CTO of CannonDesign - Hilda Espinal

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to Hilda, the CTO of CannonDesign, right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Hilda at 00:00:15) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:16) This is the Modern CTO Podcast. Okay, so I'm really excited because I'm a fan of Canon. We had from Canon Imaging, Dennis, who was SVP over there. And so the Canon family—are the brands somehow connected?

(Hilda at 00:00:43) The Canon is—no, no, we're not. It's a very different entity. CannonDesign is architecture, engineering, and construction, and it's not related to the photographic type of entity that we're all used to as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:56) Do you know they have, like—

(Hilda at 00:00:57) They are not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:58) They have lots of lines of business. Do you know this?

(Hilda at 00:01:01) Yes. And actually, it's funny because at the very beginning when I first joined, a lot of people like, "Oh, can you give me a discount on a camera? Can you give me a discount on a printer?" I'm like, "No, a different CannonDesign." But thankfully, we've done a lot so that in our space, technology-related, most people now know what CannonDesign is separate from regular Canon.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:21) So you're primarily architects, engineers. You build things?

(Hilda at 00:01:25) Yes. Primarily, we are working in the architecture, engineering, and construction space. And so yes, we build, we assess, we try to affect through design what we do for society, try to solve problems and doing it in an elegant way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:42) What type of problems are you solving?

(Hilda at 00:01:45) Well, I think if you think about our primary sector being healthcare and how do we affect the design of hospitals, MOBs, we recently did a merger with a group that is focused on pediatrics, which is huge. It's another area that we wanted to grow. So if I use as an example, it's really, you know, affecting the experience of us as human beings and how do we experience space, how do we navigate through it, how do we feel about it, what do we recall, how do we engage technology in it to make it more, you know, either more comfortable, more advanced, whatever—you take your pick. It's one example. We also do education. We do commercial. There's so many aspects. There's so many areas. It's really kind of exciting because, ultimately, we're serving a population, society. So it's not just the building. It's what it does for us, I think.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:35) That's so—about eight, nine days ago, I had my first son, second child, first son.

(Hilda at 00:02:43) Oh, congratulations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:45) Thank you. And he's actually in the NICU, right? Because, you know, the hospitals and the infants and the pediatrics and all that. Nothing serious, just because he was early. And so he was working on a little bit—he needed a couple more weeks in the oven, you know?

(Hilda at 00:02:58) I see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:00) But so you guys build hospitals, build buildings like that?

(Hilda at 00:03:04) Yes, we do. We do. And we're always looking. We were just having a discussion with the health market about taking more and more into account the customer experience because you often have a client, right? Somebody that hires you to do this type of work, whether it's a renovation or a new hospital. But we really, really make an incredible effort in trying to focus on the patient, like your kid, right, your son, and you guys also. What is the experience for you and your wife in terms of, you know, how do you feel while you're in that space? What makes you feel comfortable? What are some of the necessities you may have? How will we design that to make it as ideal as we can?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:44) That's really interesting to me because growing up and in my professional career being in this big Internet boom, right?

(Hilda at 00:03:53) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:53) We focus—I often say to people, you know, your website is like your building. It's like the building for your business. It's what people go into and they experience. And if you have a dirty building or a gross building or a broken building, that gives a feel. If you have a well-designed, beautiful building, that gives a feel. But we're always so—in my side of the world, we're so obsessed with the metrics, the A/B split testing. How do we make that experience so great for them online? But I never thought about it. Your company is like doing that for a physical building, like looking at the physical building like the product.

(Hilda at 00:04:23) Correct. Correct. And oftentimes, you may also even want to brand it in a certain way that when people see this building, they know it's Joel's. They know it's yours. They know because there are certain aspects or things about it or features that allow people to identify.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:36) It's a giant J.

(Hilda at 00:04:40) It's a J.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:40) Lots of elevators.

(Hilda at 00:04:43) That will be the L. We'll figure something out there, right? The L at the end? Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:47) Or we could go Apple style, like make it a J from space, like when you're looking down.

(Hilda at 00:04:52) Ah, there you go. There's all kinds—yeah, yeah. Or you can make it explode, or you can make however—there's plenty of ideas.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:58) I'm working on it with CannonDesign. We'll figure it out. We got the best in the minds on our team.

