Latest / Calm Under Fire / Sergio Fernandez De Cordova
Transcript
- Col. John Boggs: Welcome to Calm Under Fire. This is where we explore how real leaders deliver when the stakes are high. I'm Colonel John Boggs, U.S. Marine Corps retired and the president of Fortitude Consulting. Fortitude Consulting, it's an executive leadership development and coaching firm. I am an advisor to senior executives, to generals, CEOs, and then the like. In every episode, we'll uncover how extraordinary leaders stay calm, take action and win without chaos. So let's get into it. My guest today operates on a global scale across governments, multilateral institutions, the private sector and the highest levels of diplomacy. Sergio Alonso Fernandez de Cordova y de Vega is the founder and executive chairman of the public Foundation, where he leads groundbreaking work in public-private partnerships, in innovative financing, and data-driven governance. His impact spans more than 100 countries, and he has touched over 1 billion people. 1 billion. Under Sergio's leadership, Public has partnered with the United Nations, the Vatican, and the White House. shaping how nations harness media, data, and technology to strengthen economic resilience and build sustainable infrastructure. He has helped raise over a billion dollars, that's right, a billion dollars to advance economic inclusion, smart cities, and emerging technologies. He's been recognized globally from knighthoods to the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, to personal recognition from Pope Francis himself. This is a leader who thinks in decades, not quarters, a strategist whose work changes how countries prepare for the future. Sergio, welcome to Calm Under Fire. It is truly an honor to have you here today. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Thank you, Colonel John. I really appreciate the time and I'm excited to have our conversation here today. Col. John Boggs: ⁓ Sergio, you work ⁓ at the intersection of and multilateral ⁓ and the private sector. So how do you describe your mission when speak with leaders your work for the first time? Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Well, it's a great question, John. And it's not about encountering our work. We come in as problem solvers, right? We are looking at where the future is going. I, being an entrepreneur, came to America when I was nine years old and started my first business when I was 12. You know, learned that if you want to do it right, you got to do it and stop talking about it. And in my journey of building the various different businesses from media to newspapers, newspapers to media to billboards to smart cities to now, the foundation. I realized what lacked in a public sector was really access to innovation and access to that sort of a visionary thinking so that they knew how to actually work from within government. So people would usually leave government and then go to the private sector. ⁓ People would, you know, say I'm going to, you know, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: do my time here and then bring that experience. But when you leave government and go to the private sector, ⁓ the only value they bring is access, not innovation. so when you look at, know, from a context of how do you help leaders lead is give them the tools, right? Give them the tools and then give them the tools without a paywall. What I realized also was that, you know, everyone looks at government because they see a lot of ⁓ dollars, if you will. They're not disposable dollars. You'll see a lot of startups, entrepreneurs, or even the government sector themselves that say, I'm going to come back and I'm going to make a lot of money being a lobbyist or doing this or working alongside. What really kind of lit a fire inside of me was this gap that existed between how a leader is trying to lead and they dedicate their lives and unfortunately some of them don't come really equipped with business savvy or technology savvy and that needs to change no matter what. But in a moment we're trying to bridge that gap. And so you have people in Congress today printing out emails and they have their aides tell them exactly what the email said. There is no level of utilization of technology. I saw this way back when I had my newspapers when I went through the digitization phase from Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: printing plates to print newspapers to digitize them and pressing a file. And, yet the, you know, government was still literally 10, 15 years behind. And, you know, to me, we're really, as I was saying before, what really got that fire inside of me started was I said, wow, we need to bridge this gap. And this is, you know, and I didn't see it as a business opportunity. I saw it as a responsibility. And I said, as I'm building this, if I want to have a good partner on the other side, I need to, you know, wear their shoes, understand where they're coming from and then help them and give them the tools so they could see what I see. And at a bare minimum, we could then decide how to engage, how to build that infrastructure. I always tell people I build infrastructure. Infrastructure is not sexy. You don't see it. You don't celebrate it. Right. Nobody recognizes it. You don't realize you're driving on a highway or you're using fiber satellite technologies for us to have this conversation. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Right. And that's really kind of where I found myself. And it was an interesting niche because everyone that I spoke to wanted, everybody has aspirations. They all wake up, they brush their teeth, take a shower, eat breakfast. They're all humans, presidents, mayors, senators, congressmen, CEOs, or the pope himself. And so, you know, at the end of the day, when we see the world transforming, as we have seen over the last 20 years, This is a tremendous opportunity to actually do the right thing to support, help, to help our leaders do it better. And, and that's really kind of, you know, to answer your question, I don't want to, you know, go deeper into that, but that's, as you can tell, is something that really drives me. It's exciting ⁓ because, know, the knowledge is out there. I always tell people we're over disrupted, over innovated. It's time to actually implement. Col. John Boggs: Time to actually do the work. ⁓ Alright, yeah. When was the moment when you realized that your path was going to be global and not just entrepreneurial but geopolitical? Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Yeah. Well, it's great question and I think it was when I had my billboard business because when I started my billboard business, I started with this idea that we're going to digitize the streets, the pay phones, the taxi cabs and my apologies on that and create digital infrastructure that will reinvent the future through the streets. Everybody was always talking about IBM, right? IBM was always ⁓ the main player when you talked about government and digitization about 20 years ago. right in the 1999, 2000s. then Oracle in the early days of, buy our tech, Dell, buy our computers. Everybody taught you that they were going to go to the future, but nobody could draw a straight line from zero to a trillion dollar economy. so when I had my billboard business, what I started to see was, you know, when we raised a lot of money from a hedge fund and to grow the company, when they saw the vision, said, this is nuts. we need a platform and you're just the right platform because we've done our homework and you know, people know who you are. You just don't make them happy, which is a good thing. ⁓ ⁓ so when we started the business, I really focused on, and I said to my team, I'm going to focus on real estate, government fairs and legal. Right. ⁓ I started to really go into, you know, the, the reading the laws and understanding the laws of New York, New Jersey, Chicago, ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ and be honest with was like a language I knew. from whatever decades and I took zero law at that time, had zero experience in any of this policy making, but it was, just, I understood it. I was like, I could see it. And I was like, all right, here we go, all in. I'm just gonna follow that fire inside me. And that was the first time, you know, I kind of had that feeling. And I just said, this might just be my calling, right? And I was like, this is something, I don't know where this takes me. But started with the billboards. Fast forward, we went on to rewrite history in the billboard market. We led the industry on the digitization. You know, I was involved in the committee on the digitization of the highways. ⁓ You know, we were probably the most aggressive ⁓ spender in legal and government affairs across the country. I had 15 lobby groups and 25 law firms working for me directly. And I was basically like general counsel and head of government affairs. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: I went all the way from, you know, ⁓ working with the white house and that's how I got involved with the white house all the way down to state level and city level. And what I realized was these mayors, when they saw that I had, and I was starting a lot of, ⁓ groups of young leaders, said, if I'm spending all this money, but I'm really not using these lawyers, let me figure out how to grab the remnant capacity and give it to my fellow entrepreneurs and say, Hey, I'm already paying DLA pipe or 20 grand a month. but they're only doing two hours worth of work. Let me use that other work capacity and put it to good work, right? And how do I explore the do good? So it became known as a triple bottom line guy that knew how to actually create good inside government as a business. And that was really our RMO when I started the billboard business was, you know, don't want it, you know, when we, when we did all the policy making, like for Miami, we created the Times Square of the South. right, digitize all of Miami, the idea was that a percentage of those funds had to go to arts and education. So I started to realize, you know, the power of writing good policy from zero, right, from zero to one, right, in Peter Thiel's book, right, from zero to one, not from one to five, but people are already at two to three. You can't undo zero to one. So from zero to one was, okay, if we're to write the policy, let's write it better. And just my thinking really evolved. in what can be, not what can't be. ⁓ again, coming at it from very entrepreneurial and really had a depth of understanding this stuff, ⁓ started to build with the billboard business. then now, you know, eight years later, after having, you know, built this business as it became the third largest privately owned billboard company, the fastest growing in America, ⁓ it was, again, I wasn't really a billboard guy. What was I? I was a government affairs and public private partnership guy. I was a P3 guy that understood how to merge the two. Now, you know, as an entrepreneur, I was like, how do I make money from this? And it was like, it's impossible. There's just really no way because I'm competing with some of the biggest organizations in the planet. So I went on a journey while, you know, as I was wrapping up on, you know, my sort of, trying to figure out what's next from the billboard. company and started to, you know, go out there across the planet and work with the governments of Guatemala, Mexico, the Emirates, because they all wanted to build. This is the early days. They were all digitizing their countries. ⁓ Everybody was looking at this new thing called smart cities, right? And I became the most logical person to talk to because I'd actually done it. I literally created, you know, pay phones that had solar panels and bus shelters that