Operator: The feed for this streaming event,
brought to you--
Operator: For joining today's conference,
all participant lines have been placed
in Listen Only mode.
Today's conference is being recorded.
If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time.
And now I'd like to turn today's conference over
to President Batjer.
Thank you, you may begin.
-: Thank you operator.
Good morning and welcome
to the California Public Utilities Commission,
18th Annual Supplier Diversity En Banc.
As Stated I am Maribel Batjer,
the president of the California Public Utilities Commission.
And it's my pleasure to welcome all of you
to 18th Annual Supplier Diversity EnnBanc
on General Order 156.
Themed "General Order 156: Generating Economic Success
"During Uncertain Economic Times."
Before we begin, I'd like to note again,
that this is a public meeting
and it is being recorded
and may be posted online for subsequent viewing.
By continuing to attend this meeting,
you consent to being recorded.
If you do not consent, please disconnect now.
Thank you.
With that said, please join me.
As we Pledge Allegiance to the Flag,
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the--
All: United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
-: Thank you.
It's the first time.
I think I've said the Pledge of Allegiance
without looking at a flag, but thank you all.
As we start the program,
we would like to take a few minutes to honor someone
who will be dearly missed by the Commission.
Most of you are aware of the passing
of the honorable Gwen Moore.
Ms. Moore, distinguished herself as a founder
and CEO of GeM Communication.
And most notably as a Member
of the California Assembly for 16 years,
she served as majority whip
and gained a national reputation serving 12 years
as Chair of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee,
which had jurisdiction over the California cable industry,
rail and rail safety and all the investor-owned Utilities,
including water, telecommunications and energy.
Affectionately referred to as the godmother of GO 156,
Ms. Moore authored the historic
Utility Supplier Diversity program
that encouraged a fair portion of total utility contracts
and subcontracts for products
and services be awarded to women
and minority business owners.
She, her service and accolades are too numerous to count,
her impact and influence touch the lives of so many.
On behalf of the CPUC,
we would like to extend our condolences to her family
and loved ones.
By way of background, General Order 156,
the Utility Supplier Diversity program was created
as a voluntary program over three decades ago,
to encourage fair proportion of total utility contract
and sub contracts for products
and services be awarded to women, minority,
disabled veteran business enterprises
and lesbian gay, bisexual, and transgenders, excuse me.
Although the Supplier Diversity program goal
is to increase competition and promote inclusion.
This opportunity also enriches the same communities,
these companies sell their products and services to.
The program has been making great strides
since it was first adopted in 1988
and continues to serve as the model
of all supplier diversity programs
throughout the United States.
Corporations today want
and need suppliers that produce a quality product
or provide a quality service at reduced costs.
In 2019, the 31 Reporting Utilities
procured 12.66 billion diverse firms,
while also exceeding the 21.5% category goal.
This is a great accomplishment
and the achievement has not gone unnoticed.
The program is expanding with the passage of SB-255,
which lowers the annual revenue threshold for participation
from 21 million to 15 million.
While including electric service providers into the program
and requiring Community Choice Aggregators
to report specified information on diversity.
We are a tight schedule.
So let us proceed with opening remarks
of my fellow Commissioners, Commissioner Randolph.
-: Good morning, President Batjer
and all of the participants.
I think this year,
it's hard not to think of the things we have lost, like Gwen
and the opportunity for us to be together
and here with the, together with each other
and networking and chatting
and re-rebuilding relationships.
But it's also important to think of what we've gained,
this year, we've gained a renewed attention
on the challenges about racial equity in this country
that inspire us to really continue to build this program
and further the success of communities throughout the State.
So I look forward to the conversation today,
about how we can always improve this program,
make it better, make it more expansive
and bring economic opportunity to communities
throughout the State that have been hit so hard this year.
And we want to make sure that communities
have something to look forward to going forward
and also remind folks to please make a plan to vote.
Thank you.
-: Thank you Commissioner Randolph.
Other Commissioners.
-: Yes, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Thank you, President Batjer.
Good morning, everyone.
Also a pleasure to be here,
I'm looking forward to hearing the state
of our Utilities meeting diversity goals
in terms of business practices,
in light of our ongoing pandemic.
Utilities contracting programs are economic engines
for our California economy.
I mean, the sheer numbers are phenomenal
as outlined by you President Batjer.
And to be strong, that economy must be diverse
and inclusive.
And indeed, this was the honorable Gwen Moore's vision
when she introduced the Enabling Legislation.
That is the reason we have GO 156 today.
And during these difficult times,
I think it's all the more important
that Utilities form partnerships
and increase programs with high schools
and community colleges for job training
and meeting the GO 156 diversity goals.
Also partnerships and programs for incarcerated persons
coming out of prison are important for job training
and giving a chance.
Our society is diverse
and the foundations laid by our diversity pioneers,
such as the Honorable Gwen Moore
and Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
are more important than ever if we are to recover stronger
from this pandemic.
And I'm optimistic that we can push this effort further
across all of our regulated Utilities.
And I look forward to the dialogue today, thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner Shiroma, Commissioner.
I can't see Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Yes, thank you President Batjer.
Also wanna thank, recognize the Honorable Gwen Moore
for her undeniable impact on us all
and this program in particular.
I think after she passed,
I learned that she had over 400 laws to her name
and they were all focused on justice, equity
and wealth creation.
Many of the things are here today,
I know also wanna recognize during the pandemic,
the importance of the another law that Commissioner Shiroma
is really leading on,
which is the Moore Universal Telephone Act,
the Lifeline Program,
and just the utter importance of dependency
that millions of Californians have on that program today.
And like Commissioner Randolph said,
we are actually in quite an exciting time.
There's important initiatives that will require potentially,
if passed, Proposition 16 in particular,
greater opportunities for diversity in our State
and our businesses and all of our economy
and the spending legislation that would also require
more explicit diversity
and representation on corporate boards.
So I think it is a rebirth of this issue
of how we are intentional about creating diversity wealth
in our diverse communities.
And I really look forward to talking about
some of the current opportunities.
I know in the past,
we talked about some of the opportunities
within wildfire, response and prevention,
and also would like to hear
a little bit about COVID response
and how these are creating potentially new opportunities.
So I look forward to our discussion
and to our ever evolving areas of opportunity, thank you.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Thank you very much, President Batjer.
I also want to acknowledge Gwen Moore,
who is a tireless inspirational leader and visionary.
I had the pleasure of sitting next to her
at the last three En Bancs.
And to the end, she worked extremely hard to hold Utilities
and others accountable for their deeds and their promises.
And not a statement would go by that she wouldn't question
to make sure that they were holding their feet to the fire.
So she was a real inspiration for all of us.
As my colleagues have said,
this has been a year of great challenge and stress.
COVID has dramatically underscored the economic
and social disparities that are still far too prevalent
in our society.
We know that people of color
and businesses of color have suffered
disproportionately from COVID
and from the economic dislocation that's followed
and the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor
and others have shined a light on the pandemic
of structural racism in this country.
As my colleagues have said,
and we firmly believe that these events highlight
how important programs like General Order 156 are,
which had, it has provided,
for decades has provided economic opportunities
for communities otherwise on the margin
or excluded from business opportunities.
We need the program now as much as we ever have,
these more difficult times have given rise to new
and different business opportunities,
from COVID, from the thread of wildfire mitigation
and others that we have to see as we go forward.
I look forward to the discussion today.
-: Thank you very much my fellow Commissioners
for all the very important words
and points that you have just made and underscored.
I am missing the comradery last En Banc,
last Fall was my first and we were in Fresno
and I so enjoyed sitting on the dais with Gwen.
I hadn't seen her for several years.
It was great to renew our friendship.
And it was just a great meeting of all of we
who care so deeply about diversity, social justice,
and the creation of wealth in our low income areas.
And with that, I will be moderating the
General Order 156 Utility Contracting Opportunities panel.
I have specific questions,
but I will ask of the panel participants.
And I also encourage the participation of my colleagues
if they may wish to follow up with questions,
we'll start with Tarrance Frierson from the California,
excuse me, from Southern California Edison.
First, climate change is impacting California
and many of the industries regulated by the CPUC.
More frequent and severe wildfires
are an example of these impacts,
which we are experiencing right now,
which can have devastating effects
for customers, communities, and the environment.
CPUC along with Energy, Utilities
and others have been working to develop comprehensive plans
and direct investments to help mitigate the wildfire risk
as well as support a stronger, smarter
and cleaner energy infrastructure
for the State of California.
One element of these comprehensive plans
is vegetation management.
Simply described as clearing dry brush
and trimming trees.
During the 2019 Supplier Diversity En Banc,
your CEO, Mr. Payne discussed
the utilization of diverse firms
for the SCEs Vegetation Management program.
So I'd like to say,
what is the status of the SCEs contracting
and spend with diverse suppliers,
specific to vegetation management
and work streams.
And please include any participation barriers
or challenges that you are aware of for your suppliers.
-: Good morning, President Batjer,
and to the other esteemed Commissioners.
Before addressing this specific question,
I would like to join you in recognizing
the honor of Glen Moore
and really looking forward to the work
that lies ahead of us as we honor her just commitment
to diversity equity and inclusion.
SCE is proud of its overall results,
supplier diversity program results
from our sponsorships
of various community-based organizations to outreach events,
to our contracting with diverse
and small business enterprises.
As you know, multiple factors can impact
our overall performance,
such as changing business priorities, procurement needs,
supplier availability, and more.
In 2019 SCE recorded $2.2 billion in spend
with a 650 diverse business enterprises.
And that represented about
40% of our total corporate purchases.
As it relates to our vegetation management contracting
and spending results.
56%, $144 million of our contractor spend
was with diverse firms.
Additionally, 20 of the 36 suppliers
that are working on the vegetation management program
are diverse business.
And nine of those firms are participating
as prime contractors with direct contracting opportunities.
One diverse firm, in fact,
just transitioned from a subcontractor role
to a prime supplier role.
And we are really excited about that participation,
and we are excited about those results.
However, there are real challenges for suppliers
and the Utilities in the vegetation management.
(mumbles)
For suppliers, it is the insurance costs
and the intendant liability risk,
premiums are on the rise.
We're hearing that over and over and over again
from so many different suppliers
and one adverse judgment against a smaller,
diverse business, nearly just,
or absolutely ruined their business.
For Utilities, it is the limited marketplace availability
of suppliers, diverse suppliers who have the capabilities
or the capacity to support the work.
And the Utilities themselves are competing
for some of the same resources
to work on our various projects.
So to address some of these challenges,
SCE a transition from managing
our vegetation management work from seven large work zones
to 11 zones, and they have been sized
to help with those capacity constraints.
And the insurance challenges.
You mentioned that CEO, Kevin Payne,
talked about this transition last year.
And since making that transition,
diverse suppliers are supporting
the tree trimming activities across six of those 11 zones,
which demonstrates our commitment
to inclusion of diverse firms
and our recognition of their capability.
SCE does have some upcoming contracting opportunities
that I would like to mention.
Is they're a specifically in the weed abatement
and the pre-inspection works.
And I want the Commissioners here to know,
as well as our partners,
that diverse firms are being actively sourced
for inclusion with these opportunities.
Let me wrap up with sharing
that my supplier diversity colleagues and I,
we regularly meet to discuss these challenges
and exchange ideas about ways
that we can advance opportunities for small
and diverse businesses.
We believe that this best practice is necessary
to maintain the progress with programs
like the General Order 156
and our commitment that each of our utility tie-ups to stage
and utilize small and diverse businesses.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, Tarrance.
I have another question, sort of a followup.
As you've met with your colleagues
and you've identified barriers,
what are you doing to encourage greater participation
or throw in the net wider to more opportunities
for more people to be engaged in your programs?
What barriers have you run against
and how are you tackling them?
-: I'm gonna circle back to the market availability
and really being able to connect the suppliers capabilities
and capacity to the vast work that is needing to be done.
One of the things that we regularly do, my colleagues and I,
we share information about the suppliers
that we are coming across,
and that we are able to utilize in our own programs.
We leverage events like this to connect with suppliers.
You mentioned being in Fresno last year,
and I was just talking about an upcoming opportunity
that we have.
And last year on this, one of the panels,
there was a supplier that we identified
that may be able to support some of the work
that we have coming up.
And so we'll be actively engaging with that supplier.
Another key to that, is working with our partners,
our various community based organizations.
Some of my colleagues who are on this panel with me today
and making sure that we are staying plugged in
and connected with them
and leveraging those rich partnerships
to identify those suppliers
that we can bring in to our supply chain.
-: Okay, thank you.
I'm going to move now to the second and third panelists,
Edmund Lombard III, the California Black Chamber
and Tracy Stanhof California American Indian Chamber.
And I'm going to be asking each of you the same question
and we'll start with Edwin.
As leaders of the diverse organizations.
How are you contributing to the development
and expansion of minority owned businesses?
First, Edwin.
Is Edwin on the line.
I'm not hearing him.
So Tracy, I'm gonna turn to you--
-: Well, thank you. -: And I'll,
you need to repeat the question?
-: Oh, I got it, thank you, President Batjer.
You're looking good again this year.
You always wear the nicest ensemble.
Thanks for-- -: Thank you.
It's a hair and makeup day.
(all laugh)
-: Exactly, first, I wanna thank Gwen Moore.
She's really changed the world.
And I had spoken to her just a few days
before she unfortunately passed about this event,
the En Banc coming up, and so it's especially sad.
What are we doing to contribute to the expansion
and development of minority owned businesses?
Well, our American Indian Chamber here in California
has invested heavily both in (mumbles) equity
and in our funding to host an
Procurement Technical Assistance Center that helps Indians
and tribes and Alaska native organizations throughout,
really now the Western United States
and nationally we've gotten so adept at doing that,
with business capacity training,
linking to procurement opportunities,
linking to our partners, hosting numerous webinars,
especially during this pandemic to help our folks.
Everybody keeps saying triaged,
well, we're still in triaged.
In fact, I think it's gotten worse
before it's gonna get better
because as this pandemic extends,
we're gonna be having to really help people
using all the buzz words pivot.
Of course, numbers of us have started to sell PPE
and other materials that assist in helping businesses
with the pandemic and dealing with the pandemic.
So we've been really advocating to,
I have to smile at my buddy Terrance because sometimes,
we've been having challenges getting these folks on,
but I want to say,
and I want to express very, very emphatically that the,
all of the Utilities telcos and water companies
and everybody involved in the implementation of GO 156
has really stepped up to the plate for us
and coming on our webinars
and helping the different applications
to help our people move forward
during these troublesome times,
sometimes it's been very slow.
Vegetation management has been one of those challenges.
In our community, we've got folks that can do it.
And, it's still a slow, a slow process.
And I know, to give everybody
just a moment to focus on that,
it's because of insurance requirements
and other things, but still,
we're looking for quicker ways to implement contracting.
What we need is opportunities.
And so as emphatic as I was that,
and still are that these folks sitting in supplier diversity
at these Utilities, telcos and water companies
and cable firms have been helping us,
we need to really keep advocating
for more contracting opportunities quicker
rather than later at times.
(computer beeps)
Rather than large contracts,
and direct to the Utilities.
President Batjer.
Woman: Luiz, I need to--
-: President Batjer.
Can I ask a question?
-: Yes you may, (mumbles) stage to the,
my fellow Commissioners to break in please,
and unfortunately I can't see you all so speak up
as Mr. Randolph just did,
and you can go back to the first panel too as you wish.
Yes, go ahead Randolph.
-: Okay, so both Tarrance and Tracy mentioned
the insurance issues,
and I just kind of wanted to unpack that a little bit
and kind of talk about what opportunities there are
to kind of assist with that,
is, I mean, I know insurance
is a significant problem Statewide,
but I'm wondering, has there been interface
with the Insurance Commissioner's Office
or have there been any sort of potential steps
that might be useful to take, to assist in this problem
and try to make,
increase the opportunities for smaller companies
to get the insurance that they need to do this work?
-: Well, Commissioner Randolph, this is Tracy, I think,
and then, I think that's a good idea to interacts
with the Insurance Commissioner's Office.
We have tried to help our businesses
get numerous brokers together to insure them
because sometimes one insurance company alone
won't insure somebody in doing this type of work.
But the other thing that I've heard,
and it might be a great idea to start some kind of fund
to help our businesses be able to obtain the insurance,
some type of ad hoc funding issue vehicle,
and use that because it's a very expensive process
to go through to get into this industry.
But we do have people that can do it.
I don't know, Tarrance, you might have some more on that,
ad hoc funding.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Randolph.
And thank you, Tracy.
So as we said in the past Southern California Edison,
we will demonstrate flexibility when and where possible.
And so we really do lean in
to helping our suppliers across the board.
And one of the things we ask our suppliers to do
is to make sure that they are notifying us immediately
when they're having issues, including the insurance issues.
And we typically address them on a case by case
or individual basis because the needs
can vary among the supplier.
So there's really no one size fits all solution.
And I really do appreciate this question
or follow up question.
In our discussions with suppliers, mine directly,
in conversations that I know my colleagues
are having as well.
