Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Modernizing Customs and Trade Systems with Cindy Allen
67 Plays10 months ago
In this episode, Cindy Allen, CEO and Managing Director of Trade Force Multiplier, joins Host Brian Glick, CEO of Chain.io, to discuss:
- Cindy’s journey in the trade industry, from from CJ Tower and DHL, to FedEx Trade Networks and now as founder of Trade Force Multiplier
- Navigating government interactions for a small business
- Prioritizing collaboration between CBP, the trade, and other government agencies
- The importance of mentorship and career support in the supply chain industry
Cindy Allen is an accomplished executive with over 35 years of experience in international trade, showcasing a stellar track record in navigating the complexities of governmental agency liabilities and enhancing customer satisfaction.Connect with Cindy
Follow Trade Force Multiplier
Connect with Brian
Follow Chain.io on LinkedIn
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Supply Chain Connections
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Supply Chain Connections. I'm Brian Glick, founder and CEO at Chain.io. On this episode, we're going to speak with Cindy Allen. Cindy has been a rock star in the supply chain sub genre that we all know as customs, which is where I come from and certainly my background. And Cindy's always been a person that I've looked up to in the industry. We're not going to get too nerdy on customs in this one. We're going to talk a little bit more about
Cindy Allen's Career Journey
00:00:32
Speaker
Cindy's journey from working in small businesses to then working for the federal government to then working in large enterprises and how changing culture and how she's had to adapt herself and her style and also get those organizations to adapt to getting a culture of getting things done. So I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:58
Speaker
Cindy, thanks so much for being on the show. Thanks so much for having me, Brian. I'm a huge follower of yours and excited to be in the conversation today. Flattery will get you nowhere with me, but we got two people who are fans of each other here, so.
00:01:12
Speaker
Why don't you tell everyone else who hasn't followed you for a long time, kind of your background and why you love this sector? Yeah, sure. Thanks. I've been in this business for over 35 years. I started my career on the northern border in 1987 and trade automation was just beginning. I worked for a company called CJ Tower, which at that point was a small regional broker and had six offices on the northern border.
00:01:42
Speaker
In subsequent years, it became Tower Group, which then became FedEx Trade Networks. Ironically, that was my last job before I started my own consulting firm, Trade Force Multiplier. I was the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Compliance at FedEx Trade Networks. I like to tell the story that I started at one place and came full circle.
00:02:05
Speaker
have started my own consulting firm because I've completed that circle and now on to new challenges.
Exploring Trade Automation
00:02:11
Speaker
But I've always been really fascinated by the automation. And while I don't have a computer background whatsoever, I always was interested in how trade could be easier for participants, how we could transmit entries easier, how we could find information easier.
00:02:30
Speaker
how things could be pre-populated. So as my career went along, I became more and more involved in automation from the automated broker interface and the AMS systems, the manifest systems. And then of course, through my foray at CBP, being the executive director of the ACE business office, really defining what the trade needed from that system and what CBP itself needed from the system.
00:02:57
Speaker
I've kind of done everything around trade other than work at an actual importer itself. So that's kind of my background and where I am today. So let's get some language straight for those listeners who maybe have not been as... We had to do this when we had Amy Morgan on as well. But we're maybe not as steeped in customs and trade issues. So let's just get some basics out of the way that I think we'll talk about as we go through this.
Understanding the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE)
00:03:24
Speaker
What is and was ace?
00:03:27
Speaker
ACE is the Automated Commercial Environment and it is the system that CBP uses and actually the whole US government uses it.
00:03:36
Speaker
to collect international trade data from those who import and export into and out of the United States. So everything that you think of that comes from a trade statistic from the government actually comes from the ACE system. And those are census data saying, oh, we imported this billions of dollars in this industry sector or this segment, or we exported this amount to that country in this time period.
00:04:05
Speaker
That data is actually all based in filings that international trade participants actually send to the ACE system at customs. So if you're ordering something online, you go in and say, oh, I want that sweatshirt with that cool Christmas saying on it or whatever, and you input that data. Well, someone has to report that importation to the government and they have to possibly pay taxes on it or duties on it.
