STRATCOM on 9/11

Rob Simmon is a fellow Rotarian and member of the Glenwood, IA club since early 2009. He’s served in several District 5650 roles since 2015. Rob is presently the Assistant Governor Team Leader, the chairman of the New Club Development Committee, and the coordinator as well as a facilitator for the Visioning Program for District clubs.

Earlier Rob served a total of 36 years in the Defense Department beginning in Omaha as an Air Force analyst with Strategic Air Command’s 55 th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing and ending in Omaha as a Senior Executive for the National Security Agency in the Defense Intelligence Service.  

Rob’s last NSA assignment was as the representative for the Director, National Security Agency to the Commander, U.S. Strategic Command for seven years - 1999 through 2005. As the NSA Rep to STRATCOM he ensured that the Combatant Command and its components received his Agency’s relevant Intelligence, Information Assurance, and Nuclear Command and Control products and services required to accomplish their missions.

Rob served in a variety of earlier technical and leadership positions for the Agency at its Maryland headquarters and at several overseas locations. Rob studied Russian language and culture at the University of Kansas, at Syracuse University, at the Soviet Union’s Leningrad State University, and later as an NSA employee as a student for two years at the U.S. Army’s Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany. He has also studied Polish, German, and Spanish.

Rob and his wife Susan, a retired Registered Nurse, live on her family’s Iowa Century Farm outside Glenwood, Iowa. Their daughter and grandsons live in Castle Rock, Colorado after Air Force assignments in Alaska, Germany, Romania, and in several continental U.S. locations. Their son, a manager for an Omaha technology solutions company, lives with his wife in Council Bluffs, Iowa.