129 Years of Family Serving Family: Lisa Avallone, HQ

One in a series honoring the Exchange’s 129 years of family serving family.

Who she is: Lisa Avallone, Training Specialist, Loss Prevention, Exchange HQ

Years with the Exchange: 31 years.

Military connections: Avallone’s father served 31 years in the Army. “We never lived anywhere longer than five or six years,” Avallone said. The family spent a good deal of time in Korea and Germany.

All three of Avallone’s brothers served, two in the Army, one in the Navy. She also married a Soldier who served 18 years. “All I know is the military,” she said.

Exchange connections: Avallone’s mother worked for the Exchange for 21 years in Loss Prevention, retiring in 2004.

What she did at first: Avallone started at the Burger King in Heidelberg, Germany, while she was in high school. After attending college in the U.S., she went back to visit her parents in Europe. During this time, she met and married her husband, and they PCS’d to Fort Campbell, where Avallone rejoined the Exchange, working again at the Burger King.

She worked at Fort Novosel and Fort Drum as an early-morning stocker and foreman before PCS’ing back to Germany. While at Mannheim, Avallone went through the Retail Management Academy, after which she ended up back at Heidelberg as a sales and merchandise manager. Next was Fort Cavazos, where she served as a shift manager at the Express before moving to the main store as a sales and merchandise manager.

Avallone’s next PCS was back to Germany. She was promoted to a position at the Katterbach main store. She spent a year in Afghanistan, then went to Hawaii for five. In 2016, she interviewed for Corporate U, the Exchange’s Human Resources talent learning program. “Next thing I know, I’m getting orders to Texas,” she said.

After five years in HR at Exchange HQ, she transitioned to LP. For the last three years, Avallone has trained HQ and store LP associates on policies, procedures and management skills. “The Exchange rightly spends a lot of time and energy developing talent in the field. I saw this position as an opportunity to develop talent at HQ,” Avallone said. “I hoped to bring my store experience in food and operations to LP and update, improve and create new training to further the Exchange experience.”

Deploying with the Exchange: From September 2010 to September 2011, Avallone was the store manager at Camp Eggers in Afghanistan. “The store wasn’t very big, but it was impactful,” she said.

“Because I deployed from Europe, I had a lot of connections there that I could reach out to, and sometimes I was able to get some merchandise we wouldn’t have normally had.”

Avallone remembers a service member who came in one day around the holidays. “He was looking for a laptop or an iPad or something he could connect on so he could FaceTime his wife and children, but we didn’t carry a lot of electronics.” Avallone reached out to colleagues at the Katterbach Exchange and had a device transferred to Camp Eggers from her old store. “The joy on that young Soldier’s face—it made me cry,” she said. “It gave me a chance to understand a bit of what our Soldiers go through.”

Making merry: Around that same time, Avallone called her daughter, who was in high school back in Katterbach, and asked if she and her classmates could make a few handmade holiday cards for the troops at Camp Eggers. Her daughter went to her school counselor and shared the idea. A few weeks later, Avallone received a box with 300 Christmas cards.

“We set up the box with holiday decorations and put a sign that said, ‘Take a card!’ and we’d get to watch the Soldiers’ faces as they read the cards,” Avallone said. “The school had put a return address on the box. From what I understand, some pen pals came from that experience.”

Memorable moments: Avallone would often travel to conduct training sessions and appreciated experiencing different cultures. She recalled going TDY to USAG Humphreys, where most of the associates she was training were local nationals. “I had such an amazing response from them. They were so happy and positive and grateful.” Avallone had taken the time to learn about Korean culture, including memorizing some phrases in Korean, such as “thank you,” “good morning” and “you’re welcome.” “They really appreciated that the Exchange had this program and just responded so warmly.”

Family serving family: “That phrase means the world to me. Because I moved around so much, family is always where I’m at. I have my parents, siblings, husband and children, but there was always an Exchange family,” Avallone said. “They always welcomed me, listened to me and helped me grow. The organization allows individuals to grow while still treating them like a family member.”