Linda Houk is President and CEO of Information Systems Solutions, Inc. (ISS). In 2005 ISS was restructured and she was selected to lead the company into the future. Since her arrival, the company has experienced steady growth, and has been identified for six consecutive years by Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest growing privately held companies. She is recognized by the Montgomery County (MD) Chamber of Commerce as their 2011 Small Business Leader of the Year.
Prior to joining ISS, Linda served 21 years as an Air Force officer where, as part of her accomplishments she oversaw multiple contractors and organizations and coordinated with managers of other projects/programs and high-level Air Force decision makers, including the Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Air Force. She also served on the Air Force Program Review Committee, which reviews the Air Force budget submissions and establishes the annual Air Force Program Objective Memorandum (POM). Linda is a graduate of the Air Force Institute of Technology, with a Master of Science in Systems Management, and she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Miami University.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M and T Bank presents CEOs you.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Should Know, driven by Western Transportation Group and iHeartMedia. Let's
meet Linda Hawk. She is the CEO for Information system Solutions,
also known as MISS, a company that provides IT services
that integrate technology, people and processes to help organizations collect, manage, analyzed,
and distribute data, enabling better decision making, improved efficiency, streamlined operations,
(00:26):
enhance customer service, and a competitive edge, often involving cybersecurity,
software networks, data analytics, AI, and project management. Before we
talk more about Lenna's company, I first asked her to
talk a little bit about herself, where she's from and
her origin story.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I'm a military brat and this shaped my success in
the business world. Through the regimented childhood that had certain expectations,
I was able to thrive and learn all the skills needed.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
For that particular role. I had planned to.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Always be a member of the workforce, and I found
out that didn't always meet with what my expectations were.
For example, I'm of the generation where women did not
join the workforce as a career. Because of that, when
I started to look for jobs after graduating from college,
I was met with we're not hiring women because it
(01:24):
takes jobs away from men.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So that put me in a dilemma.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
But I found out that I'm a pretty good problem solver,
and I noticed that the military was advertising for women.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
They were trying to determine.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
If women could take on some of the support roles
because they were lacking men and needed additional people. So
they went back to their World War Two experiences where
women were joining the military and support roles as a
temporary stop gap for the lack of men and allowed
(01:58):
the men to then be in the combat roles. Well,
we were so successful. We were about two percent of
the military service at the time. We were so successful
that nowadays women can be in combat boots on the
ground and carrying guns and shooting at the enemy, whereas
back in my days, we weren't allowed in cockpits, we
(02:20):
weren't allowed out of state, out of.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
The United States.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And because of that, I've take great pride in being
on the leading edge of women being an accepted force
in the military.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, thank you for all that, And I know you're
a proud member of the United States Air Force, and
I do want to talk a little bit about that
your service and then being in the private sector. But
where'd you go to college.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, the cradle
of coaches back in those days, and it was a
very nice, mild campus. I got interested in some of
the liberal arts and took passion toomics, and of course
that's a very necessary portion of business development and running
(03:06):
a business. At the time, I had no intention of
being an entrepreneur or running in my own business, and
had actually been advised not to do so by my
father because he saw the Great Depression and saw how
businesses collapsed very quickly and wanted to make sure that
his children were protected by having a company that wouldn't
(03:28):
be as affected by those types of downswings in the economy.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, it's a great school, and I'm a big sports fan,
and I know that Ben Roethlisberger went there. I actually
saw him play in his final season when I went
to a Colorado State game when I used to live
out in Colorado. And of course he turned out to
have a great career, a couple of Super Bowl wins.
But I know he's one of the more famous alumni
that went to Miami of Ohio. I do want to
talk a little bit about military service before we talk
(03:53):
about ISS and of course information system solutions you being
the CEO for almost twenty one years now, and the
military service, and we talked to so many people in
the series Linda about their service and then going into
the private sector. What did you take from the military
service into the private sector that you could use and
(04:13):
that you couldn't use. I'm always curious about those kind
of things.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
What I learned from the military was how to work
with men. Men and women think differently, they react differently,
they have different expectations, and by being surrounded by an
all male workforce with barely a woman involved, I learned
very quickly, through fortunately the advice of some senior NCOs
(04:37):
that took me under their wing to work with the men,
how to guide them, how to give instructions, how to
give them orders, and also how to make sure that
I could look at a situation and determine what to do.
So that was a huge understanding. A lot of times
(04:58):
in the civilian world people don't pay attention to detail,
and yet attention to detail is critical in the military
because if you don't pay attention to all the fine nuances,
someone could get killed or a mission could go wrong,
and we.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Really can't have that.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
We owe it to our service personnel and to our
clients in the commercial world to make sure that we
do it right, we do it effective, and we do
it at the best cost for them and for us.
