Hiring for Good is a podcast exploring the transformative power of leadership and what happens when the right person takes the job. Acumen Executive Search presents the Hiring for Good Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this episode with Skip Newberry, President and CEO of Technology Association of Oregon (TAO).
About Skip Newberry: Skip is a frequent speaker on topics related to technology and entrepreneurship, tech policy, economic development, workforce, public-private-academic partnerships, and civic innovation. Skip is the Founder of TAO and serves on the Oregon Cybersecurity Advisory Council and the Workforce & Talent Development Board.
Skip Newberry’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipnewberry/
Technology Association of Oregon: TAO fosters an inclusive, innovative, and world-class economy for the Pacific Northwest. We drive the regional tech industry, empowering entrepreneurs and fostering connections to position the Northwest as a global innovation hub. It helps companies of all sizes grow, network, support employees, amplify regional influence, and celebrate achievements.
Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/288s2urueV7xjlsFoYW8QN
Podcast on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hiring-for-good-podcast/id1725208602
Tanis Morris: Director of Business Development at Acumen Executive Search. Email: tanis@acumenexecutivesearch.com
Suzanne Hanifin: President at Acumen Executive Search. Email: suzanne@acumenexecutivesearch.com
Acumen Executive Search Website: https://www.acumenexecutivesearch.com/
Acumen Executive Search is the leading certified woman-owned Executive Search and advisory Firm on the West Coast. Acumen sources, attracts, and qualifies world-class executive and management talent for organizations to support them in achieving their organizational goals. Due to their focus and local network, which is both broad and deep, we are able to leverage best practices across a broad range of industries. We employ an equity lens throughout the recruitment process.
Hiring for Good Transcript
0:00 well hi this is Suzanne Hanifin with Acumen Executive Search and my lovely
0:05 co-host Tanis Morris cannot be here today but we’re really excited to have
0:10 Skip Newberry from The TAO – Technology Association of Oregon – to be part of our
0:16 guest and for those who are new to Hiring for Good, Hiring for Good is a
0:21 podcast of best practices in leadership and just to kind of do a
0:27 little highlight of Skip’s background, you know Skip earned his
0:34 JD, was a startup founder of two companies before working with the City
0:42 of Portland and then in the last 12 years being with the TAO and I know
0:47 that’s just a broad highlight so I’m going to ask you Skip to fill in the the
0:53 gaps and share with us your journey sure thanks um so the the one common theme in
0:59 a relative um sort of convoluted and not quite linear career um is I really um enjoy
1:07 learning about systems and when I was in uh College I liked learning about um
1:13 international relations and geopolitics and that brought me to uh the Center for strategic and International studies
1:19 which is a global think tank in DC and I spent some time there as a fellow um that was fascinating work and some of
1:27 the work I was involved with involved a focus on sort of Entrepreneurship and
1:32 Microfinance in the developing world and also how to work with different diasporas uh of successful entrepreneurs
1:39 in the US from other countries and how to kind of mobilize those groups uh to
1:45 have political influence um and it was fascinating work uh and I realized
1:50 quickly uh that I didn’t want to become just an academic trading papers back and
1:56 forth uh in terms of influencing um International Relations and after talking to some uh sons and
2:04 daughters of diplomats I realized that if I wanted to have a family maybe the diplomatic service was uh was probably
2:10 not for me because it wasn’t terribly family-friendly then ended up in um uh
2:16 deciding to pursue uh law uh so I was like okay that’s a another system that
2:22 um I’d gotten exposed to in studying international trade and was like this is fascinating and so uh decided that
2:29 working in Boston during the dot com boom um I had a chance to join a boutique Law
2:37 Firm that was doing a lot of work with uh startups, Venture Capital, private equity, and we did a lot of work around
2:43 financings intellectual property etc. and I was also involved in a startup on the side uh with some friends from college
2:49 and that was during the dot com boom 2000 and uh lo behold 2001 hits there’s a the
2:57 bubble bursts and I got to see working with at the time one of the few cyber bankruptcy attorneys in the US
3:04 everything that went wrong and so it was a great experience in learning what problems to avoid um and I also realized
