Mr. Sánchez is a member of the Senior Executive Service since 2013 and became the Director of Regional Business for the Pacific Ocean Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in June 2022. He leads and provides direction for the Division and its four subordinate Districts located in Hawaii, Alaska, Japan, and Korea. He provides executive direction and management for a workforce of approximately 1,700 active duty military, U.S. civilians and foreign nationals and leads the engineering, construction, resource management, strategic planning, and regional business operations in support of a $2.0 billion annual program across the Indo-Pacific region. As a member of Corps of Engineers enterprise governance boards, Mr. Sanchez also provides corporate leadership for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
From December 2017 through May 2022, Mr. Sanchez served as the Deputy Director of Research and Development and Deputy Chief Scientist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In this role, he assisted in developing policy, setting direction and providing oversight for Corps research and development supporting the Department of Defense and other agencies in military and civilian projects. In addition, he served as the Chair of the agency’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council.
Mr. Sánchez began his career in 1995 as a Research Hydraulic Engineer in the Hydraulics Laboratory at the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station. From 2008 to 2010 he served as the Corps’ Chief of Asset Management and was responsible for developing and executing an integrated national plan and investment strategy for the Corps’ infrastructure assets. In addition, Sánchez served from 2013 to 2017 as the Director of the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory where he led a team of more than 250 researchers, support staff and contractors and was responsible for planning, directing, and coordinating a multi-million-dollar research program in the specialized areas of coastal and hydraulics. Recently, he served as the acting Regional Business Director of the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division, interim Chief of the Installation Support Division and acting Director of Contingency Operations and Homeland Security at Headquarters USACE.
Mr. Sánchez holds bachelor’s and master’s of science degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) at Mayaguez, doctorate-level courses from Mississippi State University, and is a graduate of the Federal Executive Institute. He has written numerous technical publications on navigation locks, hydropower dams, surface and groundwater hydrology, computational fluid dynamics, coastal engineering, and infrastructure asset management and has served as a consultant and technical advisor in several international research efforts.
Mr. Sánchez is a registered Professional Engineer and a member of the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure (PIANC) and the Army Engineer Association. Some of his awards include the Bronze Order of the de Fleury Medal, Superior Civilian Service Medal, HENAAC’s Albert V. Baez Award, UPR’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and twice recognized by Hispanic Business magazine as one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the United States.