So I took that away from the military with me.
What I also took that wasn't quite as useful because
(05:43):
I had to kind of reshape my thinking is. The
military is very structured. We have a lot of statements
of work that we follow. The officers are a jack
of all trades, a master of none, and we have
to be that way because when a conflict arises, we
need to be able to be moved into a different
position and be able to command immediately.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So that is something that I took.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
With me into the civilian workforce, and that didn't go
over too well when I had all these standard procedures
and I found that it was a little bit too stringent,
so I relaxed.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Some on that.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
We still had policies and procedures and of course information
system solutions. We put in place our isostandards for quality
management and service management, and those are a set of
policies and procedures so that helped, but I didn't make
them so strong that people had to use a checklist
(06:41):
and make sure that they had to follow things without
having any ability to make a decision.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
So we've allowed some of.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
The decisions to be made at lower levels where it
wouldn't have been done in the military.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Understood, Wilson, and thank you so much for sharing in.
Thank you so much for your service. Were really appreciate that.
Let's talk about Information system Solutions ISS as CEO, and
we're being introduced to our audience, maybe some people for
the first time about ISS and what you do. If
you were to give Linda maybe a thirty thousand foot view,
(07:16):
I do want to talk about what you do. But
I know mission and vision are very critical, especially in
your line of work. Can you talk about those well.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Our mission is that we meet mission critical goals and
we do that by providing people processes, infrastructure, technology to
align the it with their objectives. And so we do
this for both the federal and the commercial space. But
(07:45):
our focus is actually on the Department of Defense, and
because of that, we have a lot of rules and
regulations that we must follow and also provide a lot
of cybersecurity to both our company.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And to our clients.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
That's been a recent focus in the Department of Defense,
and so that would be kind of the.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Overview of what we do.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
A big area that we work on right now is
a lot of cloud engineering with AWS and Azure as
our customers start to work more in the cloud, and
we also do a lot of integration capabilities into the network,
identifying capabilities, prototypes, determining a best solution and suggests that
(08:36):
to our customers because as we do the job that
they've hired us to do, we also recognize that they
don't always know the best way to go about doing
something to even meet their goals, and they might even
be on the wrong track. So we always analyze what
we've been told to do and make sure that it
does meet with the customer expectations and that they do
(08:58):
understand that what they've asked for is what they are
going to be getting and we validate that with them.
We also have a great expertise in computer forensics that's
extremely high demand and not surprisingly with all of the
cyber attacks that are happening, and so we do a
lot of identifying, analyzing the digital information, doing DATTA recovery,
(09:21):
incident response, and bringing systems back into compliance.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
So overall, that would be a good description of what
we do.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Very good, thank you. So I'd love to talk about
the state of the industry just for a little bit.
I know this could probably be its own podcast. I'm
always sleeping well and I because of people like you
and your team and what you do. And I know
there's a lot of super secret stuff going on that
you can't share, whether it's with clients or what you
do specifically. But with that said, you know, we all
watch the news, we read the news. I know that
(09:51):
you know everybody says the world done fire. There's a
lot of things going on right now, but you and
your team are busy right now doing a lot of
incredible stuff out there. This the state of cybersecurity and
we're we're at not only domestically but internationally. How are
you feeling about things right now and also the future
in the next five to ten years.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Cybersecurity has been a focus for many years as we've
learned that a lot of cyber attacks have been occurring,
and therefore the federal government in particular has focused on
trying to figure out how to secure the systems.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So there's been a.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Lot of effort on the part of not just federal
but state as well to get compliance requirements, how to
work those requirements, and they have National Institutes for Standards
and Technology now has a list of compliance checklists to
make sure that companies, even if they don't go for
(10:50):
a certification in cyber are able to at least make
sure that they are going to be as compliant as
possible so that we can't be hacked because it's very
simple to do. Passwords are a very simple thing that
people just kind of ignore, and that's probably the easiest
way to get into somebody's data. So with the emphasis
(11:11):
these days, it's really gotten tighter, it's become more secure,
and I think that in the next five years it's
going to be even better because now their focus is
on cybercrime and how to prevent it, and we now
have a lot of experts that are able to do
that computer forensics, figure out what went wrong, where it
(11:34):
went wrong, and patch that.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
We also have the ability.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
To test our own systems to make sure that we
can't be hacked. So it's very promising and I think
as we continue forward and get even more experienced, that
we'll be able to really tighten things.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Down, Linda, I'd like to talk to you about competition,
and I don't want to make any assumptions that there's
another company that does what you and your team specific,
but I do imagine it could be a competitive field
out there. As you're pitching yourself to clients or somebody
comes to you and says, we'd like to work with you,
how are you differentiating yourself from the other clients out
there and the other companies.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Well, there are a lot of companies that do the
type of work we do. The way we differentiate is
mainly in two ways. For one thing, we focus on
the customer and we focus on our employees with the customer.