3:12 how many startups get tripped up by a lack of understanding of the law or what intellectual property uh strategy looks
3:19 like etc. so and then went to law school with the idea that I was probably not going to practice terribly long and uh
3:25 ended up doing a couple clerkships uh in commercial litigation and then um uh got involved with a a
3:33 company in Boston um that was starting to grow and we came up with this idea for a company that was eventually spun
3:40 out and um I ended up running it and that uh was more in the professional development space where we did kind of
3:46 blended learning both online and and uh you know on in person on site and and
3:53 that was really rewarding work 3 years later ended up um transitioning off the um side of that business ended up doing
4:01 some consulting with a couple other different startups helping them get launched and then I was in my late 20s
4:07 in Portland at that time and um had been living here for about few a few years
4:12 and really started to get a flavor for all the amazing people and companies and
4:18 startups and talent that was here and I was like wow this place is really going to going to pop at some point just need
4:24 some dots connected and I started thinking back to my time in the 90s at CSIS and I was like like you know what
4:30 if there’s an angle here for Tech focused Economic Development and what
4:35 would it look like to be a practitioner that work and how could I get a job doing that work in Portland a lot of
4:41 things had to happen and fall into place and kind of fast forward I did get an opportunity to interview with um then
4:48 Commissioner Sam Adams right before he got elected or as he got elected mayor and he was building out the team we hit
4:54 it off and he’s like hey you’ve got a really interesting background I think you can contribute to the economic development team and so I joined his
5:00 team as an adviser um and during that time got to work on helping to launch the Portland seed fund and the city’s um
5:08 strategies as it relates to technology from an economic development standpoint um also did some Community Economic
5:14 Development work with Main Street programs and um and then also what was fun was I also had responsibility for
5:22 some gov 2.0 and open data initiatives working with um with the Bureau of Technology Services so I then got
5:28 approached by a bunch of folks in the tech sector who are like hey we love the work you’re doing would you ever consider a
5:33 nonprofit opportunity and that was the Software Association of Oregon so um I was eventually convinced that that made
5:40 sense professionally joined and uh 6 months after joining what was supposed to be a turnaround project for the
5:46 Software Association of Oregon we effectively launched something new called the Technology Association of
5:51 Oregon and that was 12 years ago and still there so that’s the long kind of convoluted story but the the theme
5:59 around understanding systems and then applying them for maximum impact um TAO
6:04 is kind of the an amalgamation of that where I can work with entrepreneurs who are using technology which is a tool
6:10 that can create massive impact at scale and to help them be successful right to
6:16 create wealth for themselves their families their communities and um and also provide tons employment
6:21 opportunities for for folks so it’s pretty exciting work and and rewarding at that too oh absolutely and I think
6:28 that the TAO and correct me if I’m wrong but I think it’s one of the largest associations in our state and the
6:36 influence between government, private business launching new business. I mean
6:42 you touch it all I mean lobby to I mean so share a little bit more about the TAO
6:49 sure yeah in one sense we’re a regional Tech Trade Association so we work with companies large and small uh helping
6:56 them get access to resources and our work really fits into three buckets um
7:01 so one of them is uh professional development networking events building community across different functional
7:07 roles and teams and then another thing that we do is we focus on uh policy and
7:13 um sort of government relations as well as uh some traditional lobbying work and
7:18 then the final area is we serve as kind of a an incubator if you will for
7:23 collective action problems uh or opportunities across many companies and so they look to us to help to identify
7:30 resources and bring them in as necessary and where there are gaps to create new resources and so it’s pretty fun because
7:37 in doing that effectively we have to have an understanding of who’s here what their pain points are and what
7:42 opportunities look like well so now I’m dying to ask because I think across the