00:04:34
Speaker
And that information is transmitted by customs brokers, who I like to say are kind of the facilitators of the travel of the goods.
00:04:45
Speaker
Freight forwarders are the travel agent for the goods. They range from the goods to go from one place to another. And in the middle of that are customs brokers who report that filing to the government. So that's one big role that ACE plays. The second role is that it is the system that customs actually works out of itself.
00:05:07
Speaker
So those e-commerce shipments say, like, that's Cindy Allen. We got to look at her shipment. She's not trustworthy. They have that because they understand and they know what my importing history is. And if I've imported from bad places or imported bad things or had some issues. So they use that system to determine what they want to look at and what they deem as to be probably safe and that they aren't going to look at.
00:05:32
Speaker
They also use that system to collect the data. They use the system to collect the duties. They use the system to do reporting through all that data, but also to Congress and also to the Treasury. Hey, this is how much duty we've collected and it goes to the Treasury.
00:05:49
Speaker
That's the second thing. The third thing is it serves as a portal for all the other government agencies that have jurisdiction over importer export. There's around 47 different agencies like the FDA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency. They all have a role to ensure that what's being imported is safe.
00:06:11
Speaker
and good for consumers. So that's the third major role that it plays for international trade. So a huge cog in the middle that kind of operates silently in the background. So I want to ask you a culture question here, but it's going to be about ACE a little bit. You joined
00:06:31
Speaker
customs formally in 2010, before that you were involved as, you know, representative of the private sector in the participation of all of this. But my recollection, I did some research years ago, the first reference to ACE was in like 1994 or so, right? So by the time you joined in 2010, it's kind of like the big dig in Boston, right? And we all know we got to finish it, but it's maybe a little bit overdue and a little over budget.
00:06:59
Speaker
What was it like going from having worked in smaller businesses and on the private sector side to then being part of this giant federal machine and trying to drive something to the finish line?
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, it was interesting. I will tell you that I was contacted by CBP and the government can't recruit people that they're not allowed to do that, but I was highly encouraged to apply for this position. And it took them six months to convince me to actually apply for this position because there was a four billion with a B billion dollar budget.
00:07:33
Speaker
And something like 3.25% or 3.25 billion of that budget had already been spent. There was something like 30% of the system that had been delivered. So who wants to take that job, right? That's not an exciting job. I had never worked for the government directly. So it took me a while to actually decide, hey, this is something that I might want to do.
00:07:55
Speaker
But, you know, the excitement of doing that kind of won out in the end and I applied and got it. So I don't know if that was foolish or, you know, a good career step. I don't know. But it was with the intent that I was expected to kind of turn around the program. At that point in time, the Obama administration had come in. They had a technology guru who said,
00:08:20
Speaker
anything that isn't producing results must stop programming.
The Shift to Agile in Customs Programming
00:08:25
Speaker
So we were under a stop program for ACE and with 30% done and the whole entire international trade data coming from this future system, it was a precarious position to be in. So I was probably set up in a much different way than most people coming into the government.
00:08:44
Speaker
I had the backing of the commissioner of customs who at that time was acting commissioner Berson who said, you know, this is extremely important. He always saw CBP as a data agency, not necessarily an enforcement agency. As a matter of fact, I remember sitting around the table and all these, you know, what I called the guns and the badges from CBP and all the trade people.
00:09:09
Speaker
And I remember Commissioner Burson saying, you know, what is this agency? And, you know, there was a lot of, well, where, you know, we protect consumers. Yes, we do that. We provide enforcement. Yes, we do that. We're the last law enforcement agency in the United States, which is true. Yes, we're that. But he said, what really is a data agency? We're a data collector. And you could see all of everybody kind of frowning. And he said, we don't take any action unless we have the data.
00:09:35
Speaker
We use all of that data to form how we're going to do risk management.