So many companies forget and I'm giving this as advice
as well to my competition, that you need to pay
(12:35):
attention to your customer. You need to be responsive, you
need to do what you say you're going to do.
You need to keep them informed of what you're doing.
You need to get to know them and understand their needs.
And this is where we come in and are extremely strong.
We're given a statement of work, this is what you're
going to do, this is how you're going to do it,
(12:55):
and then we go in and we start learning the job,
figuring out what they want, what their end goals are,
and then making it better. And of course this is
all with the permission of the client, because we don't
want to force on them anything they don't want. But
I've never run across a client that says, no, we
(13:16):
don't want to make it more efficient and save us
ten thousand dollars over the next week. It's always been, oh,
tell us more, how can we get better? And so
now we've gotten a reputation for being extremely easy to
work with, very responsive. We take immediate action. We don't
brush it off and say, well, we'll get to it.
Oh there's a problem, well we'll look into it. We
(13:39):
do it immediately. If there's a significant problem, we actually
get on a plane and meet our customer.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Face to face.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
And so that has been extremely impressive because that way,
a face to face works so much better than even
a team's call. And our younger society is more comfortable
with teams, but our older society is more comfortable face
to face. And I find that I still get much
(14:06):
better responses when I'm working face to face with someone.
As for our employees, we care about them. We make
sure that their lifestyle balance works with their work balance,
that their needs are met not just in the workforce,
but also in their private lives, because if you have
(14:27):
an unhappy person, they are not going to do a
good job. If they're worried about something in their private life,
then it just affects their work life. And so employees
are the most valuable asset a company can have, and
we have a high retention rate fluctuating between ninety two
and ninety six percent. That vows for our treatment of employees.
(14:50):
We take care of them, We work with them. When
the government was in shutdown, we let them know exactly
what was going on, how we were responding, how it
would impact them. And because of that, we had an
extremely comfortable workforce. They knew what, they knew their expectations,
they knew what would happen, they knew how it would happen,
(15:11):
and that.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
We would take care of them. So that's extremely important.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And when people are making a decision, well is it
better for me to do whatever it's going to affect
my employees, but who cares well that will affect your
future in your business. And so it's our interaction with
our customers and our interaction with our employees that really
differentiate how we are with choosing who to pick.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well, thanks for sharing that. It's not going to surprise you,
but most of the leaders that I talk on this
series say those seem two things and much more. And
I think this is a great segue into leadership. You
have a lot of people that you have to deal
with and your one voice, and with that said, when
it comes to work life balance, but making sure that
execution has done for some very important things than twenty
(16:00):
four to seven three sixty five, I'd love for you
to talk a little bit about leadership, about your voice,
about your vision, getting it to your managers and then
to the rest of the staff, making sure that everything
is executed correctly, follow up and then if there are
mistakes made, how do we get better? Can you talk
a little bit overall about how you lead this company
and what you do exactly?
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Well, since we are essentially everywhere in the world at
one point or a time or another, we now are
in full telewwork. We were planning to do that COVID hit,
so we were already partially doing telework and COVID ended
up getting us into a full telework mode for headquarters. Unfortunately,
we weren't able to offer telework for some of our
(16:43):
employees that were out in the field. But to oversee
such a diverse locations.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
We have a lot.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
We rely a lot on teams, We rely a lot
on the Internet for everything.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
To get the word out.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
We have a a company portal where we have a
lot of the announcements of what's going on. We have
staff meetings, we have in person meetings where we fly
in our program managers and we make sure that everyone
stays in touch. Staff meetings are a requirement. If you're
not on the staff meeting, it means you're on vacation
(17:19):
or sick leave.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And there's just some things.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
That we do require that are non negotiable and there
are others that are So it just depends on the
actual situation. But our pms get the information from my
executive staff.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I've got a very very strong.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
COO vice president of Operations and Operations manager.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Our HR manager is top notch.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
She's been with the company for quite a long time
and evolved from an office manager into being our HR
director and so it has really been a blessing having
a support staff that understands the company has developed with
it and understands what we want, how we want it,
(18:09):
and what we do. The executive staff that I have
is very responsive. They understand what's going on out in
the field. They are actually technical experts. My COEO could
actually walk in and do a lot of the jobs
that we currently do for our customers, so he's got
a really good understanding of that, and so does my
(18:34):
vice president of operations. So it really helps to have
that background, the understanding foresight. I do a lot of
strategic planning, what's going on in the world, what's the
government doing, what's it going to be? Their emphasis? What
do we want, how does it fit in with our culture.
