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357- IT Budget Hell by Cindy Novak - DeLaurell · You've Been Heard

• 0:04
  Speaker A: Welcome back to today's episode of Dissecting popular IT Nerds. I'm your host, Doug Kameen, and today I'm talking with Cindy Novak, the director of R and D and technical operations, business partner at Avidity Biosciences. Welcome to the show, Cindy.
• 0:18
  Speaker B: Thank you very much, Douglas, for having me.
• 0:21
  Speaker A: That is a mouthful. It's a great title, but I'm struggling to get it out because there's a lot packed in there, isn't there?
• 0:28
  Speaker B: There is, and it has grown significantly since the begin of the year. So I started out supporting research and I just keep tacking on more and more and helping the rest of the business.
• 0:39
  Speaker A: So. So pretty soon, like, you'll have a business card that'll just like, it'll. It'll go front and back with your title, right? It'll be like, you know, that's why.
• 0:45
  Speaker B: We have digital business cards, comma, you.
• 0:48
  Speaker A: Know, comma, this, comma, that, comma, you know, just keep adding to the list, right?
• 0:52
  Speaker B: Well, I hope not, because this is already quite a bit to handle and I'm a team of two right now.
• 0:58
  Speaker A: Ah, yes. Yeah. So it's. Yeah, that challenge. So we asked this before we got on the interview part of the podcast, but your title, you have business partner in your title. You're working for a company, Avidity Biosciences. And sometimes business partners are not necessarily exclusively in the IT realm, and they don't always come from the IT realm, but you consider yourself and you are a part of it. Your background is in it and that's how you came up in the world. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure.
• 1:27
  Speaker B: So my background originally is actually quality. So I started my career 30 years ago as a quality engineer, and I fell into an IT role because they needed the subject matter expert for a lab system. And so I discovered that I had a passion for helping people develop computer software. I actually don't like computers, but I do enjoy the software side of things. And I've moved up the ranks since I started out, mostly supporting the lab, both research and quality, and thus the background. And I've moved up steadily and at Avidity, I became a business partner, a full fledged business partner, and I'm actually very proudly part of our IT leadership team.
• 2:12
  Speaker A: That's awesome. Congratulations. So how long have you been with Davidity? At this point, just a couple years or almost three years, two and a half years. Yep, three years. So, and you mentioned your titles. You. You've tacked on a couple of extra roles in your title. Just since the beginning of the year. So things are, things are moving along here for you there. Like tell us a little bit about like what, what's it, what's the day of the life look like for the role that you occupy?
• 2:37
  Speaker B: About 90% meetings and 80% work. So I, I support, I, I try and manage several projects so to support the business, I support research which from our perspective is our laboratories that are doing our development work and discovering our wonderful platform. If you research about Avidity, we have an amazing platform we're developing. And then I also try to reach out to my development side which is our biometrics team, our clinical team, make sure their needs are met. And then I do a lot of work with our technical operations team on multiple projects as well. So a lot of meetings, a lot of one on ones to coach not only my immediate team members, but other team members within it. And at least once a week we have a standing meeting with our IT leadership team. So a lot of meetings, but it's all focused on our strategy and making sure that we succeed and can support the business.
• 3:37
  Speaker A: And so you've been in IT management in a couple of different capacities. It looks like just, you know, the advantage here is I get the cheat sheet of using your LinkedIn bio to tell me a little bit more about you before I ask questions. So I can now ask leading questions instead of. But I can see you, you've been an IT manager and you know, and a manager of particular systems and supporting them in larger organizations and sometimes it appears in somewhat smaller organizations as well. So like you've had a variety of different roles and capacities where it looks like you've had to push in with different skill sets.
• 4:09
  Speaker B: Here I have and it's really, it's been a fun challenge. So I started out, like I said, with the software side of things. But if you're managing a software implementation and a large scale project, you're going to manage people, whether it's consult or just external people to your department to make sure that the work gets done in your timelines and your budget are met. And that led into people recommending me for leadership. Funny story about that. My the first boss that ever actually wanted to make me a leader. I said no and I turned him down. And it was, he was flabbergasted because he'd never had somebody turn that down. But I wasn't ready. I was too immature and I didn't have the skill set. So I had a dotted line leadership role with him and I helped, I learned under his guidance and he really was a fantastic mentor and to this day still is. He's long since retired, but we stay in touch so I get to bounce ideas off of him. And so that was my start into leadership in the IT space.