00:09:40
Speaker
both from a people and a goods perspective. And I always appreciated that because he understood that without ACE and without the modernized system, he wasn't going to be able to carry out that enforcement. He wasn't going to be able to perform that screening. He wasn't going to be able to protect the United States. So that was the backing that I had. I also had very strong backing from customs authorizers on the Hill, the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means.
00:10:08
Speaker
who I had dealt with in the private sector in support of Ace and who supported me from that perspective when I was in the government. So I had probably a very strong backing that most people don't have. So I didn't really experience a lot of the bureaucracy that most people feel and truly that I felt at the end when I left customs. So I was set up for success going in the door
00:10:35
Speaker
And I was given free reign to do what I needed to do to make this be successful. And kind of the first thing that I did is I did, you know, kind of the 90-day approach. I said, what do we got going on here? Because it was the first time that I had seen behind the curtain, right? And that's always exciting when you get to see behind the curtain. It was much less exciting after 90 days when I'm like, oh, geez, what do we got here?
00:10:58
Speaker
And i remember thinking i need to talk to everybody so i brought all of the trade together about all the other government agencies together i brought a lot of people from customs together inside. We really have to do this together we can't do it separately.
00:11:13
Speaker
we have to do it together and we prioritized from start to finish what we needed to do. And I think that really was also unique in that I was able to do that with the backing of the trade because I'd come from the trade with the backing of the Hill. So I had, you know, a funding stream with the backing of the agency. So it was kind of this tidal wave momentum to get that going. So one of the things I remember from back then,
00:11:40
Speaker
Because I was on the other side, right? I was working for a customer's broker at the time. I was at Vandygrift.
00:11:46
Speaker
announcements started coming out from customs that said, we are going to take an agile approach, which was a very new word back then. Now it's a business cliche. We're going to be agile this, we're going to be agile that. But it had a very specific technical meaning at the time, that we're going to deliver small batches of features and we're going to do it on a regular basis. We're going to get them out to what we call the trade, what most people would just call the private sector. And
00:12:11
Speaker
iterate and we were part of that as a customs broker. I had a person on my team who was just dedicated to helping customs test FDA filings. Like I remember that being a very big thing. It was iterative, right? And it was collaborative. What was it like from the other side of that conversation? Again, like inside of an agency that had just spent $3.2 billion building 30% of a $4 billion system to say,
00:12:37
Speaker
Like, were they ready to hear, okay, we have to do this differently? Or did you have to drag them through that? There was a little bit of dragging. There really was. Before that approach, Customs had complete control.
00:12:49
Speaker
even though they had the trade support network, which is the formal body that CBP went to to say, hey, give us your ideas. Let's prioritize. Once they had that, then they would stop and then they would go build a bunch of things. And then they would, you know, throw it over the fence and say, what do you think? And people would say, oh, here's all the things that's wrong with that. Or you didn't really understand what we wanted. You didn't really understand what we needed. And, you know, they throw it back over. So it just made it so much more
00:13:19
Speaker
complicated than what it needed to be. And also CBP wasn't doing the programming themselves. They were hiring contractors and they would sometimes hire discrete different companies to build pieces of it. And so it didn't necessarily all go together very well on the backend. And then, you know, on the backend, the folks at CBP and their vendors and programmers were confused about what requirements really meant, you know,
00:13:47
Speaker
you talk about jargon and helping people understand what it means, there is a deep divide between what the private sector and trade says and what CBP really understands and hears because most of the folks at CBP had never been in the parade and vice versa. Most people in the trade didn't understand what CBP was trying to say.
00:14:07
Speaker
So I think that I saw my role as being a translator. I translated what the trade wanted to CBP and I translated what CBP wanted to the trade overall. And I think that made it a lot more smooth. And I remember we had some new leadership on the technology side come in and
00:14:25
Speaker
The individual came to me and said, hey, there's this new thing called agile. And what that means is we're going to build smaller segments in iterations, but we need the trade to be involved all the way through. I mean, great idea. We had been doing that kind of up to the point where people were programming, but what we weren't doing was doing that in small segments.