had solar panels. were the first ones to do anything like that in America. And the infrastructure is a billboard guy. Right. So, you know, it was really interesting is that I was just kind of like, you know, the old saying is just keep working hard at it. You just continue. You're going to get better. I just kept exploring, right. And in this city, this city, this city. And then people would ask me, that can you apply that to Mexico? Can you apply that to Guatemala? And I was, and then again, I was like, wait, I can't really charge them because they're government officials unless then I have to go through procurement. I was, was just giving the information for free. I was like, yeah, I'll help you out. like, I'll donate my time and I'll help out. And at the same time, I was starting to do a lot more impact work. And I realized that all these organizations, we had media space, hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising space. was like, and we were only at 70 % capacity, which means we had a lot empty space. So I started to get involved with the United Nations. I started to look at global leadership. We started to really get involved in where is everybody that, you know, is 27 years old raised 500 million. I mean, that's a big deal in 2005. And became really famous, really popular quickly, but in the wrong directions, because everybody just wants money from you. Nobody wants to actually sit down and grab a shovel. ⁓ so what I saw was at the global level was, are all the other entrepreneurs like myself who are going to be doing this for the next 40 years? Where are all the global leaders, the political leaders who are going to be the next heads of state? Where are all the... family office and young heirs that have no purpose because their parents are forcing them in one direction, but they see the world differently. How do we unite? So I started to create next gen circles and then I became chairman of political affairs for why yo USA. Then I took on political affairs, why yo ⁓ globally. Be honest with you. That was really my four, four a was like an infrastructure that I could already use. So now I was traveling around the world talking to people about the future. Entrepreneurs were coming. I would say to people, was like, we, the next generation of entrepreneurs want a seat at the table. We're not looking for money, but we do want to make sure that we help you shape tomorrow because we are going to inherit it. You will be gone in 10 years, but we won't. I got 30 more years on top of your 10. And so let us help you shape tomorrow for better economic inclusion, economic development and scale of innovation. And a lot of people thought I was crazy, but I would go and meet with heads of states. was, I was really, I started to network like crazy around the planet. and attend all these events. And as chairman of political affairs, it was great because this is how I got involved with the White House, is I represented 16,000 CEOs in government affairs. So it an easy pitch. Colonel John, ⁓ I represent 16,000 CEOs, a million employees, the largest union that is only focused on the future and representing close to a hundred billion dollar economic value, would you like to sit down and talk? And I want nothing. All right. So it really was, you know, I'm a little bit aggressive sometimes. So, you know, really kind of, you know, got into the rooms and represented even with the U.S. when, when, Obama took office and he started talking about entrepreneurship, him and Joe Biden, you know, we hosted them at an event and I said, you know, went up to directly to Joe Biden. said, you know, anybody could open up 87 doors. I said, what makes a real man is opening a door and closing it. And I said, so you can't talk about entrepreneurship to a room full of entrepreneurs when you have no depth, no context, or even have an exact plan of execution. Because how are we going to do this? And fast forward, they put me with the global entrepreneurship program, the GEP. And this is why I'm still in a billboard company. It put me in the GEP and they said, okay, great. Now be careful what you wish for. ⁓ They said, great. We want to, the state department has an agenda of the most dangerous countries in the world. And how do we drive entrepreneurship policy as a means of the State Department policy? And ⁓ here you go. And so, you know, I was in Egypt and during the uprising and they took us right out. know, they literally two days before, you know, the government and the agency came in and scooped us out and they're like, all right, you guys have to get out of here. This is not going to be healthy. What's going to happen here? And we were literally there talking to the entrepreneurs about, you know, no radicalism. entrepreneur is the future, can build your own future. And this is really kind of how I got involved into the global landscape. And then I realized, I was like, you know, who am I? I'm a jack of all trades. People used to say to me, said, well, why can't I be a master whole? do I have to be, why does this is a half empty rather than half full? I said, the world is shifting. We're not in the fifties anymore, people. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: ⁓ stop listening to that because I really started to follow this sort of intuitive fire inside me of saying, you know, I need to go even broader, global, because this message and talking about the future of government technology, innovation and ⁓ development is what everyone wants, but nobody knows how to plug it in. And then fast forward. ⁓ And in November of 2011, I had this like four o'clock in the morning awakening. And I realized, I was like, I need to restructure my life because I've now uncovered a new direction. And, um, and I had to basically focus on starting a foundation that focuses on how we help the public sector and government overall, look at technology, data, media. and connectivity and all these other things as a means of driving the future and leaving no one behind. Because again, from zero to one, if you map anything from zero to one, you can map it. know, once you go from one to two, ⁓ now you're taking from somebody, right? Rather than building and saying you do X, Y, Z. But if the person thought they were doing X, Y, Z, then now you've taken from them, even though, you know, and that sort of mentality in the public sector And in the private sector, I also started to realize that we needed a solution. So I started the foundation on one side. On the other side, I was crazy enough to start two things at once. I started to split my life into two. One side is going to be, you know, Chinese wall in the middle. One side will be focused strictly on how to help government to start to plant the seed. And then the other side is build smart cities. And I said, I'm going to wear the moniker. I'm going to wear the scarlet letter P3s. P3s historically in the 80s and 90s and the early 2000s was seen as a privatization vehicle for bankers. So I'm going to take over the parking lots for 100 years. I don't have to improve them. I'm making my money. I don't have to add new technology, new innovation. By the way, that real estate could do five other business models. So I was like, OK, we're going to help rewrite history with P3s. But the only way to do it is I'm going to literally strip naked. and exit every business that I'm involved with and just now start fresh and jump off the cliff with this idea of building a global organization that's going to help change the future with looking at the impossible never been done using media data and technology. That was our early ethos. And then on the other side is helping policymakers look at how we could build economic development opportunities through P3s that are inclusive, leave no one behind and make money, right? And on a P3 side, and that's really kind of where I got my crazy fire, which I was like, you know what? was like, I have to do this. And I realized that I was, couldn't do it inside a billboard business. You know, I told my partners, I was like, that day has come. It's time for me to evolve. And it was a little bit scary. People thought I was having a midlife crisis because I was 37 now. And, but no, to me it was... I found a direction. Col. John Boggs: Wow. I've got so many other questions now. ⁓ my gosh. Let me go with this. You've been in the room where nations are debating their future, no doubt. I you talked about where you're going and they called you, they pulled you in to help them do this. I mean, the title of this whole podcast is Calm Under Fire. So, What are the things that the nations face? When government faces crisis, economic, environmental, political, what distinguishes the leaders who navigate, who are with you? What distinguishes those leaders from those who just sit back and get overwhelmed? I mean, could imagine, just listening to you, I could imagine some leaders sitting there going, ⁓ this is too much for me. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Well, you know, it's, um, it's, it's really interesting. I think when you sit down with a head of state, um, or head of the city or head of an organization at the end of the day, they have their priorities. They have their ego, which are pretty wrapped up, well wrapped around it. Um, they have their agendas. Um, They have their influencers, people that are influencing and telling them what to do, or people that they unfortunately owe favors to. Right. And then they have a desire to do their job. But notice that I said this as a fifth thing. And so ultimately this is the most important part. And so what we do every time when I sit down is we're just bringing solutions, right. And solving problems, right. There's no ego, no pride of authorship. You know, it's exciting for me to be able to go in. and sit down and say, okay, what are the priorities? What are the problems? you know, some people get stuck up on, I need a hundred million dollars. That's great. No, I can't do anything until we get a hundred million dollars. I'm like, tell me what it, what do you need? Let me see the blueprint. Let me see why you need a hundred. What do you need a hundred for? What is it that you need? Okay, great. So let's find entrepreneurs and people that would love to work with your government. Let's unpackage this and let's find a solution. Right. And, know, to me, chaos is actually peace. Because when people bring all these problems, actually could see everything. People are afraid of chaos because it's a lot. And you talk about calm under fire. Calm under fire, it's just because you're too ⁓ focused on the pieces rather than focused on the goal. And that's what everybody gets lost. They get lost in the chaos of, rather than the eye of the storm, you are the center of it. If you go right outside the eye of the storm, you're going to get You get torn apart. But if you stay right in the middle, you have pure clarity. And, you know, when you look at what these governments are dealing with chaos, but there is a direct path to clarity. If you actually listen to them, an old mentor of mine said to me, Sergio, you have two of these and two of these. And guess what? You have only one of these. So remember that. And I was like, Right. So when you enter the room, listen. and watch, look at actions, reactions, how they manner, their mannerisms, how they engage you, right? And how they, know, how they even, what their posture is about even meeting you, you know? 50, 60 % of people, they're like, why the F is this guy here? Why am I meeting with you? By the time we're done, taking photos. And it's like, how do we follow up? And I'm like, well, no, I'm like, I'm not. looking to get engaged, we're looking to help, we'll connect the dots, we'll help, you know, sort of create the ingredients for the solution