• 5:12
  Speaker A: So I'm going to, I'm actually going to interject for a second here because there's, I, I 100% want to explore this for a second. Uh, so you said, you said no and where, I mean I know you just explained you felt you weren't ready. How did you know you weren't ready and how did you make that evaluation to like self, kind of like self, be that, be that self aware.
• 5:32
  Speaker B: Honestly, I think I broke out into a cold sweat almost immediately. Um, I had had, I'd had some interactions with the people management side of things. Again, dotted line. And I'd been doing that for a while. But the idea of writing a review for somebody or dealing with a person with personnel issues when things weren't going right, it's easy when things are going well, for sure. It's much easier. It's when things aren't going well. You really have to be able to step up your game and manage that in a truly professional manner with a significant amount of emotional intelligence. And at that point, at that age, in my point in career, I did not have the emotional intelligence that I would need to handle that type of situation. I was still a hothead. And you can't be a hothead and be an effective leader.
• 6:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, I remember. I, I, I, it passed. I've told this story on the, the podcast here. I'm, I'm 46 and I've been in management roles since I, in my mid-20s, I, I ended up at a IT consulting firm, like local, you know, regional provider, you know, 20 plus years ago. And weeks after I started as a systems engineer, consulting system engineer, the person who was my boss departs somewhat unceremoniously and quickly. So they're like you, you are, you could do this right? So you know, very quickly I was essentially the boss of, you know, eight people and 26 year old me was nowhere near as wise as 46 year old me was as a manager. You know, I was, I was, I mean I wasn't like a high, like yelling at people, throwing things across the room type of high. You know, they're not saying that's how you say you're a high tech, but, but I, I know what you're getting at, which is like, like I remember times when I would sit down and I'd Like I'd have an employee challenge me or something like that. I'm not doing this. Why? What, what are you going to do? Well, I do it because I'm the boss. Right. I told you you could do it. Like, that doesn't work. Like, I know now that's not how you do it, but, you know, 26 year old me was like, well, you're going to do it because I'm in charge. Right?
• 7:34
  Speaker B: Right. It's. Yeah. And. And that absolutely does not work to say, well, because I told you so, because I'm. I'm responsible, I'm the boss. And therefore, because people won't do it or they will sabotage it, maybe not even intentionally, but they're not going to give it their best effort or. You were, you were my peer, you were my equal last week. Who are you to tell me how to do my job? And I actually had a role when I joined Rejoined Baxter as we were spinning off as Baxalta. I had one of the people on my team was somebody I had been an equal with at my first stint at Baxter, and we had been friends outside of work. And my first conversation with her was all social media interactions need to stop. We need to pause it. We need to move this over to a strictly professional relationship until we kind of establish a cadence, because you don't want any perception that there's any favoritism anywhere. And she was really open to it. She was really surprised by it. She said, I never thought of that. And then I asked her, I said, so are you going to have a problem being with me being your boss? No. She ended up being fantastic. But it was a learning experience to sit there and go, how in the world do I navigate this? Because when I started, that was never an issue. Social media wasn't a thing. And so now that's an everyday occurrence. And I actually experienced the first time with that, not even in my professional space. My first leadership role had nothing to do with it and nothing to do with business, but was in my volunteer work and one of my mentors in that space. So it's an aviation museum in Southern California, and I was responsible for all of the volunteers and I'd come up through the ranks. I was the assistant volunteer coordinator, became the volunteer coordinator for several years, and one of the volunteers happens to be my husband. So I learned very quickly how to navigate de g. Don't show favoritism to him or his friends or his particular space at the museum. And it was a great way to cut my teeth on being A leader and managing a lot of people. So that was about 150 volunteers at.
• 9:42
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• 10:35
  Speaker A: We're going to look, we're going to explore that in a couple of minutes here a little deeper. But I want to ask you also still on this topic about the time you said no, what else do you, looking back now, what else weren't you ready to do? And the reason I'm is I'll give you a frame of why I'm asking this. So you know, our listeners on the podcast are, you know, other IT leaders and mid market companies, but also people who are coming up into the IT leadership space and they, you know, when am I ready? What's the right way to do it? What's the right approach? So thinking back on that, you know, 26 year old you or 30 year old you who said no, what else wasn't ready? You know, you laid out a couple things, but were there other things now that you're like that too? Like totally would have done that, right?
