Speaker 1 0:00
I’m Danielle etzbach. I am one of the CO directors of the Education Committee, along with Kim Montgomery, and we would love to welcome you to our second introduction to telecom webinar for 2025 this week, we’re highlighting the power of partnership and supplier diversity, and we’re very excited to have two incredible women speak on this topic, Heather Moyer and Leticia Latino vanserton There are joined by Caroline Mathis, Head of Marketing at HNM systems, and she will present the content. Before we start, I kindly ask that you disable any automatic note taking AI or recording apps, the information provided in this presentation does not and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Instead, all information content and materials available are for general informational purposes only. Individuals should contact their attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter, use of and access to this presentation or any of the links or resources contained within the presentation do not create an attorney client relationship between the user, reader or other users accessing the presentation and the author of the presentation All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on contents of this presentation are hereby expressly disclaimed. No representations are made that the content is error free. In addition, please be advised this meeting is being recorded. If you choose to turn on your camera participate, you are consenting to being recorded. This recording will be uploaded to the education section of the wwlf website for future viewing by members. So now that we’ve covered all of the legal stuff, let’s get started. The format for today’s webinar will be a 30 to 40 minute conversation between Heather and Leticia, and then we will open it up for discussion. For any questions or comments. Feel free to use the chat feature on the side for any questions that come up along the way. We’ll be monitoring that throughout the discussion, and we’ll hit the questions at the end of the session. So I will now turn it over to Kim to introduce today’s speakers.
Speaker 2 2:16
Awesome. Thank you, Danielle, and it is my absolute pleasure to introduce Heather and Leticia to you all. Heather is the founder and president, CEO of HNM systems, which is a tech enabled professional services provider in telecom, energy and technology within her leadership, HNM has grown revenue 25 times and earned multiple spots on the Inc 5000 list. Previously, she was an executive at a staffing firm driving 900% growth and securing a spot on San Diego’s 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies list each year. She’s an active philanthropist, and she also serves on the board of echo in the valley, and is a member of the peers network and YPO recognizes a top 40 under 40 honoree. She was also a finalist for the San Diego Business Journal, CEO and Business Woman of the Year awards, a Forbes business council member. She was recently nominated at the LA Times inspirational women awards and beyond her career, Heather is a devoted wife, mother of two, and embodies leadership, resilience and compassion in all she does. Leticia is a distinguished corporate executive with over 25 years of expertise and technology driven industries, her extensive experience spans health technology, telecom, software and infrastructure with a focus on entering new international market, markets, fostering innovation, driving growth and leading transformative initiatives. Currently, she serves as the president and CEO of Neptuno, USA Corporation, a leading telecom infrastructure provider since 1972 with over 10,000 telecom towers and sites in the Americas. Leticia began her career at Merrill Lynch before transitioning to Northern telecom or Nortel. And her accolades include the 2024 5050, Women to Watch for boards. The 2023 telecom CEO Americas by UK, is AI success. The 2023 30 most influential leaders in tech by insight, success. And 2023 most connected women in telecom by connector, Latin America. And 2022 smart disruptor by smart cities Miami. She’s chaired the FCC broadband deployment Advisory Committee, Jobs and Skills Training working group from 2018 to 2022 and served on the FCC Equity and Diversity Committee, and was also appointed to be the telecommunications inter agency Committee. She also serves on several boards, including the national wireless safety Alliance. And in addition, Leticia is a published author, public speaker, mentor to young women, and a huge advocate of nurturing human connections. I am just amazing to have you ladies with that, with all of with this. And so at you know at that, I’ll go ahead and turn it over to Heather to do. This into the presentation.
Speaker 3 5:01
Well, thank you so much, Kim. And it’s been such a wonderful experience talking with Leticia over the last four months, really talking about this topic and how we move supplier diversification from access to impact, right? What a what an important topic, particularly today in the economy and in the administration. And so what we want to do today is to spend a little time talking about supplier diversity and really understanding the impact of having diverse suppliers, and talking about how we can foster equitable empires, how we can really position ourselves to drive innovation be a true partner, not a supplier, how we can build resilient networks to grow our own business, and how truly we can elevate the presence of women in our industry. So today, we really want to spend a lot of time talking about shaping the conversation, giving you some key takeaways about professional organizations how to navigate and build meaningful relationships and really driving change at the highest level. So we are excited to be with you today, and we’re looking forward to sharing some actionable strategies to help all of us maximize our impact in the industry.