7:47 country not just in Portland OR Oregon but the Tech Community has been really
7:54 suffering what what’s your thoughts of what happened and what’s the next step
7:59 look like for that I would say it’s it’s kind of a a mixed mixed bag um one is
8:06 one of the issues is uh the last 10 years or so uh there was an era of
8:11 relatively cheap money and that enabled certain business models that uh could
8:17 take advantage of that fact and and by that I mean there was a lot of venture money and um other uh Capital flowing to
8:25 startups who were effectively just adding users right they were in growth
8:30 mode and they weren’t really focused on profitability and so you could argue that they were building platforms that
8:36 were conducive to acquiring a lot of users but there was no real business there and so the idea was you flip that
8:44 company to some other company that has the resources and hopefully the idea
8:49 that would allow for how to commercialize that at some point and the goal of the venture capitalist and the
8:55 early entrepreneur was really not to build a business it was just to sell it at some point for for for as much money as possible and that that model has
9:02 definitely changed now that uh interest rates have gone up and the money is no longer cheap and you could look at pre
9:09 2011 or so and it that era looks a lot
9:14 more like where we are now so it’s not that necessarily um things have gone
9:20 into an entirely new direction I think there’s been a bit of a reset around a focus on business fundamentals for
9:25 companies that’s been painful for startups that were getting going under the premise that we just need to raise a
9:32 bunch of money and then we can figure out product market fit and then maybe someday we can figure out a path the
9:37 profitability or just sell the company to someone who wants to um that model no longer works now you have to be able to
9:43 figure out early on how are we generating customer traction to be able to demonstrate that um and that there’s
9:51 stickiness and and it’s all the basic fundamentals of how to grow a business and so on top of that a lot of the
9:57 Venture Capitalists have moved kind of up market and um or downstream I guess and they’re not really investing as much
10:04 in some of the early-stage companies thankfully we’ve had some uh new
10:09 opportunities locally with funds and other investors stepping in to fill that gap um and over the years and so that’s
10:16 good for this region but a lot more can be done I think to look for different sources of capital for early stage
10:22 companies here and then I’ll say two large companies um especially in Tech
10:28 and more established companies in Tech had I think a bit of a hiring spree in
10:33 2020 and 21 during the early part of the pandemic a lot of stuff shifted to digital services and goods and companies
10:41 were like wow this is amazing and you had cheap money fueling hypergrowth so companies over hired and I think what
10:47 happened was now that you had the shift happening with interest rates uh uh
10:53 raising and companies getting pressure from their boards and investors to say okay you need to get leaner meter and
10:59 more profitable um they look to cut um unfortunately and so from 2018 or 19 to
11:07 today if you look at overall Tech employment growth it’s generally up but
11:13 the problem is you had this massive spike in 2020/2021 and that has largely been eliminated um and so that’s
11:19 what we’re seeing in terms of a lot of the reductions and force and layoffs right now so again I would characterize
11:24 both the financing system as well as or the financing environment as well as the employment environment is very much kind
11:32 of reset back to maybe earlier years um rather than an entirely new environment
11:38 in many respects so um what’s tough is people who got started you know post 2011 or 12 they don’t know anything else
11:46 than the last 10 years and and it’s like any industry but I think in Oregon in
11:52 particular because the Tech Community has a loud voice and we watch it and we
11:58 look at it so it’s interesting to think it’s a normal business
12:03 cycle that everybody’s feeling not just Tech exactly yeah so the podcast you
12:10 know is on leadership and again hearing your background and I love that it’s not
12:16 a straight line nobody’s career is a straight line you take these piv..you know these changes
12:23 what have been some of the big learnings and um whether it’s a mentor
12:30 or something that made you shift yeah I would say there’s um a lot
12:38 of examples along the way but one that was particularly um impactful was when I was
12:44 working for a judge um after law school as her clerk um she she gave me the
12:50 advice as did her husband um that you know you should take risks and that your
