Adam J. McLean, PhD
Three decades inside institutions where training is not a formality but a condition of survival — the United States Air Force, federal human-performance consulting, all starting at the USAF Academy. McLean Performance Group is the synthesis: a practice built to prove that training actually changed how people perform on the job.
- PhD · Performance Psychology
- Air Command & Staff College Graduate
- Air War College Graduate
- USAF Squadron Commander (Ret.)
- SDVOSB Certified
30 yrs
Commissioned Service, USAF
Commander
KC-135 Squadron
$563M
Booz Allen Federal Contract
PhD
Performance Psychology
A career engineered to make training defensible — and to prove it worked.
Adam McLean spent three decades in environments where the cost of a missed qualification was measured in lives, not metrics. He flew the KC-135 Stratotanker as an Aircraft Commander, served as Chief of Operations at the United States Strategic Command Global Operations Center, and ultimately commanded a KC-135 squadron — personally accountable for the standardization, evaluation, and combat readiness of crews flying one of the most demanding air-to-air refueling mission sets in the Air Force inventory. After his squadron command, he completed his service writing training and standardization policy at HQ Air Mobility Command (A10N), the policy authority for the major command.
At Booz Allen Hamilton, he carried that operational discipline into a $563 million Department of Defense human-performance training contract spanning Army, Navy, and Air Force aviation programs.
He completed his PhD in Performance Psychology in 2020. His doctoral research examined the transfer of training in high-consequence environments. That research is the foundation of MPG. He continues to teach as adjunct faculty in psychology at Grand Canyon University.
One Discipline, Many Operators
MPG works across franchise systems, federal contractors, and other regulated operators because they share a single problem: each must be able to prove — to an auditor, an insurance carrier, or a court — that the people doing the work are qualified to do it, and that their training changed how they perform. The setting changes; the discipline does not. A flight crew’s checkride, a contractor’s CPARS record, and a franchisee’s bench of certified instructors are the same problem wearing different uniforms: define the competence that matters, build the evidence that it was achieved, and make it hold up under scrutiny.
A documented progression — operator, consultant, scholar.
1991 – 2021
United States Air Force
30-year commissioned officer. KC-135 Stratotanker Aircraft Commander; Chief of Operations, United States Strategic Command Global Operations Center; and Squadron Commander. Led aircrew training, evaluation, and standardization across multiple operational wings, including inspection and evaluation visits at the Major Command level.
Graduate of the Air Command and Staff College and the Air War College.
2019 – 2025
Booz Allen Hamilton · Lead Associate & Deputy Program Manager
Directed a $563M DoD human-performance training contract across Army, Navy, and Air Force aviation programs; site lead for a team teaching cognitive performance enhancement at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas. The program earned Exceptional CPARS ratings in every assessable performance period during his tenure.
2020
PhD, Performance Psychology
Doctoral research on the transfer of training in high-consequence environments — the academic foundation of the MPG framework.
Current
Faculty
Adjunct Faculty in Psychology, Grand Canyon University.
A Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business.
UEI
FARFG6ULP5D5
CAGE
15M98
NAICS
611430
Status
SDVOSB
Ready to talk?
A 30-minute call. No deck. No deliverables. A frank conversation about your records.