Intro: [00:00:00] Thank you for meeting us at the intersection where the worlds of energy and technology come together.
Sheryl Riggs: Well, thank you for meeting us at the intersection. Uh, for those of you that are just listening for the first time, welcome, and for those returning listens, welcome back, president, and CEO Sheryl Riggs. But today I'm joined by a very special guest that I'm very excited about.
Sheryl Riggs: I'm joined by Rachel owning. She is the founder and c CEO of Geo Site, if you're not sure, please look it up. They are a cutting edge company leveraging AI and machine learning to fuse satellite, drones, and other data into business [00:01:00] workflows for logistics, installation, management, incident response, and operations planning.
Sheryl Riggs: I know that was a lot, but basically she's, their company is all in our world, integrated everywhere in our world. Very exciting. Rachel is an impressive, is just as impressive as her company. A mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University, her dissertation focuses on US cyber command teams developing offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.
Sheryl Riggs: And Rachel also has worked with the military to use commercial imagery and communications platforms to create improved intelligence products and resilient operations. So it is no surprise with a resume like that that Rachel was named in 2020 in Forbes 30 under 30 in Enterprise Technology. Can you believe it?
Sheryl Riggs: How did she accomplish all of that? Under 30? So just fantastic. We're really excited. [00:02:00] Rachel, thank you again for joining us here. Um, I wanna stop, let's just jump right in. Is there anything else that you'd like to share about yourself?
Rachel Olney: thanks for that intro, Sheryl. Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm just gonna have to sit here and reel for a second.
Rachel Olney: Like, that was so like thoughtful. You put together and lovely. . Can you just, can you introduce me everywhere? That was absolutely amazing. Um, so, uh, I mean maybe I'd add, I'll add a little color to it, right? Um, when I studied the the cyber command teams, a lot of my focus was on, uh, innovation and, and this was actually what the the dissertation ended up titled, " Innovation in Necessarily Bureaucratic and Hierarchical Organizations."
Rachel Olney: So in industries like Utilities, Uh, people are always like, there's a lot of bureaucracy. And I'm like, it's okay. We are literally the experts. Uh, we can, we can handle it. Um, so, you know, that's that one piece. And then the second is, and I know we'll, we'll get into it here in a minute, [00:03:00] um, I am a die-hard nerd for geospatial data and, and its applications.
Rachel Olney: So, um, all the, all the shiny resume stuff is nice, but at the end of the day, uh, definitely just a, uh, a nerd who's excited to be here.
Sheryl Riggs: And I love that, that you just broke it simply down because I mean, one of the things we try to do at the podcast is just anybody, if you're new to this the first time, and I like the way you just like, "Hey, I'm just a regular person."
Sheryl Riggs: You know, you talk about, um, we talked about Geo Site as building applications that fuse satellite, drone, and other data into business operation. Uh, workflows, you know, this is cutting edge amongst the many other things that you're, you're involved with, but can you just tell us, our listeners, a little bit about how it works, just however simple or how detailed you want to go?
Rachel Olney: Yeah, absolutely. This is my favorite thing to talk about. So, um, but um, Sheryl, as I go through my ask is keep peppering with questions and clarification. Especially talking about really nascent technology people can get kind of [00:04:00] jargony, right? Um, and so I wanna make sure that, that for your audience, that we explain things fully.
Rachel Olney: Um, so geospatial data really comes in lots of different flavors. I typically break it out into four different parts. So before we talk about what GSI does, it's probably good to have some grounding on what is spatial data, um, you know, even to start with. So in my head, there is, you know, remote sensing um, and so that breaks apart into a couple different things.
Rachel Olney: And so I always tell people separate in your heads when you think about data, any sort of collected data, so satellites, drones, aircraft, those are all stratospheric balloons are actually big now. Those are all platforms, right? Those are things that you can stick a sensor on. And then you have all of these amazing sensors.
Rachel Olney: So maybe it's detecting, you know, RGB, right? And it's just taking an image, but maybe it's also doing, um, hyperspectral so you can look at vegetation encroachment, or maybe it's doing synthetic aperture radar so that you can see, you know, terrain changes or you can see if, you know, if there's been a landslide or if there's been flooding or things like [00:05:00] that.