• 11:17
  Speaker B: A lot of it was, it was as much about the hard skills, being able to do a budget, having the relationship, some of it's soft skills. So relationships with your business side and hard skills, I could program, no problem. I can configure a system, I can build a computer, that stuff's easy. But doing a forecast or a budget or any of those other skills that you don't go to school to learn, now you do. But I had never had anybody teach me how to do any of these things. I'd never had exposure. And then I was being told, okay, so when you take this position, part of that is you now own this part of the budget. For I, I own what now? I'm responsible for how much money. And I looked at it and it was I mean I take an accounting class, you know, basic accounting and stuff, but it was, this is a whole different level at a multibillion dollar company with an IT budget at the time that was several million dollars. And I could do a project budget. But that's easy. That again, that's easy. That's a very hard and fast cost. Trying to figure out how to do things like that, how to lean into upward management, upward leadership, managing your managers, that was really hard. And a lot of it was self doubt. I am, I truly did not feel like I was qualified to be a leader at that point in time and at that point in my life. And looking back on it, I'm glad I waited. And what I did is I ended up with kind of an interim role that was have leader in the title. And I start. Was able, which then enabled me to start picking up certain skills, building the first draft of a budget or having input and working with the team to build their goals, their professional goals and, and help do their reviews. I would actually do the first pass of the reviews for this team and then hand it over to my boss and say here's what I came up with. And. But learning to deal with VPs and even at the time directors, I'm like, I can't talk to these people. I have no idea how to talk to these people. I was terrified to sit in a room full of directors, which now doesn't, obviously doesn't faze me. I talk to our CEO all the time. But at that time in that point in my career, I had no idea how to do that without tripping over myself. And so I, I'm glad I made the decision because I was able to learn from it.
• 13:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, now I'm going to get deep for a second here and I just, I put my elbow down on the table and missed people on the podcast can't see that. But I just like jumped on unexpectedly because I was like, woo. I spooked myself. But I want to get deep here with you for a second and I, I would love to explore. So the IT space is very male dominated and one of the things that they, you know, this is, this is a, a conversation that's not, it's not, you know, new or unexpected where it's often highlighted that, that you know, the women in these roles, they, they're like, I don't have the skills. I, you know, and then guys are like, I could do anything. I'll fake it till I make it. And um, and I'm just curious how you find the balance between those two. And did you feel like maybe some of that kind of like, like idea, you know, held you? I don't want to say held you back because you've, you certainly enjoyed success. But I just, I've, I'm trying to figure out how to explore that a little bit with you because you, you're occupying a somewhat unique space in it. You're telling me a story here about like, hey, I said no, I made the decisions. And I, you know, I certainly think those are, those are exactly what, you know, they, they were the right things for your career. But that doesn't mean that, you know, for somebody else in that space, like, there's a lot of people who are like, oh, I shouldn't do this. And especially women in this, in this environment who are like, oh, I don't know what I know yet. And things like that, and they try to be cautious when they shouldn't be.
• 15:07
  Speaker B: And, you know, that's a really good point. And I have to say, a lot of it, I've never truly felt held back as a woman in the IT space. Yeah, I have my dad to thank for that. I have my mentors to thank for that, truly. I was raised in a family that's like, you could do whatever you want to do. There is no glass ceiling unless you think there is. And the other really cool thing about the role that I first turned down, when I turned down that leadership role, my boss's boss was a woman leader. And so, and she was a very strong, very powerful. She was forced to be reckoned with. She was absolutely phenomenal. She kicked butt, didn't take names, she just steamrolled right through. And so she actually, she, she pulled me and she questioned me. She's like, wait, are you sure this is the decision you want to make? And wanted to make sure that I made it for the right reasons. Now I will say sitting in a room, a conference room full of male VPs and directors, very much was intimidating at that point. But again, it was more for me, even looking back at it, it wasn't that I'm sitting in a room full of men. I have a lot of male dominated hobbies. We can go down that rabbit hole later. But I'm in a lot of hobbies that, you know, I'm around a lot of powerful men, so that's never fazed me as much as just going, I don't know what they know. I don't have a PhD. I don't have a master's degree secret. I don't even have a bachelor's degree. So I have an associate degree and then a lot of self taught. And so that for me was more the root of my lack of self confidence in taking that role at that time. So and I tell people don't do what I did. I fully encourage people. There are absolute reasons to not get a four year degree. Not everybody is cut out for college. But I encourage people to either get that four year degree or get additional education, do additional work, learn, continue learning. Just because I didn't go to formal school for four years, I still I do a lot of learning on my own which is how I enjoy it. And if you're not learning, you're not growing and you'll never elevate to that next level.