12:57 professional journey is rarely linear anymore and um and I thought that was a
13:02 pretty kind of poignant observation her uh her husband who was a really
13:07 successful law school dean and scholar um that was his second career he started
13:12 out first in law where he uh joined first a big firm and he went to New York
13:19 and next thing you know he’s general counsel of like a Fortune 500 company next thing you know he’s also an
13:26 executive at The Fortune 500 company with certain business responsibilities not just legal and in his mid-40s or so
13:33 he went to a law school reunion and everyone was talking about like what definition of success they had achieved
13:40 etc. and he’s like is this really it and he did a 180 left walked away from his
13:46 corporate uh career and decided he wanted to teach corporate law and spend
13:53 time with students in in scholarship and so he ended up going from like a pinnacle down to the lowest rungs of
14:00 trying to get a job as a assistant professor or whatever or adjunct at um any school that would take him and
14:06 eventually worked his way up and became dean of a law school and um and a pretty prominent scholar in corporate law
14:13 globally and um he said you know look a lot of people say you need to go to the
14:19 biggest pond possible and try to become the biggest fish he’s like I think life is much more rewarding when you can kind
14:26 of chart your own path and it doesn’t have to be the biggest pond and maybe your idea of the biggest fish is different than someone else’s and
14:33 sounds simple but um I think it’s important to be reminded every once in a while of that and it was at that time
14:40 and talking with the two of them both the judge as well as her husband that um I was starting to think about okay do I
14:46 make the leap from the Northeast where I’d grown up had a really great network and everything else and and moved to the
14:53 West yeah and and they encouraged me to do so they’re like take the risk take the risk and it isn’t it funny every
15:00 time I say take the leap I’ve leapt yeah it’s amazing how life kind of was
15:06 supposed to be the way it is yeah and you’ve been a big risk taker I mean again two startups going from
15:14 traditional legal path to then Economic Development um do you contribute
15:22 besides well I guess let me rephrase that what advice would you give another
15:28 person that you know may may or may not have finished law school but what advice
15:34 would you give that a young 20-year-old yeah I would say it’s similar to what uh advice I got when I was at an event in
15:40 law school where we had essentially three distinguished alumni as panelists and the first two were like I had
15:48 everything planned out and you know it was one step after the other and because of my intellect I was able to see this
15:54 opportunity which was again in this linear path and the the third panel who’s arguably more successful than the
16:01 other two said that’s all Bs and um and essentially like there is no like
16:08 predictable linear path anymore and if anything it’s moving in the other direction and and so he he encouraged
16:14 folks to essentially look at one what their values are and their definition of
16:20 success and it’s going to make them feel fulfilled in their work and to not
16:25 necessarily be kind of beholden to other people’s definitions or ideas so
16:31 part of it is an I uh sort of a you have to spend a sufficient amount of time and
16:37 self-reflection and um and then the other part of it was being open to opportunities and always maintaining a
16:44 network in the background because you never know when your network will either present an opportunity or when you might
16:49 need to rely on that network to help you out at some point and I see this a ton in my work now where we often will have
16:57 someone who’s in the tech sector that’ll reach out after they get laid off and meanwhile they’ve completely forgotten
17:03 about their network for years takes a lot harder to build and activate a network from scratch than it does if
17:10 it’s at least somewhat maintained in the background and you can say all right yeah I’m laid off all right I’m going to
17:16 I’m going to tap my network I’m going to start talking to folks about what are they seeing where are they seeing opportunities hey can you introduce me
17:22 to this company I want to learn more about it and you know rightly or wrongly there’s still a lot of emphasis around
17:29 referral networks and that’s one thing that I find particularly rewarding about our work at TAO is that whether an
17:36 entrepreneur or someone looking to break into a Tech Career if we can help accelerate the
17:43 speed at which they can get connected to a resource or to a person who can help them out and break into a network that