and then move on, right? I'm not looking to move to your country, no disrespect. I'm not looking to, you know, do anything other than just solve the problem and move on to the next, you know, the next thing. And that's really kind of become our forte because no agenda is we're not asking for money, we're just bringing the solutions. We have the network, we have the pedigree, we have the ability to execute and a proven track record of executing. So as these ideas became from ideas to, you know, crazy vision that everybody was like, what, what, you know, what are you doing? Is it getting people really excited? And, ⁓ and I said, that's fine because then we find those that raise their hand, you know, they're in the back. They're like, I want to learn more. Right. And I don't focus on the sexy person. I'm like, I'm going to go to the woman or man that's raised their hands because they self-selected. They're emotionally ready and, and, and, and have. you know, that sort of voice in their head that says that they need to do something different. And so we always come in and we bring in the different. We come in and we show them how to think differently. We show them how to look at the future. because sometimes whether any person in government is stuck in what they see in front of them in a box that they're in. Right. And I had a meeting, I won't say what government, but I had a meeting with the head of state. Col. John Boggs: Hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: It's their state department in Europe. And they were talking to me about entrepreneurship, know, innovation and how to attract more and how to get more respect across the planet as a member state and across the UN system. And I said, you know what the problem is? And this will explain a little bit of the before from before. I said, you know what the problem is? What all those respects are? I said, you live in a beautiful fishbowl. And I said, and it's beautiful fishbowl. said, you see everybody else's fishbowls. I said, but you're afraid to come out of the fishbowl thinking that there's no, and you're in the ocean by the way. Right. And I say, and you're afraid to come out of your fishbowl. You're afraid to, you know, you're complacent with what you know, rather than where the world is going. And if you actually can step out and look from the outside in and then understand that everybody else sees you. as one of the most formidable ⁓ institutional partners in the planet, rather than what you see yourself as, as little fish inside a little fishbowl. And I said, the difference of what the perception and your reality, not the reality, your reality is, said, they're this far apart, this far apart. And I was like, so we got to change that to begin with, because if you're not believing in it, then who how are you going to engage an entrepreneur, an investor, a family office, who's going to put $100 million side by side with you? You're not going to. And these are the conversations that we get into. I hate to say it, but I just very simplify it, right? Because sometimes everybody wants to write 30 page reports and all that, and to tell you what it is. then six months later, we've only met three times, but we wrote 30 to 60 pages of reporting, right? We don't live that era anymore. All right, the question is, show me the roadmap, grab the napkin, whatever that is, let's draw the roadmap, let's figure out who's doing what to whom, let's figure out who we need to bring in from the outside, let's figure out how to do it, and let's start tomorrow. Col. John Boggs: Wow, well, you know, that leads me right to this, and that's the government sector. The government sector and the private sector don't often speak the same language. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Mm-hmm. Col. John Boggs: So how do you bridge that? I mean, they just don't. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Well, they absolutely don't. Right. One is governments are focused on economic development, security, right. ⁓ The humans, health, and the jobs that they've been elected to do. ⁓ Private sector is focused on the bottom line. Right. And so when we work across the space, I always educate my folks in the private sector saying, you know, Humanity is not a transaction. Right. And, you know, the planet, you want to do good for the planet. Well, that's not a transaction either. That's a long term investment. Right. So it's like, it's like looking at, you know, bonds and treasuries, a long term investment. Now, how can you play in here? Well, you can't come in and extract all you can from it because now you've left it with nothing. ultimately private sector, all they want to do is push their tech. make money from it, right? And get the credit, right? What government wants to do is figure out how to protect, protect, protect, right? And how to do it the right way. And the government leaders, of course, have their mandates. But again, the big problem in the government space is I remember when we first started working with governments and helping them create innovation hubs, right? We were the ones that were pushing that across the world and talking to governments as you need an entrepreneur in your office as your head of innovation. Right. And that was one of our big pushes across the planet because like if you don't have your own internal innovation expert, Hey, you're not Mr. President, you're not the one that's going to do it. Mr. Vice president or, or my damn, ⁓ governor, whoever that is, you're not going to be sitting down. And by the way, the entrepreneurs, how are you really going to take you seriously? So find somebody in that same age bracket, a brilliant person uplift them. Right. Or find someone that's just really intelligent and give them the job to be the expert on innovation and identify what solutions the government could use and then how to run a process. We did