Phil Washington's voyage from the challenging streets of Chicago's South Side to the heights of transportation industry leadership is a narrative that resonates with the power of transformation. In a candid conversation, he shares the profound influence his family had in steering his life towards a purpose greater than he could have imagined. From the pivotal moment that rerouted his life's direction in the military to the serendipitous leap into the transportation arena, Phil's story is a masterclass in seizing life's unexpected opportunities and the profound impact of spiritual grounding.
His reflections on situational leadership and the practice of empathy within authority come to light, offering invaluable insights for anyone seeking to lead with heart and strength. His principles, such as "proceed until apprehended," provide a framework for navigating the complexities of organizational trust and the art of managing disappointments. Phil's success is a poignant testament to the enduring power of a mother's prayers and the spiritual inheritance that transcends material success.
#abovethenoise24
# faith
#reconciliation
#race
racialreconciliation
Stay in touch:
Podcast art by Mario Christie.
Phil Washington's voyage from the challenging streets of Chicago's South Side to the heights of transportation industry leadership is a narrative that resonates with the power of transformation. In a candid conversation, he shares the profound influence his family had in steering his life towards a purpose greater than he could have imagined. From the pivotal moment that rerouted his life's direction in the military to the serendipitous leap into the transportation arena, Phil's story is a masterclass in seizing life's unexpected opportunities and the profound impact of spiritual grounding.
His reflections on situational leadership and the practice of empathy within authority come to light, offering invaluable insights for anyone seeking to lead with heart and strength. His principles, such as "proceed until apprehended," provide a framework for navigating the complexities of organizational trust and the art of managing disappointments. Phil's success is a poignant testament to the enduring power of a mother's prayers and the spiritual inheritance that transcends material success.
#abovethenoise24
# faith
#reconciliation
#race
racialreconciliation
Stay in touch:
Podcast art by Mario Christie.
Welcome to Above the Noise, a podcast at the intersection of faith, race and reconciliation, and I'm your host, Grantley Martelly. My guest today is Mr. Phil Washington, a friend, a brother and someone that I'm really excited about talking about today. I think that you, as my audience, will learn a lot from Phil. We learn a lot together. Phil is the current CEO of the Denver International Airport, former CEO of Los Angeles Metro and the Denver Regional Transportation District. He was also the head of President Biden's transition team for transportation, served an illustrious 24-year career in the US Army and is leading and mentoring many young people and business people to be successful in our industry. So I am extremely thankful that you are here, Phil, and I'm thankful for your impact on my life in the time that we've known each other.
Phil:Well, thank you so much, Grantley, for having me here, and I applaud you for your work, not only on this and doing the podcast, but your work around the country and inspiring people, especially people of color.
Grantley:Thank you. So let's begin by introducing yourself to our audience. Tell them where you were brought up and some things about you growing up, your family, you married or not, before they get to know a little bit about you, before we start talking about the specifics.
Phil:Yeah, well, let me start with where I was born and all that was born on the south side of Chicago, a single mother who worked 14 hours a day. I grew up with five sisters and people say, well, five sisters, wow, that's you were spoiled or something. So they make that assumption. That's an incorrect assumption. Four of my sisters were older than me, and so what that means is you deal with a lot of guys that's older than you, protecting their honor, if you will. So I never really knew my father. I met him after I was a little bit older, but it was a lot of love in our family.
Phil:My grandmother actually lived with us and raised us, and that was a blessing as well. And it was a blessing that we had the values, if you will, of both my mother and my grandmother, and their values were very, very faith-based, which we can talk about. And, having said that, I was very, very close to both my grandmother and my grandfather and, of course, my mother had one sister and one brother and was very, very close to them, and my first cousins as well. I am married and have four children, three girls, one son. So my son is an only son as well. So there you go, but wouldn't trade that in that upbringing in for anything because of the values and the priorities that came with it.
Grantley:Thank you. So many people say I grew up on the south side of Chicago or I grew up in the Bronx, or there are places in the United States, in LA, if you grew up in Watts. That has a certain meaning to people in the United States. But for some of our audience, people who are not familiar with that, what does it mean when you say you grew up on the south side of Chicago? Does that? Have any special meaning.