Speaker 4 6:18
Thank you, Heather, well, it’s great to be here and please, I mean after, after the introductions. The only thing it means is I’m not as young as all of you, so it’s just that’s how you get to pack a little bit of that, that experience. So I’m excited to be here. And Heather, the feeling is mutual. And of the entire WWF team, they have done a fantastic job. I just want to say they put a lot of effort and energy in bringing these to you all, so I’m very grateful for that. So what we want to cover today, it’s how to build relationships before the procurement process starts. How do we navigate that that same process with confidence, growing our credibility through professional associations and diverse certifications, maximizing those certifications beyond that procurement stage, and what is our role of women? And I apologize if there we have some of the men members, but how women can advance the supplier diversity platform, then we will go into key takeaways, and we’ll have some time for questions and the open discussion. So the importance of building relationship before procurement spans not only our professional life, but really our personal life. So this is where I kind of the podcaster in me, is going to come up, which means we need to build authentic relationships, no matter what where we are and what we’re doing. Why? Because that’s the only way that we establish trust with the stakeholders and that we also establish who we are in the industry. So we wanted to share with you a few of our success stories, but I’m a big proponent of networking from the heart or with heart again, when you’re authentic, when you care about who you’re talking to, that relationship is just going to blossom. You know, maybe it’s not in the timing we want. And I understand we have pressures from our bosses and from directives and goals. But you know, everything happens when it needs to happen, in my view. And sometimes when we pressure those relationships too much, they strain, and that’s what you don’t want. You want to really build in a sustainable in a sustainable way. So basically, we’re all selling all the time. We are on sales pitching mode every day. And so for me, one of the case studies or experiences I want to share, it’s I go to a lot of shows those of you that follow me, is one of the action items. If you can go and get out there and meet people and be at the trade conferences, do it, no matter how shy you are, how afraid you are of networking is really what? It’s really an important aspect of our professional careers. So I was one of the shows. Didn’t know anybody, but I’m like a sniper, and this is another actionable thing. Procurement means targeting people you may want to meet or people that can help you advance that process. So I had somebody in my mind from trilogy, international partners I wanted to meet. It seemed like a long shot, but I still went for it. He gave me the time of a coffee. And that coffee became, you know, like he was very high up there, CTO of global city, of the global company, and that, just because I was assertive. I didn’t oversell it. I just went with a with a you know, plan, but I was able to grow that very high level relationship into him sponsoring me. We talk about mentors, but the importance of having a sponsor within the company, it’s really important. It’s somebody that’s going to be. The meetings where you’re not that’s gonna really plug you and your company in, and it’s gonna guide you through meeting the right people. Because procurement is almost transactional, in my view, it’s meeting some of the requirements. You have to have a good relationship, but unless you have that level of trust with that a sponsor within the company is gonna be very hard. And so that coffee became, you know, US selling 1000s of towers in four different countries, different software and but it was a very concerted effort to always be loyal to that relationship, always crediting that relationship also in their interactions. Because people don’t like to forget who who started the whole thing, right? So you also have to be mindful of who got you there, and then at the end of the day, it becomes family. I just called the wife of one of them in this company. We haven’t worked together in 15 years because they they sold the company. We’re still like family. So my whole key point here is build relationships that last longer than just whatever you are trying to get that relationship to the first place. And I’m sure Heather, you have other successful experiences like that that you want to share.
Speaker 3 11:13
Yeah, I’d love to share a story with you, but first I have to say I love sniper. I’m going to steal that. I always call myself the personal investigator, because we’re always looking for those right strategic relationships and for those people to connect with that you can have an authentic connection. So I love that you shared, that some of you have heard this story before, but when I started the business 14 years ago, I acquired my first customer off of a cold call, and they said to me, I will give you one opportunity, and if you’re able to find the fiber guy right in Orlando, Florida, will give you the opportunity to work on the project. I was 26 years old, working at the first floor of my town home, thinking to myself, how am I going to do this? But I’m going to do it, and was successful in winning that project. Fast forward to 12 years later. The seventh person who I put on that project, who worked for me for many, many years, is an incredible engineer. So I ended up winning that project. I had probably about 56 engineers. We deployed 49 square miles of Wi Fi and 54 nodes in partnership with our customer and the seventh employee that I put on that project. He ended up becoming the head of engineering for another large amusement park in Orlando, and he called me 12 years later and said, You were the only person that would give me a job because he was foreign. I threw his wife’s baby shower to Leticia. Is point. He became family. And he said, I have an opportunity to build and deploy a new park, and I want you and your team to build the wireless there. So that was an incredible long term relationship and win. In addition to that, he said, Oh, and by the way, my brother, who did all of these other projects with you, is now the head of engineering at that other amusement park, and he wants to bring you back on board as well. And I think the really unique opportunity and the story here is he was able to bring me on, and then I was able to reconnect with his family. His brother brought me on to get on boarded through the other amusement park. But we needed procurement to sign that deal, right? So I had business relationships, personal relationships, long term relationships within the business, and then also really needed to leverage procurement to get that agreement going. So I think both are equally important. But what I love about this conversation today is it’s about authenticity. It’s about long term relationships. It’s about doing business with people that you like,
