050 | From Selling Burritos to Running a Consulting Firm with Bacilia Angel

The key difference from other cities that I've traveled to and I had , at the time , traveled to a lot of places because of my last consulting firm was that when you speak to people here , there's a lot of passion and purpose in what they communicate and so on , what they spend their time doing right , and so , like the people on the hill , they're here because

they want to create a change and everybody's like passionate about something right and there's issues that people are working on , the people in the federal government they're really passionate about their domain space , right and so it just was very enlightening because I had never heard people talk about their jobs in that way , like jobs were just jobs , like in where

I grew up in Arizona like everybody not everybody , but people don't necessarily like their jobs and it's just a job . and it may be just a job to certain people and that's okay , because you know people get their passions fulfilled other ways , but here it's just , it's different and I wanted to be a part of that .

I'm Basilia Angel and I right now am the CEO of Mealy or Advisors , which is a consulting firm that really helps transform organizations to grow , improve and help create more people driven projects and help improve with a people focus in terms of any change that an organization is trying to do , ensuring that they have a human centered approach to the change that

they're trying to create for their organization , for the world , and things like that .

One of my biggest clients today is LaNusa , and we are working with them on creating a social impact strategy and building really a Latino outreach megaphone to be able to leverage a lot of the access they have in terms of entertainment and media and being able to connect them with civic organizations to make what they're doing and amplify it on a broad scale for

Latinos .

I'm on track to do what I really want to do , which is really help the world improve and make things better for people , specifically people of color and underserved populations .

Really , in the middle of nowhere I grew up there was cornfields , sometimes it would be cotton fields , they would alternate and sometimes we did live in the town for like a little bit as well . I think the school had 700 kids and it was K through eight . And it's just very rural .

To get to the town where my well , now it's a city my high school was was 40 minutes away , or one or two hour bus ride .

I was very sheltered , but it was very much a different upbringing than a lot of the people I run into at these events , as well as being here in the DC area growing up , you know , surrounded by immigrants and I talk about like growing up with like goats and cows and ostriches and selling burritos , which is not the norm for a lot of people I know .

I might wake up before school , we'd be making , I'd have to make sandwiches , help my mom with whatever she needs before I left , and then , coming home from school , I'd have to make 60 bean and cheese burritos . And you know , that was my life , probably that year , and then even that summer , the summer when I was 15 , 16 , we were out going to .

I was so during the summers and sometimes during the year we would . I'd be , we'd be waking up six , seven in the morning . I'd help again do that . The sandwiches it would go up to like 100s . I would make it like 100 sandwiches before it go up and we'd be going out to like 104 . It would be so it's in Arizona . It gets up to 120 .

And we would be , degrees Fahrenheit and it was not fun . I remember I'd want to quit every single day and I'd have to negotiate with my mom on so many levels , but it was really hard . It was well . It was for multiple reasons .

It was not well one I'm not a morning person , and then I learned to not like cooking as much because of having to be surrounded by all this cooking . And then it was hot and I , you know , again , we were sheltered .

So we , I would see a lot of kids , a lot of friends , they'd be having fun , whereas I would have to be working and so it's just not as cool . But you know , I learned a lot from my mom and seeing that whole , that whole experience was very interesting to me . So for me it like motivated me to do good in school .

You know kind of the entrepreneurship of your mom to kind of make ends meet and make it all happen and pull it all together within the household boss vibes , and you know , pulling in the resources that she had at the time , which was you to say , all right , let's , let's make this work .

Tell me about how that shaped your outlook on what your career prospects could be right , Because you can see that and say you know what I want to do . I'm going to start my own food truck , I want to start my own restaurant , Like I want to do XYZ , or it could push you in another direction and I just would love to explore that .

And thankfully , one of my math teachers I was really good at school and I was really good at math and one of my math professor , my teacher at the time recommended a program called the Joaquin Bustos Math Science Honors Program , jvmshp , who focuses on rural communities , underserved populations and getting them to learn more about Math and Science , and he recommended

me for this program , helped me apply . I applied for the program and got accepted and at that program which is one of the summers in high school , so sophomore they were the ones that really exposed . Well , when I got exposed to college which was not something , I Really fully understood what that meant .