And recently it was in a conversation with a supplier
that mentioned that their insurance costs,
specifically related to having
to purchase wildfire insurance coverage
increased 400%, 400%.
And I also wanna underscore that the problem is so big
that it is not just limited to small firms
or large firms, diverse firms, non-diverse firms.
It is really affecting suppliers across the board.
And so we have, Commissioner Randolph,
we'd been in ongoing discussions
with a variety of stakeholders
to address the wildfire insurance challenges
facing suppliers in the utility.
And it's having significant impacts on our program.
Challenge is, when we are sourcing,
trying to source insurance for suppliers
or with diverse suppliers that is having some impacts,
but I do wanna circle back that's in those discussions
with the different stakeholders,
some believe that legislation and regulatory action
may ultimately be needed to address some of the challenges
because as you can imagine,
they're just multiple factors
and variables that have to be considered the various options
that are being discussed among the different stakeholders.
-: Okay, thank you.
(mumbles)
-: Tracy, can I ask you a quick follow up question.
-: Sure.
-: When you said we need quicker ways
to implement contracting,
were you referring primarily to the insurance problem
or are there other measures that you think could be taken
to have quicker contract implementation?
-: Sure, there is, it's not just the insurance problem.
It's everywhere.
And we're experiencing delays in contracting
is being led to delays in contracts.
And once you get a master service agreement,
you're able to implement that master service agreement
by getting an actual purchase order up of it.
Oh, we're experiencing,
it's very difficult when people aren't
in one place to do business.
I know it's probably the wave of the future
that we're more spread out,
but there's a lot of issues
and somebody can't just walk around the corner
and talk to someone else at a accompany about helping you
in advocating for you to get your contract led or paid or,
or so there's, Commissioner had been a lot of slowdowns
in the whole process because of COVID, I think,
and it, we kind of had the same thing going on last year,
a bit with the changing economy and the wildfires.
And there's just been so many impacts in the State,
but contracting has to go on, businesses need businesses,
our rates keep going up as far as insurance
and ransom, the utility itself, which,
is all part of the plan
and problem here in the State of California at times.
So it's, we just need to really focus on it
and drill it down
and get back to you the nuts and bolts
of letting contracts faster and,
and getting people in place.
One of the other problems with that, Commissioner
and I hate to drag on is there's a lot of super contractors.
Once the, and I don't mean to take anything away
from the super contractors that have grown
their diverse businesses so large.
And sometimes it's easy for,
in my perception for the Utilities to go,
"Hey, we've got the super contractor,
"they already have their IS net world.
"They already have their insurance.
"They already have all of these pieces in place"
and they get the contracts a lot easier
than developing more diverse businesses down the pipeline.
And I'm sure that Utilities are working hard to do that,
but it just seems to sometimes it's not there.
-: Thank you.
-: Great, thank you.
I see now Edwin, that you are on,
or do we have you both on video and audio?
-: Well, I hope you have me on audio now.
Can you hear me?
-: Yes, I hear you loud and clear, perfect.
-: Glad to be here.
-: Love for you to follow up on Tracy's comments
as leaders of diverse organizations.
How are you contributing to the development
and expansion of your minority owned businesses?
-: Well, first of all, thank you,
President Batjer for allowing
the California Black Chamber of Commerce to be engaged
on the 18th Supplier Diversity En Bach.
Our Board of Directors are adamant
about being actively involved in
what you're trying to get done here.
And I like to say that it all starts with relationship.
Everything that we do in this area starts with relationship.
And if you're gonna take that relationship any further,
that relationship has to become a partnership.
And once you become partners with another organization,
there's a pipeline that's created
where awareness is made available to you.
And once you're made aware of what the opportunities are
that are available,
then you can take advantage of those opportunities.
And then inclusion begins to happen.
One of the most important things
that we, at the California Black Chamber
is trying to do is reestablish relationships,
create new relationships
and relationships build the capacity that we, as a chamber,
a Statewide chamber needs in order to provide support
for our member companies.
A case in point,
we want to be able to provide the technical assistance
needed for them to structure their organizations properly,
to take on contracts by answering RFPs properly
and providing the correct information to the Utilities
and other corporate structures
so that we can take on these contracts.
And not only that,
we wanna help build the capacity within our organization
so that they can deliver on the contract.
It's very important that we are large enough,
not only to receive the contract,
but to fulfill the contract,
that may mean two organizations partnering with each other
in the merger, that may mean an acquisition of
one organization purchasing another organization
and becoming one organization
in order to take on that capacity.
So capacity building is a big thing,
but as you know, and most people are aware now,
one of the biggest issues that in the Black
and African American community we face with,
is the lack of access to capital.
And because of that lack of access to capital,
even if you take on a contract,
you may not have the financial ability to stay
in the game long enough to begin to receive the funding
that you're supposed to receive to fulfill that contract,
because it might be a quite a ways off
before you start receiving the funds that are due to you.
So one of our main issues is that,
we're going to provide the technical assistance
that our companies need in order for them
to answer these RFPs and take contracts.
Help them develop the capacity that they need
in order to fulfill those contracts.
Partner with the Utilities
and other major corporations,
partner with organizations like Tracy's,
so that we can work together with each other
in order to accomplish a synergy
throughout this great State of ours.
One of the other things that I wanted to bring up,
and Tarrance's right on when it comes
to the cost of insurance,
in order for us to stay in business.
Because of the wildfire it's changed the dynamic
of how we can continue to exist,
even with this crazy stuff that we're dealing with,
with the downturn of, the financial downturn from COVID-19,
you're just adding another layer
on top of the layer, on top of the layer.
The U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce did a study that showed
that 41% of all Black businesses,
because of the advent of COVID-19 will no longer exist
as we come through this pandemic.
41%, that's almost half of all Black businesses.
That's a tragedy.
And so we're working to keep that from happening
and the support that we receive from organizations
like Southern California Edison,
who is a great partner of ours is very important.
And we look forward to moving in that space.
Now, the other area that I think really real work needs
to happen is within the professional
and financial services, especially financial banking.
Right now, I believe the number is between 11 and 14%
of all institutions that are youth
or Black or people of color.
That's ridiculous.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
That needs to be fixed.
We need to come up with programs
in order to change that dynamic,
and in changing that dynamic.
Then you fix that problem with lack of access to capital,
which is one of our major issues.
So hopefully that answers your question
and I'll relinquish with that.
-: It was very helpful.
And I was going to follow up with,
before you raised the lack of capital
and what the impact of COVID-19 is.
That's a terrible percentage,
41% of the Black owned businesses may not exist
when we come out of this epidemic.
So I'm surely hoping that we can have strong partnerships
and assistance from our Utilities.
Are there any follow up questions for either Tracy
or Edwin at this time from my fellow Commissioners?
-: President Batjer.
-: Yes.
-: Just on that last point,
thank you Edwin for raising it.
Excuse me, I know it was an issue last year
as well on that sector.
And I don't know if Tarrance,
if you can talk to anything that Edison has done
to really intentionally look at how to seek opportunities
for those financial contracts,
and maybe that includes some of the insurance, I don't know,
but certainly, I know much of what's happening today
is taking advantage of the low interest on the debt.
Is that, are those transactions areas that Edison
or some of your partners are looking
for diversifying in your contracting?
-: Off mute, we look diversify across all areas
of our contracting
and partnerships with small and diverse businesses.
And I do wanna point out that we are general procurement
in terms of purchasing goods
and services is one lane or lanes that we look through.
And then there is the financial transactions
that we report out separately in our annual reports.
As it relates to those areas,
we have a number of diverse businesses
that are supporting our financial transactions.
I think we right now,
are leveraging about 20 different diverse firms
as it relates to financial transactions.
And I'm pleased to report that a number of those
are African American owned businesses and so,
in various areas, public equity managers,
private equity managers,
co-managers of our capital market financing.
So we're excited about our results in that area.
One thing I do wanna point out is,
and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago
when we announced the set up diversity, equity
and inclusion actions that the company is taking internally
and externally.
One of the things that we will be doing
as supplier diversity is we're commissioning
a marketplace study really to began to understand
where are small and diverse businesses showing up
in the marketplace?
And then overlaying that with our purchasing areas.
So we can see where those opportunities
are to really connect diverse suppliers
to those opportunities.
So really looking forward to getting that work underway
and seeing what those findings are.
So then we can work with our
various community-based organization partners
to do the good work that we need to continue to do
to facilitate the engagement
and the utilization of small and diverse businesses.
-: Thanks, Tarrance,
I'm mindful of our time and we have two more panelists,
I wanna bring on.
So we also have time toward the end for some more questions.
So turning now to the fourth panelist, Jennifer Capitolo
of the California Water Association, Jennifer,
two of the seven water companies reporting diversity spend
are not meeting the 21% point 21.5% goal,
California Water is, Cal Water is 18.37
and San Jose Water's 12.89.
Just kind of wondering some of the factors that contribute
to the company's not reaching their goals.
-: Sure, thank you, President Batjer and Commissioners.
Good morning.
Thank you for having me.
I just wanna take a quick moment to introduce myself,
'cause this is my first En Banc
I am the new Executive Director
of the California Water Association.
Many of you who remember my predecessor, Jack Hawks,
who retired earlier this year, I started February 1st.
So my entire tenure with this organization has been
during this COVID pandemic.
And I was hoping that I'd get to meet all of you in-person
and get out and spend time experiencing supplier diversity
and making those face-to-face connections.
But here we are,
and hopefully can spend some time with you
all in the years to come.
But I have spoken with both Cal Water
and San Jose about their supplier diversity programs.
And I'd like to answer the question regarding these factors
more broadly.
And these two,
rather than these two companies in particular,
when I first started with CWA,
I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Chair
of our California Water Association USCCB committee,
and I've attended committee meetings that they've held
on a monthly basis.
And then your folks,
Stephanie Teresa were also so kind in offering their time
to me earlier this year to talk about GO 156.
And I think what one thing that I really have taken away
from those conversations with folks is that,
the numbers don't tell the entire story, right?
So there's three issues that I really want to highlight
of why companies may not be meeting their goal.
And so the first is there are some diverse suppliers
that have lost their status due to internal restructuring.
In the past, we've seen diverse suppliers acquired
by larger non-diverse companies,
and we've seen diverse suppliers,
secure venture capital funding,
which means they're leaving major ownership in the process.
But the important thing about both of those actions is that
they are significantly growing their business.
So we are in the situation seeing diverse businesses grow.
And I think all of us on this panel would count
that as a success and that's not reflective
in any of the numbers that we're reporting.
There's also a very interesting gap between suppliers
that are available for the types
of water infrastructure projects
that we're building in Northern California
and in Southern California.
It's important to know both the two
that President Batjer mentioned,
Cal Water and San Jose are both headquartered in San Jose.
This is important.
Those companies,
their location is a reason for these numbers,
high cost of living, housing prices.
They've seen diverse vendors moving out of the San Jose area
because of these higher cost of living.
If you compare that with Southern California,
where our companies are doing much better,
there are a lot more diverse vendor options
for larger contracts, which is,
the things that need undergrounding pipeline, escalations,
that kind of stuff.
So that's important that we're seeing this issue.
And this kind of brings me back to a conversation I had
with Stephanie and her team about the PUC's,
Environmental and Social Justice plan,
where we want to invest in communities
that are experiencing hardships,
where we're seeing economic justice.
And it's just interesting that we're not seeing
the same business development opportunities
in Northern California,
and Southern California for vendors.
And then I think third,
you've already heard some of this today
is that the process is complicated.
We do have contractors that are diverse,
that cannot manage the process to become certified.
The process is complex.
There's privacy concerns about the paperwork.
Having folks say,
we need a full copy of your tax filing
and copies of your passports.
Some folks just don't wanna do that.
But I think, where we are.
We have a plan in place.
We are working all we can do to mitigate these issues.
We are working very hard to identify
and cultivate specialized contractors
in Northern California.
We've talked to some of the folks in Southern California
about coming up to Northern California,
because it's really hard to hire someone for a project
in Northern California
and not have an office where you can go
and talk to people about their projects.
But that is an option that we've talked to them about,
opening secondary office in Northern California.
And we'll be able to continue working with those businesses.
We've also been doing some,
I call it cross marketing within our companies
where we're having our supplier diversity folks talk
to other business units to really create champions
for supplier diversity throughout the company,
we are doing everything we can to support
and simplify the process before it becoming certified.
And we are continuing to modify
and strengthen our contract
and RFP language under the Prime Supplier Program
to require greater sub contracting for diverse suppliers.
I just wanna end by saying,
there in past three sessions like this, as you all know,
we have Federal and State government
view infrastructure development
as that pathway to economic recovery.
And we really see a lot of new opportunities on the horizon.
There's a great new report if you all haven't taken
a look at it at the U.S. Water Alliance Report on
"The Economic Benefits of Investing
"in Water Infrastructure."
And it just, it talks about all the opportunities,
if we work on developing our water infrastructure system.
And I think we really saw during COVID the need for safe,
clean, reliable drinking water
to fight against this public health pandemic
and improve quality of life as well.
But some of the numbers that are in there,
it's inspiring just to end with this number of,
they believe if we do the infrastructure investment
in the United States that we need to do that
will result in 800,000 new jobs
and disposable income increases of $2,000 per month
per household.
So these companies might be struggling now,
but I do really feel like there is opportunity
on the horizon for the companies in partnership
with our diverse suppliers.
So thank you.
-: Thank you, Jennifer.
And I should have said welcome,
since you are indeed new to your position.
And I also want to acknowledge
that The California Water Association
was helpful during the heat storm when we needed,
for many of our companies throughout California
to shed energy consumption.
And it was very helpful that you all answered the call.
I wanna make sure that we have plenty of time
for our fifth panelist.
Is there maybe one quick question of Jennifer before we go
to the fifth panelist and then our final questions?
-: Yes, President Batjer.
If I could just maybe a request that I could enlist,
perhaps even Tarrance and Edwin on a specific ask
for San Jose, an opportunity for them to increase
their diverse procurement
within the financial sector,
they have currently pending
over $300 million debt applications for new debt.
So there's an opportunity here really,
and it looks like Tarrance could give you a lead
of at least 20 diverse contractors for you to explore.
And I'm sure Edwin and Tracy could follow up
with additional ones.
So just a specific request to follow up on that,
Jennifer with San Jose,
as the opportunity to bring up that 12% to something more
at par with their colleagues.
Thank you very much.
-: Okay, thank you.
-: President Batjer,
if I could just. -: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: I know you asked for just one more, well, but a comment,
and Jennifer, nice to see you,
for that San Jose area,
it seems there's an opportunity here
for really challenging the numbers
and accomplishing them.
And there's San Jose State University,
there's Stanford university,
there's Santa Clara University,
there are all these institutions there
that really should be enlisted to,
okay, what are the constraints or the opportunities
for developing (clears throat) intervention
and for, I mean, Santa Clara County
is right next to, it's just right there.
It's a, it is not a high income area.
It's very diverse area.
San Jose itself is pretty diverse.
So I know these contracting needs are heavy industrial.
It could be information technology,
all, a whole panoply of things,
but really to enlist all the, what we call the quote,
"The bright minds" that are in this, in that area.
To tackle it and help identify what action items
can be taken by the Water Utilities to meet,
because I mean,
to meet those percentages meet them
( Shiroma chuckles)
within the criteria.
The four corners of GO 156
This is, it's just a comment, a perception
and a viewpoint from me.
Thanks a lot.
-: Can I piggyback on Commissioner Shiroma's comment
in terms of it, if indeed, the issue for the companies
is finding suppliers in lower cost areas,
the Central Valley is just a hop, skip, and a jump away.
So maybe focusing on that area
rather than Southern California might make sense
in terms of finding potential contractors.
-: Indeed throw the web, the net a lot further.
I agree.
And I was thinking the same.
And again, in sake of time,
it always seems like we have many more questions
than time allows,
but I'm gonna turn to the fifth panelist
and that's Laurie Dowling,
The National Utilities Diversity Council.
Hi Laurie.
-: Hey, good morning, President Batjer.
-: Yeah, please tell us
how the National Utilities Diversity Council
supports diversity
and inclusion throughout the United States.
-: Well, thank you for asking me
and thank you for letting me be with you today.
I would like to say that on behalf
of the Chairs of our Board of Directors,
the Honorable Kimberly O'Guinn of Arkansas
and Rob MacLean of Southwest Water,
we're really honored to be a part of this conversation
and part of the California family.
I also wanted to mention that
in honor of Assembly member Moore,
we're very pleased that our friends at the Black EOE Journal
will be including a tribute that NDUC has written
as an article in their Fall magazine.
So which will also be available online.
So I hope that you'll look for that.
It's a really lovely photo of Assembly member Moore.
The National Utilities Diversity Council conducts research
and shares best practices to encourage diversity,
(clears throat)
excuse me,
in the Utilities and communications industries,
for us that supplier diversity, workforce diversity,
language access, customer service, governance diversity,
and philanthropic diversity.
And we do this through webinars and virtual panels.
So we were sort of virtualing long before everyone had to,
which is handy for us
through a free diversity toolkit,
which is a collaboration with
the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
and the Department of Energy.
