CGA Team
Charlie Salls,
Senior Advisor
Charlie Salls is a retired U.S. Coast Guard leader who most recently served as the Command Senior Enlisted Leader for Coast Guard Atlantic Area, one of the service’s most senior enlisted advisory roles at the enterprise level. In this capacity, he served as the principal advisor to the Atlantic Area Commander, responsible for the readiness and development of more than 50,000 personnel across a global area of responsibility, and advised senior leadership through major hurricane response operations and large-scale missions to secure the nation’s southern border and coastal approaches in support of national-level priorities.
Prior to that, Charlie served as the Coast Guard’s second-most senior enlisted leader, acting as principal advisor to the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard and as senior enlisted advisor to the Vice Commandant, advising on decisions affecting a 40,000-person workforce. In that capacity, he secured funding to modernize personnel systems, expanded leadership development pipelines, and strengthened the integration of the Coast Guard’s Core Values across training, evaluation, and command philosophy.
Among his most significant contributions is his role as the architect of the Master Chief Advancement Panel — an enterprise-wide system that required redesigning a longstanding process while overcoming institutional resistance to culture change. By shifting promotion from a test score to an evidence-based assessment of a member’s full record, he replaced a deeply embedded norm with one grounded in leadership, performance under pressure, critical thinking, and a commitment to lifelong learning.
He achieved this by aligning senior leadership, engaging stakeholders across the enterprise, and driving adoption without formal authority. That system remains in place today.
Charlie has held command at sea and ashore, advised leaders through Hurricanes Maria and Irma, led organizations through a complex civil-military environmental and public health crisis in Hawaii, navigated a global pandemic and a prolonged federal government shutdown, and built strategic partnerships across the Indo-Pacific, South America, Africa, and Central America.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Homeland Security and Emergency Management from Thomas Edison State University, where he received the Arnold Fletcher Award for Academic Excellence. He is a graduate of the National Defense University Keystone Course and a native Spanish speaker.