00:14:46
Speaker
So I found that to be the most exciting idea. And we informally adopted that approach before I left. And of course, you know, when I left, when Brenda Smith took over that executive director position, they really honed that approach and really adopted it in a formal manner. But I think what was really crucial during that timeframe was the trade's ability and willingness to come in and say, you know, hey,
00:15:15
Speaker
We're going to spend two weeks out of every eight weeks and sit down with you and tell you this is what we meant and sit side by side with the programmers. And that's really where a lot of that dragging came in was, yes, you have to sit down with the trade. Yes, you have to sit down with the other government agencies. And there has to be a collaborative approach here or we're never going to get to that end result. We're going to spend a lot of time throwing things back and forth across the fence.
00:15:43
Speaker
when really we can just tear that fence down and start being neighbors, good neighbors, and really working together. So I think there was a reluctance. The trade and the private sector were all for it because they were frustrated with the approach. This is not what we said. We said, one, two, three, you program four, five, six, where's step one, two, three? And there was such a delay because the programs were so massive. They'd write requirements and two years later, the programming would come out.
00:16:12
Speaker
There was a lot of excitement, I think, in the end in that approach. Part of that also came about because the main programmer of ACE, their contract ended and that major vendor had to be replaced and it made sense to replace them with smaller companies who could program smaller segments and move forward. So you start
00:16:39
Speaker
With these small companies, like you're doing the work, you're clearing stuff on the Northern border, which is a very fast moving. Okay. We're just going to go get stuff done. Even amongst customs people, the Northern border, the truck borders, the Northern South are like just a rapid pace world compared to air and ocean trucks are just constantly moving.
Cindy's Transition to Corporate and Consulting Roles
00:16:58
Speaker
You go to government, you know, you're trying to get them to move faster to drive things forward.
00:17:03
Speaker
And then you make the decision to go to two of the largest companies on the planet back to back in DHL and FedEx. So how did you have to evolve and change as you went through those different phases? I think like anyone, as you move in your career, you start learning more things. You learn how to manage larger and larger teams.
00:17:23
Speaker
You learn, you know, to really build a good direct reporting team that's been really crucial for me is the opportunity to build a great team to move things forward.
00:17:34
Speaker
I've seen recently a lot of discussion online and LinkedIn and other places about whether you should build a team who doesn't recognize your absence and whether that absolves you from responsibility. I was in that debate yesterday. I know a thread you were talking about. I'm always taking the approach that I should build my team so that if I move on to the next thing,
00:18:00
Speaker
they won't miss a beat. And I did that, you know, previous to me going to the government. I did that when I was at the government. You know, a lot of people when I left were like, Oh my God, it's been, you know, it's going to fall apart. We don't have anyone in there. But I built a team that was fantastic and was able to just continue to deliver. And so I think going to, you know, DHL and FedEx, I was kind of the next opportunity for a large organization to see what I could do.
00:18:27
Speaker
And DHL at the time I went there, I was the head of US brokerage in the US. They had made a massive change that wasn't necessarily as successful as they hoped it was, had an impact on their bottom line. And if you're noticing a thread here, there's a problem, I come in.
00:18:49
Speaker
I'm going to fix it. I'm known as a fixer. So it was an opportunity to do that on a large scale where I started, which is in customs brokerage. So I had customs brokerage and compliance and some sales responsibility and consulting. So it was exciting to do that for a larger company.
00:19:05
Speaker
I'd done that previous in my career, you know, for regional and smaller brokers, but it was an exciting opportunity also for a company that, you know, has the resources to automate to a great degree. So that's really what excited me about that opportunity was, you know, taking on a new challenge and in the field that, you know, I'd grown up in my career with more resources to be able to design a program like I wanted to. That was really interesting from that perspective.
00:19:34
Speaker
So I guess all of us fixers, and I always kind of considered myself a fixer, even though I'm a founder now. I had to create something to break and then fix it, but I know the feeling. You identified a gap in the service offer. That's right. I'm fixing the whole industry. That's how I'm supposed to say it.