(Hilda at 00:05:02) Can we get that in writing? Yes. Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:06) No. But I will, because you like the pediatrics and the health and everything, I will—I'm going to send you some of these books. This is a children's book.

(Hilda at 00:05:14) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:14) It's called The Princess Physicist.

(Hilda at 00:05:17) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:17) And it's about a little princess who gets stuck in a tower. But instead of a guy coming to save her, she finds a book on physics under her bed and uses physics to get herself out.

(Hilda at 00:05:24) Excellent. Perfect. Loving more than one way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:28) So that's my—that's my family's charity. And so we give them up and we give them away to, like, homeless pregnant women shelters, things like that.

(Hilda at 00:05:36) Oh, that's wonderful. Really. Really. It's—it's, um, I mean, it's obviously the story. It's another passion of mine to also try to advance us women in technology and in architecture. And it's not about, you know, waiting to be saved, but we can carve our own path and do quite well at it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:52) Yeah. I liked the book. I wrote it, and we had it produced, and we made a charity around it, and it worked pretty well as a way to give back. So yeah. So tell me a little bit about, like, you're—you're a nerd. You like technology. Right?

(Hilda at 00:06:08) Yes. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:13) What's your earliest memory of technology? Is it, like, Commodore 64, an arcade game? What is it?

(Hilda at 00:06:19) Oh my God. If we're going to age ourselves here, yeah, it would have to be something like Nintendo and fighting my brother for using it because it was his back in the day. I was having this conversation with a colleague here because he just recently got interviewed by Autodesk, and it was something about, you know, with virtual reality now, Ernesto can read minds. And he made reference to those days, and we then had a separate exchange like, "Do you remember playing Pac-Man?" Or, "Well, my first game was E.T." or whatnot. So it goes back to those days. Yeah. Way way back then.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:49) Blowing in the cartridge?

(Hilda at 00:06:51) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:52) Exactly. Trying to get the game started.

(Hilda at 00:06:55) Yeah. And, you know, you hit it, so, you know, whatever. Either you got a minute.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:59) Violence and machines used to work. Like, you could actually hit the machine and it performed better.

(Hilda at 00:07:05) Uh-huh. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:07) It doesn't work for MacBooks though.

(Hilda at 00:07:09) It's a little different now. Yeah. Nah. We'll do the opposite. For sure. Those are very early days. And this is back in the Dominican Republic, by the way, where I'm originally from. So that, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:19) Tell me about your journey getting here.

(Hilda at 00:07:22) To the states. So it's interesting. I was born in the Dominican Republic. I stayed there until I wrapped up high school, interestingly enough. Over there, there's no regulations as to when do you go to what grade. So at age 16, I wrapped up, and I had this dream that I wanted to study architecture in a mecca of architecture that Chicago is. And so, luckily, my grandmother lived here, and it was the days before 9/11, so it was quite easy to apply. And within three months, we got our green card, the family. But not everyone in the family got it. It was sort of a split. And so having been the one that had just wrapped up high school, my brother was still in medical school. He seemed like, "Hey, you're the perfect one to kind of, you know, get going and do what you've dreamt of doing." And so I ventured out to Chicago on my own, left my parents and everybody over there, and came and joined my grandmother and my aunt here, and started to study architecture. So that was kind of the beginning of it all. It was a very different time, and it was challenging to say the least because I didn't even speak English then. And so, yeah, it's been a long way since.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:31) That's amazing. We have one of our videographers, full-time videographers. His name is Alex. And about two years ago, he was living in Russia, didn't speak a word of English, and then he won the green card lottery.

(Hilda at 00:08:45) Oh, wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:45) Like, one in 10 million people. And then, so he came over here, worked in a wood factory chopping wood because there were some Russians there that could teach him English. And he couldn't get a job without—he was a videographer for many years over there, but he couldn't communicate. You—if you can't communicate, you can't go to a job, so you have to learn English. And so he had to go somewhere where there were people he could make some money and learn English. And so he chopped wood for a couple months, learned some English, and then I found his portfolio online and relocated him from North Carolina down to Florida. And he's been amazing.

