[Music] all right well good afternoon everybody i'm lieutenant colonel jj snow i'm the chief technology officer with afworks which is the innovation wing of the united states air force and i am delighted to be here with you all today for this exciting panel entitled stronger together how diversity fuels bright ideas in the federal government and joining me today are some dear friends and mentors i'm just delighted to have all of them on this panel and we're going to talk about some of the exciting initiatives and great work that we're doing in the federal government let's start off with the honorable secretary hunter gertz hondo it's great to have you here can you tell us a little bit about your position what you're working on and just say hi to everybody oh you're muted there we go i'm the first guy so i know here good uh good day be with all you guys and uh been in uh in uniform as a government civilian uh as an appointee multiple services and stuff so i've been around a lot and not that smart but a pretty good poacher and uh and love learning from everybody here and and i guess what i would say is uh what's really exciting is these kind of dialogues really happening and people doing something about it and so jen thanks for having us here and look forward to talking with everybody and learning from them awesome thanks for joining us i know how busy you are i really appreciate it michael michael aquinaeli thank you so much for joining us please tell us a little bit about yourself and what you've been up to late lately sure thing so uh up until september of last year i was the chief innovation officer at the department of veterans affairs and a lot of our work while i was there was really focused on understanding how to improve veteran care and how to improve the outcomes from the payment arrangements that we make when we purchase veteran care so it's the whole value-based care movement in the context of the veterans administration and it was a lot of fun but i felt a need given where we were with the pandemic and the global impact of the pandemic and you know beyond the physical care elements uh also the mental health care elements there's just a lot of work that needs to be done and i felt like i needed a bigger platform to pursue some of these initiatives and so i ventured out and now working across a range of opportunities and initiatives across government across the startup ecosystem really aimed at you know bringing a lot more simplicity a lot more affordability and a lot more equity to the us health care system wonderful thank you for taking the time to join us today i'm so grateful glad to be here warren cesar with dhs welcome tell us about yourself and i love your pink room thank you jj i'm so glad to be here with such a great group of folks um i am chief of the innovation hub at sissa we've been around for about six months at this point but going gangbusters and excited to make some good things happen in bringing innovation to cisa and highlighting the great innovations that are already taking place within our organization i have a background in the intelligence community so i've had the the grand pleasure of spending time um in dod and um i appreciate every moment there but i am very excited to be part of the ecosystem within in innovation and found some great people to partner with so glad to be here wonderful thank you for joining us today and last but certainly not least dear friend chris manuel thank you for taking the time out to join us from monterey california tell us a little bit about what you've been up to well my uh i guess my somewhat recent news um retired from the uh military after almost 34 years of service in november and i'm continuing with service at the naval post graduate school i'm currently the associate dean of research for technology development but the exciting thing that we're working on is the central coast tech bridge and really looking at how do we leverage the latent capability at nps with the students professors and making the connections throughout all of the tech bridges now uh worldwide not just through the country but uh yeah there's a lot of exciting things that we're looking at with uh the tech bridge and that whole world awesome thank you for joining us i know you've been super busy too everybody's got a lot going on so i'm really grateful because we kind of pulled this together last minute thank you all so let's talk a bit about diversity um all of us are really intentional about this uh we all value diverse teams and diverse perspectives and this has been something that has played in time and again to our success stories and many of you have them and have seen them firsthand and have helped to build them let's talk about how diverse teams and diverse perspectives most recently have been helping out in your organizations around generating new ideas and innovating at the next level and let's start with with secretary gertz all right please just honor my secretary yourself honda you got it oh so uh again uh it's a little in a little culture shock uh previously this job was down to special operations command you know very focused small agile group uh now here department of navy so that's both navy and marine corps uh 148 billion dollar a year 130 000 government folks and so the experiment has been how do you take an agile mindset and apply it to such a large organization you know building everything that's you know from seabed to space but what we've really kind of focused on i think is is two core elements uh our real competitive advantage that we'll be enduring is our um thirst in capacity to learn and our ability and thirst uh and curiosity to learn is directly proportional to our ability to create a culture where everybody's respected and we really think of diversity more than just a social norm but a competitive advantage and be very thoughtful about that uh and when i say diversity in all dimensions um who we are what color of our skin where we're background uh which is crucially important but then um who do we know what are our networks what skill sets do you bring to the table how do you think about a problem and then um with that kind of his overarching intent what are simple practical things you can do every day uh that make a difference and what we've found is the best way to implement it's at the small team level and if you can kind of give the right picture to a small team uh give them some tools maybe a little coaching uh you know here's a couple we call them plays you know here's some plays you