everything from RFP writing for governments and how to actually run processes to actually bring in, you know, not pilots, because I'm not a fan of pilot projects. Pilot projects is an absolute complete waste of time, right? Is to actually create mechanisms that are scalable, right? Think big, act small, do it now. Right. And if you could think big, but you know, you're taking baby steps, but you start tomorrow, you start to solve that, you know, issue. And then we also started to see that private sector. That's where we started working a lot with family offices because what we started to see with private sector in our evolution was. Again, I'm an entrepreneur, right? So you think of how can I solve, make money, solve, make money? What is a transaction? It's a binary formula, right? X plus Y equals Z. And so within that, was like, okay, now that's the wrong blend. It's not private sector and government. Right. So put private sector aside. Now let's figure out who owns the IPs. Right. Let's figure out who is a multi-dimensional investor, family offices, the rise of family offices. I'm thinking I'm going to say to the article I did on Fortune magazine, right. But the rise of family offices as multilateral stakeholders. is greater than ever. Why? Because they can move money, long-term thinking, care about their people because they're employing half the population probably if it's in another country, and actually care about education or thinking like a government but are not connected. So we went on this journey about six, seven, eight years ago of identifying families across the planet and then going from the family down to, like if I were to deconstruct the whole thing, from the family down to the IP. Now at the IP, we're at zero to one. So then we said, why don't we build out like a tech institute, a technology transfer institute so that we could do a lot of what our great government has tried to do with technology, but they put it in ⁓ Pittsburgh University or they put it in Stanford or they put it in Texas or Arizona. It never makes it out because again, it create processes on top of processes that Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: You know, as an entrepreneur, I'd be like, all right, good luck. I'll reinvent it. Screw it. Because I'm not going to wait for nine months. It costs me money. So we said the IP is let's do the tech transfer. Then we could actually scrape all logos, bring that to government, whatever innovation that is, bring that into the government so that they could actually then embrace the innovation and then do a calling and saying, okay, now we want more people. Therefore we cut the process from nine months to, you know, two months. or years, by the way, to two months, and then be able to actually transfer the technology, create a scalable opportunity for the private sector, we say to them, and this is just one of the many solutions, right? Private sector, we say to them, are you, how do you fund this? We dissect the model, right? And then once we're able to dissect the model, we help them because we say, okay, you can't put logos on it, but actually knowing that you're working with X government or Y government will... Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: will increase your valuation and the perception of the value of your company. So I'm actually helping you make money, but it's not transactional day to day. It's a long-term value creation. So we tell people, it's like, don't come to me and think that you're going to make money. I say, come to me and think that we're going to help the government sector implement technologies that are going to change the world. Col. John Boggs: All Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: and you'll benefit from it. Col. John Boggs: and you'll benefit from it. Let's go back to smart cities and sustainable infrastructure. For some they say, well, that's just buzzwords. What do leaders consistently misunderstand about that, about smart cities and sustainable infrastructure? Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: You know, it's a great question. And I spent a good part of, uh, of, of the last, uh, 15, 16, I guess you could even say 25 years, you know, looking at smart infrastructure, right? I call it smart infrastructure. And I'm going to give you a little, a small anecdote because I think it'll make sense here. Um, when I was transitioning from the billboard company to my smart city company, right. As it began a smart city company, went. And I traveled around the planet and met with all the tech giants, right? Oracle, Cisco, but they're heads of public private partnerships. They're heads of government, right? I didn't need to see the CEO. And, um, and I met with them and I just had one simple question and I would go to them with a little piece of white paper, right? Size of a napkin. I said, here is today and here's the hundred trillion dollar market you sell. to the stock market every day. I want you to show me how to get there. Col. John Boggs: Mmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Right? No answers. Not one person could answer. ⁓ you have to buy my product. Well, what business are you in? What are you doing? I'm like, well, I have a smart city business. I want to help rewrite history and a planet on how to scale smart cities, but do it once. I say, you don't build a highway twice. I said, so smart cities is a temporary evolution of society and the planet as a whole. I said, but it's not a forever model. Col. John Boggs: Yeah. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: It's a in-between. It's transitioning us from dumb to smart, literally, at which point once everything is interconnected, now it's a software game. It's a data game, right? It's a different, it's a transfer of connectivity and energy. But ultimately it's still infrastructure and not one person. Even I was on the board of Dell's, ⁓ with Michael Dell, and they said, we'll support you. We'll give you free screens. ⁓ was great. was like, that was the only person that actually said, we'll help you, right? To their credit. But it was also agenda driven. Hey, we'll put our products out on the streets. How many screens can you put on their sidewalks? ⁓ ⁓ a great business model. It's a brilliant thinking. But I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. ⁓ believe that it's got to be the latest technology that solves the problems. So as we were building that business, we realized that everybody was productizing, productizing, productizing. Again, going back to what I said before. to be honest with you, as we were building a smart city business, I realized that I now travel to like 60, 70 countries spoken at every smart city conference. did an ⁓ educational course for all the mayors in Australia ⁓ ⁓ literally it was all over the planet from ⁓ Hong Kong, ⁓ Middle East, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico. no, ⁓ the Holland all over the map and, and, just saying the same thing. Everybody was opposed to the thinking because I was basically saying they couldn't make any money. If you look at the smart city space, who survived, right? Who's still around that could actually say, and, and the engineering companies, the infrastructure players, all the infrastructure players, right? Why? Because that's where it was at. The rest is, is the frills. Col. John Boggs: Mmm. Yeah? Of course. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Right? What light bulbs I'm going to use, or you still need to own a pole. What Wi-Fi router or knock I'm going to use or what sensors I'm going to have. You know, that's, yeah, the market's huge, but good luck investing the money to try to get government to understand. So I said, that was my whole vision was let's invert the model. Let's show government not to give their cities away. That was always my thing. Right. And, and when Google was doing their whole Google city and all that, I was actually opposed to it. My friends at Google, they're like, dude, stop. And I was like, no, no, because I am absolutely opposed to that because you cannot give your city away to one company. You need to create a multi-stakeholder mechanism that allows multi-stakeholders to all plug into a mainframe that then everything benefits from each other. You have open, wholehearted competition, innovation, and continuous innovation. Everybody talks about rapid innovation, but they don't do it. Right. Rapid innovation is actually making sure that the structure of the multi-stakeholderism is there. Rapid innovation is not you and I saying we're going to take over New York and we're going to do it better. No. Rapid innovation is building the mechanism that allows many stakeholders to have a seat at the table listening and then applying what works best because even technology, I've always said this, it is a, um, one size does not fit all. Every country, every region, you have so many different variables. You're operating in a Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: you know, dimensional chessboard and ⁓ people are just throwing things. And they're not listening, they're not paying attention. And you needless to say, I'll tell you, I was never the guy they wanted to speak twice, but you know, the one thing I'll hold, you know, from here to the end is I'll always speak the truth. And ⁓ because it's what I believe, it's what I've seen, and I now have, as one would say, the gray hairs ⁓ to prove it. Col. John Boggs: Prove it. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: 25 years of doing this nonstop, it's not insanity. It's, you know, now all of a sudden, you know, as you look at where we are with the foundation, it's, you know, we're a very trusted partner because we've never changed our narrative. Col. John Boggs: Sergio, this has been fantastic, but I do have one more question for you. You've ran through actually a number of questions that I had figured I'd ask, but you already answered them. But where do you see the greatest opportunity for global cooperation and where do you see the greatest risk if leaders fail to act? Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: I think the greatest opportunity my is, is data, right? Greatest opportunity is data. It will outlive us for a million years. If you look at today and you know, as far as your brain can imagine and see the only constant that will be the same as data, right? Period. That's it. Number one, number two, all in the same context is The infrastructure, right? The infrastructure around it, space, space infrastructure, right? It's not only, you know, good for the environment because it helps us, you know, protect our natural habitat, conservation and preservation, but it also helps countries have their own access to their own infrastructure, right? And it also helps, and that's really where a huge, huge, massive opportunity. people say a hundred trillion dollar market, you look at space, that is, I could draw a map for you. I got to literally draw map for you and tell you exactly how we could get there. Every country will have their own space program. Every country will have the ability to do their own space innovation. We'll have the ability to go to the moon and do space exploration. And and but that's a 20 year conversation and people don't think this way. Right. So, you know, a lot of people are trying to figure out, OK, how do I monetize data now? I'm going to run it up and I'm going to steal all your data and then I'm going to sell it to somebody else. And those days are soon to be over. And, ⁓ you know, I've been always a big pusher of data is a sovereign right data is an asset class, very important asset class. And that's why I teach governments that is part of their balance sheet. And, and data is a human right. We should be able to say, I don't want