Phil:I think it does. I think it comes with, for me anyway, a certain awareness that I have embedded in me. I'll just call it street savvy. Not that anyone else does not have it, but a certain street savvy that comes with that. I mean, I remember when I was in the military I would tell people that I was born and raised on the south side of Chicago and they would immediately have a certain perception of what I was, and sometimes, most of the time, actually, it was not.
Phil:I won't say it was not good, but it came with this sort of perception that I was slick and you couldn't get anything over on me and all of that. And so I'll also say that people from the south side of Chicago they may be the only ones that I know, and I know folks from New York and the Bronx and different places, but south side of Chicago folks are the only ones that specifically identify themselves from what side of the city they're on. It's the south side, I mean. Folks from New York, they don't say the south side of the Bronx, they just say the Bronx, and so that distinction has always stayed with me and anybody that you hear, that you meet, that were raised on the south side of Chicago will probably identify themselves that way.
Grantley:Okay, but that's good to know, because sometimes people who didn't grow up in the United States hear those things and say well, what does that really mean? Let's talk a little bit about your career. You left high school and joined the military. Talk a little bit about that, and then we'll be talking about your transition to transportation.
Phil:Yeah, so was in high school, was not really sure what I would do and I don't tell this story often, I'm not sure for you, Grantley, because I like you, but I was not a great student in high school and I had a pretty long rap sheet in high school, I guess. And so in October of my senior year, I was actually expelled from high school for doing some crazy things with some crazy guys and I was expelled. And at that time in my life I was 17 years old. At that time in my life I just thought you know what, I'll just be expelled and I'll just get some job, some little job, and I'll survive and I'll just do my thing. I did not tell my mother I was expelled. It took me probably about a week, or maybe even two weeks, before I got up the nerve to tell her and I thought that I would just. I thought she would just feel the same thought. I thought she would say, you just go ahead and do your own things and you're on your own. Instead, it was the first time that I saw my mother get very emotional and pretty much breakdown, because and this was a very tough woman, very, very tough woman, and I had never seen that before. She said, hey, listen, I'm taking off from work and we're going up to the school. She told that assistant principal, I must have my son, my son must graduate, my only son must graduate. And she broke down right there at you know, in the office there, and it surprised me, and it surprised the vice principal as well, who had a change of heart and who said we will allow him back into high school, but he has to do two or three things, which I was willing to do. And so that was sort of my significant emotional event, or C people call it, and I was allowed back in, not until January. So this was October.
Phil:So during that time that I was out, I went to night school, I did a lot of different things to catch up, and me and a buddy went down to the recruiting office and we joined right there. We lied about our age, so much so that you had to be 18. I lied and said I was 18., so much so that my records, almost 25 years later, when I retired, I actually had a different birth date. Right, yeah, it was crazy. And so that's how I joined the military. I joined on a delayed entry program because you had to be a high school graduate even then, and so that delayed entry program allows you to come in, sign in, sign up at that time and go six months later. And so I went and left in June of that next year. So that's kind of how I joined. It was not something I planned to join the military or anything, but something that was. You could call it divine providence, if you will.
Grantley:Okay, was your mom supportive of that?
Phil:My mom was scared because keep in mind that well, not keep in mind, but this was this I joined in I think it was December of 1975. And so the Vietnam War had just ended in April of 1975. So a few months earlier the Vietnam War had ended and here I am, joined in the military. So I think my mother was more scared than anything, but she knew that I had to do something and she knew that I had to get out of Chicago and there was a lot of stress that I was under as well, because another thing I didn't tell you, that I didn't mention, was I had a young girl pregnant too, in November of 1975. And so actually the baby was born in November of 1975. So you talk about pressure on me, but on the young lady too. So October I'm kicked out of school. October my girl had a baby. She's born daughter. In December I signed up for the military. So it was a lot of stuff going on around that time.
Grantley:Yeah, a lot of stuff. Are you still in contact with that child?
Phil:Oh, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Just talked to her yesterday. She's a beautiful young lady, a registered nurse living in the city of Chicago, so that's my oldest daughter.
Grantley:That's great. Well, congratulations, thank you. However, with that stressful sign up for the military, you happen to rise to some of the highest ranks of the enlisted I think the highest rank that you could go as an enlisted person in the army. So it seems like it fits you pretty well, would you say yeah.