And then , second , I was exposed to Careers that I did not know existed , that you could do with math , and I was like if I could have a job where I could did math all day , I would love it . And I learned about engineering , and so I was determined after that math science honors program to become an engineer and .

So that's really still not getting to the CEO part , but I loved the whole concept of using math in a career at that point .

So for six weeks I was taken out of the desert and so for me , I was like this is the way this . I have to go to college , so I'm back to high school .

I was determined to graduate faster , so I talked to my counselor and and I came up with a plan to graduate from high school early , and so I finished high school in three years , applied to ASU and I didn't even apply anywhere else , which my sister's still , like you , should have applied to Harvard and because they all believe I could have gotten in and I

just Loved that program so much , I was like determined I'm gonna go back to ASU , that's my school and that's what I wanted . And so I did . I graduated with three years and got accepted with president , scholarship for context , how ?

What you did and Did you declare , as an engineer major , math major . What did that ? How did that turn out ?

You go into engineering , you're going four years and you start with engineering classes right off the bat . I'm so engineering 100 , where we did Robots and that was fun , so that class was fine . So then I was like okay , engineering is still good , it's the electrical part that's not good .

I ended up switching and trying to test out different ones for like the first year and a half and it just wasn't working out . I was really struggling With certain courses and I realized I really wasn't prepared to be in college . Studying is different , tests are different , the way they , the expectations of you are different .

I don't know if I had been lucky or just really good at the way that my high school and my Small town was at . Prepare it like preparing me . I did a lot of independent studying growing up but it was still not . Could not pass some classes so , really , and I ended up dropping out for about a year .

I also just had a lot of personal things , that Medical reasons that I was really struggling with at the time and I just . I just I had I , I couldn't continue was . A lot of people might actually be surprised by this because not a lot of people know , I'm not even sure my entire , like my family .

It was just a really , really hard time and I needed to step away to figure out exactly what I needed to do , wanted to do . I was just overwhelmed , felt like a like I don't know if I was really cut out to be an engineer . I didn't feel like I fit in , I was like one of the few Latinos at ASU that was studying engineering .

I was also like there was these classes with 300 plus students and they were all men and I was like one of five girls , if even , and it was just I just Needed to figure out what I needed to do before I continued . So I really struggled for from for a moment .

Ryan is like , oh , I'm really good at this thing and I'm now doing this at a high level , but there were points in time when things didn't go as planned right . Like you graduate high school early , thinking that that will mean you graduate from college early , and instead you needed a break , and that's okay .

And you know life is not as linear as we sometimes like to make it out to be right . Like when you look at social media or you look at our lengthens , it all seems progressively getting better and that's not always the case .

There are things that are happening in our lives that forces to stop , forces prioritize other things , and you did that and you know you were able to Continuously figure out how to progress from there .

So we'd love to hear about kind of what happens Once you take a year off , like , first of all , what are you doing during that year and then , second of all , when , at what point , do you determine to

go back ?

I was doing a lot of the marketing , financials , bookkeeping , just every all the back office type stuff , as well as Answering phones , help , supporting with quotes , so many things helping it grow and then at the same time that really inspired me to do small business . So then I also started arm , a miss system company .

So I did a lot of random things like I , though my list of experiences is very long . So it's like starting a landscaping company , starting a miss system company , I was also helping because then I learned how to do books .

I learned how to so supporting multiple Organizations , doing bookkeeping , I was doing Tax preparation for a minute , and so I really just started exploring and I was exploring in different small business ventures . But I I came back and because of all that business stuff I was like I need to get my business degree .

So because , even though I'm like doing business , I would like to have more Education around business and finish my degree , even if it's not engineering . So then I did , I went back and I got my business degree . Around that time economy hit and it was really Rough to get a job during that time and I ended up getting a job doing at a call center .

But I'm doing the Spanish call center for US Airways , so every time you call to change your flight or complain about the flight being delayed , and it was in Spanish .

So I did that and that's where I noticed that all the cool jobs that I would have wanted to have , even in the airline industry , were more technical analyst , pricing analyst , doing the routing , and just that seemed way more fun than answering the phone . And so I ended up Going back and to go like , go go to back to engineering .