We have a high ethical standard, which sometimes means we
(18:57):
don't get the jobs that we would like because we're
not willing to bend and that's a hard line for
a lot of companies.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
They and I.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Cautioned them on that when I'm training someone or mentoring them,
the time will come when you're going to have to
make a decision. It may be legal, but is it
ethical And they have to make that decision themselves as
to what is ethical to them, and our standards are
pretty high.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Very good. Well, thank you for sharing all that, Linda,
I'd like to put a pin in work just for
a second, and if you indulge me, I'd love to
talk about philanthropic and charity work. I know they're meeting
you in the green room with the others today that
it's really important to you when you do have time
in your busy schedule, whether it's through the business and
work or home personally, what do you like to be
a part.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Of Thank you, Dennis.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I appreciate the opportunity to mention that because I do
love philanthropic activities. For our founders set up a giving
program matching gifts and for the military and veterans charities,
it's automatic. They don't have to say i'd like this one,
(20:07):
is it okay? And so that's just an automatic And
we have found that with those charities, the USO has
been the most popular. It's received the most requests, and
it's not surprising considering about fifty percent of our workforce
our veterans, me being one of them and having experienced
(20:27):
the USO firsthand when I was out in the field.
But when other charities are usually local, we have an
Arizona contingent that is really fond of an organization that
supports the needy kids through the Kuwanas Club, and it
is something that we were asked to sponsor since they
(20:49):
had lost their main sponsor. So we've taken that on
because it's something that is of interest to our Arizona people.
But VIP, the Veteran Institute for is my passion. I'm
on the board of directors that oversees the VIP program
and what it is is a training program free to
(21:10):
the veterans. It's usually a three day intense program where
we bring them all in to a location in Maryland
and we train them on a variety of things, mainly
business development and you know, financial considerations, but the key
is networking and that's important no matter where you are
(21:34):
and what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And so we have different classes.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
There are several that focus on just entrepreneurial training for
federal contracting. We have a program for those that are
just starting up. We have some that for those that
are more mature. We also have a program for commercial
for those that want to go into the commercial world.
(22:02):
And at the interests of one of our sponsors for
the VIP program, we have started an aerospace program on
how to get involved in the aerospace program, and that
has been extremely popular with some of our sponsors because
they do a lot of aerospace work. And then there's
also the international contingent that we teach on. It's not
(22:26):
for those that do international work as a federal contractor,
which is the type of work we do, but it's
what do you do when you don't have the government
backing you and you want to do work in another country?
And so that really helps out to determine whether or
not somebody really wants to take it on because.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
There's a lot of easy pitfalls that can occur.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And if anyone wants more information about that, just go
to National VIP dot org and there's a lot of information,
especially you veterans out there that are wanting to get
involved in federal contracting or commercial contracting.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
You know, check it out. It's no cost to you.
So I help to see you there very good.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
I can see why VIP is such a big deal
to you and your passionate about it. It's a very
cool service that is offered. Where we always, you know,
high school, post secondary school, they always don't offer a
lot of life skills, and VIP does that. So I
can see why you're involved in that. That's really nice.
I do want to get some final thoughts from you, Linda,
And then also we're going to give the website and
if you're hiring. I know people are listening to our
(23:30):
podcast for that too, But if we just kind of
recap all the things we've talked about about ISS, just
some final thoughts from you, Linda, the floor is yours.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Thank you, Dennis. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
And for you listeners out there, I hope to have
you check out our website and contact us. We're adding
new and exciting opportunities supporting both our internal mobility as
well as new talents from outside, and that's where you
come in, so you know, please check it out. If
you're in trigged by us and wanting to explore career options,
(24:03):
check out our website ISS dot com. Up in the
upper right corner, you'll see a blue box saying careers.
That is a direct line to our full time recruiter.
If there's a job there that you're interested in, you
can apply directly to the job. If not, there's a
general form to fill out and our recruiter will talk
(24:25):
to you.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
It's not a bop. It's an actual.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Person and she will find out what your interests are,
what your talents are, and see if there's a fit.
If not, we can certainly keep you in mind for
future work because we have a lot of opportunities that
are coming up that aren't quite in the.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Mill yet not standing well.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Linda, thank you so much for your valuable time, thank
you for your service, and thank you for all of
you and your team do. Once again, I know that
you can only share so much what you do with
your clients out there, but knowing enough about the industry
and also interviewing CEO like yourself in that genre, it's
incredible work. I know it's hard work. It can be
very stressful, but it allows all those Americans to sleep
(25:07):
a little bit better at night for all the things
that you do with your client. So I thank you
for that in National Security and thank you so much.