Phil:Yeah, so you know, I left Chicago on June 29, 1976. And the blessing of that was that the night before June 28, 1976, my mother married and I was so happy for my mother who married a very, very good man, who was actually a minister and, as I said, I, you know, did not know my natural father very well, but I was so happy that actually my mother was marrying remarrying, if you will and this man was moving her out of the public housing or the projects that we grew up in. This was the most I felt good about leaving. Yeah, I'll put it that way, because I was concerned about my mother's. My sisters were a little bit older. They were leaving the house. I was concerned about my mother still being out there in my leaving, and so the night before was probably even better than me leaving the next morning. At 4 am in the morning my mother was concerned that I was going to the South. I went down to South Carolina.
Phil:The racial tensions, as you know gladly, in the South was not too far removed.
Phil:Right, you know, being from Chicago, we grew up with the story of Emmett Till. Emmett Till was a young boy of 14 years old that was sent down to the South in 1955 and was murdered in the South for allegedly whistling at a white woman, and so we grew up with that story. We knew his mother. His mother went to the same church that my aunt and my mother went to years earlier, a church called Robert's Temple, Church of God in Christ or 40th, people from Chicago will know. And so we knew his mother, who insisted on an open casket in 1955 to show how her son was brutally murdered. So my mother was very, very concerned, not so much about the army, I guess. She was very concerned about me going to the deep South, and so I left that next morning to go to South Carolina and I was down there for boot camp and in training, subsequent training, and was blessed to earn the highest enlisted rank that a person can achieve and that is Command Sergeant, major E9. So very, very blessed about that.
Grantley:Did you specialize in anything in the army, or was it multiple different duties?
Phil:The first unit that I ended up with or in was an air defense artillery unit, and I was in that unit in a remote part of Germany, and so that was sort of my first specialty unit, if you will. And then I did a number of other special assignments, nominative assignments. I was in the NATO alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance that of course still exists today.
Grantley:So then you get out to military and you're now still pretty young, can still have another career or two. How did you get into transportation? Was that like many of us who ended up there unintentionally instead, or was it a planned transition?
Phil:It was unintentional, it was very unintentional, like most of us getting into transportation I had. My last duty station was in Colorado. So I came up from El Paso, texas, fort Bliss, texas, and I got an assignment to come up to Colorado. At that time I probably had about 21 years in. I was newly promoted to the top enlisted rank and got orders to come here to Colorado. A lot of people think I'm from Colorado but I came up here on a military assignment and so I was up here for, I guess, about two and a half years and I got orders to go to Korea from Colorado.
Phil:And I thought about in those days, the Korea assignment with the US Army was one year one year unaccompanied, it's called where you cannot take your family, and by that time my daughters had been in and out of different schools. My second oldest daughter went to three high schools in four years. It was very, very tough moving them around. And so I got these orders and I thought I would do that one year unaccompanied, which didn't sound like a big deal for me at that time. And just as I was going to accept those orders, the US Army and their infinite wisdom of course decided to change that policy from one year unaccompanied to two years unaccompanied, and that is what changed my mind. I submitted my retirement papers. I did not have a job or anything, but I had 12 months to find a job, so I was not really worried about it. And I saw an ad in the newspaper right about that time and the ad talked about a transportation executive job. I think it was assistant general manager or sort of like a deputy at the regional transportation district in Denver, colorado, and I answered that ad and so I said you know, I'm going to go down here and just check it out. And it was all completely on a whim and I drove in and I ended up talking to the CEO of the agency at that time. Unfortunately, he was a Vietnam veteran and he understood my level of responsibility at that time in the military and I think he asked me two or three questions, that was it. And he said you know what? I think we got a good fit. He said I think we got a good fit and he offered me the job. You know it was like 78,000 a year. I was like, yeah, but my only problem was that I still had 12 months in the military.
Phil:And to finish up this quick story. When I got the job offer, I called my buddy at the Pentagon His name was Larry Strickland, he was a SAR major as well and I called him up and I said, hey, listen, I got a job man, I got to get out to Army. And he said, well, you got 12 months to go, phil. And he said, well, you know, the best I can do is cut off six months of that 12 months, which he did. And I called that CEO back and I told him the situation and he said you know what? We will wait for you, that six months. And I thought, well, is this, is this not divine providence or what you know I get? I get six months chopped off and I got this guy saying that he's gonna wait for me for the other six months, and he did, and that's how I got in transportation.
