Hi, I’m Paul Darley. Thanks for tuning in to our September and October issue of Inside Darley. Hard to believe that summer’s come to an end, but that also means it’s time for our Fall/Winter Issue of the Darley Times, which we’ve attached for you here.
On page one, you’ll see some information on a new board member. Jim Johnson, who we announced earlier this year from the fire service, has joined our board. Now we’re really excited to also announce that retired four-star General Joe Votel has joined our board. Now, General Votel has come to us, he’s run CENTCOM and JSOC and the Army Ranger Regiment. Most recently, he was the President and CEO of BENS, which is Business Executives for National Security, a group that we’ve been a part of for a long time. So we really, really feel privileged and honored to have General Votel on our board.
Also on page one, you’ll see the announcement of James Long’s retirement. James is a third-generation family member like me. James is just an amazing, humble servant leader who’s so well organized. He ran our Equipment Division, and most recently our Defense Division. We’re really going to miss James. He will stay on as a member of our Board of Directors.
At the same time, we’re excited to announce that Steve Fitzgerald, or Fitz, is our new President of our Defense Division. Fitz is also just an amazing American, he was a Navy SEAL and just brings incredible leadership skills to Darley just at the time that we need that as we grow our Defense Division.
We’ll also attach, on page two, you’ll see some information on our Family Constitution, and in a multi-generational family business like ours, having a set of ground rules for the next generation are critically important to us.
On page three, you’ll see some information on some new defense contracts and actually results from a new customer survey of our defense customers where they gave us an 86 Net Promoter Score, which anything over 80 is world-class. So thank you for the vote of confidence, and what a privilege to be able to serve those folks.
On page four, you’ll see some information from some of our other divisions. This includes Pump Modules, which have really been a growing area for us as fire truck builders have long backlogs coming in and being able to help them fill those needs. You’ll also find some information on our Parrot Drones, and I’ll tell you, drones and counter-drones have really been probably our biggest growth area at Darley, so we’ve attached for you our new uncrewed systems information, which also includes underwater drones, counter-drones, and some great information for you there.
As we look as a business to scale from a billion to 2 billion to 3 billion over the next couple of years, making sure that we do that through technology was incredibly important to us. So we just brought on Nate Habeck as our new CITO, that’s a Chief Information Technology Officer. Nate came to us with over 20 years at Baxter. He’s fitting in perfectly at Darley, right person, right time for us.
As you sit back and you think, “Hey, look at outside resources, what can you learn?” We’ve attached for you a couple of articles from McKinsey. One is titled What CEOs Are Reading, and the other encompasses great information on leadership and AI and other areas that might be of interest.
If you’re in the fire service and you’re interested in leadership, we’ve attached some information for you from LeadershipCrucibleFoundation.org. This is an organization I’ve been a part of their board for a while. They’re holding a seminar on November 5 that we’ve attached information for you on leadership within the fire service. We’re one of the main sponsors for that, If you don’t have it in your budget for you to participate from a tuition standpoint, reach out to me personally. We’ll be happy to sponsor you for that.
So hey, thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley. Hopefully you’ll have a great Labor Day weekend.
If there is anything we can do to assist you, we hope you reach out to us.
Darley – Darley Times Fall/Winter 2026
Darley – Uncrewed Systems Capabilities Brochure
McKinsey & Company – What CEOs are reading in 2026
The Leadership Crucible Foundation – Local Impact Leadership Summit Brochure