And through a lot of ad hoc work with companies,
identifying best practices around aspects of diversity
and with regulatory agencies,
looking at national best practices conducted
by their fellow agencies around the country
to help sort of advance opportunities.
We try to be the people around the country
that look at what is being done now
and what are the things that are happening
and need to be honed now.
But also we try to go
and look and see what's over the top of the mountain
so that we can,
sort of encourage regulators and corporate leaders
and diverse suppliers
and others to be thinking about
what we need to know for the future.
As an example of that, we just finished last week,
a free webinar on "Bias and Artificial Intelligence
"in Hiring and Procurement."
Led by Nicol Turner-Lee of the Brookings Institute.
That kind of thing.
We try to look over the mountain to see
what's gonna be coming up as well.
-: Oh yeah, I was on mute.
I'm gonna open up to my fellow Commissioners now,
just with follow up questions for Laurie,
-: I actually just have a bit of a selfish question.
Is there, is it possible to get that,
is there, is the conversation
about the artificial intelligence bias
and hiring available online for us to take a look at?
-: Sure, we'll be happy to send it to you.
We can send you the recording as well as the deck
that Nicol used.
It's very interesting.
She has been leading this for Brookings.
She's in charge of their new
Tech and Racial Equity Center there,
she's formerly with the MMTC
and her work is really exciting.
She hadn't really done very much yet on hiring
and procurement.
So with us, that's part of what
we encouraged her to sort of take a look at.
Be glad to make that available.
We'll send it to Stephanie and she can distribute.
-: Yeah, it's a totally fascinating topic.
And so many, hiring processes now rely on,
these AI pre-screen so that's fascinating.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
-: Yeah, excellent.
That's great.
(mumbles)
-: Okay, sorry.
-: No, go ahead.
-: Laurie, I was gonna ask you if you've thought about,
or have ideas for how to transition Utilities,
and now we have new entrants coming into our program
from doing this as just an obligatory mandate to making it
more part of their standard operating procedure,
more the DNA to be diverse in their supplier contracting.
-: Thank you for asking that Commissioner.
You know, it's interesting when,
I've been working, I'm on the Advisory Council
for the DC Public Service Commissions review
of their diversity MoU,
they have an MoU rather than a legislative action.
And to be honest with you frequently,
I'm citing California to my colleagues
on that Advisory Council,
because I think that the links of GO 156 relationship
to the State of California has created a belief
and an ownership of diversity in the DNA of a lot
of the regulated Utilities in California.
And I've actually been citing that a lot for my colleagues
on this Commission
and also for the Maryland PSC as well.
So I think that what the public Utilities,
the California Public Utilities Commission does
so brilliantly is you, you create an opportunity
and a requirement for, if you'll forgive the expression,
this may sound a little harsh,
but an annual reckoning,
and I think of that as sort of on Thanksgiving,
we count our blessings,
in the Fall we count how we're doing
along these measurement parameters,
and then we report them to you.
And I think that is a huge part of the,
what is encouraging the advancement of diversity
in California
and is being mirrored by some of your fellow Commissions
around the country.
But also I think it also really sort of drives
that into the DNA.
So I say,
I think you're already making it part of the DNA,
but creating an opportunity for people to publicly share
how they're doing is really powerful
on a whole lot of fronts,
including creating an important space
for the diversity and inclusion
and supplier diversity leaders within the company
to show their importance to the overall corporate mission.
And that can't be understated.
-: Thank you.
-: Thanks.
And one more question,
and then we're gonna open up for all of the panelists.
We're gonna be running just a little bit behind,
but any other questions for Laurie at this time?
Specifically for Laurie?
-: I can ask a short one here, Laurie.
I know in the past you've talked
about diversities of the Board
and how they really helped treasure those cultural
prioritization as well.
And I wondered if you had any recommendations on that,
a new here, for this year.
-: I am so glad you asked that, thank you so much.
I mentioned our free diversity toolkit
and it currently comprises four buckets around diversity.
We're right now working on bucket number five,
which will be launched by December.
And that actually looks at diversity in Commissions
and Commissioners.
We're really excited about that.
People will be able to search the database
for different kinds of Commission actions
around workforce, supplier, diversity and other,
and then also be able to look
at the diversity of Commissioners,
the next bucket that we're working on.
And we're gonna be doing that in collaboration
with a group of national organizations,
including the American Association of Blacks in Energy
and Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics among others
is taking a good long look at diversity
at the corporate board level.
We've done some work on that,
and we have a couple of tools on the toolkit
for what corporate board members need to know,
but we're gonna do a very deep dive into that
in the early new year.
So thank you for asking.
-: President Batjer. -: I think you're on mute.
-: Mute.
That is terrific to hear.
Can we see the results of your bucket five on your website?
-: Bucket five on the website gonna be made available
in probably December.
I'm working with NARIC right now
to double check all of our math
and then the designers have to make it sort of searchable.
You can get access to the raw data
through NARIC before then.
I suspect we'll be talking about it in November.
-: Yes, thank you, that's terrific.
Okay, we're running short of time,
but I really do want to open up
to my fellow Commissioners for any questions
of the overall panel that you have,
that you would like to ask.
Yes, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Thank you, so we also have someone who's commented
in the chat about mentoring
and training up incomers
and that's, I think an important feature.
But my question is.
And I think Edwin you brought up some of this,
Tracy also that, as far as building the bench
and the, and not only helping small businesses
and the GO 156 businesses to sustain,
but also for new businesses to enter,
it takes mentoring and that takes training.
And so my question is there sufficient financial resources
for that kind of mentoring and training?
I mean, when we talk about
the contracting dollars themselves,
but do we also need investment
in training folks, mentoring folks,
helping folks navigate how to respond to an RFP
and so forth?
-: I would love to see more money in that area.
Here at the California Black Chamber of Commerce,
we started with a couple of local institutions
throughout the State,
and we've got a pilot program
that's gonna be kicking off pretty soon here,
where it's a young entrepreneurs academy,
kind of a situation where we're reaching down
as far as the junior high school
and teaching young African-Americans
what it means to be a professional,
what it means to be an entrepreneur,
helping them have a desire to develop
and learn the skills they need in high school
and junior high school to become an entrepreneur.
And then we're partnering with the community colleges
and creating a program where they would go straight
from high school
where they will receive community college credits
for taking some of these courses
and then move to the community colleges
and further their education on things like marketing
and management and financial literacy, access to capital,
which is required for you to gain access to capital
and also contracting.
But in order for us to build this program out
and be successful with it,
you're absolutely right,
there was a need for funding.
There was a lack of funding in that area right now.
We would love to see anyone
that's willing to partner with us on this platform,
help make that a success.
I believe it is the future.
As we go into what I'm calling the new normal now,
where we can't just run business the way we used to,
everything is becoming more virtual.
AI is becoming a major player in how we do business,
but it's not inexpensive,
and you have to have access to the facilities
and also the broadband internet capabilities
and so on and so forth in order to participate.
And so funding is a huge piece of what can actually happen.
And that's where that partnership comes into play.
If you have a developed partnership with the Utilities
and major corporations that have funding
that can provide what's needed
in order for us to build the capacity
and be successful in an area, we can get there
and we can get there relatively quickly.
So thank you for raising that question.
-: I agree with Edwin.
It is needed.
In fact we just had another big grant awarded
to us this year, this morning, signing off on one,
and we've had over the past,
I guess, 10 months, almost,
well, over a million dollars worth of grants given
to our American Indian Chamber out here in California,
because it's empowering our people to train our own people,
to become entrepreneurs in our cultural relevant way.
So the more funding we get,
the more responsibility we have,
but the more success we have.
Like Edwin, we have our, we have what we call
our Junior American Indian Chamber of Commerce,
which many of the Utilities have been integral
in funding for us this year.
And it's been very successful.
So Commissioner Shiroma,
we do need more funding for this effort,
we're focused on helping people now start a business.
It's gonna be our next effort.
We're finding in our community,
younger people are not starting businesses
as they used to be, for whatever reason,
and we're gonna help them address that.
There's also issues with the digital divide in our community
and Southern California Gas is helping us with that.
They're working with
the California State Superintendent of Education,
at least in their service territory here,
they've put out some funding.
T-Mobile's come in this year.
I know I was pretty harsh on them last year,
but they're partnering with us
and they, anytime we get support
and partnership is that when discuss from these Utilities,
telcos and water companies,
we've been able to parlay that into training.
And there's so much more training that needs to happen.
One of the things,
and I was kinda disturbed with Jennifer, in your comments,
sorry, my new friends,
we help people get certified.
It is not an issue to get certified as a minority business.
We have the capacity, capability.
And unfortunately,
if somebody doesn't wanna share their tax records,
then they probably can't do business with the Utilities,
telcos and water companies,
or any major corporation in this country right now.
So we have used the investment
that these Utilities are putting to us, Edison, SDG&E, PG&E,
every single one of the groups sitting here, AT&T
to help that not be a problem.
So, anytime the investment comes in Commissioners,
we put it to good work
and it's helped us with millions of dollars in contract,
even during this pandemic.
Because the bottom line is contracting jobs
and economic self sufficiency for our diverse communities.
And that's what this investment back in California
with our rate payer dollars is doing.
And again, thank you for letting us speak today.
And the other thing we wanted to say is buy California,
California rate payers dollars needs stay
with California companies.
I know Edwin you're laughing about it.
'Cause the more advocacy we do,
we wanna keep this money here,
helping our own people grow our communities
here in California.
-: Okay, thanks so much Tracy.
We're way over time.
So I am so sorry for that.
'Cause this is a rich discussion that we're having,
but I wanna thank Tarrance and Edwin and Tracy
and Jennifer and Lori,
for your panel discussion this morning.
And with that, we will take a 10-minute break.
I am showing that it, well, let's just call it 10:15
and we'll be back at 10:25.
And the next panel will be moderated
by my fellow Commissioner Liane Randolph
and it will be the,
"Prime & Sub contractors: Supplier Diversity Best Practices
"and Contracting Barriers."
Thank you all.
Randolf: Rechtschaffen?
Batjer: Yes.
-: Oh, he's stepped away for a second.
He was here a moment ago.
-: Okay, and--
Rechtschaffen: I'm here.
-: Oh good, there you are Cliff.
Is Commissioner Guzman Aceves?
-: Yes.
-: Okay, great.
All right, Liane, over to you.
-: Okay, thank you very much.
So our, we have three panelists for this next panel,
which is about,
"Prime & Sub Contractors: Supplier Diversity Best Practices
"and Contracting Barriers."
Our three panelists are Mark Montgomery,
the President and Chief Executive Officer
of Bridgewater Consulting Group.
Kirby Hays, President and Chief Executive Officer
of Hal Hay's Construction Inc
and Jan Davis, President of Superbtech.
Each of our panelists will give a,
some brief opening remarks.
And then we will have some question and answer.
So looking forward to hearing about your companies
and your experiences with the Supplier Diversity Programs,
we will start with Mr. Montgomery.
-: Certainly thank you so much.
First off, I wanna thank
the California Public Utilities Commission
for putting on such an event,
creating the exposure
for so many supplier diversity companies that are out there,
creating awareness for all the various Utilities
that we serve or look to serve
and creating those door opening opportunities,
really want to just congratulate
and share just a positive support
for all of the supplier diverse companies out there
that are striving to do business in the utility space,
commendable for all the work you're doing
and the courage that they have to start
and build a company for all the work that they do
and supporting their communities
and for all the job opportunities that they're creating
for so many people to be able to support
their communities even more.
And finally, I want to thank the Honorable Gwen Moore
for all of her support and services
and leading the charge for creating GO 156.
We're all here today because of all of her work.
And although we have a ways to go,
we are better off today than we were yesterday.
And again, just thank you all for this opportunity
to be a part of this event today.
-: Thank you.
Mr. Hays?
-: Hi, good morning.
I'm Kirby Hays with Hal Hay's Construction.
I'd like to thank the California Public Utilities Commission
for allowing me to represent Hal Hay's Construction
here at the 18th Annual En Banc.
Certainly honored to be here
and represent, not only Hal Hay's Construction,
not only Indian Country,
but diversity businesses as a whole.
So I'd like to thank the CPUC for constantly raising the bar
and fighting for it, thank you.
And again, I'm excited to be here today.
-: And Ms. Davis.
Oh, we don't have your audio.
Are you on mute?
Did you call in to the Verizon number that you see you.
(clears throat)
Perhaps could somebody put their Verizon number or--
-: It's in the chat.
-: Yeah.
-: If you look in the chat,
you can see Robert Stanford sent a chat note
to the panelists.
And it's has an 800 number for audio.
So while you are calling in to that number,
maybe I'll just ask Mr. Montgomery
to sort of just a quick first question,
and then we'll come back to Ms. Davis,
but could you tell us a little bit
about the services your company provides
and how you have interfaced
with the Utilities in the Supplier Diversity Program?
-: Certainly,
so Bridgewater is a utility-based management consulting firm
and what we do have work closely with utilities,
for their utility monetization, strategy work,
business process re-engineering,
learning development training,
organizational chain in management.
We do a great deal of work around analytics
and an AMI support services, as well.
And so we work with various different utilities
that are across California and other States, as well.
And, we have a great relationship
with the supplier diversity organizations
at these various different utilities
and they create a great deal of exposure for us,
based on our capabilities that we provide.
And then we work very closely with the end-users,
as well as we look at expanding
and growing in our relationships
over there with those Utilities.
-: And what are some of the two or three key opportunities
that you've been able to take advantage of
with the Supplier Diversity Program?
-: Absolutely, it first starts with everyone understanding
the importance of investing time in building relationships.
No one is gonna look to do business
with any company out there that don't take the time
to invest in building relationships,
for people to get to know you, get to like you,
get to a point of being able to trust you.
And only then whether it be an opportunity
to be considered to talking about, doing work,
at the very different Utilities.
And a second for us is really making sure
that the services that we offer,
align to the business needs.
We don't wanna go out
and promoting a certain service offering
that's not a value or benefit to us, end-users.
And then third, it really comes down to your staff.
It starts with my leadership
and hiring very smart, high character people
that are, that align to the vision of the company
and where we're headed
and making sure that you are hiring people
that are different than you are.
People that's gonna challenge your thinking
with a goal of helping to make your company
that much stronger, it's very important
and very important for leaders to know
that they don't have all the answers
and they need the people around them that compliment them.
and that can challenge you on your thinking.
And I think really,
and last, becomes your employees
that are out there on the front line
that's delivering the work.
You wanna make sure the same things, smart people,
high character people, people that are results-oriented,
but understand the of knowing,
of building trusted relationships
out there with their clients.
And I'll be remiss if I didn't mention
an all important fourth,
and then Tarrance actually shed light on this
earlier this morning.
For us, we have to work with great confidence
on what it is that we do,
but at the same time for me,
I operate with a certain fear
that all of this that I do can be taken away from me today
because you're a young supplier that's growing
and anything can happen out there.
So you need to stay on your toes at all times
and making sure you stay close to your business
and making sure that you're having constant conversation
with your staff
and close conversation with clients to understand
where you need to continue to improve
on your ability to do business
and support them successfully.
All those things are essential.
Thank you.
-: Okay, thank you.
Mr. Hays, I'm gonna ask you the same question,
tell us a little bit about your business
and tell us about some of the opportunities
and successes you've had
with the Supplier Diversity Program.
-: Sure Liane, thank you.
So a little bit about Hal Hay's Construction,
Hal Hay's Construction is
a large family-owned DBE general contractor.
We're based in Riverside.
We also have a presence in Northern California as well
with an office up there.
We specialize in all types of construction from heavy civil
and infrastructure to facilities, maintenance
and new construction.
We were 2018 NMSDC,
National Supplier of the Year Award winner.
We've been working with publicly utility-owned companies
for over the last 10 or 11 years.
We're currently working for 10 different utilities governed
by the CPUC.
As I reflect about some of the successes that we've had,
really, there's three of them
that I was able to capture as real key successes,
real key opportunities where we seized the moment.
One of them that we're proud of is the adaptability.
We were founded 29 years ago
and we are a completely different company,
than the Hal Hay's Forestry & Construction Company
that was founded in 1991 as a small time owner operator
that fought wildfire in the Summer
and plowed snow in the Winter.
And nowadays we do, a breadth of construction,
from building dams and bridges
and military airfields on one end of the spectrum
to building, brand new ground up lead platinum facilities,
state-of-the-art aerospace facilities.
And so adaptability is really one,
as I look forward, something that I'm keen on,
even from the first panel is,
and getting excited about is,
is maybe going back to vegetation management,
based on what Tarrance was saying,
but always, kind of to Mark's point,
always trying to stay sharp,
always looking for the next opportunity,
looking for the pockets
where there's not a lot of competition,
having your ears open to what your client's needs are
and trying to service those needs.
Number two for me,
would be really embracing a partnering approach,
built on trust and transparency.
Maya Angelou is credited with saying,
"I've learned that people will forget what you said.
"People will forget what you did.
"But people will never forget how you made them feel."
And I'm not always perfect at it,
but that's something that I really,
that's an approach that I really try
to take with our clients.
