As a young Air Force officer trainee at Lackland Air Force Base, Mike Smietana connected with the Exchange.
“For about 30 minutes, we were free to do what we wanted, and I’d go to the store,” said Smietana, senior vice president of the Real Estate Directorate. “It was a little shop, probably a troop store, and I’d go every time I could just to get a sense of normalcy. It was like the real world, where I could buy a candy bar and a Coke. It got me through the first few weeks or so.”
Connections and relationship building became themes during his career, both in the Air Force, where he served for 26 years, and at the Exchange, where he will retire on June 26 after nearly 18 years in Real Estate, including nearly nine as SVP.
Finding his path
As a student, Smietana enjoyed solving problems, especially math, chemistry and physics. He was good at what he calls “the introverted stuff.”
“Just give me problems to solve,” he said. “No arts and no writing or things that were more social in nature. I liked to solve problems.”
After earning a bachelor of science in civil engineering from the State University of New York (SUNY) in Buffalo, Smietana found the career field to be narrow and specialized. Fortunately, he had talked to an Air Force recruiter who had come to SUNY seeking engineering talent.
“I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but I kept his card,” Smietana said. “And then as the summer went along, I started thinking, ‘Well, that might be a pretty good option for me.’ So I called him back. He ended up putting me in touch with the engineers at Griffiss Air Force Base in New York.
“They talked to me about what Air Force engineers do. I thought, ‘That sounds pretty good. I’ll try that.’ So I joined the Air Force. And I asked my wife to marry me and join me. And thankfully she did.”
As a civil engineer officer, Smietana was assigned to the Headquarters Air Combat Command staff at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, and assigned twice to the Pentagon: once as an action officer responsible for military and non-appropriated fund construction, and later as an Air Force Housing Division chief. He also served as senior military assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment and Logistics. He was fortunate to be a Commander three separate times.
While serving in the Air Force, Smietana would continue his education, earning a master’s degree in business administration from the University of West Florida and a Master of Science in national resource strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.
Going where you go
As Smietana moved up in his career, the Exchange was always there. His first assignment was at Arnold Air Force Station (now Arnold Air Force Base) in Tennessee. His wife, 21 at the time, was pregnant. A new BX at Arnold provided a sense of normalcy. So did exchanges at RAF Bentwaters in England, where his wife worked briefly as a concessionaire, and in the Azores, in the Atlantic Ocean about 900 miles west of Lisbon, Portugal.
In 2008, Dan Metsala, the Exchange’s senior vice president of Real Estate at the time, wanted to hire former military engineers. Metsala asked Gus Elliott, a retired colonel and military engineer, for recommendations. Elliott sent a request to a friend, who knew Smietana and sent it along to him. Smietana applied.
“It went really well, because they wanted someone with military experience, someone who had been on the other side of supporting the Exchange,” Smietana said. “They all realized that the Exchange needed help connecting with our hosts, our installation people.”
Smietana joined the Exchange in 2008 as Vice President of the Real Estate Directorate Support Division. He later became Vice President of Facility Management and Support. In August 2011, he was named Vice President of the Real Estate Directorate, and assumed the position of senior vice president in August 2017.
During his Air Force career, many of Smietana’s mentors told him that he needed a wide support network. He made it a point to maintain good relationships with whomever he dealt.
“I always cherished relationships I built with the military everywhere I went,” he said. “And it served me well, especially because of my tours in the Pentagon. When you’re in the Pentagon, you become known in the Department of Defense. Your name gets out there, and you become recognized. I’ve got people that I met in the Pentagon 30-plus years ago that I still keep in contact with who still help me to this day.”
During Smietana’s years with the Exchange, the organization opened nearly 30 shopping centers, moved distribution centers from Giessen to Germersheim in Germany and from Camp Market to USGA Humphreys in Korea; modernized Express stores; and more.
Smietana credits a lot of that to the relationships he built in uniform and at the Exchange. As a non-appropriated fund instrumentality, the Exchange largely finances capital projects through earnings. But Congress occasionally authorizes appropriated funds, which come from military partners, for specific projects.
“One of the reasons I was brought on was my relationship with the Services and ability to communicate with them, as well as the ability to get appropriated funds when we need them,” Smietana said.
The big achievements
Real Estate has accomplished a lot during Smietana’s tenure, but a couple of projects stand out.
In 2017, the Exchange was in the midst of a major project at USAG Humphreys in South Korea. U.S. forces from USAG Yongsan and areas north of Seoul were scheduled to relocate to Humphreys, more than quadrupling the population, making a large Exchange—the third largest in the world—necessary.
The largest project of the overall program was the shopping center, and the project was underway with a 2018 target opening. When Lt. Gen. Tom Vandal, Eighth Army commanding general, asked the Exchange to accelerate opening the main store, mall and food court before Thanksgiving. Tom Shull, then-Exchange director/CEO, agreed.
“We ended up accomplishing it,” Smietana said. “The teams rallied … There were so many challenges, but the team said, ‘We’ve been given a goal. Let’s hit it.’”
The Humphreys Exchange opened three days before Thanksgiving—four months earlier than planned. It became known as “The Miracle at Camp Humphreys.”
In 2020, the Army’s launched a pilot program targeting Quality-of-Life improvements at its “big three” installations (Forts Irwin, Polk and Wainwright), later adding Fort Hood to the list. The Exchange not only responded with new and upgraded stores, it evaluated other remote and hardship locations to ensure that facilities best represented the brand standard for customers, leading to additional Quality-of-Life investments.
“I’m really proud that the Exchange decided that we were going to improve some of the facilities at these austere locations,” Smietana said. “Those were the projects that probably gave me the most satisfaction, because we’re serving our customers ‘where they are’ and we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is—and it’s so appreciated. It’s about giving our customers the same standard at these remote places that you would get at a large installation.”
Retirement plans
After Smietana retires, he and his wife plan to see the country.
“We’re going to travel the country in our motor home, and we’re going to visit as many military installations and Exchanges as we can,” he said. “We usually go to state parks. But every time we see an installation, we can’t resist the temptation to pull in, and we’ll naturally go to the Exchange. It’s kind of in our blood. We’ll see that Mountain Home Air Force Base is nearby and say, ‘We’ve never been to Mountain Home.’ And we’ll pull in. We do that all the time. And we’ll continue to do it.”
These visits are more than just sentimental—they’re family visiting family.
“We have a significant advantage over regular retailers in the fact we know our customers,” Smietana said. “Many of us are our customers. That is a distinct advantage in the retail world. We understand our customers better than anyone. The organization employs so many Veterans who used to wear the uniform in some capacity. Some associates still wear the uniform today. That’s what makes the organization great … that family serving family thing. We understand our customer because we are our customer.
“It really makes it a 24/7 kind of calling, that I’m a customer and an associate,” he added. “I can’t get AAFES out of my mind sometimes, either from a customer standpoint or an associate standpoint.”
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