Speaker 4 13:56
great and I love your story, so that and in the funny thing is, is everything cross connects and really boils down to the most basic, which is, as you say, just making making customers, your families, not all of them are the same. By the way, it’s just like finding the friends, so also staying with the community and the in the customer that will enable you to get to where you you want to go. So that’s like the intangible part. Now we’re going to try to go a little bit more to the tangible part, because we all, anybody that has navigating procurement knows that it’s a headache many times identifying. So we’re going to go through kind of the process and try to demystify a bit so identifying opportunities. Many times people ask me, How do you know where the work is? Sometimes it’s like you don’t know, like you’re a certified vendor or you’re in the vendor database, but you don’t know where the opportunity is. I like to give you with some of my key. Key ways, how I do it. I leverage market intelligence. I think subscribing to those market reports, you know, inside towers, with fierce Telecom, all these things that we have available to us, I know sometimes it’s overwhelming, and they get, they hit our email, and we are like, we think we don’t have time for this, the information you may need to get the new deal you’re looking for might be in that email. So I normally try to print information that I find that it could be useful to me, and try to devote maybe an hour of reading during the weekend or during, you know, when I get home, and try to just get into that reading habit about market intelligence, monitoring the tender platforms, if you are a vendor that does deals with the government or municipalities of cities, having those NAIC codes set up properly is super important. I know with Heather, we discussed this before that could be a session all of its own, because it’s a monster all of its own, but it’s taking the work up front to set those things properly so that the right opportunities get get to you and just engage with with stakeholders. So that’s kind of how I try to keep abreast of the opportunities out there. Then you go and move to analyzing the requirements if you have built and have been successful at building a strong relationship, many times, you will be surprised. You will be get you will be asked, What do you put in this requirement for this particular project? That’s the that’s the place you want to be when you have certain influence in terms of the requirements. And it’s not like reading the requirement. Is like having sometimes the customer doesn’t even know exactly what they need for certain projects, like we’re working on a tower project right now that’s going to have a radar. It’s kind of one off, and our customer is asking advice on what to put in the RFP. So it’s a good position to be in. So collaboration with the stakeholders performing gap analysis, once you see the requirements, identify where you may be missing something in the solution, and what risk is associated with you missing that component, because also you may identify a good opportunity, might be very risky to pursue it. So that’s something that also is important that that we have to evaluate, is this really a good fit for the company, on the position as a value driven partner? Is a lot of what we spoke about. For me, it’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint. It’s about long term. We are all first degree cousins in telecom. You’re gonna find people down the road. So you need to really do your homework and engage as a value driven partner, not just a transactional partner. You may get your quick win today, but then down the road is going to be a problem if we approach it that way. In my opinion, on proposal side, I can get very extensive, because my time at Nortel was spent doing very large, $300 million proposal. It can be a pain in the neck to respond to a proposal, but if you take the time and customize that proposal and let the customer know that you’ve read it, it’s hard to read the whole the whole tender sometimes. But there are ways you can you can flag the customer and say, I’m hearing you. I listen to you. I read the whole thing, and I’m adding things in my response that allows the customer to understand that you have indeed read the whole thing, address the buyer, points, customize as much as you can and strategize your RFP response. Those will be my actionable items. And then for the last one, of course, follow up and negotiate. You have to stay a little bit connected. You don’t want to be overbearing in the follow up, but you want to set the expectations on when you’re going to hear back from this proposal. And don’t be afraid to call. I feel these days we are not calling in every phone call you make, you’re going to get information that may allow you to win the deal. If you’re going to do only email is going to be very hard for you to uncover, going back to the spy and to the uncovering information, it’s going to be very hard to for you to get what you need to maybe be the differentiator to be awarded the deal, and just always think on a win, win situation. So Heather, if I miss anything in your view that is important, feel free to add No, you’re
Speaker 3 19:31
