In this episode, Skip Newberry breaks down what’s really happening beneath the headlines in tech, from funding shifts to workforce resets, and shares the leadership lessons that matter most: take risks, build your network before you need it, and define success on your own terms.
The leaders who will thrive are the ones who embrace change—even when it’s uncomfortable. – Skip Newberry
Suzanne Hanifin: President at Acumen Executive Search. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannehanifin/
Tanis Morris: Director of Business Development at Acumen Executive Search. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanis-morris-75a113266/
Skip Newberry: President & CEO of Technology Association of Oregon (TAO). LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipnewberry/
Acumen Executive Search Website: https://www.acumenexecutivesearch.com/
TAO Website: https://www.techoregon.org/
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