00:19:50
Speaker
We all end up as consultants at some point, right? Because it's just the ultimate opportunity to go fix a whole bunch of things. So kind of what has you excited about kind of diving back into the consulting world and what kind of customers are you working with or what kind of problems do you want to go help people fix? I was in my last position at FedEx for over seven years and one of my mentors told me, Cindy,
00:20:15
Speaker
You know, after like three or four years, you either need to change jobs or you need to move to a new company. So if you look at my employment history, the longest I ever stayed was at FedEx for over seven years. And previous to that, a regional broker called Wilson International on the Canadian border for six years. And I felt like it was time for change. You know, I'd solved a lot of problems. We got, you know, things moving forward.
00:20:41
Speaker
After about seven years, you need to change your approach anyway. Companies need to reinvent themselves. And they were thinking about that. And I just thought it was a good exit time for me. So I retired.
00:20:51
Speaker
had a great career, have nothing bad to say about them at all. They were a great company and I learned a lot from the individuals there as well as from the business itself. But I wanted something fresh. So what I love to do, like you, I like to identify what a client needs from an automation perspective and help them identify a solution.
00:21:14
Speaker
an offering that solves that problem companies you know customs brokerage freight forwarders even importers they aren't really great about. Figuring out what they really need they see all the new bells and whistles and they get a pitches from companies and technology and they don't really know.
00:21:32
Speaker
what they need from an objective perspective. So I love to come in and help companies do that. I did that kind of as part of my job at different companies anyway. And so now that's a service offering that I have and am excited to offer to clients of any shape or size.
00:21:52
Speaker
Through my career, I've known a lot of the software. I'm like you, very familiar with what's out there. Extremely aware of the environment we're in, which is much more enforcement oriented and understanding kind of what's next. What's going to come next in the next three to five years and helping customers understand what that is, I think is really exciting to me. The other thing is I've been involved with the political environment, regulatory affairs at a high level for
00:22:21
Speaker
You know, a couple of decades now and helping customers who don't necessarily have the budget for their own lobbyists, right? They aren't going to go out and hire someone because they don't have a need every day to have representation. That's something I can offer. I can facilitate those communications with the government. I can facilitate meetings and resolution.
00:22:41
Speaker
with the government, both at the regulatory agency perspective, but also with the Hill. I've developed some good relationships with them over the years and continue to work with them on some of the current legislative proposals. So that's something that is fun for me and has always been a fun part of the job. I don't necessarily want to be a lobbyist. I don't do it to that degree, but facilitating those relationships is what I like to do. And I like to, like I said, and my role at CBP was translating
00:23:10
Speaker
you know, between the private sector and the government, I'm really good at that. And that's something I enjoy. So that's something I offer as well. And then there's the normal service offerings that a consultant has from start to finish. And anyone who is interested, my full service offerings are on my website, which is tradeforcemultiplier.com. So we'll put a link in for you. Actually, when I say something first, because with other people,
00:23:37
Speaker
We did some interactions with the federal government as a company and as a kind of younger company. It's a very weird and intimidating thing until you go do it. And then you realize that most people in government are actually there wanting to have meaningful conversations and very thankful.
00:23:54
Speaker
to get the perspective that you can bring to them and very, very collaborative. And it was a big surprise to me as somebody who had never really operated in that space that when we started working with a consultant, and this was a lot around the port congestion and things that were going on during the pandemic where I thought that we had some value that we could bring, you know, and we weren't trying to get contracts or anything. We were just trying to talk. Having someone to facilitate and kind of walk through that
00:24:19
Speaker
with us and how to engage. And it's almost like going to another country in the sense of like the cultures are different and the way you go about talking to people and certainly the restrictions on how you, you know, what you're ethically allowed to do and not, you know, having Sherpa through that process.
Private Sector and Government Collaboration
00:24:33
Speaker
I think it's not as scary as a lot of small companies think it is, you know, and that if you have a guide, it should be much more accessible to the companies that are not FedEx and VHL.