Rachel Olney: And so you have all of these amazing platforms and sensors that are detecting things from afar is remote sensing is that, that term? Then, the second bucket is in situ sensors. So these are ones that, you know, folks who are listening to this podcast are probably even more familiar with than I am. So these are all your, your SCADA systems, your supervisory control data acquisition systems.
Rachel Olney: These are, you know, methane detectors that you're putting along, you know, a pipeline or you know, other types of sensors that you're, are in situ or in the place where you're sensing, right? And a lot of those now are geospatially referenced. Or you know, when they're put in, you have a map of like, here's where the sensors are, right?
Rachel Olney: So those have a spatial component. Then you have all of this extraordinary analytics that people are doing with all this data. So think of companies like Orbital Insight or um, Cape Analytics or Better View, or Arturo. And what they're doing is taking all of this rich data and then extracting from that change [00:06:00] detection or object detect.
Rachel Olney: Or things like that. Um, and then the third category, and this is always, I always just say this is the, like other bucket, the, or the fourth category, sorry. The fourth category is the other bucket. It's things like parcel data. It's things like, you know, who's operating on this land? It. Covid numbers, for instance, we did, we did some covid work, the incidence rate of covid in different counties, right?
Rachel Olney: Like that is data that is collected not through sensors, but through some other format. And what's really cool about what we get to do site is we work with all of those things. Um, I think the the strangest piece of like spatial data we've worked with as like an extreme example is policy data. So for, um, search and rescue in the United States.
Rachel Olney: um, so for the lower 48, uh, before Geo Site, they were using Excel spreadsheets to coordinate search and rescue across the US. You know, in, in every industry, people think the other industries are more sophisticated. It's definitely that way with government, you'd be surprised the tools they use. [00:07:00] Um, But they have basically agreements that say, if you're in this county, here's how you have to triage a search and rescue.
Rachel Olney: If you're in this state, here's how you have to triage a search and rescue. And so you can actually geocode those things. You can say, okay, here's a polygon that is New Mexico, or here's a polygon, uh, that is Nevada. And then you can say, this beacon or this emergency is happening in this place, and therefore here are the procedures.
Rachel Olney: Right? So spatial data can mean things, of course, the shiny stuff is satellites and drones and people get really excited and we obviously get really excited about those things. But, um, but what we do is we pull all that data together and then, so you can think of this as kind of, um, it's a Combinator problem, but it's like two-- two sides of a funnel, right? We're really fancy plumbing. So we pull all that data in. We have algorithms that will say, okay, for West Texas versus for, you know, Pennsylvania, here is the right aerial imagery, here is the right vegetation encroachment, you know, analytic [00:08:00] model. Here are the right things for this environment, for this problem.
Rachel Olney: Um, and so that's the the plumbing on the other side where we connect back into those workflows so that folks aren't having to try to figure out what is the right spatial data for their problem, for each problem, for each region, for each train. Um, hopefully, that, that kind of makes sense.
Sheryl Riggs: Well, you act more than made sense.
Sheryl Riggs: Um, I mean, actually clarify for me as well too, because I can actually see. , how there's a perfect unity between utc, uh, Geo Site, um, with the, and with the utilities and technology partners because, um, what I often say and people, they might have already heard it, connect the dots and as you were talking, I can't help but think how that applies to everything that we do.
Sheryl Riggs: Because you're right, you have to get the data. Yep. You have to analyze the data. And then you have to utilize the data efficiently. Like we have different types of utilities at UTC as our members. We have IOUs, we have co-ops, we have munis there in different regions. There's, it's not cookie cutter. And basically, you're already, [00:09:00] uh, demystifying one one of the ways because, but together, collaborative, collaboratively, that's how we figure out, like you said, incident response, um, emergency response and so forth.
Sheryl Riggs: And project uh, climate change and so on and so forth. So it, it made it very clear to me and actually got me excited. Uh, my background is more of a accounting and, um, finance and, um, operations. And some of that includes HR and I always people like, oh, that's not sexy, you know, and it just like you, I got, I was getting excited cause I really like that data, the analytics and what does this mean?
Sheryl Riggs: What do the numbers mean? What does this data mean? So I thought that was really cool. And I hope people are listening, can, can connect the dots too, and see how, this is just another example of the endless ways to be a part of this critical industry.