(Hilda at 00:09:19) And he gets to do what he also loves. Great. Great. Yeah. It's interesting you say that because my very first job was as an intern in a hospital. Go figure. Really? Full circle. I mean, when I worked as an architect, I worked in healthcare. I just gave you an example of healthcare, and so I guess there's an interesting pattern of it's sort of the user, the person that occupies the space, and then not having the ability at some point in my life to design that and continue to affect that from where I'm at right now. So, yeah, full circle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:47) How many people are you the CTO for?

(Hilda at 00:09:50) Well, it's interesting. We have a super lean team here in terms of the idea of wanting to really democratize knowledge and make it super accessible. So my team right now is about, let's say, about eight people here. But then we also have another group that's focused on the infrastructure, and that's about 20 other people. And so I don't necessarily see that I oversee that group because I have a partner that is primarily leading all the infrastructure effort, and he oversees that 20-folks group, and I oversee the other one. That is primarily—if I may just kind of start talking about that—it's very, very focused on technology for the practice. So it's very unique in the way that the DNA of this group is primarily folks that have a similar background like mine of having been in a design profession, whether it's architecture or engineering, and then having made the leap into embracing technology and now driving it forward.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:46) That's amazing. So you lead that group?

(Hilda at 00:10:49) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:49) Wow. That's fantastic. And what project, like, are you really excited about right now? What are you doing that's getting you up out of bed in the morning?

(Hilda at 00:10:56) Oh, it's—there's a lot. There's a lot going on. I think, well, it's interesting. Early, early on when I joined, because I've been at CannonDesign for almost two years, it was very much in my mind to try to demystify this, "Hey, are you the Canon that can give me a discount on a camera?" I wanted people to know who we really are, and we've been around for a hundred years. And it's not that we're not well known. It's just in the technology space I wanted to amplify that. And so, in the first year, I focused quite a bit in getting out there externally, not only getting to know the business, but also speaking as to who we are and doing different publications and whatnot. Now I'm focusing that internally a whole lot more. And so when you say what gets me out of bed, usually, it's some exciting opportunity with a colleague here because we're either trying to go after a job pursuit, which we can try and win together, or just strategize about the sector that they oversee. As I mentioned, we do healthcare, but we do education, we do corporate. So all of the above—workplace strategy—are folks that I meet with, and I start to tell them, "Hey, this is what my group does and can do. What are your pain points? What are your needs? What are your aspirations?" And then we try to marry the two. So for me, it's super exciting to try to strategize and customize something that will give us a competitive advantage in a very unique way that would only happen at CannonDesign with the technology as it moves forward. So that's like the everyday thing, but I tell you, I'm also very, very excited about the potential of doing something that we call design synthesis, which is digitizing our knowledge. That hundred-year experience that I said we have, it's oftentimes in people's heads or it's in some sort of documentation, digital or analog. But taking all of that, capturing it, filtering what's relevant, trying to then do a little more of analytics around it and start to then do machine learning, AI—it's really kind of the key to all this. Artificial intelligence. How would artificial intelligence affect the architecture, engineering, construction profession, which we call AEC as an acronym? I think there's a lot there in terms of, you know, it's a controversial topic. Is it going to take jobs away, or is it going to make it better? Well, I think that if we start early and we grab a hold of what that's going to be and help design that, then it can be what we want it to be and not what people fear. Oh. It's a lot. It's totally—it's a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:19) Moment right there. It could be what we want it if we assume the position of creator. It can be what we want it to be and not what people fear. Yeah.

(Hilda at 00:13:27) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:27) I love that. I'm on your team.

(Hilda at 00:13:29) Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:30) I like that plan. That's a good strategy. It's like, it's very Elon Musk strategy with his OpenAI. Right? Yeah.

(Hilda at 00:13:37) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:38) Putting all the money to that, he's like, let's just build it open and be that force in the market. That way, at least we have a good AI to battle the corporate AIs.

(Hilda at 00:13:48) Well, and I think it's interesting because what makes—again, as designers, as people to solve problems and then hopefully in an elegant fashion, every firm has its culture and its identity and its—I don't want to use the word style, but just for kicks, I'll say that. Yeah. Yeah. It's—and so I think that uniqueness is the piece that we need to capture. How unique?

