Clay Woody returned to his hometown of Hayesville on Friday, Oct. 10 for his promotion ceremony to Lt. Colonel.
Woody received the high ranking in front of friends and family, and the ceremony was conducted by his brother Clint Woody.
His military career is impressive and lengthy.
Woody is a doctoral student in Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on optimization and decision analytics to improve Army logistics, readiness and resilience.
A 2009 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Major Woody earned a Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering and was a member of the Division I Army Football Team.
He holds a Master of Science in Management Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech and a Graduate Certificate in Data Science from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Woody was commissioned as an Aviation officer and is a UH-60 Blackhawk-rated pilot.
His early aviation assignments included Platoon Leader and Operations Officer positions with the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas where he deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom XIII-XIV.
As the Future Operations Officer, Woody planned and resourced more than 450 deliberate air assault missions, including joint special operations, contributing to his battalion earning the Ellis D. Parker Award as the best General Support Aviation Battalion in the Army.
Following command of an aviation headquarters company Woody served as an assistant professor in the Department of Systems Engineering at West Point.
Most recently Woody served as the lead analyst for the Strategic Analytics Division of the United States Army Pacific Chief Data Office at Fort Shafter, Hawaii. He managed over 30 high-visibility analytical projects and served as the Operations Officer for the Theater Army Persistent Common Operational Picture Task Force.
