From Small Town North Carolina to Leading Tech for 2.3 Million People with Bob Leek | Ep049

Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. For each episode, I basically hit the refresh button and bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences, to really uncover any actionable advice that we can provide to you as you’re managing your own career. So I’m very excited today that I have with me Bob Leek. So he is the CIO for Clark County. For those of you that aren’t aware, and I’m sure Bob will bring us up to speed, but Clark County is one of the largest counties in the nation. So, you know, I’m interested to kind of get into how he eventually landed into that role and a lot of the things that he’s doing to kind of better not only, you know, his organization, but the community as a whole. So with that, I’ll go ahead and introduce Bob.

Bob: Thanks for having me here.

Manuel: I appreciate you, you know, taking the time to kind of go through and share your experiences. So you and I have had conversations, you know, outside of here. And I think one of the big things, and I think the reason that I’m excited to have you on here and kind of share your story is a lot of times people see a name or they see a title and they’re like, oh, Bob Leek, a CIO, or oh, a Rishma, our, you know, they see these titles and they think it’s almost intimidating to them. And one of the things that I’ve been fortunate enough is I know you all outside of here and I don’t have kind of that, okay, he’s a CIO, he’s a person, but now I want to give you the opportunity to kind of show that and show people like, okay, he’s just a regular person. So when I come across Bob at an event, which, you know, I’ve come across and, you know, we’ve seen each other at a lot of these, but to come and say, hey, I can come and say hi and, you know, and kind of introduce themselves.

Bob: Yeah, please do that. I’m a professional extrovert, I’m a social introvert. So I relish the opportunity for people to come up and talk with me. I love engaging with people.

Manuel: So if you kind of start off, if you can tell us, you know, where you grew up and then eventually what got you interested in kind of pursuing technology.

Bob: Yeah, so it’s an interesting story. So I was four years old when we moved to the United States. I was born in the Netherlands. My dad worked for a flower bulb export company and they decided that there was an opportunity to move some of their operations to the United States. And so he came home one day and said, we’re gonna move to North Carolina. And not just anywhere in North Carolina, but Mount Airy, North Carolina, which is Andy Griffith’s hometown. So that’s gonna be familiar to a lot of people from the Andy Griffith Show, right? It was in color when I was there. It wasn’t black and white, but growing up in a town with 20,000 people, what you saw in the Andy Griffith Show with Mayberry, that’s what I grew up in. A couple of stoplights, a very close knit community. I grew up in the early 70s, mid to late 70s, the formative years, playing Little League Baseball and playing soccer and being involved in the church and all the things that you could imagine in small town America. And it was a great place to grow up. I learned English from a good friend of mine, James. I lived in the neighborhood with me. He literally took me around and said, that’s a rock. That’s a squirrel. That’s a tree. So I learned English through Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, all of that, that was in that era. And so it was really formative to me to grow up in a small American community like that and really put a set of values and principles in place for me that I still carry forward to today. So my dad then had a second big influence on my life. In 1987, I was gonna be a senior in high school. I was gonna graduate second in the class. My good friend, Todd, was gonna graduate first. It’s the first time in the history of that high school that two boys were gonna graduate at the top of their class. My dad came home and said, guess what? We’re moving to Atlanta, Georgia. We’re moving to Lawrenceville. At that time, it was Gwinnett County, fastest growing county in the country for like five years. We were a family that moved into a neighborhood that had 70 homes in it. We were the second family that moved in. Within six months, the entire neighborhood was full of people. I went from a high school with 300 kids in it to a graduating class with 500 kids in it. And so culture shock, right? Giant high school, 2400 kids in a high school, six-story high school, big athletics, a 6A school. Here I was coming from this really small environment into this giant environment. And I walked in the door and I was second in the class in terms of academics. That caused some backlash from the people that had been going to school there for their entire lives, right? So took some AP classes, small-knit community, tanked my senior year. Just totally said, you know what? I’m not gonna be part of disrupting that group, that culture, those close-knit high school folks. And several of them became really good friends. So I tanked my senior year. I went from second in the class of 500 to fifth. And so, you know, I think I had a B, maybe two. And so it’s, again, another formulative time in my life in having been disrupted from moving from the Netherlands to the United States, then moving from small town to gigantic town. And that’s really formed the core of what I’ve done. Went to college in the North Georgia mountains, private school, got an accounting degree, worked for a couple of companies in Atlanta, met my wife, now my wife. We’ve been married 30 years next year in Buckhead. That’ll be familiar to many people. Met at a dueling piano bar on one of those chance encounters. And by the third date, we knew we were gonna get, we knew we were gonna get married, which we did in 1996. Moved from then Atlanta to Spokane, Washington. She had an opportunity to move somewhere. And she was in the hospitality industry, worked for Westin Hotels at the time, had traveled all over the country. Her dad was a physician in the army. So she had never been anywhere longer than three years. And so here we were, we met in Atlanta, we moved to Spokane, couple of years there. I got to work for a company named Egghead. I can usually tell people’s age whether they recognize who Egghead was. (laughing) And for the kids, they’re like, Egghead? Yeah, for those of us in the industry, oh, Egghead. Yes, I was there during the Oh, Egghead era. And Egghead then moved from Spokane to Portland, Oregon. And really that’s where I spent the last 20 years before we moved here to Las Vegas five years ago.

Manuel: And you mentioned that it was formative and kind of doing this and kind of moving around. So your wife is, she’s used to kind of moving around, bouncing, but you, not just gonna say you were used to it, but at that age, you don’t have a control and you’re kind of, you’re moving around. So did that, when you say it was formative, did it help you kind of be okay with change and kind of moving around? Because I know that it can go both ways. There’s some people that do that and they absolutely hate it. And they’re like, nope, I’m planting my roots as soon as they have the ability to. And I don’t like change. And other people embrace it. And then there’s kind of the middle where like, well, I don’t mind it, but I don’t seek it. But if it happens, so I’m just kind of curious where you fall within that spectrum.