• 17:27
  Speaker A: That's great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. It's always a tough you know I don't call it sensitive subject but it's a tough subject to talk about. But you know I think it's always important even you know people listening to this podcast about like it is one of those industries that's it's even to this day is relatively highly gendered and you know that that creates different impediments and barriers to the people who are coming in from you know, a different those different perspectives here.
• 17:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it still is. Although I'm starting to see a little more even you know as far as how many women technicians there are and help desk people. One of the cool things is we have three women on our IT leadership team. So that's actually a pretty cool number to look at when you look at three very high level women in an IT team. And you know, but I can tell you interviewing people, bringing candidates. I haven't had a single female's resume come across my desk and I've hired for three roles now.
• 18:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, I've encountered the same problem. Like when I when I started at I was a county CIO for about 10 years before I was as my current role where I'm CIO CITO at a health mental health nonprofit and the at the county when I first started we had a woman who had been there for just about 20 years programmer as 400 as for under program.
• 18:52
  Speaker B: In.
• 18:52
  Speaker A: A while I know it's crazy right? We still had an AS400 when I started that was only like that was not there was this was less than 15 years ago. Just so we're clear.
• 19:01
  Speaker B: Oh my gosh. Wow.
• 19:02
  Speaker A: And you know home built home you know home built as 400 software. So we were moving off of it but she was planning to retire and, and, but at the time, she was one of the people who came up through IBM. So we're an IBM area where I, where I live in upstate New York. IBM was founded in this area. So there's a ton of IBM influence. And IBM had, In the late 70s and 80s, they had a program to develop women programmers because they, you know, they just, they needed people. They were like, oh my God, we need people. You want to learn cobol, you can learn cobol, you learn rpg. This is going to be fantastic. So, you know, she was one of those folks who had come up through those programs and got into the IT space through IBM.
• 19:44
  Speaker B: Oh, that's really cool.
• 19:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's super awesome. But I never got a, I never got a single women's resume for any IT position that I posted in the entire eight years I was there.
• 19:53
  Speaker B: Wow. And it's, you know, and I wish there were, I know some amazing women in it. They just don't happen to be applying for the roles. I mean, and I wouldn't, I would say this, I wish resumes didn't have a name.
• 20:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 20:07
  Speaker B: Because I don't necessarily care if you're a man or a woman. I want to see your skills. Bring me your skills. When I interview you, I'll figure out what you are. And to me that's huge. But it is disappointing a little bit and frustrating because I would love to see women in these higher level roles and applying and just add to that landscape at Avidity and anywhere else that I am. Really.
• 20:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. In my current role, the nonprofit I'm at. So I'm the executive team. There's 12 of us on the executive team. And I'm, I am one of those three guys. That's it. I'm one of three of 12 of us.
• 20:45
  Speaker B: Wow. Okay.
• 20:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 20:46
  Speaker B: So the opposite problem.
• 20:48
  Speaker A: The opposite.
• 20:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:48
  Speaker A: Our workforce is like 60%, I believe it's very, you know, I happen to work in a very, you know, female dominated workplace, which is, which, to be honest, I find, I find enjoyable in that we're a very. The organization itself is very oriented towards. Well, because we're in the mental health space in particular and social services in general. There's a lot of orientation towards like being mindful to people, how, you know, I won't say how you're feeling, but like people's, how they're showing up, how you're, you know, how, how, you know, what your backgrounds are and why you're doing things that you are, stuff like that, as opposed to Just more of a directive, like, you know, hey, we said to do this, get this, get this done, that type of stuff. So it's a. It's a much more ebb and flow and give and take relationship where the relationship between work and your personal life is much more balanced.
• 21:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know what that's like most days.
• 21:42
  Speaker A: Except what I suffer. The giant project that I'm implementing right now, you know, we're in the middle of doing an implementation of NetSuite ERP, so that's consuming a lot of our life. So.
• 21:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, big projects will do that all the time.