I'm glad we could feature you on CEOs you should Know.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Thank you, Dennis, and thank you listeners.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Our community partner M and T Bank supports CEOs you
should Know. Is part of their ongoing commitment to building
strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses within
them as a bank for communities. M and T believes
in dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local businesses
thrive because when businesses succeed, our community succeed.
M and T Bank presents CEOs you.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Should Know, driven by Western Transportation Group and iHeartMedia. Let's
meet Linda Hawk. She is the CEO for Information system Solutions,
also known as MISS, a company that provides IT services
that integrate technology, people and processes to help organizations collect, manage, analyzed,
and distribute data, enabling better decision making, improved efficiency, streamlined operations,
(00:26):
enhance customer service, and a competitive edge, often involving cybersecurity,
software networks, data analytics, AI, and project management. Before we
talk more about Lenna's company, I first asked her to
talk a little bit about herself, where she's from and
her origin story.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I'm a military brat and this shaped my success in
the business world. Through the regimented childhood that had certain expectations,
I was able to thrive and learn all the skills needed.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
For that particular role. I had planned to.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Always be a member of the workforce, and I found
out that didn't always meet with what my expectations were.
For example, I'm of the generation where women did not
join the workforce as a career. Because of that, when
I started to look for jobs after graduating from college,
I was met with we're not hiring women because it
(01:24):
takes jobs away from men.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So that put me in a dilemma.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
But I found out that I'm a pretty good problem solver,
and I noticed that the military was advertising for women.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
They were trying to determine.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
If women could take on some of the support roles
because they were lacking men and needed additional people. So
they went back to their World War Two experiences where
women were joining the military and support roles as a
temporary stop gap for the lack of men and allowed
(01:58):
the men to then be in the combat roles. Well,
we were so successful. We were about two percent of
the military service at the time. We were so successful
that nowadays women can be in combat boots on the
ground and carrying guns and shooting at the enemy, whereas
back in my days, we weren't allowed in cockpits, we
(02:20):
weren't allowed out of state, out of.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
The United States.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And because of that, I've take great pride in being
on the leading edge of women being an accepted force
in the military.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, thank you for all that, And I know you're
a proud member of the United States Air Force, and
I do want to talk a little bit about that
your service and then being in the private sector. But
where'd you go to college.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, the cradle
of coaches back in those days, and it was a
very nice, mild campus. I got interested in some of
the liberal arts and took passion toomics, and of course
that's a very necessary portion of business development and running
(03:06):
a business. At the time, I had no intention of
being an entrepreneur or running in my own business, and
had actually been advised not to do so by my
father because he saw the Great Depression and saw how
businesses collapsed very quickly and wanted to make sure that
his children were protected by having a company that wouldn't
(03:28):
be as affected by those types of downswings in the economy.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, it's a great school, and I'm a big sports fan,
and I know that Ben Roethlisberger went there. I actually
saw him play in his final season when I went
to a Colorado State game when I used to live
out in Colorado. And of course he turned out to
have a great career, a couple of Super Bowl wins.
But I know he's one of the more famous alumni
that went to Miami of Ohio. I do want to
talk a little bit about military service before we talk
(03:53):
about ISS and of course information system solutions you being
the CEO for almost twenty one years now, and the
military service, and we talked to so many people in
the series Linda about their service and then going into
the private sector. What did you take from the military
service into the private sector that you could use and
(04:13):
that you couldn't use. I'm always curious about those kind
of things.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
What I learned from the military was how to work
with men. Men and women think differently, they react differently,
they have different expectations, and by being surrounded by an
all male workforce with barely a woman involved, I learned
very quickly, through fortunately the advice of some senior NCOs
(04:37):
that took me under their wing to work with the men,
how to guide them, how to give instructions, how to
give them orders, and also how to make sure that
I could look at a situation and determine what to do.
So that was a huge understanding. A lot of times
(04:58):
in the civilian world people don't pay attention to detail,
and yet attention to detail is critical in the military
because if you don't pay attention to all the fine nuances,
someone could get killed or a mission could go wrong,
and we.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Really can't have that.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
We owe it to our service personnel and to our
clients in the commercial world to make sure that we
do it right, we do it effective, and we do
it at the best cost for them and for us.
So I took that away from the military with me.