17:50 they otherwise might not have been able to break into um that’s pretty rewarding and um and I’ve seen that play out again
17:57 and again and so that’s kind of a uh a not really well articulated kind of
18:02 role that we play as an association is kind of an accelerant in helping folks get to where they’re trying to go oh and
18:08 you’re speaking my language I mean it’s all about the connections and it’s funny I tell my semi-adult children still in
18:16 high school and one down it is the network yep it it’s not what do you know
18:22 it’s who do you know still in this world today and with social media it gets very
18:27 blended mmhm that you may have a great relationship with somebody on a social
18:33 media platform but that’s not the same thing as a business you know network
18:40 yeah so it’s a learning 12 years TAO you guys have grown and shrunk grown many
18:49 many times and it really is about the leadership and what values you bring
18:56 personally and are able to to operationalize them talk to us about
19:02 some of those real key values on building your team. Mmhm yeah one thing we
19:08 um we went through as an organization was an exercise this probably I don’t know half a dozen or so years ago um
19:14 where we started to look at you know what are what are values let’s break them down in part they’re a reflection
19:21 of the team at the time in part they’re a reflection of leadership and in large
19:26 part it’s a reflection of actions past actions what are the things we’re looking to do and and and take in the
19:33 future and um and so we we ended up aligning around three or four um one of
19:40 them is personal accountability so you’re essentially, you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do right and that’s a big part
19:46 of what um allows the TAO brand to have such force and um sort of a good
19:52 reputation is that people look to us to be able to deliver and that also means
19:58 though that with um kind of having effective honest communication is
20:03 important is kind of a second value of that because it times when someone asks you for help or uh you know an
20:11 opportunity to connect to a resource you might say okay I just I don’t have have
20:16 the ability to do that um either I have too much other stuff on my plate right now but you know let’s talk again in 3
20:22 weeks or talk to me again in 2 months or I can’t help you with this but this other person can and so being direct and
20:29 saying I’m not the right person is okay and then how do you kind of redirect and
20:35 add some value to that person so you don’t represent a brick wall and and that’s also important for external
20:42 relations and then internally that honest communication is so important um with the team because if you’re not able
20:49 to share hey I don’t I don’t really know what what our path forward looks like here you won’t get help from other folks
20:55 on the team um or if you’re not able to say like hey you know um I don’t really
21:01 appreciate the way that you’re doing this something could fester for a while
21:06 and so um those those two are very important and are kind of foundational and then obviously passion for community
21:12 right so you know being able to um have a stake in the success of the tech
21:18 sector and kind of what that means and also in the people behind it um that’s
21:23 an important kind of attribute and so that’s an important part of our our value system at TAO as well well you
21:30 talk about community and we all live through Covid where all that
21:35 social you know kind of came to a screeching halt totally what
21:41 learnings that you’ve drawn out of Covid that you’re taking now and operationalizing it
21:48 today yeah I would say um one was this is this is something again simple but
21:55 like wow okay that’s really powerful uh in 2020 we shifted to a lot of digital
22:01 programming relatively quickly especially relative to other associations locally um by early April
22:07 we had had a couple folks get certified in online event delivery um and we had shifted our entire uh spring schedule to
22:15 all digital programming just you know within a week and a half wow so we were way ahead there were other organizations
22:21 that hadn’t quite figured out what they were going to do until like June and by then we had been scheduling every other
22:27 week um half half hour um kind of tech talks where I would essentially reach
22:32 out to someone in our network and even outside of Oregan and invite them in for
22:38 conversation on some relevant timely topic and because everyone was sitting at home yeah everywhere you know it’s
22:45 like sure I’ll do a half an hour conversation and we had like CIO from a major um paper manufacturer in this in
22:52 the Southeast us and um we we we we had her on and it was funny cuz I got to ask