(Hilda at 00:14:10) What is it that makes CannonDesign CannonDesign? And if we can capture that DNA, digitize it, and get rid of the things that are repetitive and that we don't really want to work on and have it help us make better designs. Because think about it. If we, as a human being, I can only come up with so many designs a day just merely because of time, not for lack of the imagination. But if I start to feed this type of information to a computer that's a lot quicker than I at doing design iterations, and if I inform it further by saying, well, this is the impact that it's going to have on a community based on, I don't know, demographics or maybe because of the weather or the sun conditions or all of the things that affect the physical building.

(Hilda at 00:14:53) All of those things can, at one time, inform my design and give me a much better, higher quality building, for lack of a better term, because it could be a campus, it could be other things that I could do on my own with limited time and capacity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:08) Well, it seems possible because I see the AI that draws faces, but they're indistinguishable. It's like, which one of these was created by AI? And it's like, trick, they all were. And I'm like, those look like a bunch of people.

(Hilda at 00:15:23) Yeah, real that we think we've met at some point. Sure. Yes. There's that possibility. There's that possibility to not only generate design, but to inject that DNA that's ours and make it, oh, that looks like a CannonDesign building.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:36) Right. Well, your buildings are beautiful, by the way.

(Hilda at 00:15:39) Oh, thank you. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:40) I pulled them up, and when looking at them, they're just like, they're really cool-looking buildings, and they're huge.

(Hilda at 00:15:47) So some of them are huge, some of them are small, but yeah. No. Thanks. I appreciate it. I think we run the gamut. Some of them may be super functional. Some of them may be very unique. And hopefully, in every single one of them, there's an elegant solution.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:00) So if I want to build my Joel building—

(Hilda at 00:16:02) Yes. Your J.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:03) My J.

(Hilda at 00:16:04) I want to build a J.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:05) Right? Yeah. What's the timeline like? How long of a process is that?

(Hilda at 00:16:11) Oh, it varies. It varies. I mean, often the traditional way is that we have phases. And so the very first phase is to go conceptually, is to sort of figure out things like what is it that Joel would like, and what is it that he hates, and what is it that he thinks he needs, but maybe that's not what he needs because we get to play psychiatrist at times. Right? It's like, well, it sounds like, you know, you and your partners and, you know, this may be. And have you looked, whatever. So this is more of the conceptual piece. Then we get into the schematic design when we actually start to draw things up and start to propose things. Then it becomes design development, then construction documents, and then you get into construction administration where you're actually building something. So that could be months. It could be years. There's a project that we're going after right now. It's an entire campus. We're looking at a decade of engagement.

(Hilda at 00:17:04) So it could be that. That's the other extreme. It's a big deal. But also, you know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:09) Yeah.

(Hilda at 00:17:09) Yeah. It depends how big this J is going to be and how many years. But we're also trying to do something super interesting here that I think a lot of our competitors are not necessarily focused on. We have the uniqueness of having a construction arm to our group. And so we are looking at shortening that time, and not only shortening that, but also saving money by the efficiencies of maybe doing some modular type of design so that if we can bring in things that are prefabricated to site in order to erect this building, it's going to be a lot quicker, better quality, cheaper, so on and so forth.

(Hilda at 00:17:45) So we're looking to also kind of disrupt how those services happen today because there's a huge waste in the construction, when I actually said architecture, engineering, and construction industry that we're trying to get in the middle of and help those processes. So another way to innovate that we're looking into where technology is going to be a big piece.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:06) Let's talk a little bit about you as a leader. I saw the WELD on there. You're part of WELD?

(Hilda at 00:18:13) Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. So WELD is Women for Economic Leadership and Development, and interestingly enough, maybe about, I'd say, three years ago or so, I really felt like I needed to pay it forward. And really, it's just different experiences that I had in my personal life and seeing how we needed to still advance women in the profession and do what we can, not only in the architecture technology perspective, but all around. And so a colleague of mine in a previous life mentioned that she was part of this organization, nonprofit, and it's primarily to do that, is to advance the women, as I said, from an economic perspective and development. And so I joined them as one of the board members at large. And even though I was living in Dallas at the time and this is primarily out of Columbus when I joined, you know, I made it a point to volunteer my time and meet with them every so often and fly out there, and we did great things. We're still doing great things, and now it's at a national level and is looking to go international. So that's exciting.