Rachel Olney: Yeah. Well, and it's, it's interesting you bring up, you know, finance and, and working with numbers in accounting because there are so many systems that [00:10:00] are built to work with tabular data and with array data like, you know, like finance or like SCADA systems when you can have, you know, each, each bit of data in a cell and geospatial doesn't work that way.
Rachel Olney: And so what's been, what's been interesting is we see a lot of people dilute geospatial data into a table. they'll say LA long, you know, whatever the issue is, right? And when you do that and you abstract away the richness of the data in the same way that sometimes this happens in finance stocks where people are like, wait, where did these numbers come from?
Rachel Olney: There's some sort of like, you know, um, there's, there's some sort of abstraction that happened before it was useful and, you know, That happens in geospatial all the time because any of these like major operations systems, so on the ops floors of these utilities, on the ops floors of search and rescue of, you know, insurance companies that are underwriting or dealing with natural disasters.
Rachel Olney: they have to abstract everything down to a [00:11:00] table. And so they actually lose the richness of the geospatial data. Hey, we will make sure that you actually pull out the amazing data from, you know, from all of these platforms before you stick it into these systems.
Sheryl Riggs: You know, and I'm gonna get into the the next question, which is kind of rolling, right?
Sheryl Riggs: We're rolling right into it. But also one of the things I'm hearing with Geo Site and, and you and your vision is you're able to communicate this to the different, uh, users or the different, uh, beneficiaries of this data and this, and, and I, I think that's so key because we really underestimate how if we have a gold mine of information and we cannot communicate how useful this is, uh, then it's, it's kind of like where you almost miss the miss the mark.
Sheryl Riggs: So we talked about so many ways that the information and what you do. what geospatial, breaking that down and so forth. But count, tell us more. And even I even was able to, with my, [00:12:00] uh, introductory mind, able to see how it can benefit the utilities and obviously stakeholders, me and you, everybody. Um, yeah, what we talked about Covid but tell us how, more about how this your, what you do at Geo Site and, and what you're trying to do, how this can be a game changer for, for the industry.
Rachel Olney: yeah, that's a good question. So we're already seeing people in the utilities market use geospatial data, right? Especially for things like vegetation encroachment, which is, you know, I live out in California. Um, obviously we, it's something that we all think about in California and, and wildfires and, and how do we make sure that we're maintaining the environments That our, our utilities are in right? To, to increase public safety, to increase, you know, reliability of the grid and all of those things. Um, and also even for planning, right? So it's about where do you go and where do you not go on the planet. So if you can use remote sensing data, [00:13:00] To, you know, help triage those sorts of things.
Rachel Olney: It's very important. And so, um, in, in the utilities market, what we love is that there's actually this added layer. So when I, when I was at Stanford and, um, I was doing a ton of national security and somebody posed the question to me, what do you think is the largest existential threat to the United States?
Rachel Olney: And they, and, and the implied question was from external right forces. And so, The answer, and we did a ton of research on it, but the answer ultimately was the security of our utilities infrastructure. And so both my CTO and I, you know, we love data, we love our company, but we also feel a deep passion and responsibility for how do we apply this technology to ensure the safety and security of our utilities.
Rachel Olney: Um, and so earlier when I was talking about you have these institute sensors, And you have all of this remote sensing data. When you think about utilities and you think about ways [00:14:00] that they can, um, that there are risks to them both intently, um, malicious and non-malicious. I don't think trees are usually malicious, you know, they're just doing their... right. Although my dad, I grew up on a farm and my dad used to always say like, he hated trees. He hated them so much cuz they're always causing problems. so, you know, maybe you could argue that the trees are malicious, but you know, whether it's it's malicious or non-malicious, you know, having risks. You know, all of these, you know, all over our grid, different kinds of utilities, um, whether it's, whether it's natural gas, whether it's electricity, whether it's communications, things like that.
Rachel Olney: Well of that infrastructure, you actually need to layer things like what is the environment currently? Um, where our, our facilities or things sit with those sensors so you can say, Hey, we're seeing a problem here. Is there anything in the remote sensing data that would tell us? Is there satellite imagery or drone imagery or, you know, things like that that might indicate, Hey, maybe here's why we're having a [00:15:00] problem and where that problem is so that you can respond to it faster?