Grantley:Okay, well, could be. That's that definitely divine providence. So you enter transportation without without really being a public transportation expert and those kind of things, works your way up to become the CEO and not just of Denver RTD, but of one of the even larger transit agencies, la Metro, where you were the CEO there as well. So you must have some pretty great leadership skills and bringing people together. You know, how did you, how did you make that transition? How did you? You bring those organizations together? Because those of us who know you know your reputation, anybody in the transportation industry know that Phil Washington, if he runs an organization, it's gonna be our unit, an organization of excellence. So tell us about a little bit, about your leadership style and how you were able to make those transitions and to make it successful and to be the CEO of Denver International Airport, which is one of the fastest rising airports in the country.
Phil:Well, well, thank you for for for saying that sort of about my reputation. It all starts with a very, very strong spiritual foundation and I am blessed to have had that and had that now, a very spiritually strong foundation where and that comes, of course, from my upbringing in the church, that comes from my mother, that comes from everybody around me Growing up as a, as a young man, a young boy and a young man, and in that, in that environment, and so I start there, and then, in terms of leadership, I've always felt like that I had to be a collaborator and I always felt like that I could bring both a commanding presence along with a compassionate persona. And I've never ascribed to Any one leadership style. I've never ascribed to an authoritative leadership style, always or In always a democratic style.
Phil:I believe in sort of a situational style of leadership, because when you walk into any organization, I've always said that when you know walking in an organization, it's almost like a foreign substance being injected into a living organism when you walk into an organization, now that that Organism will either change you, the leader, or you will change the organization. Yes, and, by the way, my money has always been on me, you know so. So I think I think the leadership style has to be situational, I think it has to be collaborative, I think it has to be both commanding and compassionate and for me, above all, it has to be anchored by a spiritual foundation. Not that you walk around, you know, with this, you know the spiritual thing on the back of you, know on your collar or whatever, but but but that people understand that one, you're not gonna be rattled by, you know just anything gait About you. And because I think it gives strength to the organization when people see that steady, sort of Solid leadership in organizations.
Phil:And so if I had to point something out, it would be those things where, with the understanding, as my friend at Harvard says, he says this about leadership. He says that leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate that they can absorb, and I've never forgot that during my leadership. One of the principles that a friend of mine talks about is this idea, and this is in the context of getting things done. He says proceed until apprehended. So I've always ascribed to that too, because you can analyze things and tell the whole organization is paralyzed, or you can do things, because that's what we're there for as leaders is to get things done.
Grantley:Yeah, that's a great print. There's a two great principles. A leadership we should, we should probably do a podcast on leadership with you and a couple of the other guys just Just talking about leadership there.
Grantley:You, you've got that. Now you run three organizations and you've risen to those levels. But you you've also talked about your spiritual foundation. So let's talk about your fifth journey, if you don't mind going into that a little bit more about and I know it started in In in with your mama, at home and at a church. But how, how was your spiritual journey developed to the point to where it's integrated and everything that you do today?
Phil:Well, I think, growing up in church and by the way, I hated it then I have to say you know I'll be at a church all the time, but as an only son, my mother took me everywhere. My mother, of course, to church we had to go, but also my mother visited a lot of older people that what we used to call in those days, the sick and shut in, the shut in yes, I remember, yeah, yeah you remember that term?
Phil:Yes, and so my mother was. She was a young woman, you know it was. She had five of us by the time she was 24 years old, okay. But so she was a young woman, but she was sort of old at heart and she taught us that she, she would make sure that if there were prominent speakers Coming to the city of Chicago. So I tell the story in 1967, as a youngster, I might have been seven or eight years old, being at a place called Marquette Park in In 1967, listening to Martin Luther King in that park, where he got hit in the head with a rock and he said that that was the most. That crowd in Chicago, on the white side of town, was the most hostile crowd that he had ever faced, even in the south.
Phil:So this faith journey we always view things through the prism of faith. Anything that was happening, my mother say you know, you know, that's God's will. Now, you know, you know. So it was through this prism of faith that we view things, and so that's sort of shaped everything that I did Growing up, and so I was always very attentive. Also, growing up in the church, my first mentor Was the church janitor, who had a fifth-grade or education, but he would just Just counsel me as best he could and he was a deacon. And finally, I'll say, just the search for knowledge around those kinds of things has propelled me, even up to now.
