Fort Belvoir, Va. –
Many connections can be found at the Defense Contract Audit Agency. Friends, colleagues, and even families are found across the regions and offices within DCAA. Among the families working at DCAA, many are spouses, some are children and parents; but one family has a unique reputation at the agency. Kyle Michaels is an auditor and his mother, Laura Michaels, was a Corporate Audit Manager who retired from DCAA in late 2024. Kyle and his mother share two similarities across their shared time working at DCAA. The first similarity is they both started on forward pricing contract teams. The second similarity is they’re both in agreement on DCAA’s favorite Michaels, Ollie Wally Doodle. Ollie is Laura’s sheepadoodle, a cross between an Old English Sheepdog and a Poodle, who won the 2024 DCAA Pet of the Year contest at just nine months old.
Laura was the first to join DCAA in 1989, when audits were still completed on paper. Instead of having two weeks of immediate onboarding at the Defense Contract Audit Institute (DCAI), Laura onboarded through the outdated onboarding process known as technical indoctrination (TI). The onboarding experience included reporting to her audit office, where her coworkers taught her auditing basics, and reading the entire Contract Audit Manual, spanning over 700 pages. Within her first six months, Laura attended the formal TI process at DCAI, located in Memphis, Tn. She stayed there for two weeks to learn different audit types and regulations. Overall, the TI onboarding experience was often described as, “nothing to write home about,” and “hot,” by many new hires at the time.
Thankfully for Kyle, DCAI completely overhauled the new hire onboarding process and changed locations to Atlanta, Ga. by the time he joined DCAA at the start of 2020. The new building was intentionally designed to fit DCAA’s needs and the location promoted simpler travel for new hires, along with milder weather. On his first day at DCAA, Kyle went to DCAI to start his two-week onboarding process. There he learned the same foundational knowledge and processes as every other newly hired DCAA employee, no matter the office type or location they were assigned. He learned to electronically complete audits with modern software and referred to the electronic version of CAM. Kyle would go to work in a Field Detachment office, offices that focus on classified contracts, an area his mother never worked throughout her career.
Throughout much of his career, Kyle never had the intention to follow his mother’s path to work for DCAA. When he decided he was ready to shift his career from public accounting, Laura was the one who helped share a realistic expectation of working at the agency. He shares, “My mom was the one who opened my eyes to DCAA, and she helped me see it as a potential option in my career and shared what working at DCAA was truly like.”
While Kyle and his mother found their own success in their auditing careers at the agency, Ollie also found success in his role supporting internal and external messaging. Overall, the Michaels family made their mark on DCAA in numerous positions at the agency in just over a few decades.