I was like I have to just Figure it out and do it , and I felt like I was more prepared to do that because I feel like , okay , I kind of learned the hard way so I need to focus and do good .

Even though I didn't really necessarily want to work in a Mac new factoring setting at the time , I was open to it . But then I learned that you could do industrial engineering in healthcare and that's what my focus was .

I went back and then got one of my professors recommended me to a small consulting firm that was looking for operations analyst interns and that's where I feel like I got my break . It was fascinating .

I mean still like to this day I don't know how they I got hired because I didn't all the questions he was asking me in that interview I did not know the answers to . He really liked my cover letter about the logic of how I was able to save US Airways money potentially didn't know how much , but potentially and then he liked he could .

He said he could tell that I was going to give it my all like in terms of hard , hard work .

And that just says a lot about your leadership skills and your willingness to not just show up to work right , like a lot of us may just show up to work sometimes but like how do you make this work for everyone involved , from the employees , the company to the customer at the other end and for you to recommend things that improve those processes in ways that ,

from my understanding , are still kind of in play today , right ?

You know , you know you're because we would answer in Spanish , because they reached the Spanish line and then they'd be like you're in America , speak English , and it's like okay , we'll start .

You pressed one to get here , and so I , you know , and so that whole thing , it was just very irritating and so the recommendation was to switch the line to be anything but one . We recommended eight . Essentially , we , we , we , we did that recommendation and , yes , they did end up switching it and they still have it in place .

It's now American Airlines , but they still have it in place , and when they did the switch it was so much better . It avoided a lot of those calls that freed up the Spanish line more to be available for what they're intended to do .

It was perfect , and so I for me , anyway , I was just so excited about that . So , yeah , so they gave me the opportunity to come on board as an operations analyst , so I learned how to use SQL coding and doing data analytics , data analysis support , before I then started consulting .

And this is where my skill set of being able to create change and improve really started . And they trained me on a lot of so Toyota production system and Lean Six Sigma methodology , and so now I'm a Lean Six Sigma black belt .

They were the ones that really ingrained a lot of the principles good process engineering to be able to change and transform entire organizations from so either one small process to an entire organization and doing it Kaizen style , which means like within a week we will come in , do some training , redesign the process , retool some of the software and tools required to

be able to change the process , reorganize the team . You know whatever it takes , even knocking down walls and building desks , which is what we did .

It was like a hectic week , but we would go department to department in healthcare systems to improve their processes and , depending on what their performance indicators were , just helping them transform , and we were able to change the game in multiple areas , whether it was , like I said , patient flow , we didn't do that much , but we were focused a lot on the

revenue cycle . So , like improving chart flow from seven days to three days and improving net to cash , which was , you know , from $15 million to 20 million , 20 , I think the highest we saw was $24 million monthly . So from changing an entire organization from 15 to 24 .

And so when you say a process is within Six Sigma , that means for every one million opportunities that you run this process , only 3.2 defects per opportunity will occur . So it means it's a high quality process , your hope being that your airline , every time it's landing , is definitely within Six Sigma .

You don't want any defects in the landing , and Lean is really removing all non-value added activity or things that a customer is really not willing to pay for , and that means you're making it very efficient , so making your process flow really good , making sure there's no defects that you have to rework or fix anything along the way , and for me it's just the way

of living .

And so like actually I was just talking to my friend and talking about the one time I had a cook Thanksgiving dinner here in Virginia and I was like I don't know if it tasted good , but it was a really efficient process , like in terms of you know , when the turkey went in the oven .

And then , at you know , 20 minutes before I got to open the oven , then we put in the sweet potatoes . But anyway , it was just , it was a whole thing . But yeah , I was proud of my time management skills .

If it's going to , you know . If it's going to cost you $200,000 to make this change and it's going to make you down the road over anything over then 200 , you should really invest right , but like it was millions usually . So it was different then when you become a consultant in this company specifically . Now you're on the road .