• 21:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's like the worst. The worst thing. So, I mean, I think even in your roles, it also exists as, you know, even if you're a lead of a section of an IT team. But like, the worst, the worst projects for CIOs are ERP projects because they touch everyone. It never makes everyone happy. So everyone's got a gripe with some part of the system. And there's so many moving parts, it's almost impossible to keep them. You keep them all together and you're almost always guaranteed to be off budget and behind the schedule, even when you extend it out and add budget.
• 22:27
  Speaker B: Very much so. And in life sciences, add on the validation aspect for certain parts of the erp, and now you get to make even more people unhappy.
• 22:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. So just want to check or switch over to another topic here about. You mentioned about big budgets. So. And, and I've run into this too. Like, I. I serve on a. There's a board that I serve on as a. For a credit union. And you know, so they have the budgets for things like IT services and just other general stuff. It's members of the committee. So a credit union has a volunteer board and you know, so they're made up of the members and they have an audit on the chair of the audit board. So we have members on our audit board. And one of the things that we found when we onboard new folks is they don't understand like, scale of budgets. You know, like, hey, I run a small business. So then you get to this company that's like 2, 3, $400 million in operations. And like you're spending what on what? They look through the budget. So they're like, why does this cost $10,000? And you know, so like I. That struck in my mind that you mentioned about one of the things that you felt was a gap was about how you look at budgets. And you were like, not necessarily comfortable because this is like a Multimillion dollar IT budget for just one project. It just feels, it feels overwhelming just because the dollars are so big.
• 23:48
  Speaker B: It does. And it's really interesting because as you move into leadership, unless you've been a project manager, so project managers learn how to do budgets. When you become a manager or a leader, nobody says, hey, by the way, this is how we want you to manage a budget. They just go, oh, by the way, you own this now. You are fully responsible to make sure that you stay aligned with your budget for the year and you forecast for next year. And they don't tell you how. So where do you start? And kind of fun thing is because Avidity is a young company and we're small. When I joined, a lot of our software was still being bought on people's credit cards, so we didn't have purchase orders for a lot of stuff, which meant you didn't necessarily have the budget the first year I joined. And so my boss and I at the time built out an IT budget. We handed it in knowing full well it probably was well under what we needed. And they're like, you need how much money? You've never needed that much money for it. I'm like, there were three of us and we weren't buying anything appropriately. So two years later, the budget we submitted was probably five times that. And a large chunk of that was for the R and D space. Because R and D takes a lot of money. Big systems have to be put in. And you know, other than erp, we are some of the biggest systems that you put in. We still have to, every year with our budget, explain why that budget for just for my piece, just for R and D, why it's so huge and why it's growing exponentially year over year. Like, well, you want this solution, you want this. You need supply chain, you need a lims, you need an eln, you need all these tools, all these capabilities. That costs money. And guess what? I don't have headcount. So I'm hiring contractors, which is even more money. And they actually don't mind the one that's always cracked me up. Oh, you want to hire contractors, Great, Go for it all day long. Oh, you want to hire FTEs? Well, no, we can't afford that.
• 25:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, the FTV expense is like the devil, right?
• 25:40
  Speaker B: It is. And it's at the end of the day, it's not necessarily that much different as far as the budget numbers and what I spend for one versus the other. Because you're buying five or six contractors for the Price of one fte. I'm still spending the same money, but it comes out of a different bucket. So.
• 25:59
  Speaker A: So I'm going to change gears here for a next few minutes. And you alluded to and mentioned that you volunteer at a aviation museum, but this would be, I'm going to let, I'll just let the cat out of the bag and instead of asking you and trying to draw it out of you somewhere. But one of the things that's unique about you is that you have a pilot's license and you mentioned you, you volunteer at for many years, at least one or maybe multiple aviation museums. Tell us a little bit more about that.
• 26:28
  Speaker B: So I got my private pilot license back in 1999, ironically enough, being a fan of history on Pearl harbor day. So on December 7th of 1999. And so I had learned to fly up in my, where I grew up, up in the San Francisco Bay area. And fun fact, the flight school I learned to fly out was owned by a woman. So there you go. In a male dominated space.
• 26:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 26:54
  Speaker B: So I've always been around influential women. So I, I just learned. It was fun, it was fun to fly around the Bay Area. I moved to Southern California and got involved. Actually I was still living up north, but I got involved with Plains of Fame in Chino, California. And I just started going down visiting because I liked the old, the old airplanes. Part of my journey in it was that I approached them. We were the third aviation museum with a website ever.