Bob: Yeah, I think it has given me an appetite for accepting change and then the impact of change. And so one of the maxims that I work with is, if you don’t like your circumstances, then work to change them. So if you find yourself in a job or at a company or with a group of friends or doing activities that really don’t feed your soul and don’t make you feel good about yourself or what it is that you’re doing, then make a change. And so in the technology realm as well, change is a constant for us. AI is the latest gigantic thing. We have no idea what AI is gonna do to all of us. I think there are stories that are formulating and it’s not that AI hasn’t been around for a long time, but the current incarnation of AI, the change that’s gonna happen, we have to be both resilient and adaptive and open to the impact of what’s gonna happen. And so you’re right, the first three or four changes in my life were completely out of my control. I had an opportunity to stay in North Carolina and graduate my senior year and then go on to college. But at the end of the day, we decided that that was gonna be, as a 17 year old at the time, I could have moved in with a friend and then become part of their family and kind of finish things out. But we assessed all of that and said, the better thing to do is to go ahead and move to Atlanta, do one year in the high school there and then figure out where to go to college. And because of my academics, I had my choice. I could have gone anywhere, any college, anywhere in the country and ended up going to this small private school to just kind of reset. And then from there, this idea around embracing change and being resilient at the same time, I think that’s kind of the core of who I am. And so I don’t blow at the wind, but if the wind is blowing in a particular direction, then I’m gonna assess that and say, I wonder if it’s better over there and what are the steps in order to get there? Don’t be afraid of that, but also don’t just run without some sense of why am I going in that particular direction. It really has been a core of my opportunities and what I’ve been able to do. And it really forms the basis for the relationship that I have with Heather as well.

Manuel: And you mentioned that you went and got your accounting degree and a lot of times, some people have this preconceived notion that why don’t have the traditional IT path? And I know you and I have kind of discussed it. I don’t know what this traditional path is. And I think that people kind of get it confused with being a doctor or a lawyer. There is a predetermined path. You have to do med school and you have to do your residency and there’s a path. But in IT, there’s not. What made you pursue accounting? And what did you initially think? Because when we’re young at that age, we think we’re gonna do amazing things with it. So what did you envision you’re gonna do with accounting?

Bob: Yeah, I think it’s kind of an interesting story. So I’m sitting at graduation. I hadn’t decided where I was gonna go or what I was gonna pursue while I’m sitting on the stage. And a good friend of mine, one of the kids that was part of the academic group that I was a part of, a guy named Todd Lawton. So Lawton, Leek. There was a young lady whose last name was Lee sitting between us. So they called Todd up and they said, “Todd Lawton going to Berry College, pursuing an accounting degree.” And he sits down and then they call up Miss Lee and I lean over to him and I’m like, “Where’s Berry?” And he says, “Rome, Georgia.” And I said, “Accounting, huh?” And he goes, “Yeah.” So they called my name Bob Leek, undeclared. And so I walk up and I said, “Bob Leek, accounting degree, gonna go to Berry College.” And that’s how I chose where I was gonna go to college and what degree I was gonna pursue. It was just that opportune moment to say, I don’t wanna be undecided and I don’t wanna be introduced that way. And so just literally in that moment, I applied later that afternoon to the school. The school answered back and said, “Welcome, and we welcome you in.” And so that accounting degree for me, as I was pursuing that, I thought, “Yeah, my role is gonna be a CFO.” But once I got into it, I discovered I didn’t like audit and I don’t like tax. I love the mechanics of accounting, debits and credits, producing financial statements, all of that. I really did enjoy that. But the rest of the things to pursue a career as a CFO, I found, so I’m glad I have an accounting degree, but it formed the basis of running a business. And my role now at Clark County, this year’s budget, we’re over $350 million. We’re doing hundreds of projects. I kind of feel like I run a $350 million business inside of the work that we do at Clark County. And so the pursuit though, I think in technology, there was a long period of time where a computer science degree and a career in technology really could have looked like a lawyer or a doctor or a nurse or some of those professional pursuits. But technology has become so pervasive in our world and in our lives. My belief is that almost everything is technology enabling some kind of whatever it is that you do, whatever service it is that you provide, whatever good that you manufacture, technology is a piece of that. So the technology people that I really enjoy getting to know and to attract organizations that I’ve run are those that know that they know what they wanna do and why they wanna do it. We can teach them how to do that with technology. And so as an example, we have gone through most of our job descriptions now and removed the computer science or computer related degree from the minimum qualifications. So now we’re saying, and we’re also removing college degree from most of our roles because I don’t think a college degree is the thing that sets you apart from other candidates. I think the well-rounded nature of who you are and your lived experience, your background, and then the attributes that you have and the ability to learn, your communication, all the what I call success skills, people call them soft skills. When you combine all of that together, if we’re eliminating a candidate pool by having degree requirements that are traditional in the technology world, I think we’re eliminating a whole group of candidates that could be really valuable members of our team. And so between that and then attracting folks, we call it the business or operations, getting people that are providing a service today, say in family services or with the district attorney’s office that have some sense of, boy, I wonder what a career in technology would be. We love having them come over to us because then they bring that experience of delivering a service. We can give them the capabilities that technology has. You marry those two things together and we have some great employees that have never gone through a technology program.

Manuel: And that’s interesting and I’m glad that you’re kind of removing a lot of these requirements because you mentioned that technology is everywhere. So you’re eliminating a large portion of the candidate pool, but you’re probably now expanding it and getting better results because they do understand the business, they understand the workflows. You’re just teaching them, well, here’s how technology can help solve that problem or make it better or make it easier for you. So speaking of kind of solving problems and doing that, so you told me an interesting story. So now you’ve got your accounting degree, you worked for Egghead, but you didn’t come in through IT and that’s kind of that story of what eventually kind of moved you in there. So if you don’t mind telling me or telling others how you kind of got started and then that pivot into tech.

Bob: Yeah, so I worked for a couple of organizations one was a manufacturing company, they use some ERP software to manage inventory, parts inventory and those sorts of things. I got to be a decent programmer, I haven’t programmed in a long time. So any, no one should talk to me about programming, but I kept making my way through the kind of the back office related functions. And then when we moved to Spokane, I got a job with Egghead and I was the sales audit and inventory control leader in the finance department. And what that meant is for the 120 stores we had at the time, every night they would upload their cash register, my team would audit, make sure there wasn’t fraud going on, that everything balanced. And then we also worked with all the inventory related information for the marketing team, because what Egghead would do is they would start with selling a product, take a game now for Xbox or PlayStation or what have you, we would sell it for 69.99. Well, you wanna sell that for as long as you can, because that’s your maximum margin, right? Then at some point in time, sales start to drop, but if you drop the price, the right amount at the right time, you will then maintain that revenue stream, less margin, but the longer you’re able to sell a product for more than you bought it for, every dollar is margin, right? So my team’s role was to predict how to drop the prices on those products across everything that Egghead sold. So lots of data, right? There’s a beginning of data warehousing, collecting all of that, doing data analytics and so forth. And we were on a big mainframe system. So for those of you who remember green screen, typing in commands, that’s what my team and I were working and using. And I complained about it all the time. And over a period of time, there was a day that I walked in and my boss, her boss, Brian said, “Bob, I need you to come into the office.” And I’m sure I’m making this a more dramatic scene, but it tells a good story. Walked into his office and Tom, who was the CIO was in the office. And Brian said, “Bob, we are sick of you complaining about IT.” Tom is the CIO, I hadn’t met Tom before. And he says, “I’ve decided to trade you to Tom “for a bag of cash.” So Tom’s gonna buy you from me, and we want you to go into IT and because you have a sense of how to fix the technology, we want you to take on this data warehousing role and begin to work with the data and put the systems in place so that everyone can benefit from data and analytics. And so that was the day that I got off of a CFO track and an accounting track and onto an IT track. And then during my couple of years, three years at Egghead, Egghead moved from the retail store model. They were the first .com of any scale. This is before Amazon and before eBay. We were trying to do both of those business models. And so my responsibilities continued to grow into the warehousing systems, into the back office systems, everything that was kind of behind the websites. I was part of a team that built all of that infrastructure kind of behind the scenes. And that really put me on a path and I’ve been in leadership roles in IT since that point in time, put me on a path where my tagline is, leverage technology and people and processes for better outcomes. And whatever that outcome happens to be, because I’ve worked for several different companies now, but it’s to take technology in order to deliver on whatever that business model happens to be. And at Egghead, it was retail and margin.