to be sold, but if I need the money, Hey, you know, sell my data because I need to make $500 a month or a thousand dollars a month or whatever. But most tech companies today with our data sets, it's somewhere between 10 to $30,000, depends on your geography, demographic, geo and demo, right? And you multiply that in a hundred thousand resident country, you know, that's a huge economic opportunity for them to use technology. But the data conversation and data rights, data sovereignty based on geospatial and geo positioning is going to be... That's that you're going to see mark my words and you're going to see this even take off even further. The problem that we had before was that we didn't have the technology that we have today to process data lakes. Now we have AI process the data lake in three seconds. Right. So now the, you know, the gloves are off. But in the policy making space, a lot of countries are now saying, OK, well, you know, the element of nationalism, you know, is basically saying, oh, so how do I protect my economic models? Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: And where the opportunity is for entrepreneurs is to start thinking backwards from 10 years from now and start to build the solutions that will be the next GPTs, the next Google, the next whatever, right? Before it was like a billion dollar company was the unicorn. Now it's like, we're talking trillions, which I never in a million years thought I'd sit there and try to figure out how any organization and it's because they have our data. What do they own? Our data. If there's anything that's worth trillions of dollars, it's nature. It's real estate. It's real. It's physical. I could touch it. I could touch the trees. But data is a perceived value and ⁓ a quantifiable one because we see it move this way and this way. And so I think that that's the greatest opportunity and also the greatest risk ⁓ because that's, you know, as national intelligence for every country steps up as well. Col. John Boggs: data. Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: That becomes a, you know, like most administrations around the world have done, have declared, you know, the sovereignty of data, a ⁓ military conversation. So you start to get into these conversations where this is why you saw Palantir take off. I remember when Joe Lonzell started his company, didn't, you he was not that interested in government. I brought him to the Young G8. I was the chairman of the Young G8 and all these guys from Silicon Valley were never really into government. I was always like, you have to partner with governments if you want to scale businesses. the whole idea was always like, do you do good? But not a lot of those guys just went on in their own direction. ⁓ ⁓ but that's why for me, when I think of zero to one, ⁓ ⁓ that's, you know, the opportunity, but also at the same time, the risk. Col. John Boggs: Well, Sergio, to say this has been extraordinary is an understatement. There's been, and for folks that are listening, there's been more phenomenal one-liners here than you could shake a stick at. Humanity is not a transaction. ⁓ Think big, act small. I mean, ⁓ my gosh. ⁓ Look at government, looking at government, people see dollars. I mean, this has been, this has been absolutely amazing. It's been a, it's been truly a rare look at global leadership and how you think is so incredible. It's wow. I would love to actually put the marker down and try and get you back because there's so much more to hear, so much more to ask you and maybe I can get you back after the new year. So, speak with your Chief of Staff on that one. But before we close, I want to people the opportunity ⁓ you the opportunity to share more about your work ⁓ the leaders who want to work with public partners and governments, foundations. How can they help you if they want to reach out to you? How do they do that? How do people reach out to you if they want to help, they have something they want to contribute? Sergio A. Fernandez De Cordova: Yeah, I mean, we're a public foundation, PVBLIC.org. And then, you know, I'm on LinkedIn. I mean, I, know, LinkedIn is my jam. I'm a big fan of the LinkedIn and, you know, every person that I'm connected to, I've had a conversation. And so, yeah, I mean, that's, you and, you know, I'm actually, my 2026, ⁓ I guess, you know, my focus on 2026 is really to start writing more, right? Because when I have a lot of these things and you know, that Fortune magazine ⁓ article got like, you know, like 2 million reads or something, like one of the most reads that they've ever had from an op-ed. And so I was like, okay, I guess people do already to listen to a different way. I kind of stay very humble and in my lane and just tell people, I'm like, this is our lane. This is what we do. And that's why I dedicate, you know, 90 % of the time on the foundation as executive chairman, because, you know, it allows me to do the high level and dive deep into the organization and help, you know, pick up a shovel shoulder to shoulder with my team members. And, and so, you know, so to me, we're, we're, we're an open book, right? So we're always looking, you know, for As I always say this, it's a little bit for ⁓ and people that have extraordinary skills and that ready to take on ⁓ the impossible. Col. John Boggs: So Sergio, thank you for joining me on Calm Under Fire. The work you're doing is it supports nations, it strengthens the global fabric that we all depend on, and your clarity and commitment are absolutely impressive. ⁓ And to everyone listening, leadership isn't about, it's not limited to borders, folks, and I suspect you all figured that out. The challenges we face, economic, environmental, technological, they demand discipline, they demand a creative way of looking at things. forward-looking and it creates that in leadership at every level. So it for me and until next time out here.