• 27:20
  Speaker A: Oh.
• 27:22
  Speaker B: Two of the three of us were hosted on the same server.
• 27:25
  Speaker A: And it wasn't a GeoCities website, was it?
• 27:28
  Speaker B: No, I don't remember now. Boy, it's been a minute. But it was, it was really funny because I approached the president of the museum and I told him, I said, so you guys need a website? And he's like, I need a what? So do you guys need a website? You know, everybody around the world knows who you are. They know about this museum. We're world world famous. But I'd love to put together a website for you. And he's like, well, let me think about it. I gave him a, gave him my number. A couple weeks later he calls me back and he's like, what's it going to cost me? I said nothing. I said, if there's any cost this first five years, I'll cover it out of my pocket.
• 28:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. If he had to go figure out if this web thing was like a real deal, that was going to continue on. Right, right. Let me get back to you.
• 28:08
  Speaker B: Right. And why do I need this? Why do I care? We just restore old airplanes. So he's like okay, it's not going to cost me. So he's like yeah, sure, go ahead. Just any, any stuff you're going to put up there, let me read it first. Now this is fun. We were faxing pages back and forth, it was that long ago. And because he didn't have the email he didn't open, we would trick him to stay off the computer because he couldn't get past the non existent password. So he was not a computer guy by any stret. So when he said yes, I turned to my friend that I worked with, I'm like, so how do I build a website? I had and I taught myself HD but I hand coded that website for the first 8 years. Never used a tool for it, hand coded it. But I've always been into old airplanes in history. I've got about 80 hours in an old T6 that a friend of mine has which is an old World War II trainer. So I've gotten to fly a number of warbirds. I've done some seaplane ratings. And although Planes of Fame is my primary museum that I'm involved with, I've also been involved with Commemorative Air Force Quonset Air Museum in Rhode island and a few others. So I've been involved with multiple museums over the years. Side note, I also, I also drive a Sherman tank, so.
• 29:25
  Speaker A: Oh, it's just coming out. Like stuff is coming out, it's just flowing here. This is good. So, so you now when you say you volunteer at these museums and you mentioned you got some time, you've flown some of these vintage planes or flown.
• 29:38
  Speaker B: I have, yes, I have.
• 29:38
  Speaker A: Or pilot. You pilot like not, not just like, like watch them take off and polish them on the ground. Like you get in behind there and you take off and you land this thing.
• 29:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, I do not fly the museums planes per se, although I've flown a couple of them. I don't have the time to dedicate to the museum to earn that right. But I have gotten to fly them a couple times. But I have a friend who has a T6. I actually own my husb. Own a 1950 Navion which is a four seat airplane that was designed for the pilots coming back from World War II that flew P51 Mustangs.
• 30:11
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 30:12
  Speaker B: So if you look at it, it has very similar, similar lineage and it looks very, very similar to the old Mustangs.
• 30:19
  Speaker A: This is super cool. So I got to ask about the Sherman tank thing. Is this Is this a regular occurrence? Or, like, was it one time? Thank you.
• 30:27
  Speaker B: So as part of my volunteer work at the museum, I've been involved with the motor pool. So we restore the Sherman, the ambulance, bunch of other vehicles, and we maintain them. And, gosh, I'd been probably volunteering about 20 years. We were at a. At an event, and a bunch of other people had learned to drive the Sherman. And I finally asked our tank commander. I said, can I drive the tank? And he said, actually, I think it was more along the lines of, if somebody else gets to learn to drive it before me, I'm going to be pissed, to be fair. And he's like, wait, you've never driven it? And front crew had no idea I had never driven it because I've always been involved with it as long as they've been around. And he's like, oh, I thought you'd driven it. Hop in. And so we were at an event and in front of the public the first time, I got to drive it around in circles and just tear up the lawn. And if you can drive an old tractor, you can drive a tank. It is a ton of fun. I don't drive it often, but I have driven it a couple of times, and I'm one of four women who have ever driven it.
• 31:30
  Speaker A: That is. That's super cool.
• 31:33
  Speaker B: So, Yep.
• 31:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, so this is. This is. We're just. We're pulling out all the stops here on the podcast right now. We got tanks, we got planes. If you haven't, you haven't, like, they haven't, like. Like live ammunition, shot anything or anything.