speaking to my heart, singing all the same praises and all the things that we tell you know, our employees pick up the phone, build a relationship. You know, we talk a lot about credibility and a lot about relationships. And you know, business is about credibility, right? It’s absolutely about doing business with people that you want to do business with, but it’s making sure that you have credibility and that people see you as an executive thought leader, right, or a leader in the industry. Okay, and that’s why, you know, part of gaining credibility is really being a part of these professional organizations. So example, you know, wwlf, we’re here today, we’re going to talk a lot about, you know, how we position ourselves in those professional associations. You know, professional associations are so impactful for both your career growth and for industry credibility. I don’t know if talisha is here. Many of you know talisha Jermaine. You know we placed her, gosh, probably 10 years ago, and what I think is maybe was her first opportunity within telecom. And she is just such an exceptional young woman, and she’s been such a thought leader for this organization, and I have been so excited, encouraged and proud to see her really gain credibility throughout the entire industry, as she’s been recognized through wwlf. So you know, these professional associations are incredibly important. Again, they really position you as a partner and a leader. You’re hearing a lot from us already about how this relationship with your customer, this relationship in your industry, is not about being a supplier, right? So our title is misleading. We actually want you to think of yourself as a partner, as a value driven partner, as a strategic partner driving innovation and truly, if you think about diversity, one of the things that is most impactful about working with a diverse partner is agility and innovation, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that later, but it’s something we really have to focus on. These professional organizations give you access, not just to your peers, which do make trade shows more fun, which do make cold meetings much more fun, but they give you access to decision makers, real decision makers, to industry influencers, to analysts that come in and are analyzing the different quadrants of our ecosystem and our business and our market Share, and it gives you visibility into high impact opportunities. Sometimes trade shows can be a slog, right? But they’re a lot more fun when you come into a show and you’ve developed these relationships. What we really want to do and what we really want to share in terms of our message today is talking about how we’re going to drive change at the highest level. So driving change for diversity includes, of course, getting those certifications, which we’re going to talk about next, but also becoming leaders in these professional associations. You want to be a leader. You want to be a mentor. You want to come to these webinars. You want to present in these webinars, right? Really take advantage of everything that you can to position yourself as an executive thought leader. Here next, we’ll talk a little bit about credibility in diverse certifications. So certifications similar to the different supplier codes, it’s a beast, right? And I think the most important thing, in my opinion, is understanding what’s driving the need from your customer in terms of the certification. So Leticia said a lot, without saying, our role as a strategic partner is to listen to listen to the opportunity, to listen to the customer to identify a need that maybe they don’t even know that they have yet, right? So I have specific customers that are very interested in our WB and C that’s an excellent governing body for certifications. My parents always told me. So my parents were in education administration, their university presidents, so it was assumed, right, that we would go to college, but something that they told me about college, I feel to be true about certifications, they said about our degree to my brothers and I, it doesn’t get you the job, but it gets you the conversation. And sometimes that’s the case with these diverse certifications. I can’t tell you that a certification ever won me a big project, a big contract, or anything like that, but I will tell you, it’s helped us to accelerate the procurement process, and it absolutely has gotten us the meetings and has gotten us in front of the right people. So, you know, leveraging those certifications, but most importantly, understanding what the motivator is for your customer. You know, we do a lot of business in telecom. We also do a lot of business in the utility space. The CPUC is a certification here in California that is highly sought after, right? And so we’re able to meet our customers needs and spend requirements, either from tier one or tier two. Let me explain what that means. So a lot of telecom and utility and energy companies have diverse, diverse spend set asides. Tier one means you’re doing business directly with the prime, right. Tier Two means you’re a sub to prime, right. So I think everybody knows that in telecom and. Energy and utility. Oftentimes tier one spend is what everybody’s going after. But don’t forget, if you have a certification and you’re working for a tier one that’s non diverse, all of their spend for your services go towards their diversity set aside. So that was something that we were able to open up a whole new revenue stream, working with some big suppliers that didn’t have their own certification, but needed to leverage ours for tier two spend. So again, just really important, listen to the customer, understand the customer. Need reference what certifications that you could leverage that would be most impactful, and then once you have that certification, and you’re you’re able to help your customer solve that problem. You need to be able to perform right? And you want to be able to provide past performance. So we want to make sure that you’re going after customers and certifications and relationships that you can fulfill. So really looking for what would be helpful based on your own past performance, right? Because it really gives us a key understanding, so understanding what certifications are going to be really important. You know why they’re important to your customer, right? What problem are you helping them solve? And then what’s your pursuit strategy? What certifications are you going to pursue? Some of these are very timely to complete wbnc being one of them, right? It’s, I almost feel like I’m signing away my children. It’s worth it, but you don’t want to spend your time and efforts, particularly in this economy, pursuing something that wouldn’t be of value to your customer. But we’ve, we’ve had a ton of success, obviously, in addition to professional organizations