could use um you can have transformative level effects that then allow you to whatever your other initiatives achieve it at scale and at speed where we failed before was kind of approach it as just a social thing or at the individual level or at such a philosophical level there's no practical tools and so while everybody agreed philosophically nobody did anything different day to day and so we actually had weren't really achieving any meaningful change everybody is well intentioned uh you know this isn't i firmly believe everybody is well intentioned in this area but they're not we don't necessarily give them good tools uh and help them along the way and then get the get the ball rolling and then once the ball is rolling they'll take off so that's really i think what we've been trying to do and i guess the last piece is respecting that everybody's got a role to play and uh you know i'm the acquisition guy so you know you can get all wrapped up in processes well we need folks that are good at rapid acquisition we need good folks that are good at very hard nuclear power plant things we need to link across boundaries chris and esteem at nps bring a lot to the table so if we can get that right culture with an outward focus not an inward focus um that's really i think helping us um do it in a manner that is not one person dependent or two um has such a long time cycle that by the time you get to the end of it folks are just worn out because they want to do the right thing they just don't know how uh yes yes to all of that yes and that that ties in perfectly with michael some of the work that you've been doing with the va focused on how to enable our veterans uh both active duty but then the transitioning veterans and our veterans that are retired now looking at how to scale solutions looking at how to give people a voice and how to bring people into spaces to solve some of these tough challenges do you want to talk a bit about that that's definitely part of my past life and i don't want to sort of position myself as speaking on behalf of the agency or is related to any of that so i'll just put that disclaimer out there um but the context of of bringing folks together um either through formal structures uh such as a challenge uh so we while i was there were working on a suicide prevention grand challenge um and the purpose of the grand challenge was to really bring all people together uh to sort of paint the picture of the problem and and get a lot of smart people uh from around the world to really think about what hasn't been done uh because the numbers haven't really moved and so if you measure any initiative so if you look at diversity and maybe any diversity objectives you have and you measure the outcomes that are being achieved every process i think that exists every structure every organization the outcomes it is getting is a function of the design of that organization everything is happening by design i can apply that to healthcare i can apply that to anything and so if an organization is not achieving its diversity objectives it's by design if it wants to achieve said diversity objectives it needs a new design and it needs to build with the outcome in mind versus what typically happens when an incumbent is trying to innovate itself uh you ultimately run against the forces of inertia and the forces of this is how we've always done it and you know that's usually what what you you face from a challenge standpoint and so the purpose and the approach of a grant challenge was really let's break down all the pretenses let's admit we don't have the answers let's bring a bunch of people into the fold let's create a cash prize and say give us solutions and may the best solution win and so that that's really what we were trying to do i i would hate to think the problem of suicide death is intractable because it's something we have to solve it is and remains the number one clinical priority for the va and it's just one of those things where until we get to the root problem or the root cause of the problem we're not going to solve it and getting to the root cause of that problem requires asking some really hard questions and facing some ugly truth and i just don't know if we're ready for that um i'm not sure if that was helpful but you know it is it definitely is well and that's an important discussion too but getting um everybody in the room to have these messy discussions that's how we get to the right answers because you've got to understand the problem first and in order to get at those root causes we really have to have everyone's voice at the table so we can understand it yeah that was that was awesome and again nice lead-in to sabra with building the ihub that you're doing at dhs i know you have very intentionally sought out a lot of diverse perspectives um a lot of diversity across agencies and across partners let's talk a little bit about that well thanks so much for mentioning that jj i think it has been a very intentional process um i was challenged with how do we stand up an innovation effort at cisa cisa is only 2100 fed strong so we're a very small federal agency and we recognize the fact that although we have a relatively small number of folks we have a very large mission and so the only way we were really going to bring in and and create a lot of new innovation was to create a lot of partnerships and to recognize that there were so many different great things happening so many wonderful people that we could learn from so many people to listen to and it's been really remarkable to see the great projects that we've been able to be part of and bring to life because of exactly that finding different people in so many different locations i would say we've also been able to discover obviously dhs there are eight component agencies we've recently formed what we're calling the collective which is representatives in innovation across all of dhs as well as within our headquarters element as well so you can well imagine how many different perspectives and the different skill sets and areas of interest and the missions themselves how various they are across all of dhs to include tsa or the secret service or cbp it's it's remarkable so we have common challenges we have common interests and we can work on common problems together and solve them so it's been very exciting i love it thank you thank you and and chris you have a similar mission in that not only are you uniting across the forces around innovation but you're also uniting allied partners and international