Manuel: And it’s interesting, like our experiences kind of mold and shape us into who we are. And do you think that experience of you not having that traditional IT path, IT career, yes, you had the degree, but again, they took you as somebody like, “Well, you understand the finance part of it, help us in IT.” Is that what knowingly or unknowingly kind of led to some of the decisions that you’re making now? It’s like, well, let’s remove this because there’s people that know this side of the business that if we can teach them the tech side, we’re gonna get these outstanding outcomes.

Bob: And I think I grew up in an era as well where an investment in technology would pay off over 10 or 12 or 15 years. We’re lucky now with how quickly technology moves. I’ve seen that curve continue to pull down where I think in many cases, you’d be happy to get three to five years out of a technology investment. But you couple that with the amount of effort it takes to change, right? So you can’t just change the technology or the software every three to five years. The staff is constantly then in a learning mode. And so trying to find that balance, so the question is, what is the service we’re providing or what is the good we’re manufacturing? But in the case of Clark County, it’s what service are we providing? How do we measure the success of that? And then how do we enable that success leveraging technology? So that’s the business equation. And so people talk about things like ROI and those sorts of things. I think ROI is still important. If you’re gonna spend a million dollars on something, then you want some return for that. But in a lot of cases, we think in terms of ROM, return on mission. So our mission, let’s say in juvenile justice, is to help kids stay out of jail, right? Let’s intervene sooner. And what would you pay in order to keep a kid out of jail? Well, you might start by asking, well, what does it cost to have a kid in jail? And then I would pay $10 less than that to keep them out of jail, or maybe even $10 more than that because of the impact that having that happen to a kid, that that could happen. So when we think about our investments in technology, we don’t, I don’t think always in terms of ROI. So what’s the mission of juvenile justice? Okay, be clear on that. How do you measure success? Let’s not have kids in jail, great. Let’s spend the money and apply the technology and do the training and help the probation officers and then family and social service leaders and their teams to really use technology in order to prevent that from happening, whatever that happens to be.

Manuel: So then now you’ve gone through you’re in IT, you’re in this leadership role and you’re starting to grow. You said that it led you towards the leadership role. Was that something that you actively pursued? Did you think, man, I enjoy this. I like kind of setting the direction and kind of seeing that the impact that your decisions are making and kind of you’ve touched on it a little bit before is growing a team, kind of seeing that development. What is it that really said, yeah, I like this track and I wanna continue on?

Bob: Yeah, I think I’ve had the benefit of working in large organizations. So to kind of tick them off, Egghead, then followed by Banfield the Pet Hospital, which is one of the largest pet healthcare and veterinary organizations in North America because they have locations in Mexico and Canada in addition to the US. From there, I went to Kaiser Permanente. So 50 million members, yeah, 50 billion dollar company with millions and millions of members and in leadership roles there. And then to Multnomah County, which is the county that Portland Oregon is in, as a deputy CIO and then as a succession plan into the CIO role and then coming here. So those are big, complex organizations and I’ve had the benefit of working at that scale and at that level and I’ve worked for a lot of great people and I’ve also learned from people that I would say, weren’t necessarily great leaders and I’ll protect the innocent around all of that, I’m the product of every environment I’ve ever been in. So learning from people, having mentors, coaches in some cases and having a sense of a goal for me. And that goal was that I wanna become the senior most leader at whatever organization I’m in and then that evolved into the senior most technology leader during my time at Egghead and then Banfield because I wasn’t in those senior most roles, I was part of the team that was delivering whatever those solutions happened to be. But throughout all of that, I always had this sense of, some people call it a North Star. My North Star was how do I learn enough to be the best possible candidate when that senior most position becomes available so that I could apply for that, compete for that, be evaluated for that and then one day successfully achieve that role. And that happened for me at Multnomah County, moving from the deputy role into the CIO role and spending four years in that senior most role. And so, one could then say, well, I’ve achieved my goal and my success, I’m at the pinnacle, there’s nowhere else for me to go. But once having achieved that, my wife and I, we refactored again and we thought, okay, now I’m at that level, I would like to stay at that level, I would like to contribute. I became very enamored with the public sector and this idea of leveraging technology for better outcomes and then the additional phrases in the communities that we serve, because that’s what we do in the public sector. And so, continuous learning, continuously challenging myself. And then, I get feedback and the feedback is, is that people like to work for me. They feel that I give them a compelling vision of the future. I talk to people all the time that I really only do four things all day long. And that’s, I help to clarify priorities, I get resources, money, people, attention, sponsors, et cetera. I remove barriers because there are, I tell people all the time, if there’s something to get done, there are 93 things that could go wrong. But there are seven things that you need in order to be successful. And I focus on those seven things. And a lot of that is getting things out of the way so that we can be successful, describe what success looks like. So, confirm priorities, get resources, remove barriers, and then thank people for the work that they do all day long. So that’s what I do all day long. And I think that model works for those of us in these senior leader roles. It’s inspiring, it’s inclusive. I do not operate, I’m not a micromanager. I’ve been micromanaged, I didn’t like it. So I said, I’m never gonna do that to other people. It’s challenging. There is more than we’re ever gonna get done. So we have to prioritize at some point. And the nature of the work that we do is somewhat, it’s back office and I want us to do great work. And I don’t mind winning awards with work that we do, but it’s always tied to this idea of whatever it is that we do now in Clark County in the public facing realm. So if we apply some technology that helps a set of outcomes and we get some recognition for that, I think that’s great. But I want the recognition to be is that we made lives better. We addressed a problem, we created a new opportunity. We reduced the friction of using our services. We made it easier to access the services. Those are the success measures. And if we apply technology related to that, and we get some recognition for that, that’s great. But I love seeing the business teams, the departments, getting awards for improving the lives in our community because that’s what we do. We’re not a technology company, we’re a service organization. Right. Yeah.