really building those strategic relationships, looking at access and making sure that you’re having true impact, there are a lot of other opportunities as a diverse supplier, and I think it’s so important that we talk a little bit about Those key parts. As I’ve grown up professionally, what I’ve heard a lot is, you know, what type of access do you get with this certification? And I want to just encourage and challenge us all to turn that around and say, what type of impact can you have for your customer being a diverse supplier, you have a different thinking, you have a different way of thought, you have a different agility. You know, a lot of times we work with huge fortune, 100 501,000 organizations, and when we need to change something, or we need to accept a proposal, right, it takes 24 hours, right? Or, if they’re working with another large incumbent, it could take 30 days for the approvals and access, right? The agility of being a diverse supplier, I think, sometimes, is key to winning some of these projects and programs. So that’s super important. We don’t want to look at a certification like we’re checking the box, right? We want to drive strategic impact. We want to drive cost savings. Now that doesn’t mean low ball yourself. Don’t lowball your services or your company’s services. But how can we drive cost savings with our agility, with our innovation, and with our true understanding of what the customer need is? And of course, you know, really talking about how to develop that long term relationship with the customer. So we all hear all the time, what’s the LTV? What’s the long term value of this relationship? What’s the long term value in this implementation or this build? And that’s really what you want to be thinking about as you’re looking at these certifications and these relationships. You know, this isn’t just about access. This really is about impact. And how can we position ourselves to succeed that way. Anything I missed? Leticia,
Unknown Speaker 28:45
no, amazing. I’m learning
Speaker 4 28:49
amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Heather, no, I think the only thing I would add to the certification slide, maybe it’s that to keep in mind that what you what we want, this for every vendor to be treated, to be the considered the same and have the same opportunities on the so at the sourcing level. So if you happen to have certifications, use them as a tool in your toolbox. Sometimes you don’t need to lead with a diverse certification to get your chance at the sourcing or procurement process. But sometimes, you know, you hear, as Heather said, you know that somebody needs to that has a spend aside, and they say, I have this tool in my toolbox, so let me use it. So I think that that we are leaving, and this is, I guess is a good segue into this slide, is the role of women in advance, advancing supplier diversity, I think it’s no no secret that we are living right now, very interesting time for our industry. We went from having to we are we transition to two very different viewpoints in terms of diversity. And so my one thing would be the to emphasize. Is as a we as women, what we can do is to emphasize that this is not about gender only. Diversity refers to the presence of differences in terms of culture, in terms of age, in terms of disabilities. I mean, imagine how much diversity we have in this group of people right now talking, I mean, and we’re all women, so unfortunately, I think one of the misconceptions that that is being established is that dei or diversity is usually, you know, goes towards gender and that, or race, you know, being the two things that people think about. But, you know, I think it called it is also about business side. When you think about that, 81% of small businesses in the United States are owned by white people, female and male. That’s a That’s a fact. So when you want to help small businesses, which is, everybody has parents, we all come from small business, one way or the other. So this is a cause that I think we can all get behind. So that’s why, even in the work we’re trying to do as women, as diversity, getting involved in those organizations, or some organizations that Heather mentioned, what it was going to bring this is thought, leadership and diversity of thought, which, to me, is really the biggest role we can play. It’s bringing a different perspective to the table and to the tables we’re in. To me, the biggest accomplishment is to get seated at tables where I’m not there because I’m the woman I’m there because the people I’m sitting with think that what I can bring to the table, and the perspective I bring is going to add value. So I think that’s the role of women that we can that we have to leverage, and we have to stop, in my opinion, bringing like we’re women we deserve sit at the table. We need to be so excellent in what we do and so objective in what we do, that we are in that spot and they forget. It’s not easy to get that, you know, to get people to forget that you’re a woman, but that’s what we want to achieve. And and once we are there, we have to be courageous enough to to highlight the systemic issues that we have, because the other thing that happens is we get there and we are so happy that we are there that now we are part of a club or a click, or we get access to things now that we didn’t have access before that we want to be one, like one of the people that are sitting at the table, and we forget our own experience, and we are afraid of raising the hand and say, You know what? I I agree to disagree. And so I think this is what we can do. We can share all our inspiring stories with the people we’re in or with, so that they gave they gain. We create more space for everybody’s experience. And so I think, yeah, leadership. I think we are at a time of of that calls for extreme leadership. So don’t be afraid to raise your voice. Don’t be afraid to bring your ideas to the table, because you will be surprised how many people would appreciate those ideas that you’re afraid of sharing so
Speaker 3 33:21