22:59 the question okay what’s up with the uh the toilet paper supply chain issues and it was a fascinating answer that she
23:05 gave uh kind of deconstructing for us like okay we were primarily as an industry focused on commercial uses and
23:12 like malls and airports and entertainment venues all shut down so it’s tough to kind of reconfigure a
23:18 global supply chain overnight to focus on this increased demand in personal right in in personal and retail consumer
23:25 and I was like okay that makes sense and people like oh okay yeah that’s great um I never would have thought of that at
23:31 all I mean that’s fascinating yeah and uh and we also had folks that were you know in charge of
23:38 like emergency response for the state and they could also leverage our platform and channels to provide updates
23:43 to businesses and other folks around like hey here’s what you need to know here’s where we are and and what I
23:48 learned during that time too was um a lot of our conversations with members shifted to like 15-minute phone calls
23:56 and virtual check-ins um rather than traveling all over the place during the
24:01 day and having fewer touch points and so with those more frequent touch points and um quick conversations with execs
24:08 many of the execs said hey if I never attend another event this year but we can do these little check-ins quarterly
24:14 that pays for membership because I got so much value out of that and you did all these introductions afterwards to resources that was hugely valuable so I
24:21 was like okay there’s something there that maybe we lost sight of heading into the pandemic and so those are things
24:27 that we’ve definitely kind of double down on coming out of it um so we do a
24:32 lot more with um more frequent kind of virtual efficient uh touch points with
24:38 members throughout the year especially with a small team that’s important but we’ve also recognized the the value and
24:44 what you stated earlier which is that sort of in-person connection and so when we’re doing
24:50 events one thing that we find is people want more interactive group facilitated
24:55 less presentations of like one to many because you can consume content one to
25:01 many in your own time online yeah right so so it’s more about that sort of
25:08 interactive uh kind of genuine connection and and that’s animated a lot of our our outreach work oh absolutely
25:15 so with your big crystal ball that I’m sure you you know it’s polished up what
25:20 what does the next five years especially tech companies in Oregon what
25:26 does that look like yeah I would say uh if you’d ask me that two years ago I was
25:31 a little more pessimistic um especially given kind of the state of the the public sector um in Oregon um you know
25:38 it’s not not a surprise to most that we do have uh a reputation of not being the
25:44 most business friendly state uh in fact being incredibly not business yes right
25:50 and um and there were a bunch of issues that had started to chip away at our kind of vaunted livability which was a
25:57 competitive advantage I think we can get back there and we are getting back there in terms of improving that livability
26:03 standard especially in the greater Portland area but up and down the I5 Corridor and if you look at some other
26:08 areas of the state like Central Oregon has been booming um you know you’ve got Eugene and Corvalis that have some
26:15 incredible work going on with universities there with UO with OSU
26:20 where they’re attracting a ton of really interesting federal research philanthropic dollars and and then same
26:25 thing with um OHSU and PSU here so what I’m seeing is a lot of incredible
26:31 Innovation across higher ed and the private sector and that started even a
26:36 couple years ago in little bits and pieces and you know that’s something that um I think happened in the last 10
26:43 years too where a lot of the growth that was fueled um by innovators across
26:49 multiple sectors was happening outside of the public sector and and so you know
26:55 despite the fact that the public sector was um you know starting to have issues around kind of the basics uh that people
27:03 would point to is like any government should be able to do XY and Z and we weren’t um now we’re at a point where
27:09 there’s a sense of urgency and awareness around what the issues are and an attempt to start to address them on the
27:15 public sector side and that’s happening in parallel with some incredible Innovation happening on the private
27:20 sector and academic sector so I see this period of time is much more like the
27:26 2010 to 12 type period we’re seeing a lot of new startup activity in the last
27:31 couple years here and it’s more diverse both in terms of like perspectives and experiences and backgrounds of founders