partners in a space that's building um education for all let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing with the etc and some of the diversity initiatives that you guys are implementing out there at nps well for one i definitely see diversity as key or better understanding a model that we're following is something i did when i was still in the military i was the lead planner for cyber endeavor and uh one of the things that we did with the we designed the panels to where we would always have differing opinions on the panels so we would take people like from the electronic um frontier foundation maybe a um an rb cpt operator uh someone at the um at the osd level for policy and then maybe someone from a company from ibm and the moderator would really pull the differing opinions out what would happen almost every time is they would disagree and then you would see them kind of pull off to the side uh you'd see sidebar conversations going on you'd see networking and those networks ended up being something that people have worked with for years uh i did something like this when i was a student at nps where i really focused on uh operational art from my special operations background bringing in academia and industry so i've done this twice and i would say very successfully pulling from diverse backgrounds we're going to expand that at nps because we're an educational institution as well so we are looking at not only uh working with other schools uh companies organizations we're really expanding uh the scope of that diversity far beyond anything that i did during my dod time awesome and that touches on a great lead-in to our next topic which is networking hondo i know you're a huge fan of establishing really diverse networks really inclusive networks and that's something that i got to see firsthand when we were down at softworks and now with naval x and and again continuing to expand that out with the different tech bridges um let's talk about the importance of networking because we all have them we benefit as individuals we all get leadership benefits mentorship benefits and then the networks that we build also benefit our respective organizations and uh this is something that that you've been leading for a while in government so definitely want to hear your thoughts yeah i mean again great i i i i ever when everybody else was talking here i could just kind of put bits and pieces together and kind of michael's point you know it's and uh savers it's it's about design and and chris what you hear is you know you can design things for the unknown you can design things to create new opportunities if you don't take an active role in that you're not going to get something new um because uh even with different people in the same design you're gonna get likely a similar uh output and and so you know part of what we're trying to do you know it's a little bit of a let's get real and then let's get better we tend to want to get better before we get real and then we we don't really maybe solve the right problem and we feel good that we're doing something we all love activity it's a little harder to measure ourselves against outcome and so part of that get real is creating those networks to help you see yourself even when you can't see yourself or see your organization most organizations think they understand themselves most humans think they understand themselves better much better than they do uh so you know some of us we're lucky to be you know married to our high school sweetheart so i have a you know self-appointed ego deflator that keeps it real all the time but that's really really important and that's why networks are really important in creating this mutual trust so you create trust that you know chris can tell me i know i know that's a great idea no way here's here's where you're kidding yourself or here's where you got a blind spot or here's on opportunity you know i i laughed i was an early one you know the artificial christmas tree was invented by a uh toilet bowl a totally brush uh company and they took a toilet brush and cut it in half and then stacked them up and made that's how we have artificial christmas trees but you would never afford things together and so when you create the design to bring things together that don't normally come in an environment of mutual respect um then you can create these things because if you can't get real you can't get better uh and i guess the last and chris and i probably share some of the same uh learnings from socom create relationships before you need them because if you're trying to create a relationship when you need it um you know that's that's really hard to generate trust and so you know this idea of creating networks across multiple dimensions will illuminate opportunities you don't even know yet exist uh and then quite frankly we all suffer in big organizations and you need a mutual support network because this is hard right and creating your own personal resilience of trying to drive change wherever you are in your organization or just surviving having networks will give you the resilience to get through those really challenging days we all have and particularly over the last nine months have really had but you've got to do it before you need it um and then you'll illuminate opportunities you may not have ever thought to ask for awesome yes and and michael let's go to you because i know you were building networks inside and now outside of government and a lot of this has really come together in great ways positive ways to help a lot of people can you share a bit more about what you're seeing and what you're continuing to build so i'll just echo everything hondo said is awesome and on point so i'm not sure how i'm going to top it so i'll just get really tactical and say here's literally what's going on you know just building on the point of building networks before you need them building on the point of having folks who will keep it real and tell you the truth because the truth is so important when when when you're on a mission to achieve something uh having access to the truth is essential and i think a very diverse network where you can get points of views from all sides is essential to getting at the truth and so for me while i was in government it was building those relationships now that i'm outside of government it's continuing to expand those relationships in the government while bringing relationships uh from the private sector from the startup ecosystem from corporation side into the mix to say if we're