Manuel: And those skills, you said it, is you made sure to kind of be prepared for that. Now, I believe in hard work and learning and understanding. From a leadership standpoint, and again, I’ve only managed once, I’ve done, again, it’s not a title or a position, right? Anybody could be a leader, but you’re moving into specific roles to kind of have more of that influence and authority. So I’m gonna put it in that kind of wording. How do you develop, how did you specifically develop the skills to go through and say, “Okay, I want to be in the senior most role.” One thing is kind of learning how to deal with people. Another thing is how to gather data and make decision making. If I want to be the senior most infrastructure architect, okay, I know there’s specific things I need to learn. I need to understand how to translate this technology to somebody like you and say, “Here’s why I think we should do it this way. Here’s the money and here’s why, here’s the impact to the business.” How do you develop those skills to then take that information and say, “Okay, I’m gonna take that information and now I’m going to improve these services, improve the workflows.”

Bob: I think leadership is one of the hardest things that people can take on. And I think it’s something that people need to be really thoughtful around. We probably all can think of people that got promoted into leadership roles that probably shouldn’t have been. And in technology, that happens a lot where people are successful with the technology and the implementation of the technology. And then a thought comes along that says, “Well, then they could lead a team of people that do that.” And they step into that role and it’s a totally different discipline. It’s a different way to show up and a different way to think. And so I can think of maybe two or three things that very consciously I think about because leadership is also a discipline. So I think one, the greatest leaders are the ones that make mistakes. They learn from those mistakes. They’re willing to take a risk. They’re willing to take a step. They’re willing to be wrong. And that’s really tough because none of us wanna fail. But in technology, the idea of failing fast is really good, right? The quicker we can determine what doesn’t work might lead us down the path of what could work or what will work. So I think great leaders encourage their teams to take risks and then to support their teams that when it doesn’t go well, the leader takes the blame. And when it does go well, they give the credit, right? So that’s just kind of a pithy saying, but I truly believe that. And so when things go poorly, I stand right at the front of the line and go, you know what, I enabled that to happen. We’ve learned from that. This is what we’re gonna do next. And if ultimately there’s an accountability level because it’s happened to me, I have been terminated from a job because of a failure of a very significant project. It’s probably the most impactful event that’s happened in my career is to fail so poorly that it cost me my job. But you reset, you think about what did I learn from that? And then you keep going. And so leaders failing is one aspect. I think a second is being an inclusive leader. And so I’ve spent a lot of time working on inclusive leadership practices and there’s a whole discipline around that. But the things that I remember from that is that by harvesting the diversity and skills and lived experience of everyone in our team and creating what they call psychological safety so that people feel safe to say, here’s what I think or this is what I think we should do or the direction that we should go, that if you can create that environment, you unleash this amount of creativity that in a top-down model or a micromanaging kind of a model or I know the answer, I just need you to do the work. And there are industries and other disciplines that probably works then. I’ll leave them unnamed. But I believe that inclusive leadership practices are the best way to bring to light the creativity and capability of the workforce. So that’s another component of that. And then I think leaders have to have a compelling vision of the future. They’ve gotta be able to paint this image for people that say, this is where we’re going. And sometimes you’ll have a bell curve, you’ll have early adopters to that. They’re like, thank God, somebody finally gets it. I’ve wanted to go there forever. And then you’ll have a group that’s really doubtful. They’ll think, well, that seems risky or I’m gonna lose my job or what if it doesn’t work and so forth. It’s the group in the middle. So let’s say it’s 20% early adopters and 20% detractors. That leaves 60% in the middle. They will swing based on the success of moving in that direction. And the early adopters in that next group that watched the early adopters and they’re like, oh, that seems better, then they’ll move in that direction. And then the next group that says, that seems a lot better than what I’m doing today, so I’m gonna move in that direction. And suddenly you’ve got this motion in that direction. The detractors and the ones that will never feel like it could be better, you’re never gonna move them. So I don’t spend my time with that 20% that isn’t going to go where we’re gonna go. They self-select. Now there’s always a role for them. Keep the current systems running, keep the old technology alive. But those that wanna move in a direction toward a compelling vision of a future state that’s better, that’s where I make the investment from a leadership perspective. And then the last piece for me is that leaders have to have a team. And so I’ve spent a lot of time in the five years that I’ve been here at Clark County really working on the leadership team. And I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done with our leadership team. Over half of the people in leadership roles were internal promotions. And the few that we needed to bring in from outside, because we have a group of leaders that have been around for a long time, but the few people that we brought in from the outside, we’re always looking to add to the organization, add to the culture. We don’t want them to fit in our culture. We want them to challenge our status quo. We want you to bring something new, something that we haven’t experienced before. And two of the best leaders that we brought on board came from outside of public sector. So completely new perspective. And back to those minimum qualifications in the past, it said public sector experience. For some of our roles, I’ve said, you don’t need to know public sector in order to join our organization. Once you join our organization, we’re the public sector. I do talk to every new employee within their first 60 days. I meet with them. I welcome them into the organization. I get to know them a little bit. This goes back to my being socially introverted. When I see them in the hall and I haven’t met you before, I would walk right by you, Manny, and just kind of, I’m scared to talk to you. And I think they’re scared to talk to me as you opened, because Bob’s a CIO, right? He’s probably too busy to talk to little old me. And so one of the reasons I meet with everyone is to overcome that initial barrier. So when you do see me and we do interact, I wanna get to know you a little bit. What’s your history? Tell me your story, right? Those sorts of things. And so when you combine those five or six factors that I’ve gone through around leadership, that is what I consciously work on. I think about it all the time. How can I be the best leader I can possibly be measured against my own standards? And believe me, there’s no harsher critic, well, maybe besides my wife, no harsher critic of me than me. And I am constantly pushing myself to achieve the highest level of success possible and to do it with these inclusive leadership practices.