27:38 but also type of company right I mean there’s climate Tech there’s software B2B there’s B2C there are companies
27:45 doing manufacturing semiconductor-oriented startups I mean it’s fascinating and to me that’s exciting
27:52 because even in 2010 to 12 yes we had a lot of startups but it was a much more
27:59 homogeneous batch and I think there’s real power in the diversity and type of
28:04 company and the perspectives and experiences of the founders and what’s cool too is we’re seeing much more
28:09 experienced founders get back into the game now than we were back in 2010 to 12
28:15 so um I’m cautiously optimistic and more glass half full uh and those are some of the reasons why and um I think it’s
28:23 really tough to bet against this region oh absolutely we are very resilient
28:29 aren’t we yes and no that makes me very optimistic again as a business owner
28:35 celebrating 17 years seeing that economic and political yep ups and downs
28:42 in in Oregon yeah I was just going to say like last week I was in a a meeting focused on climate Tech uh manufacturing
28:50 opportunities for the state and clean energy and you had the governor there and Senator Weiden and Congresswoman
28:55 Bonamichi and head of Business Oregon of other folks and there’s a a cross
29:01 The board recognition of folks in the room that yeah our our tax policy needs to be fixed in Oregon it it is not
29:06 helping us uh compete with other regions when it comes to attracting and retaining businesses and people and on
29:13 top of that it’s not not really conducive to um effective planning at
29:18 the state level from a a revenue standpoint because we’re so overly relying on income tax it’s really volatile so it
29:24 it doesn’t help anyone on any side of the the equation at this point and so
29:30 the question is what are we going to do about it and I think that’s what we’re looking at in the next few years is what
29:35 are some of the steps we can take as a state where we don’t have to be Texas or
29:41 Florida in terms of like you know trying to attract and retain businesses in the
29:47 way that they’re doing it we just have to be more successful and more competitive than Washington and
29:53 California and what I’ve said to people for many years is that’s not a high bar so we should be able to do it right I
29:59 mean we there are some ways that we can you know introduce some fixes to whether it’s capital gains or sort of our tax
30:06 policy um to help mitigate some of the impacts to entrepreneurs and individuals and businesses and um and I think we can
30:13 do it in a way that’s thoughtful where we win as a as a as a state absolutely
30:19 and it starts with the leadership whether again you’re you’re representing multiple Tech organizations in our state
30:27 to leadership within your own organization so looking back these last
30:33 12 years what are some of the key learnings as a leader you can
30:39 share yeah I would say um humility is huge um and I think
30:47 that’s uh something that um anyone who’s been around for some period of time will
30:53 tell you is kind of a in some cases a learned trait um I’ve always said it was my oldest
31:01 child that taught me humility yes yeah the world did not revolve around me right yes I mean yeah anyone who’s had
31:08 kids you realize wow now I’ve been living my life for you know other people uh and that’s that’s quite a change um and but
31:16 yeah you know no one has all the answers um and I think too were in an
31:22 environment globally right now that has entered into a new era right so the last
31:27 7 years were defined by a certain geopolitical world order macroeconomic
31:33 um economic and uh even cultural in some cases and and now there’s this whole
31:39 upending of what we knew to be true into something that’s brand new that’s
31:45 exciting in effect if you feel like you’ve got a sense of control and agency over that it’s scary as hell if you feel
31:52 like things are spinning out of control and you don’t have any way to influence or shape it and so there are some
31:58 aspects of that that relate to how you perceive it and there are some things that are you know issues we’re going to
32:05 have to address as a global Society um if we want to see the next 75 years be
32:11 better than the last right so um I think on the one hand for innovators entrepreneurs um across all sectors this
32:19 is a pretty exciting time there’s a lot at stake as well and um I think we have
32:24 to recognize that you know the fact that we’re going through a lot of change
32:29 isn’t necessarily terribly exciting to everyone involved and to be sensitive to that in both how that change occurs and
32:37 also the policies that can be enacted to make sure that folks aren’t falling falling by the wayside um yeah and some
32:45 of these you’ve you kind of talked about which was climate um diversity AI I’m going to