What I also took that wasn't quite as useful because
(05:43):
I had to kind of reshape my thinking is. The
military is very structured. We have a lot of statements
of work that we follow. The officers are a jack
of all trades, a master of none, and we have
to be that way because when a conflict arises, we
need to be able to be moved into a different
position and be able to command immediately.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So that is something that I took.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
With me into the civilian workforce, and that didn't go
over too well when I had all these standard procedures
and I found that it was a little bit too stringent,
so I relaxed.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Some on that.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
We still had policies and procedures and of course information
system solutions. We put in place our isostandards for quality
management and service management, and those are a set of
policies and procedures so that helped, but I didn't make
them so strong that people had to use a checklist
(06:41):
and make sure that they had to follow things without
having any ability to make a decision.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
So we've allowed some of.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
The decisions to be made at lower levels where it
wouldn't have been done in the military.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Understood, Wilson, and thank you so much for sharing in.
Thank you so much for your service. Were really appreciate that.
Let's talk about Information system Solutions ISS as CEO, and
we're being introduced to our audience, maybe some people for
the first time about ISS and what you do. If
you were to give Linda maybe a thirty thousand foot view,
(07:16):
I do want to talk about what you do. But
I know mission and vision are very critical, especially in
your line of work. Can you talk about those well.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Our mission is that we meet mission critical goals and
we do that by providing people processes, infrastructure, technology to
align the it with their objectives. And so we do
this for both the federal and the commercial space. But
(07:45):
our focus is actually on the Department of Defense, and
because of that, we have a lot of rules and
regulations that we must follow and also provide a lot
of cybersecurity to both our company.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And to our clients.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
That's been a recent focus in the Department of Defense,
and so that would be kind of the.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Overview of what we do.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
A big area that we work on right now is
a lot of cloud engineering with AWS and Azure as
our customers start to work more in the cloud, and
we also do a lot of integration capabilities into the network,
identifying capabilities, prototypes, determining a best solution and suggests that
(08:36):
to our customers because as we do the job that
they've hired us to do, we also recognize that they
don't always know the best way to go about doing
something to even meet their goals, and they might even
be on the wrong track. So we always analyze what
we've been told to do and make sure that it
does meet with the customer expectations and that they do
(08:58):
understand that what they've asked for is what they are
going to be getting and we validate that with them.
We also have a great expertise in computer forensics that's
extremely high demand and not surprisingly with all of the
cyber attacks that are happening, and so we do a
lot of identifying, analyzing the digital information, doing DATTA recovery,
(09:21):
incident response, and bringing systems back into compliance.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
So overall, that would be a good description of what
we do.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Very good, thank you. So I'd love to talk about
the state of the industry just for a little bit.
I know this could probably be its own podcast. I'm
always sleeping well and I because of people like you
and your team and what you do. And I know
there's a lot of super secret stuff going on that
you can't share, whether it's with clients or what you
do specifically. But with that said, you know, we all
watch the news, we read the news. I know that
(09:51):
you know everybody says the world done fire. There's a
lot of things going on right now, but you and
your team are busy right now doing a lot of
incredible stuff out there. This the state of cybersecurity and
we're we're at not only domestically but internationally. How are
you feeling about things right now and also the future
in the next five to ten years.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Cybersecurity has been a focus for many years as we've
learned that a lot of cyber attacks have been occurring,
and therefore the federal government in particular has focused on
trying to figure out how to secure the systems.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So there's been a.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Lot of effort on the part of not just federal
but state as well to get compliance requirements, how to
work those requirements, and they have National Institutes for Standards
and Technology now has a list of compliance checklists to
make sure that companies, even if they don't go for
(10:50):
a certification in cyber are able to at least make
sure that they are going to be as compliant as
possible so that we can't be hacked because it's very
simple to do. Passwords are a very simple thing that
people just kind of ignore, and that's probably the easiest
way to get into somebody's data. So with the emphasis
(11:11):
these days, it's really gotten tighter, it's become more secure,
and I think that in the next five years it's
going to be even better because now their focus is
on cybercrime and how to prevent it, and we now
have a lot of experts that are able to do
that computer forensics, figure out what went wrong, where it
(11:34):
went wrong, and patch that.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
We also have the ability.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
To test our own systems to make sure that we
can't be hacked. So it's very promising and I think
as we continue forward and get even more experienced, that
we'll be able to really tighten things.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Down, Linda, I'd like to talk to you about competition,
and I don't want to make any assumptions that there's
another company that does what you and your team specific,
but I do imagine it could be a competitive field
out there. As you're pitching yourself to clients or somebody
comes to you and says, we'd like to work with you,
how are you differentiating yourself from the other clients out
there and the other companies.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Well, there are a lot of companies that do the
type of work we do. The way we differentiate is
mainly in two ways. For one thing, we focus on
the customer and we focus on our employees with the customer.
So many companies forget and I'm giving this as advice
as well to my competition, that you need to pay
(12:35):
attention to your customer. You need to be responsive, you
need to do what you say you're going to do.