We try to establish relationships
that will stand the test of time over 20 years or so.
As a contractor, we have a reputation of change orders,
of trying to get rich of this and that.
And so it's trying to do literally
the complete opposite of that.
So, what can we do to get our foot in the door,
perform the heck out of the contract, build that trust
and have a really good, strong,
mutually beneficial relationship for both us and the client.
Again, that it's gonna last a long, long time.
The last thing again, as a heavy civil contractor,
this is my perspective,
is really investing back in the business,
not getting the first two
or three checks from your client
and going and buying a speed boat
or a vacation home wherever,
but going and buying a Bulldozer.
Going and investing in your fleet vehicles
or the next new technology, whatever it is.
And so for me, really the three, I guess,
successes of Hal Hay's construction,
as I look back over the last 29 years would be adaptability,
partnering approach with our clients
and investing back into business.
-: Okay, thank you.
Do we have Jan Davis yet?
-: Yes, I'm on board.
Can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can hear you, yay.
-: I humbly apologize for the technical glitch,
but I'm so grateful and thrilled
and honored to be a part of this 18th Annual En Banc.
It's just amazing to be here.
So again, forgive me for the technical glitch,
but now I'm fully at attention.
-: Great, we have a uniquely complicated way
of doing our virtual meetings.
So I apologize for making it a little more difficult.
So can you tell us a little bit about your company
and sort of what you have seen as kind of your key successes
and opportunities with supplier diversity?
-: Certainly, so Superbtech is a 20 plus year old company.
We make a difference in the lives of families, the economy
and communities by putting people to work
and our space is engineering, information, technology,
and professionals.
So we saw in staff augmentation
as well as direct hire permanent placement.
In terms of the successes,
there are so many successes that I can look at,
but what immediately comes to mind is that,
having phenomenal relationships
and being transparent.
And when I say relationships,
I mean relationships with everybody,
relationships with higher ups in organizations,
they can be wonderful advocates for you
if you need them, if you need their help.
And also having relationships with,
for instance, a receptionist,
you'd be surprised that,
what they know in an organization
and how they can help you.
So having those amazing transparent relationships
that are ongoing over the years,
delivering what our clients need is essential to success.
And another thing that I think is so important is,
to keep your clients informed about the market,
the space that you were in,
the space that they are in,
letting them know what's happening out in the market
and also uprising them (mumbles) your company.
We were just awarded Supplier of the Year
through the Council.
We were Class Two Supplier of the Year.
We're still pumped up and excited
and honored to have been awarded that,
but just keeping your clients constantly in the loop
in terms of what you're doing, what's going on,
what's happening in the market,
what you're doing with other clients.
I think it makes you interesting.
I think it makes them more interested in you
and that's what I like to do.
-: So each of you mentioned the importance of relationships
and building those relationships.
So can you talk a little bit more specifically,
each of you about the,
your relationships with the utilities directly
and the staff at those utilities
who manage the Supplier Diversity Program
and how they have,
what are sort of a couple of best practices
you would suggest for them
in terms of interacting with their diverse suppliers
and strengthening that relationship?
So I'll start with you Mark.
-: Oh, certainly thank you again.
Yeah, for us, we have a tremendous relationship
with the various different supplier diversity groups
that are out there, be it Southern California Edison,
the Gas Company, San Diego Gas & Electric, Cal Water,
Golden State Water, PG&E.
And, we get out and we attend all the various events
that they put on, we listen to them, we learn from them.
They understand the cultures
of the various different utilities.
They put us in position to have the right conversations,
to be considered for our services out there
to various different clients.
It is important that it's a mutual relationship
of working together.
They can't do everything for you.
And so you have to make sure that you're doing your part
and getting yourself out there.
If they put you in position to be
at a meet perspective clients, you need to take advantage.
You need to make sure that you work
on building out those relationships with those end users
and just wanna be in position to be able to compete.
Southern California Edison nominated Bridgewater
for the SCMSDC Award for Supplier of the Year.
And although we weren't the recipient,
what a tremendous opportunity to be amongst your peers
and for people to know about you and your services
and the value that you bring,
and more than anything else,
for our clients to feel that what we do is important,
it's valued
and contributing towards the overall success
of the utilities
and what they're trying to accomplish.
It means so much, that's been tremendous.
If I were to want to be, to offer anything,
which I think would be tremendous
for a supplier diversity groups is,
I think it should be mandated
that they have a seat at the table for all prospective RFPs,
because their vote, their voice should matter.
All they're trying to do is do the right thing
and supporting diversity
and making sure that everyone had an opportunity to compete,
and that's all we all want.
It's just an opportunity to compete.
Nothing should ever be given,
everything should be earned.
And we just want that opportunity.
-: Thank you, Kirby?
-: Yeah, I really like this question,
for the supplier diversity relationships,
sometimes it's a short road.
Sometimes you get really lucky
where you meet someone at a conference
and you have a contract within a few weeks,
but those opportunities are really few and far between.
Really it's a long road with supplier diversity.
They, I look at my friends at SoCalGas, for example,
I think we, it took about four years for them
to break the door down
and get us our first opportunity within SoCalGas.
And that has been something where,
it's the old saying, "Persistence pays off."
And I would, again, I keep hanging my hat
on the relationship approach.
I think different companies,
you're gonna be let down if you,
every time you call a supplier diversity person
or every time you call somebody,
you're expecting that contract
or you're expecting something to line up.
And oftentimes, it's the times when you least expect it,
that you get the call,
"Hey, I was thinking about your firm for this or that."
And the answer is at that point, it's always, yes,
but if I could tell a quick story about how helpful these,
the various supplier diversity advocates are,
we recently landed a contract with AT&T
where there's specifically an initiative
to do second tier spend for us with Black owned businesses.
And, our database in that area was a little light.
And so I quickly reached out to Southern California Edison,
SoCalGas and Cal American Water saying "Help."
And literally within 30 minutes,
they had sent over their entire database.
And for me that really encompasses
the supplier diversity community
that we work with at the different CPUC companies
that we work for.
Lastly, I think if there was one thing that I could improve,
we do a lot of work with the Federal government.
And we see various contracting set aside.
We see small business set asides.
We see women-owned small business set asides.
We see HUBZones set asides, things like that.
And I've always wondered to myself,
is there a reason why we can't do
Black-owned business set asides for the utilities
or native American owned businesses
or small business set aside even?
And I'm not talking about
the specialized contracting opportunities.
Like we talked about earlier with vegetation management
and things like that,
but your regular run of the mill contracting opportunities,
that's something that I would like to see more of is,
"Hey, we have an opportunity coming up down the road.
"What can we do to get four or five Black-owned businesses
"to look at this
"or native American businesses or whoever it is."
And so the supplier diversity advocates
really do open the doors for Hal Hay's Construction.
Like Mark said, the opportunities are there,
but then it's up to us to go
and perform once we get our foot in the door.
-: Great, Jan.
-: Yes, so the supplier diverse people are just wonderful.
We currently do business with, of course,
Southern California Gas Company,
we have done business with them for years.
We also do business with Cal Water as well as,
Liberty Utilities.
I must say, you must show up to events.
You must be seen.
You must continue to build those relationships.
All of the supplier diverse advocates are so, so different.
When you look at a company like
Southern California Gas Company,
they have a tremendous team of supplier diversity people.
I mean, their team is just huge.
Some other utilities don't have the fortune
of having such a large team.
With Southern California Gas Company.
I can say that, they're constantly holding events,
providing training, being advocates to MBEs
and WDBEs as well.
But, in addition to advocating.
and being our cheerleader,
we have to get out of here and do the work.
We have to network, we have to be seen.
We have to build relationships.
With regards to my business,
we're constantly building relationships
with hiring managers.
So it's a combination of so many things that (mumbles)
it's supplier diversity.
It's getting out to events,
it's building relationships and keeping the pulse,
keeping on tabs with the pulse of those relationships.
-: Thank you, I'm gonna ask one more question
before I open it up to the rest of the Commissioners
to ask our panelists questions.
I wanted to talk specifically about the prime
and sub relationships.
I think, I thought Kirby had a great example
of a situation where,
one contractor can cast that net
and make sure to expand
the diversity opportunities for subs.
So do each of you have thoughts about how we
and the Utilities can encourage the,
and support the effectiveness of those relationships,
for prime contractors,
helping them find the right subs
and for subs linking them up to the right primes.
So I'll just stick with our same order that we keep doing
and start with Mark.
-: Certainly, thank you so much.
I just think it's just a continued accessibility
to all the larger primes so they can be able to see
or who we are, the value we bring, our capabilities.
And we look at relationships with primes,
in two different ways,
is one, is we want to be seen as a partner.
We don't want to be seen as a body shop
or anything like that.
We want to be seen as a partner.
We want to be able to bring value to that relationship
and be able to share with them who we are
and our capabilities.
And it's so important for us to make sure the same way
with an end-user client
or with supplier diversity.
We have to invest the time to build relationships
with those primes.
So they get to a point of seeing us as a partner,
seeing how we compliment one another
and what we can do to create success together.
We always want them to have us first in top of mind
when opportunities come up,
they can think about Bridgewater
and the value we bring.
And that's only gonna come by just investing the time
with those different suppliers.
So you all can open the doors for us to go
and have the conversation with those folks,
but in the end, it's our responsibility to make sure
that we really take that relationship
and mature it on and stay connected.
Those larger primes are, I mean,
they have tons of pressure on them as well.
No different than the pressures that we have.
And we have to take on the extra steps to make sure
that we stay close to them
and make sure that they're thinking about us at all times
when it comes to going out
and partnering together on different engagements.
And so, and we have tremendous relationships
with the various different primes
and we value those relationships
and we continue to have different conversations
on opportunities that we can work on together
and being able to achieve success together.
-: Great, Kirby.
-: For me, I would say it would be tremendously useful to us
if we could have better access to the other groups.
Again as an American-Indian contractor,
I could rattle off 30 or 40
different American-Indian owned companies,
but I am sort of on,
I feel like I'm on the outside a little bit,
when it comes to the other groups,
whether it be LGBT or Hispanic or woman-owned
or whatever, it doesn't matter.
But, I think the intent is there,
from a lot of the prime contractors,
but frankly we just don't know
and it, we could ask our peers,
we can ask the various diverse,
sorry, supplier diversity managers.
But for us, for me, it would be a lot more helpful if,
I guess if there was more collaboration
between the different groups,
we're just not aware of a lot of other companies
outside our respective group.
The second point would be accountability.
I would say, making those connections,
finding a good forum
to kind of meld the DBE community better.
And then really enforcing it on ourselves included,
what are we doing for our,
what are non-DBE contractors doing for their,
in order to hit their goals?
And what are DBE contractors like Hal Hay's Construction
doing to hit the second tier?
I don't know there's any real consequence
or real penalties or anything that I'm aware of.
I know I, you hear about people being put on probation
and this and that,
some real, something with some real teeth,
if people aren't hitting the marks,
I guess is what I'm saying.
-: All right, thank you.
Jan, what are your thoughts?
-: Okay, so we've done business
with Southern California Gas Company
for about, over 20 years now.
And at one point we were a prime in that,
we were dealing with them directly.
At another point, midway our relationship,
we became a subcontractor,
and now I'm really pleased to say
that we're back in a prime status position.
So again, like Mark and Kirby said,
we just have to continue to network, to be seen,
to interface with the supplier diversity people.
I think that when you are present,
when you have a relationship with them,
when you're constantly talking to them,
networking with them,
when you're keeping them aware of your successes,
they will keep you in mind.
I think also, we can network
and be present with other DBEs
and MBEs when we attend diverse supplier events
that might come up through, either the Council
or through an organization
like the Women's Business Enterprise National Council,
all those are forums and formats to,
for exposure for all of us,
to the different organizations.
-: Okay, so the more networking the better.
It's good to know we,
I know our supplier diversity staff
really tries to work on putting together
those kinds of events
and trying to connect people.
So continuing to put some efforts in that area,
it sounds like all of you would appreciate very much.
So I'll open this up to my fellow Commissioners
and ask if you have any questions for our panelists?
-: I do, if I may,
you've just reemphasized
and each has emphasized throughout the discussion,
how important relationships are
and how important as you just said Liane,
that networking is,
but we're in a new era with the pandemic and COVID-19,
and those relationships walking around the corner,
talking to somebody, going in person to a networking event,
just is almost impossible right now.
So I would like to hear the ideas or the thinking
or what is happening right now in the supplier community
to keep those connections going,
keep those relationships going in this time of COVID-19.
-: Certainly, will it be okay if I take that one?
-: Yes, certainly Mark.
-: Oh, absolutely, I'll tell you,
adjusting to the new digital channel
was definitely different.
And it's something that we obviously,
have all had to adjust to
and it has to figure out on how we continue to go
about doing our business
and bring a value without having an opportunity to go out
and meet face-to-face and continue to network
and spend the time in building those relationships.
And Bridgewater is a relationship-based company.
We don't have any salespeople in our organization,
in the almost 200 employees.
And so we pride ourselves on getting out
and investing an enormous amount of time with people.
And so that was taken away from us.
And so now that it was left to us to be as creative
as we could be to make sure
that we maintain those relationships
and then had an opportunity to grow new relationships.
And the fortunate thing here is that,
we laid all the groundwork prior to the pandemic.
That's so important,
to make sure you establish those trusted relationships
out there with people that would pick up a call from you.
I mean, just think about it.
And this is everyone.
I mean, everyone, all throughout the day,
you're on Zoom calls, Team calls, whatever it is,
you're on them all day.
And you have to try to find your slot
to be, to fit in to talk to people.
And it's just reaching out
and just checking in with folks
and just seeing how they're doing through the pandemic.
And it's not even just about talking about work.
Relationships are not, it's not about talking about work.
It's about connecting and checking on people
and seeing how they're doing
and how they're maturing through all of these things
that are going on,
how their families are impacted,
as all of those different things
to stay connected with people.
And so we've done all those things.
We continue to do all those things
and we stay connected to people
and we're still able to see growth in our company.
I mean, we just landed a huge SAP contract
with Sydney Water in Sydney, Australia.
That's our first contract out of the country
and they've never even met me.
And it were, it was all done through Team calls
and establishing that relationship
and competing and bidding for that RFP
and being a recipient of it.
We're very proud of that.
And I'm excited for our entire team
for all the work that they put into,
being able to achieve that, winning that deal.
But I think, it is just the adjustment
and we all need to look at adjusting
and figuring out creative ways
on how we continue to stay connected to people.
It's about creating your own blueprint
on how you continue to move forward with your business
and how you stay connected.
(computer pings)
-: Does anybody else wanna add anything?
-: Yes, I'd love to add something.
This pandemic has, oh my gosh!
It has been so stressful.
It has been so mind boggling.
And I'll tell you,
entrepreneurs are scrappy people as a standard,
and we're very creative people.
And this pandemic has caused us
to become even more scrappier
and even more creative,
and in terms of staying in touch with people,
it's just, it could be a Zoom call.
It could be a phone call,
but you have to reach out,
you have to maintain that rapport.
Again, letting your clients know what you're up to,
what's going on, and as a result of the pandemic,
it's really, really interesting,
on some things that we might have passed over in the past,
we've now looked at,
we've pursued opportunities in new areas,
and we've been awarded a couple of new contracts
that we might have not even looked at before
because we had our solid base of business that was booming.
So again, this scrappiness, it's creativity
to cause us to look around, to uncover every rock,
to stay just aware of other things that might be available.
It has really happened during this pandemic.
-: Okay, great.
Any other questions from my colleagues,
Mr. Rechtschaffen.
-: I had a question, it could be for Mark
or could be for all of you actually,
I don't know how many of you heard the panel before,
where Tarrance was talking about the study
that Southern California Edison was starting to undertake
about new entrance to the markets,
new companies, new opportunities.
Mark, I was thinking of you,
'cause you described the services,
your firm provides to the utilities very broadly
ranging from analytics to AMI, to a whole host of services.
I'm wondering if any of the three of you are working
with utilities on that kind of study
or doing similar inquiries yourself
or how you evaluating the trends of new market entrance,
where the new opportunities are.
And does it make sense to try to do this kind of,
the kind of inquiry that Edison's doing,
does it make sense for them to bring in folks like you
to do the analysis?
-: Yeah, no, so I wouldn't say that I'm a part of study,
but I'm obviously very close to Southern California Edison.
Southern California Edison's is a company
that I actually grew up at
and I spent over 24 years working
and leading in that company here.
And so, very proud to have worked for that company.
And I'm very proud that they were able
to create a business owner in myself,
coming from that company.
And then I know Tarrance
and his team work very hard out there
with the various different business units
to look at creating fair opportunities out there
for the various different suppliers.
And so, I think that's the best thing
that I can be able to share is knowing that,
I know that we continue to receive calls for opportunities.
We are heavily involved in the vegetation space,
as well as over in the wildfire mitigation area
and providing support and services.
I have very key consultants that are really helping
to lead the charge
and working closely in the transmission distribution space
and supporting that area.
But, I think that's what I wanna be able
to share on that subject.
-: Did the others have any ideas about how to get a handle
on new emerging entrance, new opportunities,
how we find those, how you identify them for the utilities?