Manuel: Building that inclusive and kind of safe environment. You’re right, I’ve been in those types of roles where you can tell and sounds like you consciously do it to feel safe to say, it’s okay if you had a problem. How do you go about building that? Because it’s one thing to say, hey, I want you to fail fast and you can tell somebody. And they’ll be like, yeah, my last boss said that. But then when something went wrong, they’re like, oh, they did that or this happened. How do you, and I’m assuming this, does it just kind of naturally spread? So let’s say I fail, oh man, something happened. And I see the one time and you told me, hey, it’s okay. And you’re like, hey Manny, we fixed it. Let’s go through, hey, the next time we’re not gonna do that. Maybe we try XYZ or whatever the next step might be. But you go through and you stand up for me, I’m gonna be like, oh, it’s not just wording, especially in a large organization like Clark County, you can’t do that for every single person. Is it something that you do enough times and it kind of just spreads so that the next person, they come in and they’re like, oh, if Bob didn’t say it, the other people are kind of advocating for you.

Bob: Yeah, yeah. I think what I would hope is if you talk to my direct reports and to their direct reports and then to their direct reports. That’s a relatively flat structure. We have supervisors, managers, and then me and my direct reports. If you talk to all of them and you laid out, do you have examples where we failed and that you felt that you were supported? That that’s what they would talk about? That the staff would say, yeah, because one, I’ve heard Bob talk about it several times. And then my direct reports talk about it with their teams and then they talk about it with their teams. And so creating this safety, the psychological safety in the workplace, it requires, it’s a leadership function and it’s an expectation on my part of leaders. So one is to set the expectation and then to model the behaviors. So when it happens, right, we call it out. I know my teams can cite specific examples where I say, I messed that up. I’m taking accountability for it. Here’s what happened. This is why it happened or why I think it happened. I mean, this is what we’re gonna do about it. And so being vulnerable and transparent around when those situations happen is another way to lead by example would be the right way to say it. But then to put that expectation in place that when this happens to you, you’re gonna do the same thing. That’s what’s expected. Not the finger pointing, not the blame. Let’s be hard on the process and not the people when mistakes happen. Because most of the time it’s a process issue, not a people issue. I have lots of pithy sayings. One of those is no one showed up to work today to purposely make something fail. Nobody in my organization, right? It is a matter of circumstances. Maybe we didn’t test it enough. Maybe we weren’t ready to go live with something. Maybe what we thought it needed to do isn’t what it ended up doing, right? So let’s be hard on that and really redefine what success looks like and then recommit to that. What does success look like and commit to that and not make this about the people. And I was having a conversation just this week with an individual who said, but what about performance management, right? Well, you still have to do performance management. You still have to create that the way to, its empowerment and accountability are the two concepts that kind of go hand in hand. You can empower people, but if they don’t feel empowered, then like you said, it’s okay if you fail. You’re empowered to fail, but you’re accountable for failing and now there’s a consequence for failing and I gotta write you up or make you feel bad or things along those lines. So this yin and yang around empowerment and accountability is really important to define for everyone. And so when we have folks that are struggling on their performance, what I expect the conversation to be would be to start with, did you understand what was expected of you? And if the answer is no, then it doesn’t matter what their performance was. You’ve gotta start with as a leadership responsibility defining the expectations because how can you hold someone accountable to unspoken expectations? So then resetting on those expectations and creating that shared sense of understanding, then allows us to talk about, and then this happened, let’s talk about the circumstances, the background, the context, whatever contributed to the lack of success and then to begin to work our way through that.

Manuel: So two questions. The first one’s gonna be, you’ve done it enough times, I’m sure the first time that you kind of took that accountability, it was rough. Like I’ve done it before, it does like any skill, it does get easier, but those first couple of times, it’s like, it’s pretty unnerving. Now is it at the point where you’ve kind of flexed that muscle or you’ve kind of built that resilience to say, oh, okay, yes, it’s uncomfortable and I know it is, but again, kind of, I don’t know if it’s the upbringing or just kind of your own kind of values that says, yes, it’s uncomfortable, but I need to do it because it’s the only way that I will get kind of better at that.

Bob: Right, right, yeah. Now I’m following your thoughts and I think, in all honesty, I operate every day scared to death of failing, right? It’s a motivator for me. I don’t want to fail. And so part of it is the self motivation that says, have I paused long enough? Have I brought enough thought, enough perspectives into whatever it is that we’re working on? Have I asked people what they think, right? Am I practicing those inclusive behaviors? Because usually when I fail, I then look back and say, huh, I didn’t do what I preached to others about how do you create the conditions for success? And I look back on a situation and say, oh yeah, I went off on that on my own. I thought, you know, I didn’t want to burden my team with it so I was just gonna make decisions. And when things don’t go well, I can look at that root cause and say, well, I didn’t eat my own dog food. I didn’t follow my own inclusive leadership practices and behaviors. And so that requires then a reset. It requires acknowledging that accountability. It requires an apology, right? I’m sorry, I let us down this path, but we’re gonna recommit to it, right? If there’s a cathartic moment that’s needed, if we need to go out after work for a little bit of cleansing or whatever, then we’ll do that. But let’s recommit to what it is that we were trying to do to begin with.

Manuel: And the other thing you said is kind of the perception and the reality. So that’s, I’m curious to see how you go about developing that skill or how you address it is if you give a kind of a direction, and I can do it to you, I can say it. I can say the words and then like you said, hey, do you understand what was expected? And they say no. Yeah. Okay, well, where did I go? And it’s, oh, well, I thought you meant X, Y, and Z. Well, that’s not what I meant. Well, that’s what you said. Those might’ve been the words. So again, that perception versus reality, and it’s not even reality, it’s what I spoke versus the way you received it or the way you perceived. There’s a term for it and I just can’t think of it. But how do you kind of go about and make sure that you’re doing that? Is it follow-ups? Do you, after you give a direction or a vision, do you ask for that feedback? Like, hey, are you understanding? I’m just curious how you handle that.

Bob: No, I think you’re thinking about it the right way. And I think it’s part of the tough dynamic of two humans working with each other, right? Because you have a different lived experience than I do. You have a different set of circumstances that you’ve worked with under. I hope that you trust me as me giving you a vision of a compelling future and that you would trust and say, well, okay, I can kind of believe in that and I can make my way through that. But in that conversation, I think sometimes I call it when I was younger, as I get older, we get wiser, right? And it’s because we make more mistakes and we learn from those mistakes. And so when I asked, do you understand what’s expected of you? And the answer back is no. Okay, this is what I was trying to paint a vision for or an intent around what parts and pieces of that don’t make sense. And then, so it’s a dialogue. It’s an engaging dialogue around that. But to keep it simpler in my youth, I would make it more complex. Like, and I might even drop stuff like, I can’t believe you don’t understand, right? And I grab a white board pen and I go up and start writing stuff on the whiteboard. And what I’ve learned is, no, this is just communication. It’s just our dialogue to get to the point where there’s no right answer. It’s whether you have gotten what it is that I’m trying to do. So when that evolves, the next step is to take those next steps in terms of that back and forth dialogue to say, okay, let me break it down into some pieces, or let me draw you a picture of what this ends up looking like. But to keep it really simple, rather than making it more complex. I think there’s an art in that. And it does require a trust-based relationship between two people. In most cases, it’s an employee and their supervisor or a supervisor and a subordinate, which has a power dynamic in and of itself. But operating on a premise of trust, operating on an idea that says, we’re going to somewhere better, whatever better is, and we need to define that. And then asking about expectations. I think that’s just part of an evolved way that we’re both on the same page. And then when there’s lack of success, that we can both go back and say, did you know what was expected? And yeah, I just couldn’t quite get there. Oh, that’s fine. What prevented us from getting there? And let’s work on that. It’s not your incompetence that I’m trying to get. There’s gotta be something that contributed to it.