32:51 throw in there because I’ve always said AI is not going to replace me as a recruiter
32:59 it’s recruiters that know AI are going to replace other recruiters it’s a tool
33:04 it’s not a solution yep exactly yeah and I think um there will be some displacement in terms of uh certain
33:11 types of jobs like where there’s a lot of repetitive kind of rot tasks or activities um and so the question is how
33:18 do we again as a society provide more opportunities and tools for folks to be
33:24 able to kind of res skill upskill into areas that are growing um and I think
33:31 it’s going to be uh something that requires a reimagining of how we’ve approached higher ed as a whole and
33:38 there’s um going to be a number of different roles for you know four four year degree institutions and
33:44 institutions that do PHDs and Masters and there’s going to be roles for community colleges and then also for
33:50 different programs like micro-credentialing the idea of quick bite-size certifications that can be
33:56 delivered quickly and effectively and stacked you know as someone’s trying to increase their earning potential and
34:02 skill set and what’s exciting about tech is that there are definitely areas like cyber security and certain data roles um
34:10 and and information technology areas um where you can essentially start to you
34:16 know acquire credentials pretty early on straight out of high school and start to stack those and quickly accelerate into
34:23 higher wage opportunities and um I also think that what’s interesting thing is
34:28 it’s going to really force our uh public sector systems to figure out what role
34:34 they play in all of this and how much they can effectively change under what
34:39 time frame uh to kind of meet the challenge head on yeah and it’s it’s
34:44 interesting hearing the macro and the micro but it’s the connectivity that
34:50 everything is connected and it’s not just one sector or one thing doing one thing it’s the whole yep yeah that’s a
34:59 again it’s a good reminder for everyone to have that kind of bigger perspective
35:04 so this podcast as you know Skip is called Hiring for Good what does hiring
35:10 for good mean to you yeah that’s a that’s a good one um I would say it
35:15 means a few different things um you know I think that if we look at what we just
35:21 talked about which was you know the sort of role of different institutions
35:27 relative to workers employees it’s an
35:33 undefined um it’s undefined right now who which institution is responsible for
35:39 the reskilling and upskilling of um of employees uh you know with the rise of
35:45 AI and other types of of new uh disruptive Technologies and I think that it’s going
35:51 to take um a probably a messy period of time where a combination of the public
35:58 sector private sector companies uh academic and educational sectors are
36:03 going to need to kind of all share the burden of what that is and I think figuring out what each of those
36:09 respective sectors can do well and what they can’t and then figuring out how it all works together is something that is
36:16 both challenging but also exciting and I think for States and communities that are relatively small and connected to
36:24 your point across these sectors the ones who can kind of bring it all together in a way quickly and efficiently um and
36:32 provide those resources in an accessible way are the ones that are going to win and be successful and and for that
36:38 reason I I think Oregon has a fighting chance um you know we’re a relatively
36:43 small state we’re pretty collaborative um and I think it’s possible to
36:48 experiment and innovate here in ways that a very large high population state
36:54 might find challenging um well that’s it very encouraging and that that is
36:59 awesome so you know at this point I just want to say thank you skip again skip
37:05 Newberry CEO of TAO Technology Association of Oregon and what a
37:10 valuable conversation again it’s it raises more a lot of questions so I’m gonna
37:17 have you back on in a couple of years to say okay what how did this play out
37:23 because we are in flex and it is exciting it is exciting yep and I think you have to kind of embrace the unknown
37:29 and embrace change as scary as that is absolutely so perfect thank you again
37:34 Skip I really do appreciate it thank you thanks for joining us today at hiring for good if you inspired by our
37:41 conversation don’t forget to like follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and if you want to learn more
37:47 about our Executive Search Services check us out at www.hiringforgood.net
37:53 or our company website Acumen Executive Search thanks so much and don’t forget
37:58 to join us next time for another in-depth conversation about transformational leadership till then
38:04 have fun