Rachel Olney: And, and I know that, you know, in the utilities market, it's only been fairly recent that you're able to monitor across entire large-scale utilities rather than, you know, allowing outages to be, you know, really, really long because you know where things are. Right? There was actually a, um, a large utility company, I won't name names.
Rachel Olney: Uh, who we were, we were talking to about, you know, how do they know where their stuff is. Right. Like that's a, a pretty basic question. That's like the question of geospatial. Do you know? Like where's the stuff? Right, right. So we were work, we were talking to them about, about their development of using spatial data.
Rachel Olney: And we were like, okay, well what, you know, how do you guys store and access information about where your lines are?
Sheryl Riggs: Yeah.
Rachel Olney: And said, well, um, we have a map room. They had a phy-- this is, and I'm telling [00:16:00] you, this is one of the world's largest utilities. They have a physical map room with maps in it that they will pull out and scan and send someone a pdf, right?
Rachel Olney: Like that is how rudimentary geospatial often is in the market. So then you talk about using these new platforms, if you don't even have the basics handled, you know, that can be very hard. Um, so for us, so for us, it's really, you know, we take all of our customers through that full journey. Yeah. In, in insurance as well.
Rachel Olney: Right. In insurance, they might say, we actually don't know exactly where the properties are that we have insured. So even if we have the world's best flood data or climate change data, It doesn't matter if we don't know where the things are. So we have insurance.
Sheryl Riggs: I really, that I, I'm, I'm, I'm just, my mind is like, just going.
Sheryl Riggs: I love that because that's another thing, especially with utilities. Utilities, like you said, um, they, they're evolving, maybe not as quickly, um, but they are evolving. And I like the way you said about the map room because it has to be a match. It has to be an understanding so that we can move forward, but also if we need contingent[00:17:00] plans, Uh, backup plans. We, we, we still have to start with some of the basics and I really appreciate that you brought that forward because I think that's another thing that's very valuable, that Geo Site, uh, and you are bringing to especially the utility industry, um, that excitement.
Rachel Olney: Yeah.
Sheryl Riggs: Uh, actually, how can I say, if everything is shiny and new, It's not as exciting as sometimes the revamp, for lack of a better say it or, you know, to renovate or, or innovate.
Sheryl Riggs: Uh, so I really think that is just fantastic because I really, to me, that's what I feel, um, is how we're going to progress is that actual innovation, not doing away like a dinosaur type of situation, uh, becoming extinct, but more of trying to figure out how can we innovate and create this kind of, um, synergy that's going to, to grow the industry and make it more secure, reliable, affordable, [00:18:00] all the things that everyone is striving to do. So I really appreciate that.
Rachel Olney: And, and yeah, one, one quick thing on that. My, one of my favorite quotes from my Ph.D. was, and it was like written by somebody else and I forget, I forget their name now. Um, was that when you're innovating in a structured industry or organization, the structure can't be ignored. And I think that a lot of times, you know like you said, you can't just go extinct to like a dinosaur. Like you have to have that adaptability to say, this is the, especially with something like utilities, right? It's not like you can just like rip everything out.
Rachel Olney: Have like, okay, sorry guys, we need a, we need a few months to like refactor everything. You can't do that. This is, you know, this is the actual infrastructure that our society relies upon. You can't, you can't just, you know, uh, or for another metaphor, like turn the aircraft carrier that quickly. You can't do that.
Rachel Olney: It's, it's too dangerous. And this is one of those places where innovation is awesome and necessary, um, for all the reasons I stated , [00:19:00] but it has to be done thoughtfully. Um, and so, Without, you know, having any, any downtime. And so that's, that's a tough thing to do.
Sheryl Riggs: You said it perfectly thoughtfully, it has to be done thoughtfully, strategically, and collaboratively.
Sheryl Riggs: Yeah, you're right. And it's critical to all of us. Even if you look at just, um, the, the, like you said, the stuff, the assets, , we might have this great new technology and this happens in the utility industry, but we have this, these assets are not, are not so modern and we kind of need to do something with it.