Manuel: So you’ve got all of this experience, everything that you’ve kind of gathered throughout your career. And now you’re here at Clark County. What is it that kind of made you wanna come to Clark County and kind of build that confidence to say, I can go here, not only can I do the role, and I feel I can make a positive change, and here’s why.

Bob: One of the reasons that I am here is that Nadia Hansen, who’s the former CIO for Clark County, was looking for a deputy. And I was in Multnomah County, I’d been in Portland for 20 years. And over 20 years in the Northwest, there is a phenomenon called seasonal affective disorder. The acronym is SAD. And it’s the oppressive nature of six months of no sunlight and rain and cold and ice and so forth and so on. It just builds year after year. So after 20 years, my wife and I decided, you know, we’re not happy anymore. So let’s move somewhere that’s happier. And the sun has a big piece of that. We’re also both huge golfers. And so, you know, this is a great place to play golf. And those that know me know that I play about 100 rounds a year. And it’s great. The work schedule affords me the opportunity to do that because we work four tens. So Fridays are days off for me and then playing on the weekend and so forth. So that was a big piece of it is let’s move somewhere where the environment will contribute to our happiness. Then the second piece is in talking with Nadia about the organization, the sense coming out of COVID, because I got here the last year of COVID, the sense coming out of COVID is to get back to what Clark County was doing, which is growing, which is improving services, which is investing in technology in order to deliver better outcomes in the community. And I wanted to be a part of that. The third is Clark County is the 10th or 11th largest county in the country. 2.3 million people live here and 50 million people come through here. And there’s 90,000 businesses, that’s scale. So I wanted to work with an organization that has scale. So that was the third piece. And then Nadia and I had like 22 interviews because I kept asking her questions, what’s it gonna be like to work here? What are the, what is a compelling vision of the future? What are the big barriers that’ll prevent us from being successful? What are our strengths? What can we leverage in order to be successful? And just conversation after conversation after conversation. And then at the end of that, I said, “Okay, I think I’d like to work there.” And so it was as much me interviewing her and trying to find the match between what I was looking for and what was available. And then once talking to the staff and talking to some of the leaders that I interviewed with, a little bit of a leap of faith to say, cause I’m gonna uproot my family. I have three kids at the time. They all moved here with us. We’re gonna change the environment. Heather had never lived anywhere more than three years. We were 20 years in Portland. We had put down some really deep roots there. Our kids were born there. We lived in the neighborhood where the schools were. The kids walked to school every day. Now we’re gonna move to the desert. And we’re in a great neighborhood here. We love our house. We love all that environment. But it was a little bit of a, I think it’ll be better, but let’s figure it out by doing it. Because if it wasn’t gonna be better, then we just need to do the decision-making process again. Maybe find another place to work here in town. Because my wife was in hospitality for her career, we know people on the strip and downtown at the big resorts and the casinos. I already was in a peer group because Multnomah County is about the 25th largest county in the country. So the peer group that I was working with are, Clark County, King County, San Francisco, Denver, Cook County, Atlanta, and so forth. So I already had developed a network of peers. Now I was just going to Clark County. And I’m very proud of the work that we do. I’m very proud of our team. We’ve won some awards for the work that we’ve done. And it fulfills what I was looking for. So it checks the boxes. And I’m a big proponent of that. Be objective in some of your decision-making. So I have a list of 10 criteria. And as long as I’m checking the box and it’s a zero to 10 scale, as long as that score is north of like 75, then I’m pretty happy because it’s objectively measured. But once that score starts to slide and those factors start to wane, then I’m going to be honest with myself and say, enough factors have changed where I need to look to do something different.

Manuel: You mentioned you have these peer groups. And I know back in Washington, because you had been there and established roots and a lot of your big active in SIM there. And I see that what you’re doing here is you’re trying to build up the Vegas community and talking to your peers. They’re doing things in different groups. So Angie with ISSA and AITP LV So a lot of these things I see for those that aren’t aware, with the SIM, you have this golf tournament. And it’s not a golf tournament just to have a golf tournament. It’s to kind of help fundraise. And for the first time, having joined probably less than a year in SIM, seeing that that money being raised is going towards scholarships, trying to help the next generation. I see a lot of what you do, not only within Clark County and kind of bringing your people up, but it seems like you are also very involved and you really want to see not just Clark County, the entity, but the community thrive as well. What is it that drives that to want to do it? Because it’s one thing to say, “Hey, I want to do it.” And you could do it with just SIM, with just in a specific realm, but you tend to go through like, “Hey, no, we can all do this.” And sure you have that organization, but we can do things together. And we each have our own place, but then together we can kind of do more.