-: Okay, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: A question, yes, thank you.
So the preface to my question,
I think back on what worked for me (chuckles)
in garnering opportunities, competing for opportunities
and the career path to where I am.
I know that, back in the day,
any of us know you work hard,
you meet deadlines, excellent products,
and then there's that person that vouches for you
in terms of relationships
and that person that vouches for you really helps
to open that first door or open doors.
And so for the panelists,
when you think back on who was it that, first,
opened that door, you don't have to name names,
but that vouched for you
and Mark I noticed that on your website,
one of your clients is SRP.
And, when I was at SMUD,
we were constantly competing with SRP
for that number one, customer satisfaction votes
from J.D. Power.
It was kind of going back and forth, back and forth.
And it was all like, "Oh, well, what they do.
"that was so, "that made a difference for them
"that J.D. Power, survey garner them number one, the West,
"and number one in the country oftentimes
"for customer satisfaction."
And that hunger, that competition is important.
But if you can think back on,
who or who vouched for you that first time
that got your foot in the door?
-: Yeah, no, absolutely.
And without naming the client,
and I can share a story on that.
That's actually in truth,
the launch of Bridgewater a little more than six years ago.
And I remember when I was planning
and getting ready to launch Bridgewater.
And I like to think that I have a tremendous amount
of relationships out there in the utility space
because I grew up in a utility.
And I've always been a person there
that pride themselves on relationships,
but this was the new chapter in my life
and a new journey, right?
And, so people remember Mark Montgomery
as this likable nice person relationship person,
but it wasn't a,
no one was thinking Martin Montgomery, the CEO of a company.
And so when I launched into this venture
of building Bridgewater,
I didn't count on one person in my network
that knew me to open up a door of opportunity for us,
because I felt like if I have relied on that
and someone turned me down,
I could have been discouraged
and there wouldn't be a Bridgewater today.
So I went in there with the thought,
I'm not counting on anyone in our relationship.
And I remember meeting a client at a conference
and I would just sharing with them about who we are
and our capabilities
and some of the work that we do.
And some of my history and working in the utility.
And then he asked for further conversation with me
to really talk about some work
and supporting his organization.
And I shared with them some of our experience around AMI
and around the Meters
and the conversation went very well.
And he gave me a pilot project to come in
and help them think through
the next generation strategy for Meters.
And we went in
and we delivered on that project at a very high level.
And from there, he started looking at giving us more work
and really out there campaigning for us
throughout his organization,
to look at giving us a chance to doing more work.
And then it just started to spread.
And then after that, some folks in my network
and relationships started to find out about us
and 'cause I had never promoted Bridgewater.
And then they started calling us in to come in
and compete for different opportunities.
And then we just started to grow.
I mean, we started growing so fast,
early on for opportunities,
I received phone calls from supplying management saying,
we're growing too fast and we need to slow down
and we need to make sure that we're delivering
on more of the deliverable
before they look at giving us more contract.
And I said, "Listen, it's not me driving it.
"That's the clients that are calling
"and requesting our services.
"So I'll try my best to slow it down."
But that was it.
And we had an ambassador out there
that was really supporting
and endorsing Bridgewater
and we made sure that we didn't let him down.
And we made sure that no matter what,
like we do with every client,
you're the most important client.
(Mark chuckles)
-: So that importance of cold calling as well,
but also having your elevator speech at the ready,
no matter where you are,
you're ready to talk about what you do is also key.
So Jan and Kirby, how about you?
-: Yeah, I feel like I,
we've been very fortunate to have many of those individuals
that have gone,
we've met at a conference or we've met wherever
and then they go back to their organization
and they kind of lay their name on the line,
behind Hal Hay's Construction, which is to me,
it's so admirable, I mean,
a lot of these companies that we work for,
a lot of these companies that are governed by the CPUC
are very large companies, very large organizations,
thousands of people.
And a lot of times individuals that could be very risky,
in a large, in a very large structured organization
to come in and say,
"Hey, we need to give this contractor.
"We need to give this consultant
"or we need to give this
"little unproven startup company a chance."
And yet, I mean, I can,
there's over a dozen examples where we've been fortunate
to have that advocate for us
and for us, that's everything.
Previously what Mark said,
I think that's a great point.
You have that advocate for you.
You have that person that goes in
and opens the door for you.
And then you know you can't let them down, right?
And so internally, the accountability,
the bar just raises,
you're gonna do extra on that one.
Number one, 'cause there's potential
for a long lasting relationship.
And then number two, this person,
it took a lot for them to lay their name on the line for you
and you're not gonna let them down.
Another I'm big on quotes.
And another quote I heard at a diversity conference
a couple of years ago that comes to mind
when we talk about all this stuff is,
"For all of us to be, to not be gatekeepers,
"but rather be door openers, right?"
And I just, I, again, there's countless folks that are,
that have contributed to our success over the last 10 years,
working for the different CPUC company.
-: Jan?
-: Prior to founding Superbtech,
I worked for a major staffing company.
And what I was able to do was to parlay former relationships
when I started Superbtech.
So I was able to capitalize and touch base
and network with people
that I had brought to my major corporation.
And we were able to piggyback on those relationships
and get some doors open for us.
So it was just ongoing, staying in touch
and maintaining those relationships.
Another really important point is that,
like Kirby and Mark said,
we just have advocates all over the place
and you don't know how happy
and thrilled that makes me.
We have people that have worked
for our company as contractors.
And now they're working in management roles with our clients
in utilities and public agencies and other places.
And so they are our biggest advocates.
Can you imagine, they were Superbtech employees
and now they're in a leadership role within an organization?
You can not imagine what that means to us
and the power and the weight that brings.
-: All right, well, we are just about out of time,
so I will turn it back to President Batjer
and thank you so much for all of our panelists
that was a really interesting discussion
with some good suggestions.
And a reminder to pick up the phone
and reach out to people you haven't talked to in a while
and maintain those relationships in a way
that's so much more challenging right now.
So we gotta put in that extra effort.
So thank you again, and President Batjer?
-: Thank you, Commissioner Randolph.
Thank you for an excellent panel
and Mark, Kirby, Jan, thank you very much.
That was very interesting
and educational and formative.
So thank you.
And we will be taking another short break.
Commissioner Randolph's got us a little bit back on track.
I would just like to note that I will have to be departing
before, during the next panel.
So I want to thank everybody who is on the line now,
before I have to depart for a meeting
that I can't miss that happens at 12 noon today.
So with that, we will take a 10-minute break
and it's, let's just call it 11:15
and we'll be back at 11:25 sharp.
Thank you.
Operator: The feed for--
-: To move on to our next panel,
which is the "Reorganizations, Acquisitions & New Entrants:
"Supplier Diversity Strategies."
and Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
you're going to moderate this panel.
So I'll let you begin your introductions.
-: Thank you very much, President Batjer.
Good morning everyone.
Good morning panelists, thanks for joining.
We gonna start about 10 minutes late,
but we'll continue for the full 45 minutes allocated
to this panel.
As we've discussed already,
this has been a year of great change and challenge,
it's certainly impacted some of the key organizations
who participate in the Utility Supplier Diversity program.
We've seen a bankruptcy
and reorganization from PG&E.
We've seen a merger with T-Mobile
and we now have new entities participating
or preparing to participate in the program
as a result of legislation
in order to include our Community Choice Aggregators.
Today, we'll hear from representatives
from those three organizations.
First we'll hear from Michael Lewis,
who is the Chief Executive Officer and President at PG&E.
And thank you very much, Michael for joining us.
I know you've just emerged from a very stressful period
of public safety, power shutoffs,
which just thankfully concluded early this morning.
Marie Sylla-Dixon, who's Vice President of Policy
and External Affairs for T-Mobile
and Beth Vaughan, who is the Executive Director
of the California Community Choice Association,
which represents the Community Choice Aggregators
throughout the State.
Now at the 24 members, she told us right before we started.
So what I'd like to do is start with PG&E
and I'll go to T-Mobile and Beth.
And what I'd like to do is ask each of you
a couple of specific questions
and then open it up to my fellow panelists
to make sure they have an opportunity
to talk to each of you
before we even go up to general questions if we have time.
So first, Michael first,
I wanna congratulate PG&E for its achievement
for last year of 41.5% diverse spending,
which is quite an excellent figure.
I wanna talk about the impacts of the bankruptcy
and your reorganization, first,
and then touch on a couple of other things
that came up earlier that are,
all the Utilities that dealing with.
One of the requirements, as part of the PG&E bankruptcy
that the PUC imposed was for PG&E to set up regional units
as part of your reorganization
and have much more of a regional focus.
How do you think that will impact your diverse supply,
your diversity supplier program?
-: Commissioner, thank you for the question.
And thank you for allowing me to sit
with this distinguished panel.
It is a gift to be able to talk
about this very important topic
of how we integrate our diverse suppliers
into our operations, both currently
and into the future.
I will say that I've been here for two years,
a little over two years,
and just as we enter into bankruptcy.
And I would say that we have witnessed our organization,
I guess, meet the expectations of the Commission
in terms of the planned re-organization
and our diverse suppliers has been with us
every step of the way.
I wanna make sure we are moving to the regionalization,
I wanna speak about what they've done so far.
Every time we get expanded into a new area of operations,
they've been with us in that expansion.
It had been driven primarily by these new areas.
We didn't really have all the expertise
and they've brought those expertise to the table.
And the previous panel,
I heard words like talented, scrappy, creative, innovative,
all those words you will apply to how we've been able
to navigate these last two years.
I'm not surprised by this
because I've been here only two years,
but we've had 40 years of work,
diverse suppliers that they work within operations at PG&E
and over the last 10 years,
our diverse suppliers spend rate has increased by 200%.
You mentioned 41% this past year
in terms of their spend to the overall spend.
That's, we've done that eight years in a row.
Of at least 40%.
So we have a real rich history, if you will,
a good foundation to launch into,
as we begin to expand it to regionalization
and how we come out of the reorganization.
And that's since the reorganization,
regionalizations of means of being able
to get closer to our customers,
to be able to have more of a pulse
on the needs of those communities,
then also incorporate the diverse suppliers
within those areas
and have a better ownership model
as we engage in these areas of opportunity
to improve our service.
And let me take a step back and talk about really,
as you think about the plan of reorganization,
one of the major tenants is really
about the highest standards of safety.
Okay, so in terms of safety,
and we just discussed it here,
wildfire safety is front
and center on everything that we do.
And so in that regard, we've incorporated
and ensured that our diverse suppliers
are part of that solution to address
the needs of our communities that we serve.
I think about our System Heartening program,
which is about really removing overhead conductors
or having them covered without,
so they can understand the impact of a branch
or even a move with them all together
and going to a micro-grid.
Our diverse suppliers have been a part of that activity.
Even beyond that, we move into inspections of ISS.
We use different techniques like drones
and more risk analysis.
Our diverse suppliers have been a part of that as well,
And even in our base business like vegetation management,
which we've done for many years,
our diverse suppliers, if you will,
represent 44% vegetation management span, year over year.
So we have, again, this base is real fundamental,
fantastic baseline that we're from.
And I'd like to just highlight one example
of how this has worked for us.
And I'll highlight two of our diverse suppliers.
CES Utilities is an African-American firm
that provides drones inspection data for PG&E's
electric transmission towers and substations.
They are planning to expand
from five to 10 teams of (mumbles)
and operate per team by the end of the year,
to make sure they can meet the growth
of our effort to again, make our systems safer.
It doesn't stop there though.
Tribal Resources is a LGBT firm that used
that same drone data to conduct risk assessments
about PG&E transmission structures,
which is really a part of the way
that we're classifying prototype
and drone data per PG&E infrastructures
to help access repair needs.
So, to answer your question,
we're not, we're formulating our regionalization plans,
we have this ongoing effort to advance our efforts
around public safety and at the same time,
continue to leverage the ongoing relationships we have
with our diverse suppliers,
and our base businesses as well.
And those two, I think, work hand in hand
and will apply as we get closer
to implementing a regional organization.
-: Thank you.
I don't know if you were here earlier,
but there was quite a bit of discussion about the difficulty
that some of the suppliers are facing getting insurance,
especially in wildfire mitigation
and other related activities.
Do you have any ideas about how to make it easier
for your suppliers,
especially diverse suppliers to get insurance?
-: That was a great question.
And so I don't have a direct knowledge
of how to facilitate easier process.
I do know that we have a team
that's working on this topic as we speak to facilitate,
how do we address the insurance needs,
especially at the risk continues to grow,
to ensure that they can still be involved.
And I would just draw back to the priority statement
which is we still have this healthy relationship
within these environments that we talking about now
to enable them to be with us in the future,
even with the additional risk
and the insurance requirements that you just discussed.
But that's something we can look back into.
-: Thank you I wanna turn,
see if my other Commissioners have questions
before we turn to T-Mobile.
-: Yes.
-: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Hi, Michael.
Nice to see you.
And do you have, is it last year,
we were in the Silicon Valley
and the, when you drilled down into the metrics,
there hadn't been a lot of GO 156
contracting in the Silicon Valley.
Do you have any thing new to report for us
as far as activities there
or maybe that can be something forthcoming,
especially with the regional efforts
that are now being required
and being made by PG&E.
-: Yeah, thank you for the question.
So particularly you're speaking about diverse firms
within Silicon Valley--
-: I'm sorry the San Joaquin.
San Joaquin Valley, yeah.
-: Okay, thank you.
I don't have any specific information
to provide you regarding that particular area.
I would tell you that we do have engaged
with on going with suppliers within the city itself
of San Francisco,
but now I can't speak about a particular firm
that I did (mumbles) or in that particular regional area.
-: Okay, and I'm thinking about areas like, Stockton, Fresno,
and all the little towns in between, Hanford and so forth.
There's just a whole, there's a whole big, big area
in the San Joaquin Valley.
So I'd be interested in hearing maybe
as a followup at a future time,
how PG&E is doing with the contracting
with contractors who are headquartered
in the San Joaquin Valley, right?
Thank you, Michael.
-: Thank you for the question.
We'll follow up with you.
-: Other, do other Commissioners have questions.
I have one additional question that deals
with diversity in procurement in the fuel
and power procurement sector.
Edison was the only utility to increase
to report an increase in diverse fuel spend.
That's a particular challenge,
I think, for a company like PG&E
which reported no procurement spending in 2019
and actually has its power procurement's been declining.
Can you, do you have any thoughts about,
or address the lack of diversity in this area?
-: I don't have a specific information to provide to you,
but in terms of how to cultivate,
the (mumbles) capability
or enable diverse suppliers to compete in that area
is (mumbles) from the previous panel.
It's more about an outreach that we need to pursue here
in terms of how do we contact in a more assertive way
to potential vendors that can supply this need
and then to have them meet with us
and start having those conversations on
how to get them engage
in future recruitment contract opportunities.
So that is something that we can take a look at it
and based on what you stated,
we can address that trend in that area.
-: And then I heard you say,
I'm sorry, Commissioner Guzman Aceves,
no, no, go ahead.
-: Okay, well, this is a little bit out of topic.
I was just going to actually recognize that PG&E's new Board
and of course this reorganization that took place,
there was great leadership from the Governor
and legislature and ourselves on this new makeup,
but there are four Black Board members,
which I wanna just recognize as being outstanding
and something that I just would challenge the rest of your,
the rest of the IOUs,
the rest of the telecommunication sector, as to the LSCs.
I know, and I would just ask Marie
and Beth to maybe talk about what their Boards look like
and where they could go.
I would assume Mr. Lewis,
that you're asked by your board to report
on these numbers as well,
and that even some of their own relationships,
as we heard from the last panel
can serve as areas of opportunity.
But I just kind of want to reiterate the discussion
from last year's En Banc,
where leadership from the top retaining these priorities.
And even if you don't yet have the great diversity frankly,
that PG&E currently has,
you can potentially speak to that when you have a chance.
Thank you.
(phone rings)
-: Well, we'll take that as the first question to ask
as we move forward.
So I think a way to move forward this time,
we'll leave time at the end,
if there are other questions for any,
from the Commissioners for any of the panelists,
but let's turn to Marie now, again,
Vice President of Policy
and External Affairs for T-Mobile.
Do you want to start with that,
answering Commissioner Guzman Aceve question
about diversity on your Board.
Now, 'cause T-Mobile has now merged with Sprint
and we're gonna be talking about that.
So it's the new T-Mobile,
but we'll call it T-Mobile for purposes of this discussion.
So could you start with addressing that particular question?
-: I would love to start with that question.
First of all, I just wanna thank you all
for having this En Banc hearing right now,
especially in light of what is going on.
I think it's critical right now
that we support our diversity-owned businesses.
As you know, this is a challenging time.
I also wanna acknowledge what's going on in California,
and I just wish everyone's safe and well.
I'm actually in Washington, D.C.,
but I have family out there that has been impacted.
So just wanna make sure everyone is safe.
So Commissioner to the point about the Board,
Commissioner Guzman Aceves,
thank you for raising that question.
So we actually currently on our Board,
we know we have a lot of work to do.
We have three diverse members of our board out of 12.