Sheryl Riggs: That has to be thought of, like you said, thoughtfully, in order to implement this. We still can't just put a big mirage over this and just act like it does these huge assets don't exist. So, and its education process as well. That's why I, to go back to why I got very excited and I'm impressed with the way it seems, Geo Site is able to communicate to different, uh, thought [00:20:00] leaders and thought partners because that's critical, that communication, because that education piece has to happen both inside the utility, outside the utility.
Sheryl Riggs: But, you know, we talked about your academic research and, and that seems to be very excited. You focus on developing offensive and defensive cyber capabilities and. I think everyone has some idea of why this is important. Yeah. But how important is it for utilities to address, and you talked about it a little bit, cyber security and what do you see as the bigger cyber, the biggest cyber threat facing the industry?
Sheryl Riggs: And I just wanna add to that too, which is a challenge is trying. Not just the threat acknowledging or the threat, but also considering reliability and some of those other things that we talked about that everyone's discussing these days.
Rachel Olney: Yeah, it's a, it's a really good question. So, I mean, I'll start with saying I'm absolutely not the utilities, cybersecurity expert.
Rachel Olney: so of the [00:21:00] world's problems, what are some that keep me up at night? And, and one of them does have to do with cybersecurity and utilities. Right? Um, and what really concerns me is, and I, we've seen some of these actually happen, um, over the course of the last few years, and it's something that the national security community we're working to try to make sure there.
Rachel Olney: Actual policies around, and, you know, federal assets can, can step in to try to help because right now a lot of cyber attacks are seen as a, oh, this is company X's problem, not a national security problem. Right. And so I think some of those, those lines behind, like between what counts as, as an attack in terms of like what is the definition of war, what is, you know, all those things.
Rachel Olney: Like if, if it's a you. Um, if you're not sure, attribution is hard, right? In, in cyber and, and so there's, I think those blurry lines are gonna be something that's hard and going to continue to get harder where if there is a attack on the [00:22:00] SCADA systems of a utility, is that the same as if somebody had dropped a bomb?
Rachel Olney: Right? Does how do we look at these things in terms of risk and damage because it can be as damaging and as life-threatening, even though it is a cyber attack? And so I think those definitions need to, to be cleared up. And, and I know there's, there's a ton of people working on this problem and making sure that that national and, and private assets are coordinated.
Rachel Olney: But really, um, from like the nerd point of view, the thing that scares me is always, um, is always, uh, there's, there's of course times where we've seen, I think there was a, a factory, I think it was a, a meat factory that got down by, um, some malware. So there's that kind of cyber attack that's like very overt.
Rachel Olney: Everything's been shut down, came to a screeching halt, like major, major cyber attacks. But what actually worries me are the, the minor ones. So it's possible to put in, um, you know, malicious code or things like that, that actually just cause like [00:23:00] a slow degradation of important assets. And that's what scares me.
Rachel Olney: And so from our point of view at Geo Site, data, you keep talking about collaboration data in combination is always better. It's always better. And so from our point of view, if you can combine lots of different layers of data to start to see how maybe some things might be correlated, um, and then you can dig into those, that becomes very valuable.
Rachel Olney: So if you have all these systems up and there's amazing companies working on detecting, um, all sorts of, you know, basically. If, if they see fluctuations or things like that in, in networks that they're tracking, there are people focused on that. But if you have that data in combination with, okay, what's happening in the region?
Rachel Olney: Is this something that is normal or not normal? Maybe there's a weather event. Okay, cool. This is, this is fine. Maybe there wasn't a weather event, but we're seeing some weird stuff. Maybe that's worth tracking. Right. And so being able to layer, you know, what is happening [00:24:00] geographically in addition to what's happening digitally then becomes very valuable, um, from a security standpoint.
Sheryl Riggs: I think you, you said it very well and I put my disclaimer as well. I mean, I'm not, I don't consider myself a cybersecurity expert or even a utility expert, but definitely seeing what I've seen, like you said, looking through your lenses. I agree with you. Uh, like I said, financial, I look at, we have more liabilities than we do assets, and that's never a good thing.