You need to keep them informed of what you're doing.
You need to get to know them and understand their needs.
And this is where we come in and are extremely strong.
We're given a statement of work, this is what you're
going to do, this is how you're going to do it,
(12:55):
and then we go in and we start learning the job,
figuring out what they want, what their end goals are,
and then making it better. And of course this is
all with the permission of the client, because we don't
want to force on them anything they don't want. But
I've never run across a client that says, no, we
(13:16):
don't want to make it more efficient and save us
ten thousand dollars over the next week. It's always been, oh,
tell us more, how can we get better? And so
now we've gotten a reputation for being extremely easy to
work with, very responsive. We take immediate action. We don't
brush it off and say, well, we'll get to it.
Oh there's a problem, well we'll look into it. We
(13:39):
do it immediately. If there's a significant problem, we actually
get on a plane and meet our customer.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Face to face.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
And so that has been extremely impressive because that way,
a face to face works so much better than even
a team's call. And our younger society is more comfortable
with teams, but our older society is more comfortable face
to face. And I find that I still get much
(14:06):
better responses when I'm working face to face with someone.
As for our employees, we care about them. We make
sure that their lifestyle balance works with their work balance,
that their needs are met not just in the workforce,
but also in their private lives, because if you have
(14:27):
an unhappy person, they are not going to do a
good job. If they're worried about something in their private life,
then it just affects their work life. And so employees
are the most valuable asset a company can have, and
we have a high retention rate fluctuating between ninety two
and ninety six percent. That vows for our treatment of employees.
(14:50):
We take care of them, We work with them. When
the government was in shutdown, we let them know exactly
what was going on, how we were responding, how it
would impact them. And because of that, we had an
extremely comfortable workforce. They knew what, they knew their expectations,
they knew what would happen, they knew how it would happen,
(15:11):
and that.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
We would take care of them. So that's extremely important.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And when people are making a decision, well is it
better for me to do whatever it's going to affect
my employees, but who cares well that will affect your
future in your business. And so it's our interaction with
our customers and our interaction with our employees that really
differentiate how we are with choosing who to pick.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well, thanks for sharing that. It's not going to surprise you,
but most of the leaders that I talk on this
series say those seem two things and much more. And
I think this is a great segue into leadership. You
have a lot of people that you have to deal
with and your one voice, and with that said, when
it comes to work life balance, but making sure that
execution has done for some very important things than twenty
(16:00):
four to seven three sixty five, I'd love for you
to talk a little bit about leadership, about your voice,
about your vision, getting it to your managers and then
to the rest of the staff, making sure that everything
is executed correctly, follow up and then if there are
mistakes made, how do we get better? Can you talk
a little bit overall about how you lead this company
and what you do exactly?
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Well, since we are essentially everywhere in the world at
one point or a time or another, we now are
in full telewwork. We were planning to do that COVID hit,
so we were already partially doing telework and COVID ended
up getting us into a full telework mode for headquarters. Unfortunately,
we weren't able to offer telework for some of our
(16:43):
employees that were out in the field. But to oversee
such a diverse locations.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
We have a lot.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
We rely a lot on teams, We rely a lot
on the Internet for everything.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
To get the word out.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
We have a a company portal where we have a
lot of the announcements of what's going on. We have
staff meetings, we have in person meetings where we fly
in our program managers and we make sure that everyone
stays in touch. Staff meetings are a requirement. If you're
not on the staff meeting, it means you're on vacation
(17:19):
or sick leave.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And there's just some things.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
That we do require that are non negotiable and there
are others that are So it just depends on the
actual situation. But our pms get the information from my
executive staff.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I've got a very very strong.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
COO vice president of Operations and Operations manager.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Our HR manager is top notch.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
She's been with the company for quite a long time
and evolved from an office manager into being our HR
director and so it has really been a blessing having
a support staff that understands the company has developed with
it and understands what we want, how we want it,
(18:09):
and what we do. The executive staff that I have
is very responsive. They understand what's going on out in
the field. They are actually technical experts. My COEO could
actually walk in and do a lot of the jobs
that we currently do for our customers, so he's got
a really good understanding of that, and so does my
(18:34):
vice president of operations. So it really helps to have
that background, the understanding foresight. I do a lot of
strategic planning, what's going on in the world, what's the
government doing, what's it going to be? Their emphasis? What
do we want, how does it fit in with our culture.
