Dr. Chrissie "Zero" Reilly

I was not always a historian. When I was a child, I thought I might become an artist. I love doing creative projects; painting, drawing, clay. Here's one of my favorite creations: a pastel and charcoal illustration of a great blue heron. 

My ancestral homeland is New Jersey. I started working for a catering company when I was a sophomore in high school, and worked there through graduate school. I learned about discipline, teamwork, and the value of hard work. The food was fantastic. I got the chance to branch out into things like database design and management, and testing catering software. 

When I went to college, I began as an electrical engineering major. The classes I liked best were the electives in the humanities. My sophomore year I switched majors to history, joined the Rowan Opera Company (pictured here) and never looked back. Go Profs!

I began my federal career with the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM), where I helped manage archives, wrote award-winning articles, supported senior leaders with historical research, and contributed to the publication of both a hardcover command history and an Arcadia “Images of America” volume. I developed and led staff rides, which are still some of my favorite ways to teach people about history. 

I got the chance to work with Dr. Harold Raugh at the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). We built an archival program where none had previously existed, established accession and metadata standards, and led a large-scale oral history initiative with retirees and senior leaders. I briefed general officers on institutional history and developed exhibits interpreting logistics, supply chains, and military material culture. A side-quest within DLA was an 18 month detail in DLA’s Office of Inspector General which broadened my portfolio into audit liaison work, data tracking, and management analytics. 

I served as Historian for the 366th Fighter Wing at Mountain Home Air Force Base. There, I relaunched a dormant history office, restored a dedicated annual budget, modernized archival infrastructure, and implemented a sustained oral history program averaging four interviews per month. I designed workflows, secured innovation funding for transcription contracts, and trained military volunteers as history office augmentees. My work documented operations ranging from Operation Inherent Resolve to Pacific Iron and captured the organizational consequences of structural experimentation within the Wing. 

I volunteered to deploy to Ramstein Air Base, Germany, supporting US Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA) during the opening phase of Russia’s war against Ukraine. As a Lessons Learned analyst and historian, I conducted forty oral history interviews, surveyed large datasets, and authored the official classified history of USAF support to Ukraine.

My dissertation—completed at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2025—draws from the Ramstein experience, examining friction, analogy, and leadership during the Request for Forces (RFF) deployment to Ramstein. 

Working first at Tinker Air Force Base and later within the U.S. Army’s Civilian Career Management Activity, I applied historical methods of analysis to institutional talent systems—designing credentialing frameworks, building data dashboards, automating training workflows, and conducting competency studies affecting more than 50,000 civilian professionals working for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army.