Sheryl Riggs: you know, we don't have enough, uh, cyber, we have a lot of people working on it, like you said, but we still have a shortage of cybersecurity professionals who can help us put the big picture together beyond step one. You know, like you said, being prepared. That's one of the things that keeps me up at night, you know, and I know utilities as well, being prepared for what attack, you know, we can do all kind of scenarios and, um, practice and, um, tests, but are we gonna be prepared?
Sheryl Riggs: Um, not, you know, to handle it and to recover because like you said, even something as simple as slowing a process. [00:25:00] Can have huge impact on the society and like you said, geospatial, you know, I'll just think about that. Yeah. Nationwide, I mean globally, uh, it's, it's amazing. So I think you, you ha you provided us with a pretty expert, uh, response there.
Rachel Olney: I'm sure there's some cybersecurity experts out there, just like, oh my gosh, this is .
Sheryl Riggs: I could tell you this. And some of the conversations that I've had. Some of the people that are looking at like you kind of the big picture. Yeah. That is the, the, it works its way up to, at the end of the day, it's about are we gonna be ready?
Sheryl Riggs: And it's evolving. The negative aspects are evolving way quicker than the solutions. And that's very scary. Uh, because it can impact.
Rachel Olney: Then it becomes about, uh, talent, right? And, and having people who are, you know, who understand utilities, who understand [00:26:00] infrastructure and who understand, uh, cybersecurity.
Rachel Olney: And so any, you know, spots, where those people get nurtured, is, is really important.
Sheryl Riggs: I love it. Um, and, and we have time for one more question and I, I, I'm gonna say, yeah, we're gonna be out in California. I hope I get a chance to, to get out there and maybe meet you in person, but I'm gonna, I think we're gonna be out there in August.
Sheryl Riggs: Cause I mean, we can have another great conversation and Yes. Share your expertise again, cause I'm, I'm really enjoying it. But I wanna make this last question more of a personal one. You know, as an executive at the top of, of your field. Is there anything that you wish you heard when you were starting out on your career path that you would tell people today who may be thinking about entering this space?
Rachel Olney: Yeah. Wow. Um, that's such a good question. I, it's, there's so many things, right? I think, I think anybody, if they don't look back and go, " Man, I really, you know, could give myself a lot of advice." They're, they're not learning or growing, right? [00:27:00] So, um, there are so many, I think for entrepreneur, like my advice would be different depending on people's tracks, right?
Rachel Olney: For entrepreneurs, um, you know, you're, you're running, you know this and you're doing things, and so you know what it's like to create something from, from basically nothing. And, um, and it's hard, right? Creating something from nothing is hard and it's incredibly valuable. So my advice to entrepreneurs, Find the thing that you can talk about day and night, like to everyone's exhaustion.
Rachel Olney: They're like, we get it. SAR data's cool, Rachel. I'm like, but it's a synthetic aperture radar. Like how amazing you fly two satellites in tandem to pretend to be a bigger radar. Like that's bonkers, right? So like find the thing that you are weirdly passionate about, like obsessed with, and then you just start like, Do it.
Rachel Olney: I remember one day cuz you, you can sit there and, and debate it and talk about it and plan, you know, to no end. But one day I was sitting with [00:28:00] somebody and I was like, yeah, I'm starting a company. It was like the first time I did it and I sat there and I was like, oh my God, oh my gosh. I said, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it.
Rachel Olney: I'm gonna start a company. I just told them. I wanna do it. And you know, there's, there's this point where you just have to jump, right? You have to decide, I am the person who is the most obsessed with this in the world, or have experience or, you know, right time, right place. Whatever it is, if you know that it's something that you know you can bring to the world, do it.
Rachel Olney: Um, for, for female entrepreneurs specifically, um, and I a little bit about this here and there, I have even, and this, this really is, uh, anybody can use this advice, but I think for women especially, is One, find your crew. Like you need peers. You have to have peers. You have to find them, and you have to lean on them, and you have to be open and honest with them.
Rachel Olney: And it's basically like your, um, entrepreneurship's hard doing anything for, well, not even just entrepreneur. Life is hard. You need peers. [00:29:00] Like if, if what you're doing in your life is changing you, you need additional new peers. So find those people. And, um, yeah, so I have like my female CEO crew, right? And we talk on the phone like daily.
