Readiness

Laura Macaluso

Ms. Laura Macaluso is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Safety and Occupational Health (FSOH). In this role, she serves as the principal staff advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness on matters pertaining to FSOH and its impact on Total Force readiness. She oversees the Department of Defense’s (DoD) FSOH programs, policies, and strategic plan to include operational safety (aviation, ground, motor vehicle, afloat, and space mishaps), occupational safety and health, and occupational environmental health. She provides expert advice and analysis to senior defense leaders on safety challenges and initiatives, including serving as principal advisor to the Defense Safety Oversight Council, the DoD’s senior FSOH governance forum. Ms. Macaluso is the lead for integrated safety assessment and reporting, mishap reduction and mitigation activities, and the Force Risk Reduction (FR2) system, which is the central management tool to monitor and evaluate DoD mishaps, fatalities, injuries, and trends. Ms. Macaluso also oversees the DoD Safety Management Center of Excellence, which supports DoD installations, units, and activities to achieve a comprehensive world-class SOH program.

Ms. Macaluso entered the DoD in 2005 as a Safety Enterprise Information Technology Manager supporting the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (P&R), where she and her team developed the DoD safety information management system, FR2, and where she served as a Safety and Readiness Analyst to the Director.

Prior to assuming the Deputy Assistant Secretary position, Ms. Macaluso served as P&R’s FSOH Director, and was instrumental in aligning the operational safety and occupational safety and health policies, authorities, and resources under one Under Secretary within the Department. \

Ms. Macaluso is committed to enhancing a strong DoD-wide culture of safety and leads efforts to institutionalize safety as an enduring core value, such as implementing ongoing DoD SOH strategic communications, updating SOH policies, developing consistent DoD SOH data standards, consolidating safety tools to maximize efficiency, instituting a structure for tracking DoD safety expenditures, and advocating for operational safety and occupational safety and health resources, technologies, and solutions.

Prior to her federal service, Ms. Macaluso worked 10+ years in private industry for Booz Allen Hamilton, MicroStrategy, and other federal contractors, where she served in a variety of information technology management and business analyst roles. She worked closely with senior executives to architect and implement business intelligence solutions and data and analyses strategies, and assisted organizations with identifying and tracking essential key metrics for decision-making.

Ms. Macaluso received a master’s degree in information systems from George Mason University in 2000 and a master’s degree in government information leadership in cybersecurity from the National Defense University in 2010. She received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of South Carolina and is a Certified Chief Information Security Officer and a Certified Chief Information Officer. She has been married to her husband Scott for 19 years and they have two children, Grant and Alexa, and one furry family member named Finn.