• 31:45
  Speaker B: People get mad when you. When you shoot live ammo at them. But we do fire blanks, and yes, I do know how to load the blank shells. Okay. So, yeah, one of my other hidden talents.
• 31:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's true. They would get. I think they would be irritated if you were to shoot at them.
• 32:00
  Speaker B: We can.
• 32:02
  Speaker A: Maybe a target. I mean, like, I don't know, you know, like, you know, hit this, hit that building that's abandoned.
• 32:07
  Speaker B: You know, we've run through them with the tank.
• 32:11
  Speaker A: Have you. Have you run the tank through a building or you just drive? You just drift out of the grass or you've crushed. Have you crushed a building with the tank?
• 32:18
  Speaker B: So I didn't crush the building. I have crushed fence line.
• 32:22
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 32:22
  Speaker B: Intentionally. That was on purpose, not on accident. Yeah, but some of our crew, when they closed Fort Ord up in Monterey, California, and they were doing an event up there, and they let the guys run through the building and Destroy it with a tank. So, yeah, it was fun to watch.
• 32:41
  Speaker A: This would be. I would still want to be a part of this. I'm super jealous right now. I think that our. Our listeners are also super jealous hearing about this. They're like, where do I get to drive a tank?
• 32:53
  Speaker B: There are a couple places, but that's another podcast for another day, I'm sure.
• 32:58
  Speaker A: I'm sure there's somebody who does, like, a tanks podcast that, you know, they can tell you where all this is.
• 33:04
  Speaker B: There's a place in Texas and a place in Massachusetts where you can drive them.
• 33:08
  Speaker A: Oh. Oh, yes. Yeah, this is. Oh, yeah. Well, this makes sense because there's like. What is it like, Diggerland, I think we have out here where you could get, like, go if you want to do, like, backhoes and bulldozers and stuff like that.
• 33:20
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 33:21
  Speaker A: So we. We'll just.
• 33:22
  Speaker B: You have to have space.
• 33:23
  Speaker A: That's right. We'll just refer to this as tank land. So there's tank land at a couple places around the country.
• 33:28
  Speaker B: There you go.
• 33:29
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, well, continuing on the. The. I. I guess the. The, you know, diving into some of the personal stuff. It's a great story. I really appreciate you sharing with. With me and the listeners of, you know, your background there on that. The planes and the planes. No trains, automobiles, tanks. But we always ask on the podcast. One of the things I always ask guests is how you got into technology and computers and things like that, you know, And I think, you know, this is something you were into as a kid. Totally not. I mean, you mentioned you fell into it from a work perspective, but what was your. How'd you get into the technology space? Is like a person, or did you not? You did not. Some people are like, hey, I work at it. But, like, you know, at night all I do is, you know, work in my wood shop and build benches, and I don't want to touch computers.
• 34:19
  Speaker B: So I. My first exposure was when I was in junior high and my sister's friend would lug over his trash Shady. And he would bring that over, put it on our dining room table, pull the rotary phone off the wall, plug it in, and he could. He first time I saw anybody do any sort of hacking is he went into the San Jose State College onto their web servers from my kitchen growing up.
• 34:52
  Speaker A: Like, Like. Like they're like bbs essentially, at this point, right? Yeah.
• 34:55
  Speaker B: Yep. And so he. He'd come over, he'd bring his computer over, which was quite the feat back then because it's the whole. The cpu, the monitor, the whole kitten caboodle, the luggable.
• 35:07
  Speaker A: Not a porn.
• 35:09
  Speaker B: Yes. And he'd set up, and this was about every two or three weeks he'd come over and we'd just play on the computer for the most part. I really wasn't into it, but I'd sit there and kind of go, okay, this is kind of fascinating. Always was more interested in the life science space and the computer piece just sort of happened and technology happened. So it was never something I actively pursued. I actually originally wanted to be a nurse, so. And got halfway through nursing school and said, yeah, no, not going to happen. But I've always stayed in life sciences and I find that I enjoy the people side of the technology, which is why I'm a business partner, because that's all about the relationships.
• 35:51
  Speaker A: As soon as you mentioned that you were nursing, the first thing that popped into my mind was how does the skills that you would have brought to there and skills you picked up and learned. You, you know, you didn't, you didn't complete being a nurse. You, you went far enough along that you, you knew what, what it was about. So those skills probably set you up to be good at what you do. Right.