Bob: Yeah, I think that’s exactly that. I mean, to be a little corny, our tagline at Clark County is, “Together for better.” And so I was heavily involved with SIM in Portland and ran their golf tournament for years, was really involved in the community of technology professionals. For those that don’t know what SIM is, it’s the Society for Information Management. It’s a national organization that has local chapters. There’s over 40 of those. They tend to be in the big metropolitan areas. And the SIM Las Vegas chapter was started by Joe Marcella and others years and years ago. Like most member organizations like that, COVID really did a number on it, right? Everybody went to Zoom meetings all day long. And then the chapter was doing Zoom meetings with authors and guests and so forth. And that was just a reality of what we faced during that period of time. But coming out of COVID, the leadership at SIM when I joined, it was about 12 members, about eight pretty active members. And we had a conversation and just said, “Do we want to invest in SIM?” There is no competitor in this market. Companies have tried, usually for-profit companies. I’ll keep them innocent. But they come to Las Vegas because this is a, it’s a close-knit town, but it’s very siloed in its organizations. The healthcare tends system with themselves, the utilities, certainly the casinos, the resorts and now the sports franchises, the public sector. We were each these little silos. Well, the whole design behind SIM is to break the silos down, to bring leaders together around some compelling vision of the future. And for SIM Las Vegas, we have three pillars that we operate with. One is networking. So let’s get together and talk to each other. The second is leadership development. And SIM at a national level through their leadership institute has a number of programs focused on leaders at every level. So there’s a level for CIOs to continue to grow. And then there’s a level for emerging leaders and everything in between. So we said, “Okay, well, let’s support that leadership, growth and development.” And then the third is community involvement. And so for us, community involvement has turned into now the golf tournament. Now that isn’t something that I invented. I just brought the entire model from Portland down here. And so the sponsor community is really strong here. We’ve been able to attract for this year’s tournament, we’ll have 65 sponsors, which is incredible. And the golf tournament has now grown where we’re gonna be on two golf courses, never been done before. We’ll have 240 golfers and it’s gonna be great. And the net proceeds of that tournament fund scholarship programs. And we are a partner with UNLV, with CSN and with Nevada State University who each have computer science programs and cybersecurity programs. That’s great. We’re investing in those future employees that are coming through the college system. But we also wanted to invest in community-based organizations. And one of the first ones that we’re working with is Tech Impact. And they teach technology skills, usually around customer service and help desk, but some other things, coding school and so forth, for kids that didn’t go to college between 18 and 26. And so we’re happy to put money into those programs because we’re investing in the future people that we might work for or work for us. And so it’s something that I invest my time and energy in because I frankly, I feel good about doing that. I love our event two weeks ago, where we celebrated the recipients of the scholarship program. And they came and told their stories. I’m the first one in my family to go to college. I wouldn’t be going to college, if not for this $2,500 or whatever they get from the foundations of those schools. The Tech Impact program can fund more of those students to get free instruction and a free skill development. And so I do feel really passionate about this. Plus I love breaking down the silos. I sit in meetings now and we have dinners and the peer group here in this region. We sit around the table and I see, Matt from the Raiders and then the people from the casinos and the large employers like Nevada Energy and Southwest Gas and so forth, the healthcare sector. We’re all sitting around the table and we’re all talking about how to make lives better in our community. Even the competitors, right? When you have four of the casino folks, they’re not gonna divulge their secrets of how they’re gonna help their loyalty program be better through technology. But what we can talk about are what kind of skills do we need out of these kids that are coming out of college? What is it that we’re looking for? Where do we think the industry is going from a technology perspective? What is the impact of AI? For a while we talked about what’s the impact of blockchain. We talk about cybersecurity. We talk about employee attracting employees and then retaining them. So those are all ubiquitous topics for us. And it’s a real passion for me. I work really hard at work and then I do the SIM related stuff and then I relax by playing golf and spending time with my family.

Manuel: Well, and that’s fantastic because as someone who was born and raised here, I know exactly what you’re talking about. So when I was in the gaming industry, which is where I started, I knew all the people in the gaming industry. I moved to public sector and there is a little bit of overlap but not much. And it was just like, okay, now it’s just the public sector people. And then I moved to this one and it is very siloed. So I, it’s not that you’re not aware of how big the tech community is growing, but now kind of seeing a lot of these events, I’m meeting more and more people that I’m like, I’ve seen them or I’ve heard of their names. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe, it’s been 15 years and I’ve connected with you, maybe on LinkedIn, I knew about you, I’d seen stuff, but I’ve never had a face-to-face conversation. There’s never been that opportunity. And I think a lot of what you’re doing has brought that together. So again, as a Vegas native, it’s been amazing. Yeah. What are your kind of vision for the future? Okay, you’ve broken down silos, you’re starting to kind of grow this. What do you think is kind of next, both for Clark County, the county, and then also with what you’re doing outside?

Bob: Yeah, I think it hearkens back to something that you mentioned as well, is that in some cities, SIM becomes a little bit of everything for everybody. And I think in this community, and we’re four hours isolated from everybody else, right? Phoenix, LA, San Francisco is a little farther, Salt Lake is a little farther. But there are people who have successfully curated groups that are in a particular subject area or a particular aspect of a demographic or a population. So Thrive is a really strong women in technology group, and Cynthia and Bri and Leslie and others that are really making that go. You have Jeremy with AITP, you have the PMI chapter here is pretty strong, you have Angie and others with ISSA, and then there’s CISO ExecNet and some other groups. So my vision around the tech community is, everybody do what you’re really good at, but then let’s all come together every so often. And Top Tech Awards was, we just had that. And that is bringing all of that technology related talent into one place. And I looked around that venue now for the fourth year and thought everybody in here should be a SIM member, right? So that’s my audacious goal, is I think that SIM could be that in this market, not to dominate everything, but to curate, facilitate, to bring all that together. And it’s great that Cox and Cox Business is such a staunch supporter of Top Tech. In other cities, that is SIM that does that, and they’re supported by the sponsor community. I don’t wanna own that. I just wanna continue to perpetuate this idea that says all of us in technology working together would help this region and this community thrive even more. Now, what could that lead to? Clark County has one of its goals, is to continue to support economic diversity. We cannot only rely on the casino and entertainment industry and tourism. And we haven’t. The city and the county and others have really invested in trying to create more diversity in the economy. Part of that now is with the sports franchises, that took some legislation to allow professional sports to come here. And whether you think that’s a good idea or not, it’s going to be better for the region. Whether you like or dislike F1, right, is what it is. And so there’s that aspect of things. The over on between Sunset and 215, and from Decatur out to Rainbow or in that area is the Innovation District, Clark County’s Innovation District. And the Black Fire Innovation Center is in there. And what Bo Bernard was able to curate and UNLV built out there is just the beginnings of the possibility out there. There should be pharmaceutical companies there. There should be biotech companies there. Organizations should move their headquarters here. But it’s going to take three things for that to work. It takes employers, it takes employees, and it takes housing. And so each of those need to be invested in. And Clark County is doing a lot of work around curating the possibility of attracting organizations to come here. And so as you build on that three-legged stool, that stool is going to get higher and higher, which is going to benefit all of us. We also have to do all of that with sustainable practices. So we do acknowledge, you know, water is a big deal here. Wind is a big impact here. Temperature, you know, there’s no denying that it is hotter than it has been. And so those are all factors and variables that we need to account for. Now, what can I do in the midst of all of that? I can just tell that story and then say, let’s all work together on that compelling vision of the future. How would we define that? Well, how would you define that? And then let’s figure out what would it take to be successful? What are the seven things we need to do to be successful? And then let’s just do that. And so it’s a little bit, I’m not Pollyannish with all of this, but I also think we make it so complex that we prevent ourselves from taking incremental steps forward. And so the role that I want, so you asked me my vision where I think that I’m gonna fit in all of that, is I think I can take the privilege and the opportunity around the role that I have as the CIO for Clark County, the largest entity in this region, and bring together a compelling group of willing participants to paint a path toward that better future state, and just do it over time. And if we do it in a sustainable way, once I’ve run my laps around the track, then somebody else will take that baton and continue to run with it. And if we then have five batons, there’s five people doing that. And that turns into 20 people, and that turns into 100 people. So that’s my model, and that’s what I’m hoping to be able to do.

