KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. -- Senior Master Sgt. Diana Sena-Melero recently became the Human Resource Office Remote for the New Mexico Air National Guard at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. In this role she supports and researches anything that impacts the unit’s full-time members, Active Guard Reserve and technicians. The full-time military members of the ANG. She brings with her experience in all statuses, she’s been an AGR, a technician, a drill status Guardsman and a civilian for the ANG.
Melero believes she is the first HR remote the NMANG has had. As HR for the New Mexico Guard is located in Santa Fe, there was a need for a person to be local, where most of the Airmen work, Kirtland AFB.
“It exists normally within the force support squadron, there's other states that have multiple wings, and so they have an HR remote that sits within the wing,” said Melero. “But because we are a one-wing state, we decided to try it at the state level instead of the wing. And basically, I mean, it's new for us, because we've needed that support, right? I think we've always only had a member managing the AGR program, but we've never had an HR remote to help with both AGR and technician.”
Melero says her day-to-day includes learning all the ins and outs of the different statuses, tracking manpower, and the different sections of the HR world. But she is confident she will be effective in the new role.
“Success, to me, for this position, my goals, if there's anything I can leave behind, would be clarity and what I mean by clarity. I mean a standardized process for how we hire people, how we support,” said Melero. “I just think there's a lot of gray area with some of these HR actions. I think the technician side is a little bit easier, because HR already has a lot of that in place. It's just communicating it down at this level. But for the AGR side, I feel like there hasn't been much.”
As Melero moves forward in her new position, she wants everyone to know we are all on the same team and she is here to support in any way possible
“I tell this to everybody every day, everybody is my boss, right? I work for everyone. I'm here for the people. I think we all want the same things. I really believe in my heart that the whole New Mexico National Guard wants the same thing when it comes to resources and hiring people and really having a solid foundation there. But change is hard. We just need to be deliberate with how we update things and what we're changing and what we're not changing,” said Melero.