Image left: Assistant Administrator for Procurement Tom Luedtke. Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

Tom Luedtke is the Associate Administrator for the Office of Institutions and Management (OIM) at NASA Headquarters. He oversees the management of the institutional functional offices, and leads them to provide effective and efficient institutional support, integration and alignment of support activities, and consistency of approach to enable the agency to accomplish its missions. OIM organizations serve as liaisons to external organizations with similar functions.

Prior to becoming Associate Administrator for OIM, Luedtke was the Assistant Administrator for Procurement, heading NASA procurement activities and managing the agency's procurement functions. In this capacity, he guided and oversaw some of NASA's most far reaching initiatives including Competitive Sourcing, Performance Based Competitive Sourcing, Performance Based Contracting, Risk-Based Acquisition Management, and the many facets of electronic commerce. He represented NASA procurement to the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, industry and international organizations. Luedtke was appointed the Associate Administrator for Procurement on June 14, 1999. (The title changed from Associate Administrator to Assistant Administrator in 2002.) He served as the Acting Associate Administrator for Procurement from August 1998 until his appointment as Associate Administrator.

Prior to this, Luedtke was the Deputy Associate Administrator for Procurement. In this position, he assisted the Associate Administrator for Procurement in managing procurement policies.

Previously, he was the director of Contract Pricing and Finance Division. He was responsible for NASA procurement policy in the areas of pricing, profit, contract finance, type-of-contract, contract audit support, and related areas and devised the current Award Fee policy.

Luedtke began his career as a contract specialist with the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), procuring avionics, research and development, and services. He was the procuring contracting officer for the Industrial Modernization Incentives Program at NAVAIR, as well as for the Penguin, Harpoon, and SLAM missiles. He subsequently served as the Director of the Pricing Policy Division at Army Materiel Command Headquarters. Immediately prior to coming to NASA he was the Chairman and Army member at the Cost Principles Committee (Part 31) of the DAR Council.

Luedtke received a bachelor of science degree in Political Science and History from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. He received a master's in business and a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

June 2007