(Hilda at 00:19:22) That's a side thing, but I love it. I absolutely do. And, you know, by virtue of doing that, it inspired me to also push forward that topic here at my firm. And so I've been for the last, yeah, I guess, two years the chair of our diversity and inclusion group as well. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:41) Nice. How many people are at the company as a whole?

(Hilda at 00:19:44) Together, we're about 1,200, I think, at the moment, give or take. Maybe a little less. We've, in the last year in 2018, we did three mergers, and so we keep growing location-wise and staff-wise. Yep. It fluctuates, but it's pretty much always around a grand, a thousand, a thousand people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:04) Now do you get involved with those as the CTO?

(Hilda at 00:20:08) Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's interesting because I think the more that we get engaged in it, the more that the rest of the executive team realizes the value of having us at the table early on. There's so much to be said about analyzing not only what's technology that's there, but how are we going to integrate that with our world and theirs and not come in as, you know, big, I don't want to say brothers, so big sibling that is going to come in and kind of crush the, you know, the other person that you bought. We make sure we don't lose their value.

(Hilda at 00:20:40) They were attracted to us in the first place because they brought value. So it's very interesting to look at what are your systems, what are you using, and not only that, what are your processes that affect how we produce our work. And so we look at that very, very early on and see where are the matches and what are some of the things that we need to adapt to in order to integrate as closely as we can. So very, very early on, there's a core team that starts the conversation as soon as we have a memorandum of understanding and I get engaged. And then the process doesn't end.

(Hilda at 00:21:10) Right? We continue throughout as we become partners then to just continue to integrate.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:17) I've never heard of that word before or that phrase. Can you tell me a little bit about what a memorandum of understanding is?

(Hilda at 00:21:23) Oh, it's primarily just legal information in terms of now it's okay to have the conversations between the company that we're trying to merge with and us, and it's a limited amount of interaction with some group of people. But we really can't legally have types of conversations without that document in place. We also cannot make any kind of recommendations in terms of how do they change their technology or, you know, may buy or abandon a piece of software, for example, until all of that legal work is in place. So it's really just—

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:01) Let's talk a little bit about that only because I actually, we're very connected with the audience, and I got a message last night. Couple questions people wanted me to ask my upcoming guest, and one of them was to shed some light on the M&A process. And so you happen to mention this word I didn't know about. It's part of the M&A process. So could you walk me through just the high-level bullet points of an M&A process?

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:26) You reach out to someone, you start a conversation, you do the memorandum of understanding, and you move forward. Like, what, could you just walk me through the milestones?

(Hilda at 00:22:34) Okay. Well, I'm not the most, full disclaimer, right? I have not, not given any kind of legal advice or not. It's not my expertise. But, certainly, primarily, the conversations are happening usually at the level of the CEO, CFO, and a few others in terms of the interest in doing a merger. And that conversation, it's usually one that our CEO shares with his core team and the leaders of the enterprise like myself so that we know that this is in the pipeline. And they continue to keep us engaged to the point that when we have the memorandum of understanding, then we can move forward. And myself as a CTO can speak to the CTO, director of IT, whatever that person may be in the other firm. And then we start having discussions around, hey.

(Hilda at 00:23:19) Can you give me information on licensing, and what does your infrastructure look like, so on and so forth. We can pay each other visits. We can see how we operate. And then, ultimately, though, until the deal is signed, and I don't know what the next level in terms of what the name of that document is, is when we can actually, but all I know is that our attorney here is, okay, he'll let go. You can. And then so that's a moment where we say, hey. Do not renew this or do not purchase that because we've got you covered.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:50) The attorney go doc.

(Hilda at 00:23:51) We'll send that out. Yes. That's, you know, we have a very talented attorneys in house, and we have the luxury of being able to rely on them whenever we need to make a move. Hey. Is it okay? And so they'll let me know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:05) That's awesome.