well. Said, Leticia, and I think it brings to mind one thing. One of my best friends is a public company president in FinTech, right? So very male dominated as well. And we’re a part of YPO, the Young Presidents Organization. There’s 70 members, right? There’s eight women of our chapter, right? And her and I constantly talk about how important it is to grow the table of women in business. And then we remind all of you know, our peers that are in that organization with us, that but we have to give people seats at the table, right? We have to get a seat at the table in order to have a voice. And then, as women and Leticia touched on it as well, we don’t want to step into scarcity, right? We want to make sure that we’re sharing an abundance, right? What opportunities we have as women? One of the things that Caroline and I do is we’re looking to nominate our customers, our female customers, who are making change in wireless, who are making change in fiber, who are making change in technology, right, so that they are recognized. You know, it’s all of our responsibility to grow the table for women, for diverse business, for thought and innovation. And I really loved what you said. Likewise. Okay, all right, so we’re coming, you’re nearing the end of our presentation, and really just wanted to recap some things for you guys to think about. Right? I think of these presentations in terms of, did I give somebody? The one thing is there something that you can take away, that you can take back to your. Business, back to your team, back to your customer, that would really be impactful, that would really create value for you. So we talked a little bit about how to navigate certifications and the procurement process effectively, right? Really, as Leticia said, using the certification as a tool, not a badge, right? This isn’t access. This is impact. We really want to be that value driven partner and kind of get away from that supplier thinking. We also want to really think about building strategic partnerships through relationships, right? So we talked a lot about how to leverage professional organizations and how to leverage the certifications as well. A really unique story that actually has to do with Leticia. I was at Metro connect a few weeks ago, and it was one of those crazy trade shows where I had 32 meetings in two and a half days, and we actually had a prep call for this presentation, and I was, you know, looking at Leticia. We were chatting, what are we going to talk about? What are we going to do? Just so happens that my next meeting John was a good friend of hers from a long time ago. I knew John in the industry, but we didn’t have any personal relationship or personal connection him seeing us put this together automatically, right? I was in the club. I was in the clique. It was, it was, she’s one of my favorite people ever. And it’s just such an incredible opportunity to think about how we build credibility, and how we build those strong relationships and partnerships, and how important organizations like this are.
Speaker 4 36:38
Well, thanks for that, Heather. I say we’re all first degree coffins already. So it is true. That’s proven, proves a point. But yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, it’s building those relationships. And what a great story to for my point, which is amplify the business value in the telecom ecosystem. We are an ecosystem. We all help each other. I love Heather. What you say about the mentality of abundance, we see competitors. We need to change our view even of competitors, because we can collaborate so much and create more value for our own businesses. I mean, and I’m talking about everybody, but I could assure you, even with the company that you think you cannot do work with, if you sat at the table with the intention to create value or amplify value, and you say, you do that, I do this, but we could do this together. And this will be a new revenue stream. There could be so much more multiplication of opportunities that that is surprising. So we that that culture of a multiplying and adding value to the telecom ecosystem, if we come from that mindset, you will be surprised of what can be achieved. Shoot out to John from math tech, who’s a big sponsor for WWF here in Florida. So I if this recorder. I’ll send it to him. I get, we get the next Christmas party. No, but it’s true. It’s a perfect example of of men in the industry that really does everything they can to lift women up. And so I’m that’s kind of the people we need to recognize. So thank you, Heather for that and that. Then, advocating, advocating, advocating from a place of non confrontation, advocating from a place to creating Win. Win is not you against us, them against it’s about us as a telecom industry. We are again facing a very difficult times. There’s a company, a lot of companies, especially contractors, that are going on there right now as we speak, and so we all need to be empathetic if we have anybody in sourcing. This is also an opportunity to revisit processes, to revisit how we’re doing things, to revisit our MSAs, and to really create an ecosystem where everybody has to do better, not not where we pass a hot potato to see who ends up burn at the end of the day, as long as it’s not me, I’m happy. We cannot operate like that anymore. So we really need to do our part and revisit the processes and and just be a voice for the industry.
Unknown Speaker 39:21
I think that takes us to questions, yes,
Speaker 1 39:25
yes, that’s was wonderful. Thank you both Heather and Leticia for introducing this topic and sharing so many wonderful thoughts and part about partnerships and supplier diversity. I think it’s probably resonated with most of us on here, right? Because we’re dealing with it on a daily basis. But yes, now it’s time for the Q and A session. I haven’t seen any questions pop up in the chat. So I mean, if you have a question, feel free to take yourself off mute and ask away. If not, we have a couple of. Well, at least I have a question,
Speaker 5 40:04
so I guess I’ll kick it off just I was just gonna ask, because this might be applicable to people on the call, not necessarily in my case, but if you work for a company, and maybe they’re even a smaller company, so they’re not as diverse focused as far as like offering that as a value add to their customers. Like, how would somebody initiate that discussion with their higher ups to say, Hey, this is an important part of the ecosystem, and we need to really dive in a little deeper on, you know, showing or, you know, maybe it’s getting those certifications, I guess. How would somebody start those conversations to to show the importance, but then also, like, what do you think would be those first steps?