Grantley:Performance audio dot-com is your one-stop shop for professional quality life performance audio equipment recording and podcasting equipment, microphones, headphones, speaker stands, microphone stands, custom manufactured cables. So check out that, performance audio dot-com. Performance audio, thank you for that. Last year you had the privilege of achieving one the highest honors in in transportation in this country, in public transportation in particular, to be nominated and received the honor of being welcomed into the transportation Hall of Fame, which is a high honor that not many people get. But at that honor you mentioned that you were there because of the prayers of your mother and the power of her prayers to carry you through the years. Could you talk a little bit about that speech you gave and why you based your acceptance speech on the power and the prayers of your mother?
Phil:Well, first of all, I'm very honored to to have been inducted into the transportation hall of fame. It was something that I was not expecting, so I'm very honored that people saw fit and that the American Public Transportation Association saw fit to adopt me into the Hall of Fame. The first thing I thought about was this is not all about me, right? You know, being inducted into the Hall of Fame it was. I talked about the prayers of my mother when I left to go into the military. My mother, she didn't have any money to give me or anything like that, and she began to talk about this idea of a spiritual Inheritance, a spiritual inheritance that she was going to leave me. And you know, my mother died early, many years ago, and she began to even talk about this when she was a younger woman, this idea of a spiritual inheritance, not riches or anything, because she didn't have anything to leave me, but this idea of a spiritual inheritance. And so she said that you know, I will be praying for you. I will be praying for you. Now. This was a. This was very, very bankable. This was like a currency. This was very, very real, you know, to her, and it's real to me as well. But this was very, very real to her. It was almost as if I'm giving you a brand new house or a brand new car. I mean, I'm giving you this bankable, sustainable thing here that, wherever you are, you will know that I am praying for you. Yes, and it becomes even more real for me every day.
Phil:And it became even more real for me when I was thinking about what to say at this induction thing. And you know, I know a lot of people get up and they say, well, you know we did this and that. And you know, in my career, you know all of that. I was really not thinking about anything I did in my career at that time when I said that. I was thinking about how the prayers of my mother sustained me throughout.
Phil:All of the dangers of the military, all of the tough decisions that I had to make in my life, all of these various things. When you know there's a yogi-bearism that says, when you reach the fork in the road, take it Right. And so all of these different decisions that I had to make, I always thought, when I was about to make those, that my mother is and was praying for me. So I have faith that I will make the right call here. And, by the way, the Good Book says that even though folks are gone, their prayers are still being honored. Right, the prayers of my mother are sustainable, they're redundant, they are bankable, they are scalable, all of those kinds of things, and I thought about that then and I thought about that now.
Grantley:That's powerful. That's powerful and it reminds me of my mother, because she was a very deep woman of faith, where he has eight children, and when I was leaving to come to the United States to go to school, she was very poor, didn't have much money, and she said the same thing silver and gold have I none, but in the name of Jesus Christ, I send you and I'll be praying for you. Right, that's powerful.
Phil:That's powerful man that has sustained you too.
Grantley:It has sustained me and carried me many ways and you know, like you said, it's probably better than a pile of money. Right, Because a pile of money would have been spent by the time we graduated.
Grantley:Right, Because it cost the school but the prayers keep giving and giving, and giving and giving. Right, that's right, they don't run out. So you know, when you're young you think, man, I could sure use a couple of thousand dollars. But as you get older you realize that what she give you was even more than thousands of dollars. And it pays back. And it doesn't depend on the economy, it doesn't depend on anything. Those prayers just go up and they're honored by God and they sustain you and even protect you sometimes. That you don't even know, right?
Phil:Oh, absolutely, yeah, I mean protection.
Grantley:So let's transition a little bit here. Then I'm talking about you know. You talk about your faith and your mother's prayers, and then you moved into the military. You're now CEO of many organizations, multiple organizations. You got to lead the Biden Transportation Transition Team. By the way, I forgot to mention, you're also the CEO of the American Public Transportation Association for a while. But what that is from a faith and a race standpoint, right, when you achieve those kinds of things, you were achieving them in places where people that look like you and me are not normally in those high seats, and even if we're in the room as an executive or as a deputy or as a senior manager, usually there are not many of us, sometimes it's only one or two. So how has your color, has your race, your where you came from, your faith? Has there ever been a challenge for you in leadership I mean, where people thought that maybe you were not competent or qualified and you were only there because of some affirmative action or something and question your competency and your capability?
