decision to pursue a law career didn’t come until after he served in the Army.

“When I went into the Army, I wanted to do Army stuff,” he says. “Being a lawyer was never on my radar screen until I got out of the military and started dating the woman who is now my wife. She made the decision to go to law school while we were dating, and she’s the one who introduced me to the idea of law school.”

Harbour, who had earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Texas A&M, went on to the South Texas College of Law in Houston, where he received a Doctor of Jurisprudence, summa cum laude. He eventually found that the combo of business and legal disciplines suited him.

“After I went to law school, I practiced at a large law firm in Houston in mergers and acquisitions,” he says. “I expected to stay there and complete my career. But I ended up liking the practice of law within a corporation much better. So I left the law firm to become in-house counsel with one of my clients. I had a succession of General Counsel positions with different corporations after that.”

He worked for several companies before joining the Exchange, where he found the balance he was looking for.

“Being General Counsel of a publicly traded company is a high-stress, long-hour environment, particularly a multinational,” he says. “The Exchange is also multinational but it’s different from what I left behind. There’s stress and no shortage of challenges with the Exchange, but it’s a saner lifestyle.”

And starting in 2018, his responsibilities expanded beyond the Office of General Counsel.

Taking on more

In 2018, Harbour assumed leadership of the Exchange’s Procurement team. The same year, he also assumed leadership of Policy, a responsibility that lasted until the beginning of 2020. In 2020, he took over leadership of Enterprise Project Management, a position he held until October 2023. During all this time he was still SVP and General Counsel.

“These teams are critically important to the organization,” he says. “What they do contributes greatly to our success.”

Procurement is a diverse contracting organization tasked with procuring non-retail goods and services necessary to operate the Exchange, revenue-generating concession contracts and franchise agreements.

“It’s a group of extraordinarily dedicated people who for decades have accomplished business objectives, acquiring all the tools, supplies and services needed for the operation of our business,” Harbour says. “The Procurement team reacts efficiently and effectively to requirements and provides those things at the greatest possible value. I think the people who benefit from their work and contracting expertise have always greatly appreciated what they do.”

In recent years, Procurement has been more fully aligned with broader strategic objectives thanks to Harbour’s work with the Exchange’s Director/CEO Tom Shull and other senior leaders to remove silos and improve operational impacts.

“We’ve made some organizational changes and have done a lot of things that have made Procurement operate more efficiently,” Harbour says. “And I think the Procurement group has a better sense of identity and its place in support of the AAFES mission today. If I were going to highlight something that I’m proud of, where I think we collectively have made strong improvement, that would be it.”

Harbour says that the Project Management team faced an unexpected challenge when he assumed responsibility for the group in January 2020, COVID was just beginning.

“Within a matter of weeks, we went from a team that had its initial meeting collectively in an HQ conference room to a team that telecommuted full time and would not be together again in the office,” he says. “So we had some challenges. But we also developed a revised governance model for Project Management that is now being utilized throughout the organization.”

Retirement plans

Harbour’s Exchange duties have taken him to Europe, where he gained a greater appreciation for the continent’s legal complexities.

“It’s extremely complicated because of the confluence of different laws and nations,” he says. “In Europe, you have host nation law, you have SOFAs [status of forces agreements], you have policies and you have U.S laws. All those combine to create an environment that’s sometimes very difficult to navigate. I knew that was the case but I had a greater appreciation for it when I was on the ground.”

He was also supposed to travel to Pacific Region for the Exchange but plans were canceled because of COVID. But there will be plenty of time for travel—for pleasure, not business—during retirement.

“My wife and I both enjoy traveling,” Harbour says. “Our family has always done quite a bit of traveling. That’s going to be accelerated in retirement.”

“I’m also going to be involved in some causes and social issues that are important to me,” he adds. “I like to read and write, so there’ll be a lot of that. I have zero doubt that I’ll stay busy.”

Harbour’s path to the Exchange, from successful lawyer in the civilian business world to the Exchange’s SVP and General Counsel, differs from that of someone who might have found out about the Exchange at a college job fair. But he says that’s just part of the diversity of the Exchange, which is united in a goal to serve those who serve and have served.

“I talk to many different people at the Exchange and their backgrounds are as diverse as the people,” he adds. “The paths that bring us to the Exchange are also varied. But the common purpose that unites us all is who we serve. The value and nobility of that, knowing the people that we serve are doing the most important thing they can do, defending our freedom—just like they’re united in defending that freedom, we’re united in serving them.”