00:24:45
Speaker
That was at least my personal experience was I thought, oh, God, these people are never going to talk to us. And then I would walk into the room at the Department of Transportation, Department of Commerce, and they'd be like, thank you for being here. Right. Was the answer that we got from them.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. It's just that you don't know. Like I said, it's that translator. You need somebody to, you know, kind of be the teacher in the room, you know, coming in, helping you know who to talk to and how to talk to them. I was really surprised when I was in the government how open most
00:25:18
Speaker
agencies are to getting feedback and having involvement from the private sector. I knew that on ACE, that was the blueprint from the beginning. This was actually pushed by the trade, by the private sector, and so that was always a big part of the ACE culture. But I didn't think that was
00:25:39
Speaker
necessarily the culture of the rest of the government. And I was surprised that a lot of the government offices are very receptive to meeting. And I think that's because they don't understand how the private sector works any more than we understand how the government works. So if they're dealing with the private sector and they're dealing with the trade, it's sometimes easier for them to have somebody who can translate that talk.
00:26:04
Speaker
you know, into from government to private sector and private sector back to government. So they want to, I think a lot of them just don't know how to talk. It's like, you know, talking Italian and English, you know, you can communicate with gestures, but you really need that translation tool in the middle to be really successful. And I think that's what, you know, people like me and my service can offer to folks. So I want to wrap with a question.
00:26:31
Speaker
maybe take a step backwards here for a second, because it's just something that fascinates me.
Cindy's Reflection and Mentorship
00:26:35
Speaker
We were at an event recently together, and we were both up on the stage for a bit of the event. But prior to either of us was a very senior person who has been in government long enough to be considered famous. And I'm not going to call him out. It's not important, but very, very senior person. Books will be written with his name in it. And I went home that night and said to my wife, it is so cool to me
00:27:00
Speaker
that I was even on the same physical stage as that person, even though it was four hours later in the day and I'm sure he had left, but like just was like, who the hell am I, the kid that got hired at a customs broker to plug in the wires to get the dumb terminals to talk to them as 400 is now on this stage that that guy was just on. But you've like actually, you know, been on Capitol Hill and said, what was it like the first time when you were like, I used to be the import lead for the Kmart account.
00:27:29
Speaker
And now I'm sitting on the hill. What was that like? What did that feel like? I think it's a little bit of a, you pinch yourself. You're like, who am I? How did I get here? Because I remember
00:27:44
Speaker
You know, in the early days when I was first starting out in this industry and I answered an ad in the paper, I had no idea what it was. I had no idea what it was. I didn't even know it was a field. So I had absolutely no awareness of what this was. And to go from that to.
00:28:03
Speaker
you know, meeting at the White House for supply chain issues and meeting on the Hill to be considered an expert in testifying before Congress. I think after each one of those events, I look at myself and think, who am I? You know, I'm just Cindy. I grew up in Indiana. I don't even know how I got here. You know, but also I noticed that people listen and I think it's scary and a big responsibility at the same time, you know, because I'm considered an expert.
00:28:32
Speaker
as are you. We are asked to talk regularly. We are asked to give advice and give awareness of what's going on in the industry.
00:28:41
Speaker
And I don't know if there's any secret to what happened or how I got here, other than I asked a lot of questions and I loved learning about the business. And to me, this is a business that you either love it or you hate it. And I've loved it from the second day that I actually figured out what I was doing on the Northern border, clearing customs entries.
00:29:03
Speaker
I've loved it and I just think it's fascinating. I'll tell you a quick story. You know, I'm a part of a lot of different associations and getting involved, you know, at a local level was really important to me, which I did. And that led to involvement in the national level, which was also important to me. And I remember thinking,
00:29:22
Speaker
There were three individuals and i thought if i can impress them and let them know that i am a knowledgeable person in this area i will have made it right and they were giants in the industry who everyone looked up to everyone in our industry knows to this day their names.