Rachel Olney: All of us are, and it'll be like this chain of support. Somebody will be having a bad day, everybody's supporting that person. Then the next day it's this person, right? And, and you can support each other in, advise each other and do all of that. Um, and then the second piece is learn to introduce yourself.
Rachel Olney: So that's why Sheryl when you opened up with that amazing introduction, I. I'm gonna like sit down and write it and be like, I'll, you know, have that be, be the introduction moving forward. Well, I think a lot of times, um, because of our social norms, women are taught to kind of minimize or be very especially humble about their introductions instead of just owning like, yeah, I am doing amazing stuff.
Rachel Olney: I'm doing really hard stuff and I'm really proud of it. And, and once I got the feedback that I had given an introduction to myself, that came off as flippant and I'm definitely not a flippant person, and [00:30:00] realized that, you know, a lot of times we're not coached to introduce ourselves, so know your audience, know what they need to know about you.
Rachel Olney: Create bullet points for yourself and practice it, um, and, and be able to give a very strong introduction. But yeah, those are probably the three things. I'd go back and, and tell myself.
Sheryl Riggs: I actually love it. I, I know people can't see our faces because it's gonna be a podcast, but we are looking at each other and the energy, I am just feeling it all through.
Sheryl Riggs: The video, everything you said. I mean, I'm feeling the same thing. I remember, I remember how I felt when I was in college and I just recall telling my daughters, I have three daughters periodically. I don't care what you wanna do, if you wanna be a basket weaver, do it. Like you said, that passion that has to be first and foremost.
Sheryl Riggs: And none of us, we could try to map out our. But then, it's like The Wiz, which is one of the Wizard of Oz, is my, one of my favorite movies. I love it cuz like, yes, let's just go on the yellow [00:31:00] brick road, just wherever we don't know what we're gonna encounter, just go, just cuz you know you're trying to get to Emerald City, just go deal with whatever comes and enjoy it.
Sheryl Riggs: And I love, which is the crew, which I'm going back to the wizard. So she had a crew , and it's important you need that support because it is-- you need it for, you don't know what's gonna, what's gonna, you're gonna encounter. So I love all of that advice. Um, I hope I can be part of your crew. I feel really connected to you.
Sheryl Riggs: Um, and, and this was a great conversation, the passion. I hope people heard it because yes, you are passionate about it, but what happens with that passion? is you convey that energy because now I wanna learn more. I wanna get my hard hat. As soon as Covid is out, I want, I wanna go on site, I wanna go with you, I wanna, I wanna do it.
Sheryl Riggs: Because you get that excited when you're passionate about it. You wanna take it to the next level and see what else you can do. And I hope that, uh, as [00:32:00] people are meeting us here on this intersection podcast, they're getting excited. Like, look into this, look into it. Reach out, study, connect and see where you can-- Where you can be or where what you can do, because this affects everyone. If we don't realize anything else, everything you said, everything you're doing, it's affecting everyone. Cyber attacks, security, geospatial, everything. It's affecting you. You're not left out. You're right there in it. So, Rachel, this has been fantastic.
Sheryl Riggs: It's been great catching up with you. I'm just so excited. and I look forward to the next time. I look forward to talking again with your team. They also have the same excitement, so I'm assuming you, you put a little bit of that excitement and passion in, in, in your, your team and your meetings. I really enjoyed it.
Sheryl Riggs: But is there anything else that you would like to add before we close out this episode?
Rachel Olney: No, just thank you. This was amazing [00:33:00] and lovely and I'm so happy that we got to, to hang out here, Sheryl, and of course you're, of course, you're a part of my crew,
Sheryl Riggs: and I'll be glad to do your introduction and we will.
Sheryl Riggs: We will. You deserve it. Like you said, flowers, you deserve it and it's right your everything you said spot on as women and I'm sure, of course, like you said, it could be men, it could be other people. It is sometimes difficult. To actually walk into a spotlight. Yeah. Uh, so it is something that you kind of have to practice and get comfortable and that's another reason you need your crew to help me.
Sheryl Riggs: But thank you so much and uh, we look forward to hearing from you and take care.
Rachel Olney: Thanks, Sheryl.
Sheryl Riggs: Thank you.
Intro: Thank you for meeting us at the intersection. For more information about the Utilities Technology Council visit utc.org