| When James Dalton, ’78, received the rank of distinguished executive in the federal Senior Executive Service this year, the criteria included providing exceptional service over an extended period and possessing an exceptional record of achieving major program goals.
Dalton’s long career in the Army Corps of Engineers has given him extraordinary and far-flung opportunities to meet those criteria. The rank of Senior Executive Service is the civilian equivalent of a general or admiral in the military. Promotion to distinguished executive puts Dalton among the elite of the SES.
His projects have included an early stint on the corps’ gigantic construction of a new city in the Saudi desert and a more recent one overseeing the reconstruction of very old and devastated cities in Iraq.
In between were assignments in Egypt, South Korea and Alaska. Today, Dalton is the corps’ chief of engineering and construction, responsible for a $10 billion annual budget. He leads 12,000 staff members in 19 engineering disciplines, throughout the world.
His career in the corps started in Wilmington, North Carolina. From there it was off to King Khalid Military City in Saudi Arabia for nine years, followed by a similarly lengthy stay in Egypt.
As an engineer for the Corps, “I started my career in Wilmington, so that’s where I would say I was born. I spent my infant times in Saudi Arabia, learning things, but I grew up professionally in Cairo. That’s where I really went into more of a leadership role.”
Dalton rose to become the Corps of Engineers’ senior representative in the country, sat on the ambassador’s country team, and worked frequently with senior Egyptian ministry officials.
Back in the 1990s, it was a good place for Dalton and his wife to raise their daughter and son. The children’s school was strong, and a childhood spent in Egypt and Saudi Arabia provided extraordinary experiences. His daughter’s high school graduation was held at the Pyramids.
The international aspect of his career was hardly what he was looking for as a newly graduated architectural engineer from Winston-Salem. “My world had been only as large as from Winston to Greensboro,” he says.
“There was a fear factor for me to move from Greensboro to Atlanta, because my first job was working in Atlanta for the Environmental Protection Agency,” he says. “Going all the way to Atlanta was a really big deal.”
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