00:29:43
Speaker
And I remember sitting around with some of my friends a couple of years ago, and we have this tight group of friends, you know, girlfriends that, you know, talk about challenges of a woman in really what was a male-dominated industry for a long time.
00:29:59
Speaker
I remember looking, one of them was the chairman of the NCBFAA, one is the president of the NCBFAA, one is the president of another well-known association, very accomplished women. And I looked at them and said, oh my gosh, we are the people that
00:30:18
Speaker
the newbies look up to, how did that happen? And who are we? So I think it's really shocking to me on some level. It's also a huge responsibility, I think, to be in that role. And also, you know, I feel like I'm giving back to the industry overall. But it's also why I take time
00:30:41
Speaker
to meet and try to mentor people who are just starting out in our industry because I was lucky enough to have a couple of folks say, Hey, Cindy, you know, I think you have a future. Let me help you realize that future. And so I think it's really important that we all do that now, you know, and mentor those who are new and take time to sit down and answer questions.
00:31:05
Speaker
and talk to them about what's going on and how you've developed your point of view and what you do to be successful and how you take all the information in to really formulate what's going on in the industry and then help companies and individuals determine what their next step should be. So I think part of it's just the love of the industry that's come through and part of it's just dumb luck. Those women at that table
00:31:32
Speaker
you know, I'm about 10 years behind you and career path are the people who became my mentors, right? And it is always interesting to me, specifically on the custom side, this is different in logistics, but in customs, so many of my mentors were women that it was, I actually had to learn that the rest of supply chain was not a women dominated industry because
00:32:00
Speaker
It was the Mary Jo's of the world, the Maureen Gray's of the world that like, these were the people who taught me this business. So, you know, I think what you all did and whether, you know, I know a lot of the people who probably were in that room, you know, certainly are incredibly successful at creating a mentoring culture for
00:32:17
Speaker
those of us who are a few years younger. Yeah. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you for recognizing, you know, those fabulous women who are at the table. And I think a lot of it was deliberate. You know, we would have conversations about, OK, who's next? Who do we bring into the fold? Who is, you know, new and smart and exciting, has great ideas to bring forward. And how can we help them get there? And I think that's part of the responsibility of being
00:32:44
Speaker
you know, seen as a leader in the industry is really, you know, okay, if I'm going to accept that role, then it comes with a lot of other responsibilities that I now have to deliver, even on a personal side, you know, had leadership roles in companies. But when you're kind of seen as an industry leader, it has a whole other meaning.
00:33:05
Speaker
that you don't really recognize at first. You know, it's kind of thrust upon you, you know, with success. And a lot of that, you know, I was joking when I said this dumb lot, but a lot of it is just, you know, getting out and meeting people. I think that's also been a huge part of my success is getting involved no matter where that is and what industry it is and what association it is, but getting involved
00:33:31
Speaker
letting your voice be heard and meeting people, you know, introduce yourself, go up, you know, exchange business cards. That's how I did a lot of it in the beginning because I didn't necessarily have huge mentors in Detroit. So, you know, when I became involved on a national level, I had to take matters in my own hands and find a mentor. So if anyone is looking at that challenge, I would say become involved and introduce yourself.
00:33:57
Speaker
Well, I think that is an awesome place for us to wrap up as I do with every one of these interviews. I wish we could do another hour, but let's pause there. And I'm sure next time we're in person, we'll have to continue this conversation. But thank you so much for taking the time today. Oh, thanks so much for having me on, Brian. I really appreciate and look forward to those conversations as always. Well, thanks again to Cindy.
00:34:26
Speaker
As always, you know, I couldn't have any more fun than I do recording these episodes and getting to talk to people that I've looked up to in the industry. And I'm sure that came through in that interview. We'll have links in the notes to Sydney if you want to reach out to her for mentorship or for
00:34:43
Speaker
The consulting opportunities, again, could not recommend her more as far as someone to help guide you in your business or in your career. So again, thanks to Cindy, and we look forward to speaking with you next time.