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A case of the flu changed the destiny of Rebecca Wood, who would become U.S. Army Lt. Col. Rebecca D'Angelo, '02. 

While attending high school in Stone Mountain, Georgia, D'Angelo had planned to attend the University of Georgia on a swimming scholarship. She contracted the flu and missed the state meet. Not one to succumb to a setback, the high school senior looked into 51³Ô¹ÏÍø as an affordable means of higher education.

She listened to her heart and enrolled, often working various jobs and participating in extracurricular activities. It wasn't until her junior year that she enrolled in the Corps of Cadets and changed her major from chemistry to political science.

In 2002 she graduated and commissioned as a quartermaster officer and was assigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as assistant S3 of the 530th Supply & Services Battalion, the first of many leadership roles in the military. In 2005, she deployed to Iraq for OIF III as the executive officer for HHC 2d Corps Material Management Center. In 2019, after completing a six-month strategic fellowship with the newly formed Army Futures Command, D'Angelo was selected to serve as the executive officer to Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais, director of the Synthetic Training Environment Cross Functional Team in Orlando, Florida. Two years later, she assumed command of the 841st Transportation Battalion, in North Charleston, South Carolina.

"I think my two favorite leadership roles were my first one as a platoon leader when I was a second lieutenant, freshly graduated from North Georgia, and then my most recent one as a battalion commander of the 841st Transportation Battalion in Charleston, South Carolina," D'Angelo said. "In both roles, I feel like I had a lot of hands-on opportunity to influence my subordinates and to also make decisions that impacted the team in a positive manner."

D'Angelo said leadership is doing what feels right to care for her team.

"Whether I've been in a command role or a staff role in the military, when you put ego aside and work together toward a common goal, it's amazing what you can accomplish. And as a leader, I feel like my job is to define that goal for the team and ensure that they have the tools and the resources to accomplish their mission," D'Angelo said.

There have been challenges along the way, and D’Angelo said she looks at challenges as tests.

"One of the greatest challenges in leadership is that you can try to be as prepared as possible, and things can still just come out of left field at you. And it's how you react to that that really can define how your leadership is tested," she said.

Intuition is something D'Angelo believes is underrated about leadership.

"I'm a huge believer in listening to what your heart, your gut, whatever you want to call that inner feeling, is telling you to pay attention to and take a certain course of action," she explained. "I think sometimes in leadership we focus on trying to process a lot of external data instead of sitting quietly with ourselves and just listening to our gut. So, I try to be very cognizant of what my intuition is telling me."