(Hilda at 00:24:06) Yeah. But I think it's really important that, you know, to your point that the technology crew is engaged early on because I can tell you in a previous life, I'm not going to mention names, when we were doing something similar, we discovered, it was, oh, maybe like, I think $8 or $10 million type of engagement to buy this firm internationally. And because it was back in the day and it was international and laws are different or the way in which people ignore them or adhere to them, I found out that one of the largest pieces of software that they had, which we use in the design environment by Autodesk, was not properly licensed. And so I ended up discovering that and figuring out that to bring them up to snuff was going to be a $2 million investment. So suddenly, this $10 million with this $2 million that you have to subtract made a huge difference on the go, no-go process.

(Hilda at 00:25:02) And we ultimately did move forward, but we had to make sure that our I's and T's, I's were dotted and T's were crossed before we got into that. So, yes, that—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:10) Oh, CTO just saved the due diligence. Come on now. Everybody go hang out, Hilda. Woo. I love it.

(Hilda at 00:25:17) All right. But yeah. No. It is. It happens. It happens a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:21) That's you doing your job, my friend.

(Hilda at 00:25:23) Congratulations. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:25) Oh, I'm excited. So leadership-wise, right, you're a leader, you're leading these M&As, you're leading your team of technologists within the organization, but you weren't always a leader. And you started out working as, I think you said in a hospital, but I wasn't sure if it was a, what was your position in a hospital?

(Hilda at 00:25:45) Well, no. I was an architect that then moved on to do help desk and sort of did the whole thing before I got to CTO. But, yes, I'm very aware of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:55) Hospital. You were an architectural intern at the hospital?

(Hilda at 00:26:00) Oh, no. No. Sorry. When I was at the hospital, I was just a registration clerk trying to pick up the language like your colleague from Russia. Just at the front desk. Imagine that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:07) Okay. Okay. Cool. Okay. Yes. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:13) So as you begin, as you move from there and then into your industry where you fit, right, where you have your passion, and then you start to take the reins and run your first team. That's never an easy transition for people. You always walk away with some good stories and some learnings. So we've got some people in the audience that are listening. They're going to make their transition from individual contributor to a team lead. What sort of advice do you have for them?

(Hilda at 00:26:39) Well, I want to say, well, I'll tell you from my personal experience. I was moving from being an architect, like, regularly doing drawings and designs and whatnot, and having a passion and having seen the potential for what technology could do for the practice, and wanting a chance to sort of get in, get my feet wet, and try to do this all of the time as opposed to when my colleagues, you know, tap on my shoulder. Hey, Hilda. Can you help me? And so I went to my principal at the time, the person in charge, and I said, hey.

(Hilda at 00:27:06) I want to give this a whirl. Can you let me do this? And if I don't like it, I can go back to my old job. And he said, sure. And that's really all the backing that I needed to go give it a shot. I'll tell you as I was, I started really doing the help desk piece and, you know, moving on to then be what's called a CAD manager, a BIM manager, a director, and I think a director is the level that we want to talk about, making that transition. But I'll tell you that one of the things that, and this is relevant to the comment you made about the book that you have in back of you, is that, I don't know, I think it's this thing about being a woman, being an immigrant, and this level of insecurity in wanting to prove that I was fit for the job. So not only did I do the job and learn and was executing as probably as well as my colleagues, but I felt like I needed that at the time. Right? I needed that backing, and so I went to school and I got certified as a Microsoft Certified System Engineer.

(Hilda at 00:28:03) I went and got my master's in IT. I felt like I needed all of these sort of things to validate, to really prove that I am as good as I say I am, and that's something that we've identified through just looking at socially, something that is called the imposter syndrome that a lot of women suffer from. Right? Oh, I'm not good enough. That sort of second-guessing and doubting. So I just say, you know, that was something back when that I think may resonate with some people in the audience that I would just say, you know, just trust that you're valuable and that you can do it. And perhaps you don't need to prove to the world with all the certifications even though it helps. But anyhow, just wanted to kind of make that point there. But then I moved into being the CAD manager and then later on BIM manager, which meant I was really good at knowing and supporting and teaching everything and anything about the portfolio software that I was managing. I was managing software but not people.