We have one African American, one Latino, one Asian,
but we wanna get that both Board numbers,
even up higher than that.
So what we have done with the new T-Mobile,
and I'm proud to say this,
we entered into a diversity MoU,
and we actually entered into a diversity MoU
with California, with the National Diversity Coalition.
And in that MOU, we made 54 commitments
and the first one was dealing with corporate governance.
So we've made a commitment by 2023 to at least have, again,
representatives, an African American, Latino, and Asian
and native Americans
and our goal to increase those numbers,
to also get more women on our Board of Directors.
We know that we want our board to look like the customers
that we serve, so thank you for raising that question.
-: Can I, let me follow up on one thing
that also is in the MoU,
there's a commitment to increase diversity in the workforce
and that's something that's also come up
at our previous En Bancs.
I'm interested to know what progress you've made in that,
or what steps T-Mobile is taking to implement
that commitment of just about diversity in the workforce.
-: So I will tell you we're, our,
the makeup of the new company now with
both the Legacy Sprint and the Legacy T-Mobile,
we're actually 54% diverse in terms of workforce,
but in our diversity MoU,
we actually have 12 commitments when it comes to,
work force talent recruitment pipeline.
And so for us, we found that the issue,
it's not just having a diverse workforce,
but it's making sure that we're having diversity
at the upper levels.
So that's where we're putting forth a lot of efforts
to increase diversity at those upper levels
and there's a big focus now, not just on women,
but also on people of color.
And so in the MoU,
well part of the thing that we're doing within MoUs,
we've actually gone
and established a council, we have two councils.
We have our Council for California specifically,
and we have the Council also with the National level.
Representatives on the California Council,
are geographically diverse, ethnically diverse.
We have veterans, LGBTQ,
and we wanted to make sure,
as we're putting this, our diversity plan
and we're looking at ways that we can increase our numbers
at the upper level,
that we're getting this expertise
from leaders in the community
and having a fresh set of eyes coming in
to help advise our, with our DNI plan.
-: Let's talk about diversity spending.
Last year, T-Mobile reported about 23% diverse spending,
considering all categories.
Sprint was at 31.7%.
One of the concerns in the merger
and just more generally is,
can T-Mobile maintain a higher level of diverse spending.
What will happen with the Sprint Legacy infrastructure
and spending?
Could you talk about the impact the merger is likely to have
on these diverse spending levels?
-: So I will tell you one of the things that we've done is,
we want to make sure that we are taking the expertise
from the Legacy Sprint side,
because they did have numbers
and they do have the expertise.
So we've kept the Legacy Supplier Diversity team
from Legacy Sprint is now with the Legacy T-Mobile.
So, first of all, we have a bigger team
and we're also leveraging that expertise
for the new company.
Then if you put in a layer of that,
we also on the supplier diversity side,
is probably one of the most important components
of this 54 commitments of the MoU.
We have about 17 areas of opportunities for procurement
and entrepreneurship in the supplier diversity MoU.
So we've made commitments to increase that spend,
but we just don't wanna increase it.
I mean, we want to go above and beyond.
So we have commitments at a three-year level,
a five-year level,
and we wanna make sure that, again, we're going above
and beyond what the two companies together
now with the new company
and that we're also able to take the best practices
from the Legacy side of Sprint.
And also the recommendations coming from leaders
who are sitting on the Council.
We have a number of leaders from California
that we are working with
and folks in the community to help us grow
the supplier diversity numbers.
So I think, with the new company,
I think we're gonna go well above and beyond.
And I will tell you Commissioner,
there is a commitment at the top.
One of the things that we've made it clear
and leadership has made it clear
and as a company, it's not just at the,
at one level of supplier diversity
that we're looking at this,
we're saying across the company,
we want all the partners, all organizations,
even our employees, to look at opportunities
and to make sure that when you're doing your work,
that you're doing this with a supplier,
with a diversity, equity and inclusion lens.
And so it's become that on all of the employees
and not just DNI office
or supplier diversity offices,
but also making sure that we are finding opportunities
to work with companies in the communities that we serve
so that they are reflective of the customers that we serve.
So I will tell you that there's a big opportunity,
and I'll just give you a couple of the things
that we're working on right now.
We're also working on,
increasing our number with diverse-owned spend
with banking institutions.
We actually have already done that,
where we have set up relationships
with six diverse banking institutions, also looking
and increasing our numbers on supplier diversity
when it comes to marketing areas like that,
we also have mandated
or are working on mandating with all of our spend
across the board that when we're working
with two of our biggest contractors,
Nokia and Ericsson, that they themselves are working
with diversity owned suppliers as well.
So we know the importance of when we're working,
with these bigger companies that we're doing business with,
to also mandate that they themselves are adhering
to the same best practices as others
and making sure that they have,
are doing contracting with diverse suppliers as well,
so that there is a ecosystem of working
with these suppliers in the community.
-: And what about legal institutions?
I know that T-Mobile has had a high percentage of spend
relative to others,
diverse spending on legal institutions.
I don't know about Sprint,
but how about committing to,
what are you doing to ensure that that continues?
-: So I am actually really proud that to say this,
we're I'm actually embedded in the Legal Department
and the Legal Department early on was,
has always been a huge advocate of making sure
that we work with diversity-owned suppliers.
We've worked with NAMWOLF,
we've worked with some of the Bar associations.
We also, in addition to making sure that we are working
with diversity-owned law firms for business
is also looking at the best practices of our law firms.
So every year, we actually send a questionnaire
to all of the law firms that we do business with,
so that we can see how they're doing there spending,
working with law firms,
but also internally, what their partners look like,
what their associates look like,
who are doing the work for our company.
And so we take all of that information
and actually on a yearly basis,
we recognize one of those law firms
and they actually come out to our headquarters.
This time we'll do it virtually.
We're gonna be doing that award
in the next couple of months,
but we really take a very closer look,
very serious look at,
the spend that they have because we do work with them.
And we do wanna see,
that there is diversity at those law firms
and with those associates
and partners that are actually working on these accounts,
in addition to making sure they're also working
with diverse owned law firms
and we ourselves had been trying
to increase those numbers as well.
Operator: The public comment line will be opening soon.
If you wish to speak during the public comment period,
press *1, unmute your phone
and clearly record your name
and location when prompted, thank you.
-: The MoU is actually, it's online,
it's public or I can send it to you,
but it is public.
And actually we just announced the establishment
of the National MoU members,
and that came out as of last week.
So I'm really proud about that announcement.
And then the California, we just established that as well.
And I gotta tell you,
we have just, I can't tell you how thrilled I am
with the folks that we have on that Council.
Just the knowledge, the thought leadership, the expertise,
we are so excited to work with them.
Our employees are super excited.
I gotta tell you, we did this MOU,
we signed the MoU back October
and the California one back in January of 2019.
And so it wasn't something that the company was reacting to.
And I have to tell you,
the employees with the new company are super excited.
Everybody has been rolling up their sleeves
to get started on the work.
And it's just something that
we're very, very passionate about.
We know that we have a lot of work to do,
but we know that we've got people behind us
who are gonna hold us accountable.
And we know that we have an expertise
and we have this Council that we can leverage.
And so we are going to utilize them.
And we're putting together that Diversity Strategic plan.
We have a Community Investment Plan
that we're going to be putting up as well.
And all of these milestones are coming up
and we're meeting with these members to make sure
that we can really, really leverage them.
Also on the supplier diversity side,
I can tell you this is their top, top priority.
Another priority is also the workforce talent recruitment,
but supplier diversity is a huge issue
for the Council members.
So we're really, we've been partnering with them.
They are working with our Supplier Diversity Department
to make sure that we're doing things
on the matchmaking side.
We're also working with organizations
that are not on the Council.
So we work a lot with the California Hispanic Chamber,
the California Black Chamber,
just recently the California Native American Chamber.
So we're doing quite a bit.
And even in light of COVID,
back in March, I was a participant at this.
We actually did, after the pandemic hit,
we did a town hall, which was more of a matchmaking session
where we had the head of our Supplier Diversity come in
to talk with businesses about how to do business with us.
And this was before the merger had closed.
And we went ahead and did this
and found this to be very, very effective
in doing this virtual town hall.
So we are doing more of these types of matchmaking sessions,
but we're really working with these organizations
in the communities to help us with those connection points
and finding new partners.
And so the venue that we're having today
in this En Banc hearing is extremely important
because I know in the past,
because of what has taken place,
it has helped us with these relationships
that we've been able to foster in the years
and really leverage.
So I just want to thank you all for that,
because it's just extremely helpful for us
when we're trying to build these relationships
and find new relationships to get more business with.
-: Well, hopefully next year we'll.
-: Thank you.
-: We'll hopefully next year,
we'll be building those relationships in-person,
President Batjer.
-: I really hope so.
Yes, I really hope so.
-: Thank you so much, Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
and thank you Marie.
Your presentation and your description gives me great hope
and like Commissioner Randolphs
and Commissioner Rechtschaffen just said that,
I hope in a year we can come back
and all of the seedlings you have planted with your MoU
and your Community Investment Plan, et cetera,
have grown into a strong Oaks.
(Batjer chuckles)
So congratulations.
And I think your numbers are interesting.
I just have one quick question
before I have to depart the panel.
-: Absolutely. -: You said Marie
that you're embedded in the legal division.
Does that give you more?
-: Definitely more .
-: Okay, before where was your activities?
Where were they located?
-: I'm in Government Affairs.
-: Okay.
-: We are part of the Legal Department,
but I think it's, I'm a lawyer,
but it's a great department just because I work
with the company holistically across all departments.
And so, because of that role and that function,
I have a view into a lot of what the company's doing.
I work very, very closely with the head of our DNI.
And so I am on the front lines
and I was one of the,
have been one of the key people in establishing the Council.
I've worked very, very closely
with the head of our Supplier Diversity,
and I work very closely with the groups in the organization.
And so it has helped me
to help the company strengthen those relationships,
leverage those relationships and that expertise,
because they are closer to the community.
We want to rely on these leaders
who are close to the ground to help us with our plan.
And we're even looking for other folks
who may not be a part of the council
so that we can leverage,
take more of the best practices from the Legacy Sprint side,
also best practices from other companies.
So these types of En Banc hearing, this is helpful,
so that we can learn from others
and really take this to the next level.
But I am extremely, like I said,
excited about the establishment of the council
and what we're going to be doing.
And I think that in the next year or two,
you're going to be seeing some significant changes.
Again, we know it's not gonna be easy,
but we know we're committed to doing this,
and we're very passionate about it
and extremely excited with what
this new company is gonna do.
-: Thank you very much.
And for your fellow panelists,
thank you for being here today
and to the Commissioners, thank you.
I have to depart.
-: Thank you President Batjer.
-: Thank you.
-: Commissioner Shiroma, maybe a quick question
then we wanna move to Beth Vaughan.
But go ahead please Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Marie, is T-Mobile also working with the
California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce as well?
-: Yes, we are, I'm sorry, we are.
Absolutely, and we've been working with them for a while
and I mean, I could go through a list.
And when I was actually speaking to our head
of our Supplier Diversity,
one of the things that he has been telling me is again,
because of these hearings
and unfortunately would be better in-person.
It's helped us build new relationships.
And these are relationships
that we've been growing, cultivating,
and again, having a bigger team with the Legacy Sprint side,
they're bringing their relationships wealth
and their expertise.
And that is a huge help.
And it makes it easier for all the work
that we have ahead of us.
-: Thank you, I'm sorry, Marie.
I think we have to cut it off for now
because we want to keep to our schedule,
but Commissioner Shiroma,
I hope that answers your question.
-: Yes, thank you.
Thank you.
-: So we're gonna turn out to Beth Vaughan,
who as I said, is the Executive Director
of the California Community Choice Association,
Beth before we get into some of the substance,
can you answer Commissioner Guzman Aceves' question
about diversity on your association Board,
and then diversity in the workforce
and your member CCAs.
-: Sure and it's a great question.
So in terms of the Cal CCA board,
we have 17 directors as of this July,
eight of them are women, nine are men.
In terms of ethnicity,
I have not yet yet ask them to voluntarily self identify.
So I can do that and get back to you about that.
Within Cal CCA, our staff now has grown to nine in total,
and we have six women, three men.
And then it's a great question in terms of the CCAs
across the board, there are 24 of them now,
and the Boards are made up of the elected officials,
of the local communities.
And from what I can tell are quite diverse.
But again that's something that I think will be part
of the reporting out
in terms of what we are gonna be doing under SB-255.
So I'll hold off there
'cause I could go on about the workforce
and other things, but I do wanna make good points.
-: We can continue the discussion offline
about if you can get more information
about the racial composition of the Board
and also the racial composition of the workforce
among the individual CCA members.
We'd be very interested in that.
The big thing that's happened of course,
is we now have legislation that extends the requirements
of our GO 156 to include Community Choice Aggregators
and their obligation begin March 1st of next year.
I wanted to ask you a couple of questions
about the transition
and one is, are there special obstacles
that the CCAS have in meeting this obligation
and are there special opportunities they have
that larger utilities may have?
So what are the, are there special obstacles
and are there special opportunities?
-: Okay, great.
Well, thank you for that Commissioner Rechtschaffen
and thank you Commissioners for the invitation
to participate in this important discussion.
Supplier diversity promotes economic development
in diverse communities,
and by increasing competition,
diversity in supply chain generates a better return
on investment for companies that meaningfully engage in it.
And from our perspective that,
at its heart to part of it about access, inclusion,
and representation.
So Cal CCA supported Senator Bradford's legislation,
Senate Bill 255,
which extends aspects of General Order 156
to Community Choice Aggregators,
which I'm going to refer to the CCAs.
Specifically the legislation requires CCAs
to annually submit a detailed
and verifiable plan to Public Utilities Commission
for increase in procurements for small, local
and diverse business enterprises in all categories,
and to annually report out on the results that plan.
As you know, Community Choice Aggregators
are local government agencies,
and therefore must comply with Proposition 209,
which prohibits public employment
and contracting to the extent of program
involves preferential treatment.
Specifically CCAs cannot award contracts based on race, sex,
color, ethnicity or national origin.
And this has created a few challenges for CCAs
because they consider how to comply with SB-255.
But at the same time,
they are ramping up their programs
around these restrictions.
Most CCAs are in the initial phases of program design,
specifically drafting strategies
to gather baseline information,
conduct outreach, collect data,
and incorporate supplier diversity
into their institutional practices.
But for others like MCE,
it is about refining their current practices.
So for example, this year MCE's annual,
"Certify and Amplify Workshop with (mumbles),"
was held virtually in June because of COVID.
This workshop introduces local businesses to the benefits
and opportunities available
through the CPUC Supplier Diversity Program,
explains how to become GO 156 certified,
and how to monitor
and participate in MCE solicitation.
The virtual format enabled MCE to engage Statewide,
instead of just within the four Counties that it serves.
Working through Local Chambers of Commerce.
And with other CCAs through our Cal CCA Equity Committee,
the outreach was impressive.
Over a hundred participants
from all over the State attended.
And the workshop has been viewed multiple times on YouTube.
Also MCE in 2018 developed
a supplier diversity questionnaire
that it distributes to contractors requesting
that they voluntarily disclose
their GO 156 certification status
as well as efforts to work with disabled veterans
and LGBT business enterprises
for power purchase agreements, feed-in tariff,
customer program, contracting
and any other types of procurement.
This is a tool that other CCAs are considering adopting
to track supplier diversity
within their own CCA procurement practices.
So CCAs will first report under SB-255 in March, 2021.
And I suspect the results may be variable
as CCAs struggled to develop meaningful programs
and address the tensions between SB-255 and Proposition 209.
However, the core principles is supplier diversity,
as I mentioned, access inclusion
and representation are foundational to environmental justice
and community choice energy.
So that's why the Board of Cal CCA voted
to support Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 5,
the Honorable Shirley Weber's enabling legislation
that was voted out of the legislature this Summer
and resulted in Proposition 16,
which is on the ballot for November 3rd.
Prop. 16 would repeal Proposition 209,
which reversed decades of State
and local policies and programs aimed
at improving social equity in California,
particularly in the areas of public contracting,
public employment and public education.
Cal CCA was one of the few energy organizations
to support ACA-5.
And I wanna explain why we felt it was important.
Repealing Prop. 209 allows CCAs without restrictions
to make investments in their communities
through targeted local programs,
to proactively recruit underrepresented communities
for employment,
to improve diversity of local businesses
through the procurement of goods and services,
and to inclusion communities of color.
And as an added bonus it will make it a lot easier
to implement SB-255
and achieve the objectives of General Order 156.
I need to make it clear
that I'm not lobbying for Proposition 16.
I'm not allowed to,
but merely stating the facts as we understand them.
So in summary, yes, CCA has faced some challenges
in implementing meaningful supplier diversity programs.
However, CCAs are committed to the core principles
of supplier and workforce diversity
and look forward to working with the Commissioners
and stakeholders to transform challenges into opportunity.
So I think Commissioner Rechtschaffen
that answers part of your question.
-: I heard the challenge, I did hear,
I heard the biggest challenge is Prop. 209.