Now you're doing assessments by doing process observations , by gathering the data , determining what are the issues that really need to be improved and then making recommendations to come up with a solution , whereas now , when you move to senior consultant , now you're leading the team that's doing these things and now you're making sure that the analyst back in the office

is creating the data that you need . You have people on site creating the observations and the planning that you needed , just leading a project through a Kaizen and working with management to prepare the entire team for it . But what's about to happen , which Kaizen's can be very intense . That's where I learned that people are key for being able to create change .

I was not really ready to be customer facing , I was not a public speaker at that point , and so they invested in me to get public speaking courses , more training on a lot of these topics .

I had to go through these awful boot camps where I would have to present topics on Lean , six Sigma or topics like queuing theory , teach queuing theory to master black belts .

That was not fun , and then they would be rude intentionally as part of this boot camp to prepare me for any situation that may occur while out on the road and presenting , and so it was a difficult transition but thankfully I had the support . I feel like without that support I would have quit . I would have definitely quit .

Yeah , I just , the CEO , pulled me into her office . I'll never forget . She could tell that I was insecure and felt like probably imposter syndrome Just like who do I think I am an engineer like trying to create all this change and talking all these very technical terms . And she was like , no , you speak technical , you are prepared for doing this .

So she gave me this beautiful pep talk and just really encouraged me to take ownership of everything that I achieved to get there and that I belong there and that you know , because it was mostly guys that I was working with at this time and then she's like no , you got this Like we're going to kick all of their ass she had .

she used interesting language , used interesting quotes . That I won't say , but it was honestly . It was a really good talk that really helped me overcome and be able to move forward , and I did that for three years , which is crucial to my success , and that's why I still use a lot of those principles , as I mentioned today .

So we'd love to hear about how you were able to kind of stick around in the company for a while and progress within the organization .

So I'm a really big advocate over immigration reform and I came and I fell in love with the city in a sense that I well one the monuments and everything is just so grand and I went to the immigration march and a few other events and ended up meeting these amazing people and everyone that I met .

The key difference from other cities that I've traveled to and I had , at the time , traveled to a lot of places because of my last consulting firm was that when you speak to people here , there's a lot of passion and purpose in what they communicate and so on , what they spend their time doing right .

So , like the people on the hill , they're here because they want to create a change and everybody's like passionate about something right and there's issues that people are working on .

The people in the federal government , they're really passionate about their domain space , right and so it just was very enlightening because I had never heard people talk about their jobs in that way . Jobs were just jobs , like where I grew up in Arizona , like everybody not everybody , but people don't necessarily like their jobs and it's just a job .

And it may be just a job to certain people and that's okay , because people get their passions fulfilled other ways but , here . It's just it's different and I wanted to be a part of that and so I ended up coming to DC .

So when I ended up going through a divorce at around that time and I was like I'm going to make my wish come true so at that time I was married I didn't see it as a potential possibility . I was like I would love to live here .

And so then when I became free , became free to make like you know , just really focus on myself and what I really wanted to do and I decided to look for opportunities in other cities and really explore and thankfully MITRE flew me during an ice storm and I didn't even have any other .

It was interesting , but they flew me out here and it was just the perfect fit because I wanted to use my skills for good .

And MITRE is a company that really focuses on solving problems for a safer world and they're only customer and I know they do some other stuff , but their big focus is solving problems for a safer world and helping the federal government in multiple domains and so I was able to work for MITRE for almost eight years .

My favorite part about working for MITRE was I was able to work on national projects and create change and improve different areas , and I just have so many proud moments of like some of the projects I've gotten to work on , including the NIH all of us research program , which is improving biomedical diversity , Like the other one , the COVID Convalescent Plasma , where

we were helping keep the national stockpile for plasma and ensure that underserved populations were aware of this treatment and were participating and keeping them informed of the latest research with COVID and COVID Convalescent Plasma . And I mean there was just others .

I got to work on Veteran Affairs and got to work on that project specifically when they were in the news for delays in getting treatment . It care in the community and I was part of the team that redesigned the process to be able to get care in the community .

So tell me about your actual role in that project specifically , and some of that outreach and reaching communities . What were you tasked with doing ?

One of the things I was fascinated about is I got to see the creative process and how people create things to be able to inspire . For the first time .