Phil:Well, a couple of things that I think about. Well, you're gonna always have people that challenge you, and it could be because of your color, because of the perception that when you walk in the room you might not know leaders of color, women, women as well. So I think about a couple of things and I'm blessed, actually, that I come with a degree of confidence in my ability. So I think you gotta have confidence. Self-confidence it's not arrogance, because there's a difference, right, it's not arrogance, it's a sense of confidence in your abilities, that you are qualified. And I've always been very cognizant that I may have to do more because of how I look, and I'm willing to do that and I've done that and I've done more in every job than was expected of me. And so I think the confidence piece is very, very crucial.
Phil:When I was in the military, especially when I reached senior levels, I used to counsel young soldiers of color and I would tell young soldiers, listen, when you have to salute a senior officer and that sort of thing, commission officers, look them straight in the eye. You shake their hand, you look them straight in the eye, because there were some youngsters that did not have that self-confidence, that would gaze at the ground and things like that. And so many times as a young man I had to say prayers to myself to instill confidence as you walk in the room, and I do that to this day. When I walk in to speak to large groups and things. I pray for that confidence and pray for that self-assuredness, even now. And so, yes, there are going to be times where people look at you because of the color of your skin or because, in the case of women, their gender or anything else.
Phil:They are going to sometimes walk in a room and be perceived differently, and I think it's up to us to to overcome that in many ways with our own self-confidence. My mother used to say encourage yourself, son. Do not depend always on people to encourage you. You have to learn to encourage yourself.
Phil:And I think, despite and in spite of all of the negative perceptions that we may have as leaders of color, senior leaders of color, we've got to find a way internally to overcome that within ourselves. And however we do that, we have to make sure that it works for us, because, at the end of the day, a youngster of color or someone that is junior to us is looking to us as to how we're going to handle that situation, and so we're not in there just for us. We're in there in many cases for a number of other people that see themselves in us, and so I've always thought that I have an obligation to overcome any negative biases, any prejudices. I've got an obligation to do that for the people that are looking up to me and for my mother, even back then.
Grantley:So you had a unique opportunity. I mean, you've had many, many unique opportunities, I guess, but one of them was to be the leader of the President Biden's transportation transition team. I mean, what is a transition team? But how do you even get to be the leader of that and what is the purpose of it? What is it trying to accomplish?
Phil:It's multi-purpose, I think. First of all. So one is to assess the agency that you are doing the transition for. So, in the case of the transportation transition team, our job was to assess the agency, to determine where the agency was an agency means Department of Transportation.
Grantley:Yes, the Department of Transportation.
Phil:About 54,000 employees in that in US Department of Transportation. So to assess that US DOP, what is it doing well, what is it not doing well? The Department is made up of some 10 different agencies, if you will. You have the Federal Transit Administration, you have the Federal Aviation Administration, you have the Federal Highway Administration, so you have multiple agencies, I'll say, within that Department of Transportation. And so you're assessing all of those. And so what this requires and I'll have to say that we had the best team and the greatest minds, I think, in this country that were on that team, that team and let me just say, before that transition team, I was honored to co-chair the Biden-Harris Policy Committee, and that was before the transition team.
Phil:So the Policy Committee was made up of 300 people here in this country. Trust me when I say that these were some outstanding, incredibly intelligent people in transportation. The job of that Policy Committee was to put together proposed policies and executive orders for consideration by the campaign. We put together, I think, probably about a hundred proposed policies and executive orders for the administration's, the campaign's, consideration. So I was asked to co-chair that with a number of other individuals, folks like John Picari and others.
Phil:Then after that came the transition team and was asked to lead the transition team. That was 20 people, so these 20 people were outstanding folks too, and we were asked to assess the Department of Transportation and also prepare the nominee the nominee being the Secretary of Transportation, prepare him for confirmation. The team that we put together again one of the 20 best minds in the business. We did it by subject matter and we put that team together. So I'm just honored that I was asked to captain that team. I think we did a great job of preparing the new administration in the field of transportation and it resulted in the bipartisan infrastructure bill the largest infrastructure bill that this generation will probably ever see. So we're proud of that work.