Speaker 3 41:00
I’ll start by saying, you know, customer is king. So you know, if some, if one of my employees came to me and we didn’t have certifications, or we didn’t have diversity foundations, and they said, Hey, look at all of these set asides for these customers, or look at all these problems that we could help them solve, you know, I would be sold, right? So I think, you know, customer is king, in my opinion, identify the need within the within the market, within your customer base, and you know, bring that to, you know, your supervisor, their supervisor. And start there. Leticia, what do you think?
Speaker 4 41:34
Yeah, my view there, there’s two sides right on the on the talent side, or maybe hiring and people in at the company, I would create environments like an event or a working group, some sort of bringing different components, like inviting some females, something that I know that leadership would that something that would resonate with leadership at a subject you know, maybe technical company, you bring a brilliant female engineer that you know is going to rock it off the park, and you expose them to that, and bring a subject. And so by showing them, by putting them in contact with that kind of talent or person, or diverse person, it’s almost happens then organically, because then they want to bring this person on board, what can we do with them? And then it’s almost starts happening more than if we need to hire a woman, and it comes almost imposed. I think that’s part of the problem that we’ve had in the past that dei tried to correct years, centuries of imbalance in a very radical way, and then ended up maybe having a little bit of the opposite impact on the sourcing side, kind of same thing, and say, I would notice, like, if I’m in sourcing, and I noticed that the type of companies we we use all the time, like, maybe I will create a pool of diverse companies and say, why don’t we give this other company, this small business, without labeling diverse? I This is where strategy. I think it’s important. Why don’t we give a percentage, small percentage, of our business to other companies, just to see how they perform? And it’s good source in any way, not to prove all, all the eggs in one basket? So those are my first two thoughts on that. Thank you. I
Speaker 1 43:21
just had a general question, because, you know, my company, we’re getting involved with a lot of kind of, the bead and funded projects and other state funded projects, and they’re actually requiring that we bid out, I do a competitive bid and bid to diverse vendors. Do we have anything in our industry that kind of like we could go to that kind of says, Okay, these are diverse vendors in our industry. I don’t even know. I mean, I’m just, it’s a random question. I don’t know if it’s, you know, with W, I, a, or w, w, l, F, or anything that we would that someone that isn’t sure doesn’t have diverse vendors on their in their list, but needs to know who the diverse vendors are in a certain part of the country. Yeah, does that exist today? Or would there be value in that?
Speaker 3 44:05
I think a consolidated platform. I’m not aware of a consolidated platform. Each governing body has a list of diverse suppliers that have their certification. But really, Danielle, what would be so impactful for you in terms of bead is to I do believe Cox is already a partner of FBA, the fiber broadband Association, and that portal does a fantastic job connecting you with diverse suppliers, because that that’s a huge advocate, and they really are leading the way in terms of bead and if you need help getting connected to Kim or Let me know we’d be happy to do that, and Danielle Cox does a fantastic job developing diverse schools of thought and creating sub groups all over the country. That’s been my experience with your with your organization, yeah.
Speaker 4 44:58
So so useful the. We bank. We bank has a list of corporate entities that have the certification and usually have a contact name and number that is specifically for diverse suppliers, so that that’s a good starting point. But yeah, there’s nothing altogether.
Unknown Speaker 45:16
Yeah, business opportunity,
Speaker 1 45:19
yes, it could be but thank you very much now. And I agree with Cox, because regardless of what the current administration is saying, our company is still on a diverse track. I think it’s very critical and important. So I’m grateful for that. We have one person with their hand up, yeah, Hi. How’s
Speaker 6 45:35
it going? Casey, hi everyone. Yeah, quick question, so I have the personal experience when speaking with prospective customers and clients, often I find myself falling into being a yes person. Yes, I can solve that problem for you. Yes, I do that. Sure that’s a little out of my niche, like I can do that too kind of thing. And I know there’s a lot of power in saying no and sort of narrowing down what you do and what you do really well. So I’m curious if one or both of you could speak to an example of a time where maybe you said no to a prospective customer, and how that ended up benefiting your business in the end.