trying to achieve this and this so the big thing i'm working on is inventing the future of healthcare which you know it's very ambitious so might as well try um and and so really getting perspectives uh from all stakeholders uh from the government standpoint so working across hhs and dha and va to say you know these three agencies represent about 30 percent of the u.s health care system you know what can we think about that we could do differently to impact the whole and so those that that's a hard conversation to have um but it does lead to some truths and so it's been exciting is the short short short answer and um again echoing everything hondo said awesome and that really nice let's roll right over to sabra because you have this challenge as well working with all of the different agencies under dhs and bringing all the various tribes and and their different parts and pieces together into a viable cohesive network and then bringing in those external partners as well that's right that's right i i think as you'd mentioned previously it's it's being very intentional about bringing these people together to ensure there's diversity of thought and diversity of experience skill sets but i would say the way i really hit upon it was um someone told me once upon a time you know map out your networks because you're going to see some holes you would not have noticed otherwise and that was absolutely the case so we know that the dhs world is a finite world but you may not have had all of those networks built so being intentional in reaching out to certain people was really important i'll also add you know we have the um federal innovator salon which has been kind of the extension for us right which was broader broader access across a wider group between dod the intelligence community and broader us government folks has really allowed us to be again intentional about who we need to bring to the table i will say i'm sure none of us thought that you know a big gaping hole was you know the entire healthcare world for those of us in national security but when march came who did we need to reach out to and it was a struggle in many instances to find the right connections but it was so vital for the safety of this country and wonderfully so many people came to the call and that's been a great thing to see but i just want to emphasize you know not only the the importance of mapping but also build those relationships before you need them just like hondo says saver can i ask you a question yeah so we're talking here a lot about organizational design and big people in big jobs and all that um we're all four or five individual humans i'll speak for myself last nine months have been sometimes personally challenging from a resilience uh standpoint um maybe you or somebody else you know we're you know i think we're talking here to a pretty broad audience maybe not trying to architect the healthcare system or the navy or something but i think a lot of the principles i've learned i try or i've tried to apply in kind of daily life is would you say the same as as you're in a high profile position trying to get through every day like everybody else yeah it's interesting you say that um the thing that i've found recently is the importance of renewing energy and being able to connect with folks across the usg that really do resonate with you in a way that helps you renew that energy because let's be honest innovation is tough work and pushing that rock up the hill day after day is just incredibly challenging and being able to connect with folks who help you build that internal resilience is so important and finding strengths and uh strengthen others chris woody do you have similar colleagues out in california that you think might be able to can you shed some light on that that aspect of our lives yeah absolutely and and one of those colleagues actually is on the call um j.j snow uh jen and i uh you know a lot of times when uh we're running up against the wall we've gotta you know hey i've got to get this done or i'm running into this we definitely pick each other up um and uh it's great to have uh someone that's not going through the exact same thing that you're going through because then it can turn into a pity party which is never where i want to be and it's never where jen is um but uh she's also been a great network for us both of us uh graduated from nps both of us love the school and want to see great things happen for the school so um you know part of the network that she has helped us with is the uh joint innovator joint scouts we uh um uh and and say you're part of that as well um we've been doing those virtually but there's a time we were traveling together um and just uh you know just uh speed dating with companies from six in the morning to 11 at night um you know i and in fact i came to the conclusion i have no idea how jen does it uh i think i've got a great work that could work ethic and i met someone that outworks me and i had to admit it she outworked me but uh uh the other part of uh our relationship she introduced us to defense works uh defense works has over 70 000 connections um you know i was hired to uh stand up something called the emerging technology consortium luckily for me naval x had almost the exact same uh lines of effort that we were trying to do yet i was trying to do this as one individual uh with people saying well why would we do this for chris manuel well then it turned to were you doing this for the department of navy when we became a tech bridge so that network definitely helped us and that network's growing the other network that we're using and relying on and i think will really rely on in the future is the academic venture exchange so abx has 34 of the top research universities uh in their organization um we are looking at um something we are calling the um quantum education consortium uh and pulling those uh schools together leveraging uh the curriculum that are going on in the top 10 schools in the country to come up with one and then looking at how do we how do we address dod problems with quantum at nps and at affid yet leveraging that network to move all of us forward um the intent here even though we're at a tactical level really is getting at a strategic problem how do we start thinking about quantum technologies as a country to where we are driving the standards for it so that's my uh spill on networks i could not survive without them and uh yeah that's all i got and and chris you pick me up just as much as i i pick you up and and i think