Grantley:That's an honor, that is a great honor. For 15 years we had been, we in transportation, campaign for an infrastructure bill. Right now we got it. We had workers, we had equipment we had everything. When we finally got it, covid came in. Now we don't have enough people, we don't have enough equipment. We got logistics issues right, so it's finally here and now to make it happen. It's a tall order to make it happen, just because how the world has changed from when we first started talking about infrastructure revamping in the country right.
Phil:Yeah, if it's not one thing, it's another thing, but there's no shortage of work to be done, man. We got to keep fighting.
Grantley:Yeah, and one of the things that you are really good at is helping encouraging small businesses and disadvantaged businesses minority-owned businesses to find opportunity in places where they struggle, and you sort of built a reputation on that. Would you mind talking a little bit about the latest initiative that you're doing to help small businesses?
Phil:Yeah, yeah, I mean first of all, as you know, grant Lee, and you know you're one of the leaders in the transportation industry as well you know small and minority and women-owned, veteran-owned businesses. They are the lifeblood of this nation's economy. They're the lifeblood. You know, I've always felt that way. I've always felt like we have to do what we can on the public sector side to sustain them, sustain them through ongoing contracts, to sustain them through work in the infrastructure space. It's one thing to have a bipartisan infrastructure bill of 1.2 trillion that's great but it's quite another thing to make sure that that work is spread amongst small and minority businesses and underserved communities. It's quite another thing to ensure that it, you know, this bill, the benefits of this bill, reach those underserved communities and so small and minority businesses are a part of those underserved communities. The work that we're doing in what we call the equity in infrastructure project really stemmed from an executive order that we helped draft early on during the transition team in the policy committee. We drafted this executive, or proposed executive order that talked about increasing generational wealth in underserved communities and we drafted that up and it turned into executive order 13985. Executive order 13985. And what it said was that government agencies should put a plan in place to determine how equity could be realized in the infrastructure space. And so we are happy to report and we were happy to see that the president, president Biden, signed that executive order on his first day in office, his first day in office, this executive order that originated from that policy committee that we co-chaired. And so we looked at that executive order. It was great that it was signed and it's still great that the president signed it.
Phil:But we began to think about how we could operationalize that executive order. How can we actually make this work? Because, look, there's a lot of policies out there that they look good on paper and everything, but how do you make sure that it reaches and that it's impactful for communities that it was designed for, in this case, underserved communities? So we thought that we could operationalize it through procurement. We thought that, you know, if we go to the CEOs of various agencies and have them to commit and pledge to award look to award more contract, prime contracts, not just subcontracts but prime contracts, if we can have them commit to this idea of awarding more prime contracts to minority firms, that would trickle down to more hiring and underserved communities. And we started with five CEOs. We asked them we want you to commit to awarding more award of prime contracts to minority firms and on December 7, 2021, we had a kickoff of this meeting of this group, these five CEOs, in Washington DC, the Chicago Transit Authority, CPTA in Philadelphia, with the word the two transit agencies.
Phil:We wanted a water district, so we have the Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles County. We wanted a port, and so we had the port of Long Beach, in Long Beach, California, and I'll let you guess which airport. It committed. And so you fast forward to the day and we have almost 60 CEOs that have committed and are doing their work to make sure more awards, more prime contract awards, are awarded to minority firms. So we're still working and we're still fighting, but this is a incredible effort led by myself, my buddy, John Picari, the former Deputy Secretary of Transportation, Dorval Carter, the CEO of Chicago Transit Authority, and others. So we're doing our part and we're going to do more as well.
Grantley:Thank you, I know we ran up on our time, but I got a couple more things I want to get in quickly. I think I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about your nomination for the FAA, and if I don't, the fellows are going to all let me know. You didn't talk about that and you were nominated. It was an unsuccessful nomination. You end up withdrawing. Is there anything you want to say about that?