Manuel: And it’s exciting, and I can see it, and I feel it, and I believe it, especially, like you mentioned, we went to that Top Tech Awards, and just kind of seeing what people are doing, the people, how they were coming together, and I was talking to a friend of mine who wasn’t able to attend, and I told her, I always knew that there was good tech talent here in Vegas, as much as what people say, we’re known for gaming and things of that nature, now sports franchises. But I told him, there’s a lot of good tech talent here, and I don’t see why, I don’t know that it’ll ever become as big or as well known, but it’s like a mini Silicon Valley as far as tech talent that comes here. As more companies start to come, that innovation center, and again, just spreading that vision, spreading that word, and kind of breaking that silos, instead of, okay, well, I’m gonna do it in the healthcare space, and I’m gonna make it so that they wanna come here. Why can’t we do it together? And you attract them, but by you attracting them, now I can bring in, like the film industry is starting to come, right? There’s different things that can start to kind of grow this, and at that same time, maybe we bring that talent that says, hey, I know you have a wind problem, I know there’s a water, and let’s develop the technology to see what else we can do, because it’s amazing to me, I’ve talked to some of the people like at the water district, the technology, and the innovation that’s coming there. We are probably one of the most water efficient cities anywhere. Why? Because at a necessity, but I can’t imagine it’s gonna be hopefully too much longer, but they’re gonna figure out, okay, we know how to address this water problem.

Bob: I quote that stat all the time from the water district, we’ve grown by a million people, and we’ve reduced our water usage by 40%, right? And during that period of time. So we have these practices, we know what we can do, and it’s gonna be enabled by IoT and technology, smart sprinkler systems that don’t turn on, in those rare cases where we do get rain, you just want the thing to not run that day. That’s gonna save a couple thousand gallons, you multiply that by a couple thousand homes, that’s 40,000 gallons, or 400,000 gallons. And so those are the practices enabled by technology that can help build this sustainable environment that we’re all looking for. And so I am very, it’s not even hopeful, I just think we can pull all this off, and lean into all of that together. There’s a great startup community here in Las Vegas as well, that’s curated out of Tech Alley, that’s downtown, Josh Levitt kind of facilitates that group. It’s great to connect with them. It’s tough for us in the civic world, in the public sector to really tap into that, because of procurement practices, and other barriers and constraints. I’m gonna work on overcoming those, because I think there’s some great talent in that startup community to rethink how we deliver services to the public. I just wanna figure out what’s the path in order to tap into all of that talent, without them having to become one of my employees. I’m happy to have them come join us. But I just think this is a market and a region, because we’re geographically isolated, we kind of need to work with each other. I’m very bullish about what that future state could be, and it takes intent, it takes hard work, it takes some visionary leadership, with people like Bo Bernard from UNLV, and the economic development groups at both the city and the county. It’s all here and it’s all there. It doesn’t have to be, we don’t have to turn into, I don’t know, successful cities around the globe, a Singapore or those sorts of things. But Silicon Valley, in the market that I was in, Portland, it was the Silicon Forest. I don’t know if I’m gonna coin a phrase now or not, but this could be the Silicon Desert, right? Then so, why not?

Manuel: Exactly. Well, I appreciate all the time that you’ve kind of given me, you’ve been gracious enough to kind of answer all my questions and provide your insights. I really wanna give you the opportunity and say, if there’s anything that either I haven’t asked you or a parting message or a summary, just anything that you wanna talk about that didn’t come from me.

Bob: Yeah. I think I can round all of this out by saying, I feel so fortunate to have a role that I have and the opportunity to be, whether it’s up on stage at some of the conferences here in town, or to help influence the connecting talent to job openings and the employers that are here in the market, to do the work that I do through SIM, to be connected with community-based organizations, which I think are the lifeblood of most communities. It is the big employers, yes, but it’s actually all the small businesses and business owners that really make everything work to create a great place to work here, to acknowledge. I joke with folks when they tell me, “Oh, I was born and raised here in Las Vegas.” I’m like, “Oh, I need to write your name down,” right? Because there’s only like 200,000 of you, of the 2.3 million people that live here, that the opportunity to connect all of that, and I’m not from here. I’m not Vegas-born. This is my adopted home. I’m not sure that I will be here forever, but while I’m here, I just wanna make a difference. And I love having people that wanna lean into that. I love having the role that I have because I can make a lot of that happen. But this opportunity to spend a little bit of time with you and to tell my story in the background and just talk about, so that was the past and this is the present, the future, that’s what I wanna be involved in. And I would love to have people be a part of that.

Manuel: That’s awesome. And I can see it, right? And I can see your passion, not just in this conversation, but just seeing what you’re doing it about, right? It’s not just like, “Hey, this is what I wanna do, and I’ll figure out who’s gonna do it.” You mentioned it, right? You work hard at work and then doing all these things afterwards, so I just wanted to let you know that from an outsider coming in and getting to know you recently, probably within the last year, it is invigorating. I see the vision and I see bits and pieces from different areas. I’m like, “Oh man, I’m excited to be here.” It’s finally becoming the environment that I’ve always wished that it would be.

Bob: And I gotta tell you, a thought came to my head in a book where they put on the thank yous and they put all the people’s names. I’ll give you a list of names, you can roll the credits, because I give a lot of credit to the people that I have gotten to know in this market. And I would leave a lot of people out if I started to name them all, but I am the product of everybody that I interact with. I take the best out of all of that. I try to do the best that I can with all of that, give credit, take blame. And I’m just thinking through all the people that, I appreciate the perspective that you just shared, but it’s the product of everybody that I’m involved in and engaged with. I’m just one.

Manuel: I get it and it takes one, right? One and then hopefully from there, it kind of spreads out. So they influenced you and I’m hoping that again, you start to influence others and hopefully people get to see and if they come across you and be like, “Oh, I feel like I know Bob now because he’s told his story and he said it’s okay for me to kind of come and say hello.”

Bob: Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn, email me at the county. I love that aspect of things in creating community.

Manuel: Well, thank you again. And for everybody watching and listening, I really appreciate you taking the time. And again, hopefully you found a lot of valuable insights like as I did. I’ve been in this industry for 20 plus years, but even from conversations like this, I take away something. So I hope that you again, continue to plug in and download the knowledge and until next time, thank you. (upbeat music)