Speaker 4 46:15
Oh, I will tell you, I recently said no to a big vendor, to big turf vendor, because the pricing just didn’t make sense. I always use the joke, which is easy to say, to lose money. We don’t need help. We can do that on our own, depending how well you know the customer. I don’t advise to use that one right away, but, but basically, you know, it’s it’s all about the number. At the end of the day, it has to be about the numbers. It has to make sense, and you have to see a disposition from the customer. So if, for to me, at the sourcing moment, at that stage, if the customer is not eager to engage, is being difficult to deal with, it’s been it’s not gonna get better. It’s gonna get worse. So it’s, you know, because that’s like, as I call it is, like you are establishing trust and relationship at that stage. I mean, sourcing people sometimes can be tough. It might get better with the people you execute the project with, but so for me, having seen in the past, like four months, like, I’m confident that we made the right decision, it was hard to walk away from the deal, but knowing that a lot of people are burned, a lot of people are in bread, you we all operate to make money at the end of the day, if there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that, I think our industry also has done a poor job making companies feel bad about making money. You have to make profits. Carriers make tons of profits, if you see that their income statements, and that’s where you have to gain the power into this is what I offer. It has value, is part of my brand, and then gain their trust. But sometimes you have to buy the bullet to earn their trust. So, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3 48:03
exactly. I mean, I have a recent situation in terms of one of the amusement parks that we’re doing where they wanted us to put together a low voltage team to finish this installation, because their low voltage team wasn’t able to complete it, and they wanted this specific certification. Could we have done it? Yeah, we could have at the cost, right? Everything is an opportunity cost. It would have been at the cost of delivering to our other customers on programs that were more profitable. So what I did instead was I called our other customer, who I’ve worked with forever, who’s exceptional at low voltage, and brought in somebody I had never worked with before, connected him with that person, building that low voltage team. And the result, Casey, to your point, was they didn’t end up doing that business together, but that resource that I brought into the program has now hired me to build hyper scale data center teams in four in four different states, right? No, so powerful. And one thing I will say, everybody loves this when I tell this story. I have an executive coach, and a couple years ago he made me make a no star chart. Like, think of what you did in third grade, and you put a star next to the day that you said no, right? So I have a no star chart because there is so much power in no there’s power in your own worth. There’s power and credibility with your customer. And for months, I had the no star chart in my bathroom, and looked at it and thought like I’m winning if I have stars on those days.
Unknown Speaker 49:28
Love it. Thank you to both of you. Great insight, great
Speaker 1 49:31
question and great response. Do we have any other questions? Oh Stephanie Gilbert.
Unknown Speaker 49:46
Stephanie Gilbert, you have the floor. Hi
Speaker 7 49:48
there. I’m new. I joined this industry. I retired from AT and T after being there for 28 years. And I’ve been on this side, on the infrastructure space now. For about a year, and one of the things, one of my initiatives at NWS, is pursuing federal contracts. I’m wondering if anyone has recommendations on the tools that you use, tender tools. I’ve previewed the Dell tech tool. Of course, I’m in SAM. I think I’ve got gov win. So as a company, we’re looking to decide what tool is best. And I’m wondering if you have recommendations.
Unknown Speaker 50:35
If you crack that code, call me Stephanie.
Speaker 4 50:39
I think, seriously, I think that that, yeah, position like that are very critical right now. I think it’s extremely difficult to navigate like we are a SAM vendor, and I have issues with my team has issues with navigating that, so it’s hard. I’m not gonna lie when I don’t know, I don’t know. And this one is been even one of our own challenges as we face beat. I know a lot of the funding, I know how dispersed, but then how you really access the government platforms to make it happen has been very challenging for us as well.
Unknown Speaker 51:17
Okay, thank you.
Speaker 3 51:19
Sorry. I don’t know if Heather has Well, I don’t know that I have any meaningful feedback in terms of systems, but I will say in these scenarios, what we’ve found helpful for us and for our customers are finding someone who formerly has worked within the government, the municipality, the city, and having them consult Back to you. But you need somebody who has relationships in a very small area. So start small, start with somebody who has relationships with that area to help you navigate that process. That that’s probably my only add there,
Speaker 4 51:52
right? Thank you. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great suggestion. And Stephanie, I don’t know if you tried that. I know we’ve discussed it, but we never enacted that. A lot of these platforms, they have support numbers. Have you contact because that’s something like, the government has, like, regional support for these platforms. Have you ever tried contacting them, even the small business administration? So that’s something that I’ve I’ve, you know, if we had the resources here in turn, that’s probably what will be my next step. I appreciate that. Thank you. I’ll try that and then refer back. No, I’m kidding.
Speaker 2 52:31
Well, everyone, I think you know again, I just want to say, on behalf of WWL left, we would like to thank Heather and Leticia for leading our second intro to telecom webinar for 2025 I think we can all agree this has just been a great discussion. I want to thank you all our wwlf members and supporters for being such a great audience. Please join us for our next event with Dr Tamika Ellington, which will be on collaboration and belonging. We’re going to hold that on Thursday, April 17, from 12 to noon, central time, 12 to 1pm Central Time, and registration for the this event is actually open now through the wwlf website. So thank you all again. Have a great day, and we’ll see you soon. Thanks for having us. Thank you guys. Thank you to reach out anybody that our contact info is there happy to support anybody in the call, fabulous. Thank you. Have a great day, guys. Thank you all. Thanks. Thanks very much. Bye, bye, bye.