Phil:Yeah Well, first of all, I'm honored by the president for nominating me. When it became clear that it would be a drawn out process, I withdrew, mostly because there's too much work to be done with too little time for all of us to draw a process out, and so when I did not see a civil and a viable path to confirmation, I stepped away, and I think that if we are to do the work of the people, sometimes we have to find it in other ways, and that is where I ended up. There was some debate about my military career. There's a little known statute, a little known statute that says the FAA administrator must be a civilian, and there was debate on both sides of the aisle of whether my active duty military career and I've been retired for 20 years now there was a debate of whether I was now a civilian or whether I could be called back to the military, and this statute says that you have to be a civilian to be the FAA administrator. I thought it's an outdated statute myself, and then I also thought that if I am called back to the military, we will probably be in real trouble this country.
Phil:Yeah, because first I got to squeeze into my uniform, but I am at peace with it. There's much, much work for us to do out here, and I'll just say that what we talked about earlier, a strong spiritual foundation, helps with these kinds of decisions as well. But one of the biblical scriptures that I meditated on then and I meditate on now says that we should focus on God's will and our work in our generation. King David actually concentrated on his work and God's will in his own generation, and this is our generation, and so I don't have time for long processes and all of that when there's so much work out here to do, and that was my mindset during that season of my life.
Grantley:So, as we wrap this up, I thank you for your time and we've covered many topics. There's probably some personal listeners and people listening and saying how do I develop, how do I get to that point where I build that self-confidence, where I develop as a leader, a compassionate leader, collaborator? How do I deal with some of these things and become to the point where I can become that effective leader? What advice or tools would you give?
Phil:Well, there's many. I'll focus on just a couple that have worked for me Having some sort of spiritual foundation. Whatever that is, because in tough times you have to, I think, lean on something. Now I don't lean on no drugs and you gotta lean on something. It has to be something, and so the idea of a spiritual foundation is very, very important to me. Another important thing is consistent and constant learning that you are preparing yourself and whether that is books or formal education, whatever that is, you're constantly learning, learning something and also teaching somebody what you have learned, whether that's your kids or with or with brothers, like we often do, and I think we have to lean on that. During some of my toughest times, I had brothers call me, you included Grantley, and thank you. But we need that. We need that when we hear that brothers and sisters and folks are going through tough times, we should pick up the phone and we should call them.
Grantley:That's right yeah, not just text them or like a message on Instagram.
Phil:Exactly exactly. There is nothing like encouragement, there is nothing like it, and so I'm appreciative of friends and brothers and sisters out there that have called me, so something to lean on. The other advice I would give is in all that we do acknowledge God. Acknowledge God, because I think we have to acknowledge a higher being, because we see it every day. We go outside, we see it every day. I mean the trees and the birds and everything. So I think in all that we do, my advice is to acknowledge that there's something greater. There's something greater than us out here. We're not doing this on our own strength, right? And so that would be some of my advice that I would give to folks that are coming up.
Phil:I was talking to some young leaders just last week and I was saying that leadership is so cyclical in terms of the psychological nature of leadership, I mean you could be up one day and down the next. In transportation realm, you can have your operations. Your operations chief can come in and say, hey, listen, we had a great day today and nobody was hurt on the trains or the buses or the airplanes or at the airport or whatever, and that's great. But then the very an hour later you can have somebody say we just had a derailment.
Grantley:Yeah, we've had a major incident.
Phil:So the psychological ups and downs of leadership are incredible and we have to be able to withstand that, and I think the only way, one of the ways to sustain and be strong in all of that, is to have some sort of spiritual center of gravity that you can lean on. I think that's very important.
Grantley:Well, that's some really good advice and I'm sure many people will be able to lean on that, or if they think about it and help them in developing their leadership style and developing their leadership ability. I think one of the things you really strengthened you really spoke about earlier was developing your leadership style within you. Right, you had to realize what you were doing and realize what it was that was within you that could help you walk into a room and create that atmosphere of change which is very important.
Grantley:So anything else you would want to share before we sign off here.
Phil:Well, just to thank you, and thank you for what you're doing, Grantley, I think it's very, very important, it's very important to lift somebody up, and so I know all of us try to do that in things, that we do the idea of lifting people up instead of tearing them down. And so I think if we focus on that, I think our lives will be better, our careers will be better, and it's really the ultimate succession plan.
Grantley:You know, if we get other folks ready to take our place, Remember to subscribe and leave a rate in on the site where you're currently listening to this episode, and when you subscribe, you will be informed every time a new episode becomes available. You can also email us at abovethenoise24, Abovethenoise24@ gmail. com, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram @abovethenoise24. @abovethenoise24.