 Welcome, MCTuberlison here with Mick Pond Stevens to discuss the Navy's review which takes a look at job titles to make them more gender-neutral and relevant. Mick Pond, thank you for being here. Peter Osser-Burlson, good to see you again. So CNO gave you the lead on this front to make job titles more inclusive. What is your plan to conduct the review? Well, so as you know, the Secretary of the Navy has asked us to take a look at all of our rating titles and see where it's possible to remove the word man or men from those titles. I went to the Chief of Naval Operations and asked him to take the lead on this. It affects the vast majority of our enlisted force, and so I thought it would be appropriate to take the lead. I'm very grateful that he's given me this opportunity. What I plan on doing is, number one, making sure that this is not my best idea, that this comes from the fleet. So we're going to bring in to DC 10 Master Chiefs, 8 of those will be force Master Chiefs and then 2 of those Master Chiefs will come from their current source ratings. But before they come up to Washington DC, I sent them a letter and essentially precepts talking to them about what I'd like for them to do. So they're responsible to go out to the fleet to conduct all hands calls, to solicit email input and other mediums of communications that can be delivered to them. To find out what sailors think, what they're talking about, if indeed they were going to change the name of their rating title, what would that be, etc., etc. I will tell you that what's most important is that these recommendations, again, come from our sailors in the fleet and that these Master Chiefs are simply the deliverers of that information. So that's a very important aspect of it. The other thing that I'd like to share with you is, you know, whenever you're working on something, I always think it's important to take a holistic view of it. And in this case, I believe there's also opportunity, right? There's probably some ratings out there whereby the title of the rating doesn't necessarily align or match very well with the job that they do. So it doesn't always have to be about the man or the men portion of the title change. It could be a title change because it makes more sense. So this is, again, a total and holistic review of the rating title nomenclature throughout our Navy. Right. So you talked about who was involved in everything and a lot of the details involved in it. Is there a timetable or a timeline when this is going to be completed? Sure. The Secretary of the Navy has asked for the proposal to be on his desk one April. So my goal is to get that to the Chief of Naval Personnel and the CNO with ample lead time for them to also look at it and then present that to the Secretary of the Navy according to his timeline. Right. So have there been many changes to Navy ratings in the past, like in the history of the Navy, or is this a common occurrence, is this new? Well, so the Navy's been around 240 years, right? And over the history of our Navy, to the best that I can come up with, we've stood up new ratings, we've changed the names of new ratings, and we've stood down ratings somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 to 750 times. So there's roughly 80 ratings in the Navy today. So this is not unprecedented, but I will say that the last time we've done a whole look at all of our ratings is sometime shortly after the Second World War. So really we're overdue to take a look at all these ratings and these titles and make sure that they're in the best alignment. Right. Interesting. Interesting. So what feedback are you getting out there from, say, those in the fleet regarding the changes? Change is always hard, right? Right. Every time you change something, and then there's the feeling that we're changing tradition or history, it even makes it that much harder. But one thing that I've recognized, and I believe if you go out and you read books on change, what you'll find is that all change comes with a cost, right? It depends on, and I'm not just talking monetary, and sometimes it does come with a monetary cost. So change isn't easy, it comes with a cost, but you have to recognize that when you look at change that ultimately you hope to come out and be in a better place than what you entered. But you know that when you go into that change that there's going to be this dip process. So where are we right now? Well, we're down here, right? We're in this dip. But I'm confident, not because of anything I'm going to do, but because of the brilliance of our sailors out there. Because I know that out there somewhere the right answer exists. We just need to go mine for that gold, right? Our sailors are going to deliver to us what I believe to be remarkable input and recommendations, and I'm confident that although we go into this dip of change, we're going to come out higher than what we went into it. Again, not because of anything I or the Master Chiefs are going to do, but because of our sailors in the fleet. Right, right. McPon, so is there anything else that you would like to add to this interview? Yeah, what I'd like to share with our sailors out there in the fleet is please find out through your chain of command who your Force Master Chief Representative is and make sure that your voice is heard. If there's an all hands call, if there's an email address or some other way that you can communicate, we need to hear from you because you have the answers. Not us. You have the answer. So thank you so much for everything you do every day. And I look forward to seeing you in the fleet. Well, McPon, thank you for being here and answering all the questions. You're very welcome. And our producer, Brilson, take care of yourself. Thank you. And thank you all for watching. And be sure to stay tuned to the rundown next week. We will discuss the latest news coming from CMP.