(Hilda at 00:28:57) And so I was that expert that knew right off the top of my head how to tell you how to approach something or solve something. And then I became the director of the group, and I built that group. And I had 22 people reporting to me at the time. And one of the things that I'm very grateful for that my CIO and boss at the time recognized was that I was having trouble letting go of being the expert into being the leader and where my value no longer was around, you know, knowing the quickest answer and the right answer right away, but to actually do all of the things that you do as a leader in terms of mentoring, visioning, strategy, et cetera. And so he put me through, and I'm very grateful.

(Hilda at 00:29:41) He put me through this one-on-one coaching session, and it was basically labeled "From Expert to Leader." And I met with this coach once a week, and thank God for him convincing me that my value now has shifted to be somewhere else so that I could let go of being that expert, because it was really hard to do both. And you're not effective at one if you're trying to do both. And so that's really—I think that was a changing moment for myself. That was a tipping point when I finally accepted.

(Hilda at 00:30:09) It's okay for somebody that reports to me to know more than me about something, and that's—let them thrive. And great. And I'll focus on these other things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:19) Yeah. And as you grow and as I talk to all these leaders that are amazing like you and others, what I find is that the thing that makes them great is their ability to find great people, coach them, grow them, put them together, and that's what makes them great. It's not being amazing at the individual contributor work.

(Hilda at 00:30:42) Yes. And you say that, and you called me a nerd earlier and I accepted, and I got goosebumps when you say that because it really, really, really resonates. I just yesterday got an email from someone here in the office saying we're having a group of students stay here for a week and we would like you—we know how passionate you are about what you do—we'd like for you to speak to them. And I immediately said yes. Anytime. Let's see how I can turn my schedule around to make it so, because that piece about inspiring up-and-coming professionals, it's super important to me. And you're right, the value is in the people. I can tell you in terms of the folks that have worked for me throughout the last maybe 16, 18 years, is that I've had folks that have done what the job, sort of the role describes, and they're very kind of seasoned at it and they're great assets. But I think half of them, and I think I'm moving now into two-thirds of the folks that are working or have worked for me.

(Hilda at 00:31:33) They approach me from being in the practice, sort of seeing what I've done or my crew has done and wanting to develop into that. And it's really sort of that, you know, that echoing and trying to develop like I did a while back when someone gave me a break. And so I am absolutely committed to opening their eyes in terms of what the possibilities are, what to expect, doing as much mentoring as I can. And I think, like I said, right now, I think I'm hovering maybe two-thirds of the folks that have directly reported to me been the ones that we've mentored into the role.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:08) So tell me, when you've got this group of people and they're saying, you know, "Build me up, mentor me, I want more," it's impossible for you to invest all your time and energy into every single person who asked for that, right? But I want to know what stands out to you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:23) What qualities of people stand out to you that you're like, "I want to invest my time into that person?"

(Hilda at 00:32:28) I think, well, the fact that they're willing to take the leap and make a change already, they have my attention. The ability or the interest in, in my world, this passion, this dual passion for technology and design, it's key. But I think you have to be also an individual that is enamored with change. I think we all love that because we are going to be change agents.

(Hilda at 00:32:58) If I see that in someone, then I think there's potential. And I usually—and I have told them, "Hey, listen. Let's give this a try. I'm going to invest in you and try to provide you with the resources that you need to succeed at this role, but give me," I've said, anywhere from a year to two depending on the situation.

(Hilda at 00:33:16) And I'll give, and you give me back, and let's give this a shot. Now by no means are you committed. There's no contract. There's no memorandum of understanding. None of that.

(Hilda at 00:33:27) If you feel free to go back and do what you were doing before, because it's kind of a changing career, right, from design to technology. And I'll tell you, in the whole entire history, I haven't had but one person go back to do what they were doing before, and that was only applicable till a year ago when he called me and said, "Hey, Hilda, I want to go back and work for you and your team in the firm that you're at now." And so that's been really kind of almost 100% a transition where folks find the, I guess, that sweet spot, and they don't want to—they don't want to change it back.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:58) You're awesome. I like you.

(Hilda at 00:34:02) Well, thank you. I like you too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:05) This is exciting. Okay. So when are you—like, are you out speaking? Are you doing public speaking with Weld or anything else?