we've all been in those loops where we've all texted or called each other and had those discussions and uh i love the positivity so thank you all for that that's been absolutely fantastic um well let's talk about the human piece because all of us as leaders the people in our networks in our organizations our teammates they fuel our success as individuals and as organizations what do you do as a you know a leader uh as a mentor as a peer in your organization to really enhance that to create that space for that human element element to really be appreciated um and to create the space for people to come together meaningful ways to be successful on whatever project they're tackling and it could be something really small or could be a monumental task that's going to take multiple years honda what's your what's your philosophy here oh microphone it depends a little bit on what it is um um but i think you start by creating a culture of safety right if you can create a safe culture whether it's with your friends whether it's with your family your peers or somebody else and you enable that not for the wrong reasons but the right reasons and then i think i you know what i tell folks is they're looking for mentors good leaders love to talk about leadership good leaders love to mentor people good leaders love to connect because i think the sabers point it recharges us it's a little bit of my own self-defense mechanism from you know facing you know we're all facing challenging problems wherever you are and so to some degree it allows you to recharge your battery in a different way and kind of scale what you're trying to do because it allows you when you're on your task you can be on your task full point and then allows you to get a recharge cycle and so just letting one letting teams or your networks know you value that and you're looking for those opportunities and it's okay to ask um uh and and asking and then the second thing i i spend a lot of time i gotta remind myself all the time but almost every time i talk with a group or a team or a leader is is this idea that reaching out for help is a positive sign of strength not a sign of weakness and and saying that over and over as a leader talking about your own frailties and your own areas where you've got challenges and again back to let's get real then let's get better if you can create the culture we're reaching out for help whether it's personal help or technical help or just a shoulder to lean on if you can do that it is the most and single most enabling thing um you can do and wherever you are as a individual as a teammate as uh uh as a leader uh and and so every time you know and you got to remind yourself that and you got to make time for it and yes sometimes it's inconvenient and sometimes it's you know it can be another rock in your rucksack um but then you've also got to have the humility to know as a leader it's okay to reach out for help too um so i see a lot of leaders who help everybody else or teammates or we all we all have the ones on your team who are helping everybody and working and but they won't ask for help themselves um you know that to me has been uh it's you know that mindset will transcend any organizational design it will jump over uh cultural barriers or diverse barriers it's it's hard for people to believe it and they're gonna watch a hundred million times and they'll look for the time when when they don't perceive that's the truth but if you can get that mindset um uh and in us and and remind ourselves we're just human too then then at least for me that's what's helped that's that that's a really really important point right now because i know a lot of people are struggling and and michael you and i have talked about this we did the thrive event this year uh specifically focused on [Music] stress and and ptsd and the suicide rates that we've been seeing um let's let's talk a bit about that uh what are your thoughts as far as that human element and and i really like what hondo had to say because too too often we forget about ourselves and we also were afraid to reach out and ask for help and that's such an important point no uh i think hondo hit the nail on the head i'm very much in the forget about myself category i i take myself back to the black lives matter protest this summer it was happening right outside the va we were working remotely but obviously we were all still sort of witnessing sort of this upheaval and sort of where we were as a nation and i had to look at my team which is very diverse and we were able to create a safe space zoom call and we kind of talk through it right can't just ignore what's actually happening and say where the reports or you know i'm waiting for this innovation thing uh so it's it's about being real creating a safe space and kind of talking through sort of everyone's perspective and experiences and having having it become real uh for members of my team who are not african-american who could hear from me uh sort of how i experienced it and some of the things i was going through and it was a shock for them and then i also was able to benefit from hearing from team teammates who reported to me who were african-american and they had stories that were shocking to me and so just having everyone hear it and then having people say i had no idea you all were going through this so it sort of brings it to the fore and it allows you to actually function better as a team because you have a better sense of what people are actually going through or where they're coming from as things unfold so it's one of those things that ultimately every business is a people business even though software is eating the world as some some venture capitalists would like to say and so we we cannot forget about the human element and we cannot ignore the importance of truth when it comes to human interaction because if you build something on a foundation of lies it will crumble and i think ultimately resilience comes from being able to see the truth know the truth and deal with it ignoring it you're not you know overcoming adversity is really how you build resilience and you know there's a lot of adversity that comes with being alive and so we need to embrace it and that's how we get stronger and i don't want to be preachy self-stop you're not being preachy at all i love it um having people on a team in a space with you where you can share that that contrast you can share those tough times and you know that you can have those open honest discussions and really go back and forth ask ask