I heard, I didn't hear what opportunities you,
CCAs have because of a different business model,
different relationship,.
-: Right.
-: What advantages do they have compared
to traditional utilities that you can identify?
-: So I think it's going to be a challenge.
I look, every year we look hard at the IOUs Report
and in particular around procurement,
because that is the core of what CCAs do.
However, CCAs being close to their communities
and in their communities,
they already are working what they can do
and what they have been doing is providing grants
to the NGOs that work in their communities
to achieve workforce and diversity outcomes.
But I think what I've been thinking a lot about
and Commissioner Rechtschaffen you participated,
I think in January of 2018
at our Supplier Diversity Symposium Enrichment,
and look at the results of MCE's
Certify and Amplify Virtual Gathering.
What I'm thinking of is we have that ability
through our 24 CCAs now to tap those local businesses,
not just through the Chamber of Commerce,
I thought Marie and others today have made
some really good points about the other Chambers
that we could be working with to bring them on board
and first to educate them about what CCAS do
and the opportunities with CCAs,
and create this greater network
to get more certified under GO 156
and then to be able to actually contract,
have them participate more fully in this solicitations.
I think frankly some folks find it hard to figure out
how to engage with CCAs
that are part of the GO 156 certification.
And I think that we can make that a lot easier for them
as I observed in the MCE workshop.
-: Through other workshops like that,
or how else will you make it easier
for them to engage with CCAs?
-: Well, I think initially to kind of kick us off the ground,
I think that Cal CCA needs to co-host
with some of these other CCAs,
use MCE's model as the foundation,
but then CCAs within their own areas
and their own territories have been,
already been doing a lot.
They already have the community engagement.
I just don't think that they've matched it
with the procurement portion of what they do.
And part of that is because, quite honestly,
when you come down to contracting,
in terms of the evaluation rubric,
you cannot include supplier diversity
as one of those levers.
-: Well, I would just encourage you to do as many joint
or Statewide or regional wide networking
or meet and greet, whatever events you can
because one of the concerns we've heard repeatedly
from suppliers is,
as the number of counterparties proliferate,
they don't know who to deal with.
They don't know who the right people are in the team
that are doing procurement.
And as you've heard throughout this morning,
relationships are so critical to ensuring
a diverse stream of suppliers.
And if there are new entrance
and they're more spread out,
it's just harder to get a handle on those relationships.
-: Well, and that's a really good point that Cal CCA,
one of the things that we are have been trying to do,
and I think we're getting fairly successful at it,
is to coordinate all the CCAs.
So through our website, for instance,
we have a tab on there for jobs
and RFO opportunities
and from, and we update it every week.
And from there, you can click on any of the links
and go directly to each of the CCAs,
which also have their own webpages for solicitations.
But to your point,
I don't think that a lot of people know that, right?
So we need to be educating.
We need to be showing what tools that we've made available
and listening to people,
in terms of what their concerns are
and what we could do to help them.
So I would agree with you.
We need to do--
-: One other thing. -: We never do enough.
-: Fair enough, we can certainly all try.
One other quick point, question is,
and I wanna turn it over among Commissioners.
We've heard today about the low percentages of contracts
in the legal and financial services sector,
not from everybody,
but from a number of the utilities.
The CCAs, of course,
a lot of what they contract for is for energy.
They don't have large overheads, large staffs,
but I'm wondering maybe,
a comment as much as the question,
a suggestion to really focus on those areas as well,
to make sure they're not lost
because the percentage is generally in the legal
and financial services have not been as high
as we would like them to be.
-: That's--
-: I'm sorry, please comment.
And then we'll turn it over to other Commissioners,
but if you have any--
-: No, I was just gonna say that that's a very good point.
And when I think about partners of Cal CCA, yes,
we have the energy suppliers,
but we also have a lot of financial
and legal entities that have joined
and become partners of ours.
So there is an ability for us to do outreach.
Last year, we did a finance forum to talk
about CCAs procurement, credit worthiness, all of that.
We could easily make this a component of that,
in terms of educating around GO 156.
So I think there are a lot of opportunities
that we just have to have at the forefront of our minds
when we organize these sorts of events.
-: Thanks.
Other Commissioners.
Do you have questions for Beth?
(computer pings)
Commissioner Shiroma?
-: Okay, so Beth, I'm sorry.
Did you mention, SMUD program?
In so far as, I mentioned this before in other forums that,
when I was duly elected to the Board,
that was when Prop 209 was passed by the California voters.
And we'll see if it's gonna be a different path
once the election occurs in November
and we actually maintained our
Minority Women Owned Business program
because we had Federal funding.
Well, we were taking,
we were sued by the Pacific Legal Foundation and we lost.
So we had to dispense with our minority
and business on a program, like in it's place,
we put a very aggressive, small business program.
And through that small business program,
we developed very, very strong relationships
with all of the minority women-owned LGBTQ chambers
within Sacramento County
and a whole lot of other business entities
and did a lot outreach
And I think that is still continuing.
I am, I haven't been there for now a year and a half
or almost two years.
So my question is, is that a model,
again, things could change drastically in November,
but is that a model that could be used
in the Prop 209 environment?
It could be.
I mean, it was really an effort to provide
for that diversity of contracting as a government entity.
-: Thank you for that Commissioner Shiroma.
And I think we would be very interested.
I noticed, I believe SMUD was one
of the other energy agencies
that supported ACA 5, by the way.
But actually what I'd like to do is maybe ask you,
and maybe you could put me in touch with someone at SMUD
to participate in one of our committee meetings to,
we have both a Compliance Committee and Equity Committee.
We have a whole lot of committees at the Cal CCA,
but we could create a forum to learn about what's SMUD did
and to help educate our CCAs about that example.
I know we'd be absolutely fascinated.
So I'd love to take you up on that.
-: I'd be happy to make those connections.
And by the way, again, in the, in that story,
the former Executive Director
of our California Public Advocates side of the house,
Dana Appling was the General Counsel at SMUD at that time.
And she was our champion in our argument
about why Prop 209 did not apply
to our minority women business owned programs.
Now, as I say, we did lose that in the courts of appeal.
I have a distant forgotten, she was our champion
and also our champion is helping to form a sound legal basis
for our small business program, so.
Operator: As a reminder, if you wish to ask questions,,
ask if you wish to make a comment during the comment period,
press *1, please unmute your phone
and record your name clearly.
Again, *1.
-: Yeah, and you made the same outreach to Don a year ago,
and it's unfortunate that the Cal CCA hasn't followed up
on that offering from a year ago.
I will not belabor the point on Prop 209.
Just, I will just say, for me,
it's equivalent to saying that you have a merit-based system
and therefore inherently in that answer,
you're saying that people color
and all the other minority businesses
that we're talking about here today,
do not have the merit to compete.
And so, the argument is old,
it's for an old demographic of California in particular.
It doesn't match up to the availability of the contractors
that are on the call, that were on the panels today.
It's simply an insufficient argument.
And it's really sad that the public entities,
ourself included are lagging behind private industry
when it comes to diversity,
T-Mobile's workforce is 50% diverse.
It's not an issue,
there's no constitutional constraint here.
It is an intentional effort of time
and prioritization, I believe it starts from the Board.
And the lack of diversity on your Board
probably reflects the lack of intention.
One question that I have,
and I hope you do follow up on both the followup
that I'm offering, that Commissioner Shiromo made last year,
but also, well, you could do what T-Mobile did.
T-Mobile obviously,
that was part of our merger agreement as well.
And some of the national merger agreements.
So I won't say that it happened necessarily
voluntarily there,
but they have an MoU, the most at the national level,
but here in California, with the Diversity Council,
you could do the same.
It's about being intentional, bringing in those voices,
bringing in those relationships that we heard about today.
So if you could just do those two things,
finally follow up on Commissioner Shiromo's offerings
from last year.
And if you could consider an MoU in California
with the Diversity Council,
and I'm sure T-Mobile could share
all of their lessons learned on that.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
-: Beth, did you wanna say anything in response?
-: I agree with Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
I think those are two great points
and I'll take that on as my challenge to implement.
-: Okay, I think we're running out of time.
Is there, does anyone have any final questions
for any of the panelists?
If not, I wanna thank Michael, Marie
and Beth for your participation today,
for a very helpful panel Commission,
a President Batjer, necessarily had to leave.
So I'm going to turn this back to Commissioner Randolph,
who will take us through the public comment period.
-: All right, thank you to our panelists.
That was a good discussion.
I will, I am just pulling up my notes.
Okay, so it's time for public comment,
which we are always eager to hear at the PUC.
If you want to make public comment, call (800) 857-1917.
Access code 9899501,
we are going to be allowing three minutes per speaker.
The operator will call your name
when it is time for you to speak.
You will hear a bell sound when your time is up,
please be mindful of the other people waiting in the queue.
We wanna make sure everyone gets their turn
to share comments with the Commission.
So with that guidance in mind,
I welcome today's speakers
and I will turn it over to the operator to open the line
and call on our speakers.
-: Thank you.
Operator: Our first speaker, Jonathan Lovett,
National LGBT Chamber of Commerce.
Your line is open.
Jonathan: Thank you.
I'm actually deferring to Markita Thomas
with the LA LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Markita.
Maekita: Yes, hello.
My name is Markita Thomas,
I'm the Executive Director
of the Los Angeles LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce.
My pronouns are she/her/hers.
I want to first commend the Commission
for executing a successful
and thought provoking virtual En Banc,
and also acknowledge the tremendous loss
of former Assembly Member, Gwen Moore.
She was an extraordinary advocate, a powerful leader,
and the impact of her work will reverberate for generations.
On more than one occasion today,
the utility side of the inability to hit the goals
to market availability.
And I wanted to remind each utility,
as well as any prime suppliers
and minority CBOs to use both the National LGBT Chamber,
as well as local LGBTQ Chambers to connect
with certified LGBT suppliers.
As business advocacy organizations,
we cultivate our members on how to be contract ready.
So please reach out to us to develop a relationship,
we're here to help, the suppliers are definitely out there.
LGBT-BEs have grown in the clearinghouse
by 650% in the past five years and growing every day.
And I just wanna acknowledge our utility partners
at the Los Angeles LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce,
Southern California Edison, SoCalGas, T-Mobile,
Charter Communication, Southwest Gas,
California American Water, and Comcast.
And I just wanna say that we hope to partner
with more Utilities at the LAGLCC.
Please reach out to us.
We'd love to be a resource, thank you.
-: Thank you, operator next caller, please.
Operator next caller, please.
-: Commissioner. Operator: Thank you.
Our next caller is Robert Robertson, Client Confidant,
sir, your line is open.
Robert: Thank you.
Hello Commissioners.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
I'm the founder and CEO of Client Confidant,
a Nationally-certified disability-owned business enterprise.
We serve the rate payers of the great State of California
by contracting with California-based Utilities,
to reduce their risk
through our third party supplier performance review process.
We also contract with some of the
more proactive prime suppliers in the State of Virginia
like (mumbles) Bargas Environmental Consulting
to help them meet their utility clients,
dynamic expectations.
I love the panel earlier,
they talked about the importance of relationships.
That's what we specialize in.
However, as it currently stands with General Order 156,
my fellow business owners with disabilities
who are not service disabled have been excluded
from participation as they are not considered
diverse business enterprises within the State of California.
We, business owners with disabilities can better,
be better at adapting to business challenges
because we've been navigating challenges our entire lives.
We stand out as suppliers
and that's why California Utilities and corporations
are looking to disability-owned business enterprise
to meet their needs.
Now, we're certain it was an oversight
and not intentional that
disability owned business enterprises were not originally
included in General Order 56.
We're just simply asking you to please remember us.
Remember us by modifying General Order 156
to add disability-owned business enterprises.
I thank you for this opportunity
to speak on behalf of business owners with disabilities.
And I wanted to let you know
that there are two other individuals in the public comment
to you who will also be advocating to change the language
in General Order 156 to include
disability owned business enterprises,
these include, Philip DeVliegher.
Who's the VP of Supplier Diversity at Disability:IN,
that's the nation's leading third-party certifying agency
for disability owned
and service disabled-owned business enterprises.
As well as Zaylore Stout.
He's the founder of a minority LGBT
and disability-owned business enterprise
who will also be advocating for the
implementation of a goal relating
to LGBT business enterprises.
Thank you for your time
and I'll yield my time back.
-: Thank you, operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Thank you, Zaylore Stout,
with Zaylore Stout & Associates.
Your line is open, sir.
-: Mr. Stout, are you there?
Zaylore: Yep, can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can hear you now.
Zaylore: Oh, perfect.
Great, all right.
Good afternoon, Commissioners.
My name is Zaylore Stout.
I'm the founder of Zaylore Stout & Associates,
a minority, disability
and LGBT-certified employment law firm
with locations in California, as well as Minnesota.
I'm also the author of an LGBT history book, title,
"Our Gay History in 50 States"
which highlight significant people, places
and queer facts on a State by State basis.
So first I wanna make sure that I think the CPUC
for including LGBT business enterprises
and the supplier diversity program starting in 2015,
this allowed for me to connect with Tarrance
and Joycelyn over at Southern California Edison,
who as a company is sponsoring my book
for the State of California,
meaning they're purchasing 300 books
that are gonna be donated to LGBT nonprofits,
working with queer youth throughout the State.
And this is gonna have a significantly powerful impact
on these young people's lives.
But today my request is to,
for the Commission to expand and go further
and establish actual goals for LGBT business enterprises.
As you've seen in disparity across the country
having specifically articulated goals would help ensure
that marginalized groups stay at the front of mind
when it comes to procurement processes
and it's time for the LGBT community
to establish equal footing
with other minority-owned businesses
to create a more inclusive
and equitable system and workspace.
And as a disability owned service,
as a disability-owned business enterprise as well,
I request that the Commission as they work
on expanding access to include veteran-owned businesses
in regards to the procurement process.
So don't forget disabled-owned businesses
that aren't veterans as well.
The population of disabled Americans continues
to increase year after year,
and this is a prime opportunity
to even the playing field for others.
Thanks so much.
-: Thank you for your comment,
operator next caller, please.
-: Thank you, Julian Canetti
with California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.
Your line is open, sir.
Julian: Well, thank you.
And thank you, Commissioner Randolph
and Commissioners for this opportunity to address you.
Julian Canetti, California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.
I, first of all,
I wanna thank the Commission for their continued support
of diversity and supplier diversity
and diversity overall with California's
investor-owned Utilities.
I've, I think I was there at the first En Banc.
And so I'm proud to continue to be able to participate,
our organization to be able to participate
in these En Banc meetings.
One thing I wanted to say is that we have been successful
in hitting these numbers because of the companies
such as Southern Cal Edison, PGME, Southwest Gas,
the Water Association, Cal Water,
San Diego Gas & Electric, Charter Communications,
California Water Service, sorry if I missed anybody,
but we have developed a great collaborative effort
with all of them.
And so I cannot say enough about the mentorship
that they also provide, not just the support
and doing programs,
but also the mentorship individuals
like Karen's Spherson, who,
I mean, we're probably on the call monthly talking about,
how can we do things better and more effectively?
And this is about creating economic opportunities,
and as we're talking about supplier diversity,
we're also talking about supplier development
and developing suppliers to meet those needs,
whether it's legal, whether it's vegetation management,
we are also talking about
making these businesses competitive,
not just making them qualified
and certified, but making them competitive
so they could win the bid at the end of the day.
So again, I wanna thank all of our partners for that.
I do want to say to Commissioner Shiroma,
talking about the San Joaquin Valley,
the State Hispanic Chamber has taken special interest
in the San Joaquin Valley
and really kind of trying to create
a larger pool of diverse
and competitive suppliers for the utility.
So again, that, your comment does not go unnoticed
and finally, we're entering into a new era COVID
and all of our partners, I mean, they just stepped up
and said, "Hey, how can we help you?"
Not just with supplier diversity,
but helping businesses through this COVID environment.
And finally, I do want to thank T-Mobile the,
as we say, the new player on the block, I guess,
but you know what?
They made some commitments to California,
and I am just so happy to see how aggressive they are
in wanting to meet those commitments here,
throughout California, not just on diversity and workforce,
but diversity in their supplier base,
and especially in the Central Valley,
that's one of their concentration areas as well.
So we continue to look forward to our working relationship
with all of our partners
and T-Mobile as we help them to also meet those goals
and be successful so that we can all be proud.
Thank you.
-: Thank you for your comment,
operator, next caller please.
Operator: Thank you, Sarah Bush,
California Energy Storage Alliance.
Your line is open ma'am.
Sarah: Hello and good afternoon.
Thank you for this opportunity to give comment
and a special thank you to the Commissioners
and CPUC for hosting this important
and very rich conversation about
the GO 156 Supplier Diversity Program.
As mentioned, my name is Sarah Bush,
and I support the diversity
and inclusion initiatives
of the California Energy Storage Alliance known as CESA,
which is a policy advocacy voice
for the energy storage industry in California.
And as an association of more than
a hundred energy storage companies
and partners, CESA is very committed
to promoting workforce diversity, inclusion, equity,
and fairness within the clean energy industry.