(Hilda at 00:34:12) Yes. Well, right now, I'm actually delighted because I got asked to be the keynote speaker at a convention that is happening in Pittsburgh. It's called the AIA Build 2018. It's a yearly event, but it's for the American Institute of Architecture. And the reason why I'm super delighted is because finally—I tell you, when I was pushing technology for architecture back when I was in school, it was very much discouraged.

(Hilda at 00:34:37) Like, I got punished for doing that almost. Yes. It was to the point where my professor would say, "What? You did that with the computer? That's too easy. You need to do some extra work." Right? I kid you not. That was the day. And now an entity like this one, the American Institute of Architects, is asking me to speak to the future of architecture and design powered by technology.

(Hilda at 00:35:00) And so this is going to be the keynote piece, and it's coming up in April. But at the same time, I'm doing a piece in, say, in a couple of weeks at GTC with NVIDIA, and this is all around a technology called the Holodeck and their latest and greatest graphics development on the RTX and ray tracing for graphics. Those are the most immediate ones. But there's usually a lot throughout the year.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:23) Is that NVIDIA's main conference out in California?

(Hilda at 00:35:26) Exactly, in San Jose. Yeah. Are you going? Am I going to see you there?

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:29) Actually, maybe.

(Hilda at 00:35:30) Warm weather. Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:31) Well, I know there are PR people out there. So we actually go out to shows and do interviews live with the podcast. So we know all, like—we were at RSA last year and then, like, we know everyone at conferences. Yeah.

(Hilda at 00:35:44) It'll be great. It'll be great to see you in person. Yes. I've been going there for the last three years, but, yeah, I have two speaking opportunities this time and it's always fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:53) But you're in Chicago. And so I'm in Chicago speaking there twice this year and people, like—so next month.

(Hilda at 00:36:00) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:01) That's the first one. I'm excited because I want to see the thing I always see Instagram pictures of. The bean or whatever it is.

(Hilda at 00:36:07) The bean. Yes. The bean.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:09) And then there's the deck that, like, you look down and, like, you can—

(Hilda at 00:36:13) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:14) I forget the name of it. But it's an architectural thing.

(Hilda at 00:36:16) There is the deck. I'm trying to—it's not—you're not talking about looking at the bean, looking down.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:21) I don't know. There's, like, this platform people post, and it's like they're standing in this building, and it's, like, transparent, and they can look down. I don't know.

(Hilda at 00:36:30) I don't know. There's so many. Oh, I know what you're talking about. You're talking about the—yes, it's kind of—that's—we have what used to be the tallest building in the—well, maybe—no. It's still—it's not the tallest in the United States anymore, but it's a Sears Tower, or now it's called Willis Tower.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:44) Yeah.

(Hilda at 00:36:45) But Chicagoans refuse to call it Willis. We still call it Sears. And so, anyway, there's that, yeah, that reclining deck where you can do the 45, yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:52) Here's an architectural tip for you. Just put a large flag on it. Regain the dominance as the largest.

(Hilda at 00:37:01) Right. A really tall one. Really, really tall.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:04) Yeah. Really tall one.

(Hilda at 00:37:05) It's funny, but, yeah, a couple of times, the bitty building has won that because of the antenna.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:11) There you go. Hilda, thank you so much for coming on, hanging out, talking about design, technology, leadership. You gave some good advice, people transitioning, and shared some amazing stories. And I love the green. The green's beautiful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:25) Is that a dart in your wall, by the way?

(Hilda at 00:37:27) Let's see. Yes. There are three of them. Check it out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:31) Oh. So I love it because the most timeless part is just throwing it at the wall, and there's, like, there's no target. There's just, like, this is the wall where you throw the darts.

(Hilda at 00:37:45) Right. That's right. Because we are—there is always a moving target, right? We're always creating new things. There's always new challenges and new things to try to focus on. But, yes, Joel, thanks a ton. It's been a pleasure. It's been fun. And, yes, I look forward to hopefully meeting you in person when you're out here.

(Hilda at 00:38:02) And thanks. Thanks. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and your audience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:07) Awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you to your PR people who are in the room for setting this up and making this happen. And you have a fantastic day, and I'll let you know when I'm out in Chicago.

(Hilda at 00:38:15) Alright. Take care. Thanks a ton.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:17) Alright. See you.

(Hilda at 00:38:18) Bye bye.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:21) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.