hard questions and and talk about messy stuff yep that helps tremendously and that's how the best teams i've been on have been more like a family than a team because we have those discussions and i know i can pick up the phone and those people are going to be there for me if i need them to because of that trust that we've built so that's that's tremendous and um sabra i know this is you know similar to the military with with law enforcement as well working across spaces and across the nation um they're also reluctant to talk about trauma just sometimes come forward and share and um especially because dhs is super busy right now a lot going on in the world cyber and everywhere um how how are you balancing that out to take care of your people and to make sure that they're they're getting what they need and they're being heard i think we've all been in in remarkable teams that are running at 125 because the country demands it there's an emergency there's a need and there's nothing that you can do except go flat out and that's just simply not sustainable and it's not human it's not real and so i think being able to recognize that to have empathy and compassion not only for the team uh for the agency but ourselves as well and to say you know what i'm gonna give everybody else a break but i'm going to give myself a break too i had a friend who once upon a time told me you know she lived at 125 all the time she said every once in a while i have to have a 2 day and it was a good way to give herself that rest so that she could renew herself for everyone else as well and so i think you know those of us who have been both fortunate enough to to be part of those demanding times to help our nation's security um we have to be able to be compassionate we have to listen we have to be there for each other and for ourselves as well oh go ahead hondo well it's a little bit like tempo training or go in the weight room right you're not going to walk in the right room and then just start put 400 on the bench maybe chris would but the rest of us won't you know one you've got a so you got to build you've got to actually back to a little bit of design or individual design you've got to build your own personal resilience you've got to build organizational resilience and you don't do it by going flat out all the time you know it's a little bit of tempo training sprint take a break sprint take a break and i think um where where we all i mean again i i really identify with the comments there of if you're not careful you convince yourself to go 125 but you just drain the battery and then you're 120 is like 50 of what it used to be um and so if you think of it that way then we can you know be there for the long term um because being awesome for like a week is great for a week but not you know not where we need everybody for the long haul exactly and and chris i know out at the naval post graduate school this is a balancing act for our students many of them that are coming from the field into an educational environment for the first time maybe in years um and and there was a lot of disc a lot of discussions that you and i have had around this um specifically balancing that stress that transition um but also providing that non-attribute attributable space for messy discussions to promote education at the same time what are your thoughts on this and that's a great part of being at an academic institution you can have those discussions in the classrooms you can have those relationships with students and people that you work with where they feel comfortable talking to you part of it is building that within the organization yet you still have a mission so the way that i've managed that is normally i will talk about the vision uh of the organization and then when i'm sitting down and i'm talking to the person that may be coming in uh that may be working with me uh it could be someone that's temporary could just be someone that i've hired i start asking them about their personal goals and then i try to map what they are trying to do what they're trying to achieve with the organization's goals it's much easier that if those are aligned and people see where those are aligned for people to be able to move with the organization and you also establish a relationship with them where they're able to tell you hey i know that you have my best interest in heart these are some of the things that i'm going through but i think that's established up front and uh this was something that i kind of stumbled upon early on my in my time in special forces that uh uh it was i learned this from a mentor um and now i'm a mentor and something that i pass on to others well let's talk about i'm sorry we're going to talk about that too because i want to get into mentorship next okay and like uh um everyone else on on the call you know i am one uh that that does have have to kind of pull back the reins on myself uh i had a sister pass away in um from covet and one of the things that uh um admirando uh had said to me was make sure you take care of yourself and i told her well i'm one of i'm a very from a very large family i've got 200 some nieces and nephews uh there's 17 kids we uh uh you know as we become the older ones there was a time i was a little one now i'm an older one you know your responsibility is to the younger ones but i had to think about what she said was hey i do need to take a step back for myself in order for me to be effective for anyone else yeah that understanding how we can best serve others by serving ourselves first making sure that we're taking care of our health is good our sleep is good our stress levels are good is crucial and it's hard it's hard to do i'm very bad at it as well um but it's something that i have to constantly remind myself of and and all of you at one point or another have reminded me of as well so for that it's a good thing um but let's talk about mentorship because i know i have had some incredible mentors in my career and i feel like this is an ask that continues to come up from across the services across the agencies private sector people want to know how can i be a mentor how can i get a mentor what does it mean to mentor and how can we do it better um all of you have done this to a certain extent or have been fortunate enough to have mentors in your life can you share a bit about your thoughts about mentorship and the importance that it plays especially in a diverse and inclusive environment creating that culture that we all want hondo go ahead um yeah maybe a couple thoughts