• 36:11
  Speaker B: They translate very nicely for not just the business partnership, but the life science piece. Again, knowing our technology, understanding. And that's why I love what I do. I can speak the computer language, I can talk to my scientists about their IT needs, but I can also talk to them about the science and they're not talking over me. And that's so important. To have a valuable conversation is to really relate and to understand. Oh, you're talking about this molecule. Oh, you need to be able to do this aliquoting. You need to be able to do whatever it is they have in the labs. And I understand the instrumentation. More importantly, especially as I'm training people for our site services and our managed service provider team. I understand the limitations of the systems that we run in the labs and that you can't just treat it like any computer. And I've had that conversation with people like it's just a computer. Yes. But you can't put it on the network, you can't put our tools on it. Yes, it's a security risk because of that. How do we isolate it? And you have to be able to have the technological conversations with the IT people. That's easy. I can learn that. I've, I've learned that over the years. But to be able to have that heart to heart with the scientists is a real Skill because a lot of people on it, unless you've come up through that space, that's a much harder skillset to learn. And so the nursing experience and just coming up through life sciences has proved to be extremely valuable in those conversations.
• 37:42
  Speaker A: So we're coming up here at the end of the podcast. I want another thing I always make sure to talk to guests about is about your leadership background. And what I'll frame it as a question in your case here. If you're talking to other folks who are coming up in IT and looking to develop their leadership skills, what advice do you have for them?
• 38:02
  Speaker B: Find one or more mentors who are leaders that you respect and whose opinions are value that you value. Without my mentors, I would never have gotten where I'm at. And they come, they don't have to come from the space that you work in. I have a, one of my mentors was a VP at Northrop Grumman. A lot of them are in the industry, in this industry, in life sciences. My dad is one of my best mentors over the years, and not just because he's my father, but because he was a leader. He, you know, he moved up through the ranks and he knows how to lead people. And sometimes your mentors are not even in leadership roles, but they can, they see things and they can tell you, hey, this doesn't really translate well. It doesn't work well. And maybe you should approach it this way. There may be more people oriented and that's a super skill to have and not something everybody can do. Anybody can learn to be a manager, not everybody can learn to be a leader. That's more of an inherent skill. But find one or more really solid mentors because that, that makes all the difference.
• 39:09
  Speaker A: Pretty cool. I appreciate that advice.
• 39:12
  Speaker B: That's.
• 39:13
  Speaker A: I'm thinking about where that goes and I even think it makes me think about mentors that I have and how they're not even connected to the work that I do. You know, so I mentioned I'm on a bank board and, or a credit union. I'd be careful. Credit unions, the difference. But I had a credit union, you know, the audit chair of a credit union board and one of the CEO, you know, I would consider him to be a mentor of mine. You know, he's, we talk about like career goals and the things that are happening, but he's a great way to have advice that exists outside of say like my IT space and gives me a different lens to think about and talk to talk to somebody. But it's also Great to get somebody who's like, he's the CEO of a, you know, $300 million organization. So he has scale and scope. He serves on other boards himself. He could. He could just share things that I may not have exposure to because he's working at a different, you know, both in a different space and sometimes at a different level.
• 40:07
  Speaker B: One of my favorite mentors is somebody who. I never really thought about her as a mentor until much later, and I realized she had been a mentor all along. So I worked with her at Amgen, and we reconnected several years. Gosh, ten years later, and we started talking and just talking about some of the advice she'd given me over the years. And we stay in touch even now because of it. And it's just phenomenal because you realize, wow, this person, without me actively seeking a mentor, was mentoring me. Sometimes it's as simple as demonstrating what a good or a bad leader looks like. Some of the best mentors or best examples or bad examples because, you know, I don't want to be there. Then you go seeking out the advice from somebody else saying, how do I not become that? How do I pivot and do something different and do it better or more effectively? So never underestimate the power of a bad example.
• 41:02
  Speaker A: All right, that is awesome advice, and I'm going to leave it there. So, Cindy, thank you so much for investing your time with us on the podcast today.
• 41:09
  Speaker B: Thank you very much. This was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the conversation.
• 41:12
  Speaker A: That's a wrap on today's episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I'm Doug Kameen, and we look forward to coming to you on our next episode.