We have a high ethical standard, which sometimes means we
(18:57):
don't get the jobs that we would like because we're
not willing to bend and that's a hard line for
a lot of companies.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
They and I.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Cautioned them on that when I'm training someone or mentoring them,
the time will come when you're going to have to
make a decision. It may be legal, but is it
ethical And they have to make that decision themselves as
to what is ethical to them, and our standards are
pretty high.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Very good. Well, thank you for sharing all that, Linda,
I'd like to put a pin in work just for
a second, and if you indulge me, I'd love to
talk about philanthropic and charity work. I know they're meeting
you in the green room with the others today that
it's really important to you when you do have time
in your busy schedule, whether it's through the business and
work or home personally, what do you like to be
a part.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Of Thank you, Dennis.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I appreciate the opportunity to mention that because I do
love philanthropic activities. For our founders set up a giving
program matching gifts and for the military and veterans charities,
it's automatic. They don't have to say i'd like this one,
(20:07):
is it okay? And so that's just an automatic And
we have found that with those charities, the USO has
been the most popular. It's received the most requests, and
it's not surprising considering about fifty percent of our workforce
our veterans, me being one of them and having experienced
(20:27):
the USO firsthand when I was out in the field.
But when other charities are usually local, we have an
Arizona contingent that is really fond of an organization that
supports the needy kids through the Kuwanas Club, and it
is something that we were asked to sponsor since they
(20:49):
had lost their main sponsor. So we've taken that on
because it's something that is of interest to our Arizona people.
But VIP, the Veteran Institute for is my passion. I'm
on the board of directors that oversees the VIP program
and what it is is a training program free to
(21:10):
the veterans. It's usually a three day intense program where
we bring them all in to a location in Maryland
and we train them on a variety of things, mainly
business development and you know, financial considerations, but the key
is networking and that's important no matter where you are
(21:34):
and what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
And so we have different classes.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
There are several that focus on just entrepreneurial training for
federal contracting. We have a program for those that are
just starting up. We have some that for those that
are more mature. We also have a program for commercial
for those that want to go into the commercial world.
(22:02):
And at the interests of one of our sponsors for
the VIP program, we have started an aerospace program on
how to get involved in the aerospace program, and that
has been extremely popular with some of our sponsors because
they do a lot of aerospace work. And then there's
also the international contingent that we teach on. It's not
(22:26):
for those that do international work as a federal contractor,
which is the type of work we do, but it's
what do you do when you don't have the government
backing you and you want to do work in another country?
And so that really helps out to determine whether or
not somebody really wants to take it on because.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
There's a lot of easy pitfalls that can occur.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
And if anyone wants more information about that, just go
to National VIP dot org and there's a lot of information,
especially you veterans out there that are wanting to get
involved in federal contracting or commercial contracting.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
You know, check it out. It's no cost to you.
So I help to see you there very good.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
I can see why VIP is such a big deal
to you and your passionate about it. It's a very
cool service that is offered. Where we always, you know,
high school, post secondary school, they always don't offer a
lot of life skills, and VIP does that. So I
can see why you're involved in that. That's really nice.
I do want to get some final thoughts from you, Linda,
And then also we're going to give the website and
if you're hiring. I know people are listening to our
(23:30):
podcast for that too, But if we just kind of
recap all the things we've talked about about ISS, just
some final thoughts from you, Linda, the floor is yours.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Thank you, Dennis. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
And for you listeners out there, I hope to have
you check out our website and contact us. We're adding
new and exciting opportunities supporting both our internal mobility as
well as new talents from outside, and that's where you
come in, so you know, please check it out. If
you're in trigged by us and wanting to explore career options,
(24:03):
check out our website ISS dot com. Up in the
upper right corner, you'll see a blue box saying careers.
That is a direct line to our full time recruiter.
If there's a job there that you're interested in, you
can apply directly to the job. If not, there's a
general form to fill out and our recruiter will talk
(24:25):
to you.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
It's not a bop. It's an actual.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Person and she will find out what your interests are,
what your talents are, and see if there's a fit.
If not, we can certainly keep you in mind for
future work because we have a lot of opportunities that
are coming up that aren't quite in the.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Mill yet not standing well.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Linda, thank you so much for your valuable time, thank
you for your service, and thank you for all of
you and your team do. Once again, I know that
you can only share so much what you do with
your clients out there, but knowing enough about the industry
and also interviewing CEO like yourself in that genre, it's
incredible work. I know it's hard work. It can be
very stressful, but it allows all those Americans to sleep
(25:07):
a little bit better at night for all the things
that you do with your client. So I thank you
for that in National Security and thank you so much.
I'm glad we could feature you on CEOs you should Know.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Thank you, Dennis, and thank you listeners.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Our community partner M and T Bank supports CEOs you
should Know. Is part of their ongoing commitment to building
strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses within
them as a bank for communities. M and T believes
in dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local businesses
thrive because when businesses succeed, our community succeed.
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