um on it one i think we sometimes talk ourselves into either consciously or unconsciously ordinary mentoring people like us and so we see a version of us coming up and then we and i think back to this you know one of our core challenges in organizational design is if that happens you're never gonna that design artifact by itself preserves status quo generationally uh and then the other thing is when i was at socom i did a fun thing i i called it reverse mentoring i had lieutenants and you know civilians who had been in for two years as my mentors and and i would say okay i'm gonna have a mentoring session with you lieutenant joe bagadonis and uh and that was twofold one you know they it was such a such a rant gap that they were they're not going to tell me what i think they i want to hear and two it was modeling for them through being a mentee how to be a mentor and uh and i got some really you know if i wanted to learn what the best how is everybody thinking in the generation uh coming up what's frustrating him and stuff i mean we all we use lots of different paths um what i guess my last would say was um don't ever confuse mentorship with sponsorship uh and far too many times we get into that you know who's your c daddy or whatever the thing is and you know a mental relationship is not to get somebody promoted it's not to ensure they get a rank or anything else it's really to help that person answer questions about themselves not create a path for that person and where mentorship i think is gonna rise when we confuse mentorship with sponsorship uh or we view mentorship as we're gonna mentor people we like uh or not create the space where folks are comfortable asking uh for somebody to be a mentor who who is not like them and i tell everybody your best mentor is normally not in the organization you're working with very rarely is there a good mentor in the organization and the more tangential you can be a lot more likely the the more value the of the mentor because they're not going to tell you what you think you want to hear kind of thing yeah and that's so crucial some of the best mentors i've had most recently have come from the private sector and from areas that i never expected because what they've done is they've actually opened that aperture and michael this is something that we've touched on a bit in talking about the importance of mentorship and personal growth and how to grow yourself but also how to grow others so um let's let's hear what you have to say on this so i think this will be my opening line from now on you know i'll follow up i it's hard to follow what hondo just said so i'll try and add to it um you know he's absolutely right hit all the all the points what i'll add to it is i found the value in having mentors that are further along in their careers mentors kind of at the same place and then mentors like like again hondo said it who are sort of not where i am in my career and sort of having that open dialogue of let us mentor each other because i think i i can mentor um those who have more experience those at same level and those who are just coming up and so for me it's been very very helpful because again it's about understanding myself a little better in different contexts and then trying to shed a light of understanding to others as they deal with things and and sort of come up with have you thought about it this way uh i've had a mentor now for you know over 15 years it was my first you know how you start in a job so i started consulting in 2006 and i was assigned like a career coach and that was it he couldn't get rid of me [Laughter] and so so so they're mentors that you know it just it grows from there um and to hondo's point it wasn't about the sponsorship um it was really about just the mentoring uh because you know we only worked in the same organization for four years and and but the mentoring continued uh so again it's it's it's it's essential to success at least from my perspective um it kind of goes back to the thing about if again hondo i'm sorry i'm just gonna keep saying things you said uh but keep it real to get better you gotta get real before you get better um and so it's really about understanding and getting to the truth because that's the foundation for whatever outcome you're trying to get that's it yeah spot on spot on i'm mentoring a young man who is 23 and a marketing expert right now and i'm learning so much i have no marketing background at all and the 23 year old perspective on what's happening in the world right now is enlightening and so we're i'm mentoring him but he's mentoring me just as much and saber we've talked about this from the cyber perspective and for what you're building with ihub and bringing in the next generation and especially because so many young people are active in cyber we've talked about the importance of mentorship in this space both for ourselves as well as the younger generation coming up absolutely and i think you're right there are so many young folks who are coming in and that's very exciting and i think it's an opportunity for so many of us to really give back right i mean none of us would be where we are today have we not had great mentors who helped shape and help us grow and learn but i i certainly agree with what we've heard here which is it really does take i think listening to what somebody really is hoping to achieve and then crafting your comments to really ensure that you're getting to the heart of of the issues and and helping that person grow i think there are a lot of informal opportunities to mentor in ways that have never existed before or maybe maybe i've just gotten a little bit older also gives you a lot more opportunity to find people who are looking for that kind of advice one thing i have noticed and have seen i think as we start to uh pull in more and more adverse uh folks all the time not everyone's been exposed to what a mentorship process looks like and i i don't think there's as in other countries perhaps they have as strong a a culture form internship and so you know teaching people how to be mentees and then eventually mentors is it should be okay too it's not really something i think we've gotten comfortable with but as as it becomes more and more important um in growing professionally i think we have to get more comfortable with saying this is how you do this and this is what it looks like so a lot of good opportunities but it's exciting to see it is it is and chris that's a perfect lead into what's happening out at nps right now with our students