And what I wanted to share today is a few points.
One, that we believe that energy storage,
in particular, is a tool to help California reach
its environmental goals,
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But it's also very importantly,
a tool to accelerate the deployment of a more accessible
and equitable clean energy system that benefits the health
and the welfare of each and every Californian.
And to make this vision of the future, a clearer reality,
I wanted to share that CESA is continuing
to engage in the space.
We are engaging with our energy storage ecosystem.
As I mentioned, we've got a a hundred members and counting,
and these are frequently the vendors
and subcontractors to the utilities
that's spoke on this En Banc,
and we're working to engage them on the GO 150,
to educate them on the GO 156 program,
to encourage them to register
in the clearing house where they qualify
and to develop their own workforce diversity
and inclusion strategies internally
as is what CESA is working on as well.
And we're also collaborating with external stakeholders,
and we did wanna invite
any interested partners to contact us
and encourage working with us to continue this work,
to advance a more equitable, clean energy future
for all who live in California.
So thank you very much for hosting
this important conversation today and good afternoon.
-: Thank you very much.
Operator, next caller please.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Commissioner,
the next caller is Mr. Cole Woodman,
Veterans in Business Network.
Go ahead, sir.
Operator: One moment please.
Apologies Mr. Woodman.
Your line is open, sir.
Cole: Great, thank you.
My name is Cole Woodman.
I am the Chairman and President
of Veterans in Business Network.
I'd like to thank the Commissioners, the CPUC,
as well as all the panelists that have participated today
on another great En Banc.
We've heard multiple times today,
the importance of establishing relationships
as a factor to success for diverse businesses,
actually gaining those contracts with the Utilities
and prior to COVID-19 and 2020
and everything that has happened this year,
it was already kind of challenging for small businesses
to get that foot in the door
and establish those relationships
with the supplier diversity personnel.
Obviously the companies that are meeting their goals
and have strong programs have found ways to overcome that,
but given the challenges of COVID-19
and the fact that we are limited
to these type of virtual events,
we would highly encourage companies,
supplier diversity teams,
to look at new strategies
for how they are going to conduct outreach
and training events, things of that nature.
We'd like to think T-Mobile last year after the En Banc,
obviously there were some issues
and they took those challenges that they got called out for,
and really tried to put the rubber to the road
and make some progress.
And so they, that we've been working with them
for the past year to develop an app,
to help streamline how they get the word out
to our veteran business members.
And prior to COVID, that was a great idea.
Now in this new normal world of post COVID-19,
we believe that it's gonna be highly, highly integral
to how supplier diversity reaches out
to touch small businesses, provide opportunities,
talk about the mentorship
and training programs that they have.
If we can get things into the virtual space,
as opposed to the old school
and highly successful face to face networking,
establishing those relationships,
we are gonna have to get digital.
So we wanna thank T-Mobile for that.
We also like to thank Southern California Edison
for continuing to work with us digitally
and how, what their corporate lessons learned
for working remotely
and doing their operations in a remote fashion
and how we can translate that,
to getting our message out to our veteran businesses.
I would also like to let you guys know,
we will be having a virtual conference
for veteran businesses on October 12th and 13th,
we will be having a plethora of training sessions
and resources.
I would encourage everyone to go to VIBconference.com
and register for that event.
Thank you very much again to the Commissioners, CPUC
and all the panelists.
-: Thank you, operator next caller, please.
Operator: Thank you, Laurie Dowling with MUDC.
Your line is open you.
Laurie: Much and thank you everyone
for all that I've learned today.
I wanted to make those on the meeting aware
of some free tools that we've got that might be helpful
in light of some of the comments
of today's panelists after me.
First of all, we have two upcoming webinars on ensuring
that there are diverse suppliers
in your emergency procurement chain.
The first of that one, of those is on October the 14th
and will be led by the Honorable Meda Coleman
of Missouri PSC and Joan Kerr of PG&E.
All of those webinars can be accessed
and registered for at MUDC.com
and again, they are free.
And then we've also created
a number of free tools to help companies
and small businesses and large businesses.
It has racial equity
and inclusion capabilities to basically walk the walk.
Those also are free,
and you can request them through the MUDC website.
And then finally,
Commissioner Shiroma mentioned working with students,
and I know that a number of the people on the call
are engaged in various ways with our friends,
the Center for Energy Workforce Development,
they are having a free energy career day
on October, the 21st, it's free to students.
It is free to minority serving institutions
and it's free to parents
and it's free to recruiters.
So that's all.
And just to thank everyone for letting me be a part of this.
-: All right, thank you for that followup.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Thank you, Cesar Plumer, WRMSDC,
your line is open.
Cesar: Thank you very much.
And I would like to thank all the Commissioners
for making this opportunity possible.
I've heard several times today on the phone,
others that are finding
and locating qualified minority-owned businesses
is a problem.
The one thing that I have not heard today is any mention
of the National Minority Supplier Development Network
and utilization there of the NMSDC, which I represent.
The Western Region has three different councils operating
in the State of California,
specifically developing
and helping purchasing organizations do business
with business to business minority-owned companies.
So I would like to make sure that all of the organizations
that are on the line are aware
of the National Minority Supplier Development Council
and start to engage,
because I think there has been limited engagement.
However, even so, many of the companies
that operate in California are strong advocates
and partners of the
National Minority Supplier Development Council,
including PG&E, T-Mobile, San Jose Water, California Water,
Comcast, AT&T and many others.
So again, there are lots of suppliers that have the scale
and the sophistication to do business
with our Utilities here in California.
And that is particularly,
and specifically, the mission
and the focus of WRNMSDC, the Western Region,
as well as all three of the
National Minority Supplier Development Council operations,
here in the State of California.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, operator next caller, please.
Operator: Thank you, Philip DeVliegher,
Disability IN, your line is open.
Philip: Vliegher,
and I serve as Vice President
of Supplier Diversity at Disability IN.
Disability IN is the nation's leading
third-party certifying organization for disability-owned
and service disabled-owned business enterprises,
and we help to connect
those disability-owned business enterprises
to procurement opportunities
with over 200 corporate partners,
as well as Federal State and local opportunities.
Among our corporate--
-: Oh, we lost, we lost your sound.
Are you still there?
Operator: This is the operator.
If you have queued up to join the public comment forum,
please queue up again.
I do apologize, please press *1 at this time
to rejoin the public comment room.
One moment ma'am.
Robert: This is Robert Stanford again,
just to give you a heads up.
We lost our connections to some of our speakers,
but they are dialing back in.
We have four speakers at this time.
-: Okay, thank you, Robert.
Operator: Mr. DeVliegher,
your line is reopened again, sir.
Philip: Thank you, can you hear me?
-: Yes, thank you, glad you're back.
Philip: Yeah, thank you so much Commissioners.
As I was saying, Disability IN is the nation's leading
third-party certifying organization for disability-owned
and service disabled-owned business enterprises.
Disability-owned businesses have been often overlooked
or excluded from public
and private sector procurement opportunity.
By overcoming everyday challenges,
people with disabilities develop the creative skills
and persistence strategies that translate well
to becoming successful
and valued business partner.
Please understand that one in five people
in the United States live with a disability
and recognize that most disabilities are not apparent.
Business owners, owned by individuals with disabilities
are already part of every community.
By recognizing them and creating an environment
in which all differences are valued.
Any existing barriers can begin to fall away.
We ask only that policies
and practices are put into place,
which level the procurement plain field for all suppliers up
and down the supply chain.
With that said, we advocate to change the language
in GO 156 to include disability-owned business enterprises.
Thank you and good afternoon.
-: Thank you, operator, next caller, please.
Do we have our next caller available?
Operator: Thank you, Kimberly Ross,
your line is now open and please State your affiliation.
Kimberly: Hi, my name is Kimberly Ross.
I am the Director and CEO
of the Southern California Virtual Business Center.
I wanted to say thank you for the public,
to the Public Utilities Commission for this event.
This is my first time attending,
and I'm very grateful to be a part of this in a more,
even more grateful that these type of forums are going on,
so that we, as service providers learn about what activities
are occurring to move forward diverse suppliers
in the utility space.
Our facility actually provides capacity training
to diverse suppliers.
We have a track record of delivering a successful training.
One of the things that's really important to me is,
and I think it's going to be important
for our diverse suppliers moving forward
is really creating a relationship or
partnership, I should say,
between the public Utilities
and capacity training programs such as ours.
And I think that that relationship means,
it's contributing in terms of creating
that pipeline of diverse suppliers,
ensuring that they're getting the training that they need.
And then also what the public utilities,
sort of explaining what that criteria looks like
for these businesses to be able to qualify
for the contract opportunities.
And then working with, like I said,
organizations such as,
the Southern California Virtual Business Center to
and other organizations to go out
and sort of recruit organizations
or businesses that we know have the ability
to develop capacity
and grow because they need maybe a little bit of supportive,
in a couple of areas to be able to facilitate
some of these contracts.
So I think, it's really important
that these partnerships move forward
and that the conversation moves forward
and the dialogue,
and just to make sure that we are doing all that we can
to support our diverse suppliers
who are eagerly seeking to get into these opportunities.
And then the other thing that I would like to see is,
probably a little bit more emphasis on sub-contracting
because sub-contracting is an excellent way to get these
diverse suppliers into the door.
They may not be ready to be in a prime relationship,
but if there are some requirements that state
that there is a sub contractor requirement
for minority businesses to be a part of the contracts.
Now, these businesses are able
to sort of get a point of entry
and start to learn how to grow
to not only fill their current role as a subcontractor,
but to grow into becoming a prime.
I'm here, I'm available, I'm a USC professor.
I've been training diverse suppliers of since 2007.
I can easily be reached @scvirtualbusinesscenter.com
for, to further the discussion.
Thank you.
-: Thank you very much, operator next caller, please.
Operator: Thank you, Sue Lee, your line is open
and please state your affiliation.
-: Hi, my name is Sue Lee
and I am a Program Development Manager
with California Capital Financial Development Corporation
in Sacramento.
I'm here to actually talk briefly
about a technical assistance
and capacity building training survey
that we have independently undertaken
since October of last year.
And it was actually during the En Banc annual meeting
in Fresno that we kicked off the survey
and it's been close to a year
that we have been collecting data
from certified diverse business owners in California
throughout the State.
The purpose of this survey is aimed to help provide guidance
to California regulated investor on utility companies,
design and deliver better capacity building
and technical assistance training programs to contact us
and to better understand their needs.
And we were really lucky to have received funding
from California Water Association,
as well as T-Mobile to support the data collection efforts.
The survey was initially developed to be administered
at Statewide conferences and networking events.
And however, as a result of COVID-19 restrictions
on social gatherings, we have to,
for lack of better word,
pivot the data collection effort to online.
And so there are some set of data
that is supposedly pre-COVID-19,
and there was also a set of data
that's gonna be pretty much focused on post-COVID-19
and before COVID-19,
we were really lucky to have the support
of many community partners.
Many of those are on the call today to assist us
with the data collection,
as well as survey distributions to their members.
And in a year of the survey data collection,
we have been able to collect a total of 447 participants,
although that's only a drop in the bucket
of the number of diverse suppliers in
and within the CPUC database.
But I believe the data is really important to serve
in the beginning of understanding
of the different technical assistance
and capacity building needs of the diverse suppliers in
and within California.
There were nine questions in the survey,
we would ask about the number of years
they have been in business,
which zip code are they located since they,
the survey is focused throughout the State
and what type of business industry are they in,
if they are professional services,
if they're construction, if they are supplier
and also their revenue, annual revenue,
if it's, if they're within less than a million,
one to 3 million or one to 5 million
or 5 million and above.
And of course, what type of certifications that they have,
and we will break it down to,
if they're minority-owned women business owned, with CPUC,
if they are DBE certified.
And if they are certified with
Minority Supplier Development Council or LGBT,
and as well as, main questions,
if they have contracts
with California regulated utility companies in the past,
and if they have,
one of the challenges that they have faced,
and if they have not,
what other challenges that they have faced
in getting their foot in the door with this company,
there's a lot of details to the data.
But I think, with the data collection that we have gathered,
just to give you a summary,
that most of the businesses are actually,
about 70, 73%, 78% of the businesses that we surveyed
are actually certified with CPUC, however,
only 17.5 of the businesses that we surveyed
are actually currently working
with regulated utility companies,
with only 8% having worked
with any regulated investor-owned utility company.
And of course, the individual responses
as to the challenges that they face
are some of the important guidance
that we can use to leverage
on developing the different types of trainings
that they would need.
And we're also able to look at the data--
-: So Ms. Lee, I'm sorry to interrupt,
but in the interest of time,
I'm wondering if maybe we could find a way to work with you
and our staff to make this data available,
in a more accessible format,
maybe, we can have some information on our website
and then perhaps for next year En Banc, we can--
Sue: I apologize if I run over my time,
I just wanted to share some basic information
about the survey,
not to go too much into detail with the data,
but thank you.
-: I mean, it sounds,
I would love to delve into this data
'cause I mean, it seems like it would be a useful way
to understand some of the challenges
and get some empirical evidence behind it.
So we will definitely follow up with you after this
and try to get this out there.
Thank you very much.
Sue: Thank you very much for the opportunity.
-: Yeah, okay, operator next caller please.
-: Thank you, and as a reminder for comment, press *1,
Christine Tedder with Hampton Tedder Electric,
your line is open.
Christine: Hi, this is Christine Tedder.
Good afternoon.
I'm the Owner and President of Hampton Tedder Electric.
And I wanna thank everyone for allowing me
to speak at this event.
We are a family owned-high voltage, contracting
and design company based in Southern California.
I've been working for Hampton Tedder Electric for 35 years,
working my way up through every position
from secretary to now President since 2009,
I hold our General A
and Electrical C-10 California Contracting License.
And I'm a proud women business enterprise certified company.
As many have spoken about the wildfire insurance challenges,
as a diversity supplier
to the Southern California Edison company.
I'm here to talk about the challenges I've encountered,
procuring wildfire insurance coverage in 2019 and 2020.
Our company regularly works distribution line construction
in high wildfire areas for Southern California Edison.
Our annual insurance renews on October 1st of each year,
but mid September, 2019,
the news announced $11 billion insurance settlement
for the 2018 Campfire in the Town of Paradise.
This announcement sent shock waves
through the insurance industry,
and I'm sure you can imagine how difficult it was
for our company to secure wildfire insurance
in October, 2019,
directly after the largest wildfire insurance settlement
in U.S. history.
Prior to the 2018 campfire fire insurance was included
in our Normal General and Excess Liability insurance
for no additional premiums.
However, after the campfire,
and especially after the announcement
of the most expensive natural disaster,
in terms of insured losses, everything changed.
For the first time in 62 years,
our broker was telling us that it, that most of,
if not all the insurance companies
were striking wild fire coverage from our general
and excess liability policies,
that very few of the existing domestic insurance companies
were offering wildfire coverage.
Especially we were performing line construction work
for utility company in high fire area.
So our broker was eventually able
to procure wildfire insurance on the London market
at a rate of eight times, our regular rate.
Normally we might expect to pay 10 to 15 cents on the dollar
for General Fire Insurance that covered wildfires.
Now we were being quoted at a ridiculous rate
of 50 cents on the dollar.
To acquire insurance from (mumbles)
and we had to do an interview with London officials
and explain to them what Southern California Edison
was doing to mitigate wildfires.
Only after our explanations,
were we able to secure a wildfire insurance.
Working for Southern California Edison
made our explanations easy
because Southern California Edison involves us
in safety seminars
and provides us the information we need to educate
on our task of being a partner
in the wildfire mitigation process.
We were able to explain to them
that Southern California Edison,
was made preventing welfare's as primary company
and public safety goal.
They're installing fireproof materials
with covered conductors that Southern California Edison
is installing the largest weather monitoring system
in the world on top of all their electrical poles
to forecast how to mitigate fires caused by high wind
and low humidity event.
-: So Ms. Tedders, can you just wrap up please,
you're out of time.
Christine: Sure, we just wanna say we're very fortunate
to have Southern California Edison treat us as a partner
and thinking of ways to minimize this challenge
as a diversity supplier.
I wanna thank everyone for the opportunity
to speak with you today.
Please have a great rest of your day.
-: Thank you very much, operator next caller, please.
Operator: There are no more speakers
on the public comment telephone line at this time,
Commissioner Randolph.
-: All right, thank you very much.
-: Okay, well that wraps up our
18th Annual Supplier diversity En Banc.
Today has been a very engaging, insightful conversation.
I appreciate the commitment to this program
from all the organizations, community groups,
and others who play a role in implementing this program
and making it a success.
We look forward to the continued economic achievement
and to seeing you next year, hopefully in-person.
And of course, we also wanna take a moment
to thank all the hard work our CPUC staff did
in putting together this En Banc
in more challenging circumstances,
particularly Stephanie Green and Trisha Melton.
We really appreciate your continued hard work
on this program
and on making sure that this event is as helpful
and engaging as possible.
So we appreciate your work.
And thank you all
and we will see you again next year.
Bye, bye.
-: Thank you, goodbye.
Operator: Thank you, this does--