up and coming and some of the new technologies that you're bringing into the classroom and the curriculum with them yeah the the um many many mentorship opportunities at mps um some of those i take on myself and some of those i really connect with my network going back to your earlier question because sometimes i'm not the best person to mentor someone and recognizing that i really like the point that hondo made about the difference between sponsorship and mentorship uh because there is a difference but um yeah they're as as someone who's had really good mentors um you know and and received really good advice that's got me to where i am now i try to be that uh for others but uh again a big part of it is knowing when i'm not the right person and sometimes it's okay i need to find you another mentor and then get them to the right person yeah and that's important too is making sure it's a good fit i have a lot of people that come to me and say hey what should i look for in a mentor and i tell them always start by looking at and making sure your values and ethics are aligned and then look at where you want to go what is your path whether that's personal professional and see how they're going to be able to help and then also the final piece is where can i give back so if you're mentoring or being mentored it should be a two-way street everybody's benefiting from that we are at the top of the hour so let's go around i want to ask everybody um for 2021 what is one challenge you would love to see us tackle and then what is one success story that you'd love to see us celebrate hondo let's start with you i'm gonna defer to michael so i can say i'm agree with what michael says michael you're on the spot i wish you didn't say that um you gotta give me that again oh i love it you got him hondo so what for 2021 what is a challenge you'd like to highlight and see us really focus on and tackle and what is one success story you'd really like us to celebrate and this is as a nation it could be as a nation it can be as an organization it can be as the federal government um okay all of those all of those uh so i'll try and do it as a nation uh because i'm no longer part of the federal government so the context you know we're still in the middle of this pandemic the optimist in me which is kind of drowned out over the last couple of months still sees us crossing a million um you know dead americans uh before the end of this year and i would love for us not to do that uh that would be my big big thing so chris sorry about your sister um and it's the thing that still bothers me and it's it's when i look at 2021 i hope it's a milestone we don't hit the thing i hope we get to celebrate is actually finding out that these vaccines are effective at the level that creates some immunity beyond you know is it three months is it five months so those of you the two things like you know that many people don't that many more people don't die and we find out that these vaccines are actually very very effective longer term so i hope i didn't like bring the room down but that's what's on my mind no we're all in this together and i love it because that's exactly the kind of discussion we're here to have so thank you for that how did should i go to you next should you want to wait till the end and then you can say you're you're you're doing everyone's i'll i'll keep mine simple i think we if i think our opportunity uh slash challenge success is if we can get back to the place where working together is perceived as the first act not the last act in desperation whatever the challenge is told it everything else and that we value getting people together to solve problems as our as a way of doing business not dividing folks to solve problems uh that's both my hope and uh challenge for all of us awesome thank you sabra how about you well i also don't want to be a downer but um i think it's important for us to really take a cold hard look at what diversity means and in regards to national security and cyber in particular and to be very intentional about how do we ensure that we have a diverse population two three five ten years from now and how do we do the hard work to ensure that we get that result we've we need some work and i would say the the success i want to highlight is it's a group called leadership council for women in national security and a year a year and a half ago they realized wait we keep hearing that you know there aren't uh there aren't enough women in national security but they said no we know that's not the case so they gathered over 700 resumes and delivered that to both uh incoming potential administrations uh prior to the election in november gave them a binder of 700 resumes and said here are women that can be part of leadership teams going forward in national security so that is a success i love it that's awesome thank you thank you thank you chris last but not least best for last yeah i i um i would love to see um well well first as far as what it is the government needs to do or the hardest thing to tackle um and this is uh something that we're kind of doing right now really is how do we communicate how do we think these things through how do we get better at this so i i really appreciate that you bringing this together uh as usual jj you were on it and had the forethought to think this through uh i'd like to see more of this um you know a lot of times like 9 11 really brought the country together uh you see these tragedies going on and the country's pulling farther apart um i'm really hoping we don't have some other tragedy that's that could you imagine the size of that tragedy that would bring the country together so i'm hoping there's something else i'm really hoping that just through leadership and people taking a step back you know as uh hondo said really getting getting we need to get real about what it is that we're doing and who we are as a nation um and then take that step forward and you know through dialogue heal as a nation that's what i would love to see in 2021 i love it i love it um i am so grateful for each and every one of you today thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedules to have this very important discussion i know it's going to benefit a lot of people and i'm wishing you all a very happy 2021 and i can't wait till we can all catch up for coffee or lunch or whatever in person face to face i know it's coming um but tremendously grateful to all of you thank you so much today thank you all right thank you thank you [Music] so
2021-02-06