I was sitting in a meeting and we were looking at a social media post as a discussion topic , and so in I didn't know that was a thing I was like is this , like this is a real job for certain people , like on a regular , and I was . I got to be the leader of the team that was doing that stuff , and so I I learned a lot .

I got an appreciation for what creatives do and how much goes into creating social media campaigns , movements , partnerships . But then I also had to tie some numbers to it , like what does this mean to the government ? Like , how many partners do we need to reach to be able to get ? Like , how many people are we are actually getting the messaging ?

Like , who's talking about this in social ?

I mean I before MITRE I mean I had like all these like promotions , like I had a checklist I needed to buy a house , I need my car , like all these things . And then when I got to DC , I was naturally progressing but there wasn't really a plan in my plan . I had a checklist of things I wanted to do when I moved to DC and I never achieved it .

I mean she was born in April , I applied in October and then I so I found a program that would support me during . So I would go to school full time , single mom , and then going to school two nights out of the week , and it required a lot of help from people . I mean I even had friends come over .

Sometimes when I had to do presentations , my daughter's hair would sometimes be in the camera because she'd be like right next to me , and so it was a balancing act , but I just felt that it was important to get my degree . It's not something that my like , my family , like we don't that's not really a thing .

But for me , from moving to my like , just my , just the whole DC area , you meet everyone . Everyone in DC that I feel like I run into has a master's or a PhD and maybe it goes back to needing to certify what I know , but I just felt that it was important . But I loved , I loved my experience at American University .

We did it online and it made it easier that COVID happened in the middle of it and so there was less distractions because we were all home anyway . So I was like okay .

I've acquired skills , leadership skills , not just in consulting , but how to manage , how to like lead a team . And then at what point did you decide ? You know what ? I'm going to start my own thing .

. So , something that you didn't mention about MITRE at MITRE I was the founder of the Multicultural Employee Resource Group and helped incubate the Black Cultural Network , the Asian Pacific Islander Network , as well as the Latin American Network , which I was really passionate about . But yeah , last year was a tough year . We lost one of the founders .

It was just a shock , it was a shock to my entire system to lose one of my closest friends and it really made me question okay , so what am I doing with my life ? Where am I ? Where am I with my goals ?

And that was originally a goal of mine , and so through that you know , hard time I was able , I came up and felt like , okay , I feel like I'm ready , I feel like I have this skill set that I need to be able to launch and I took the leap .

Honestly , I think that's the hardest part , like looking back , because I've been wanting to do this for , like I said , it was just I've started businesses before , but they were service industry .

This is on a whole different scale and it's a different way of doing business , and so I I mean , I'm thankful I did , I there's , I'm glad , I'm no regrets for taking the leap , but I do think that that moment , like what happened last year , really like put me into action and then I I really had , I'm just more focused on living and determined to live

according to , like really what I want to do . And so even the projects I want to work on . They're most , like I said , they're people focused . I want to create change , as long as the change is for the better of people and helping organizations do better be better .

Social impact I'm like constantly working on volunteer type projects , also in helping the community grow , giving out just different things .

Sometimes , you know , I do like to say that things happen for a reason and I tend to remind myself of that when things are not going my way . It's like , well , you can't abandon that thought when it doesn't suit your narrative . So , you know , I hope that this has brought some light into your path and kind of steered you in the right direction .

Two , would love to talk a little bit about what's starting a ESG group , ESG , ERG , ERG you see , that's why we got to get the terms right . What is that ? And what ? Employee resource group ? Yes , why ? How do you start something like that within your organization ? Like , my organization has some right .

There are a couple , there are a bunch of organizations that I've been a part of to have them . How does one start those ? And then the third point is really to just hear from you a little bit more about what these projects mean . Like , if you , if there's an organization out there that needs a consultant to come and help them do stuff .

Just an opportunity for you to talk about how you can be helpful .

It did not exist , and so I created a concept which we came up with a name Multicultural Employee Resource Group . We felt that it was important to start with multiculturalism first , to be the most inclusive , since MITRE , at the time , did not have any cultural type affinity groups or nor programming of any sort .

And so , and there was very limited Latinos , and so it was like I can't go start a black network , have a Latina . And so I was like , okay , I , we can't start a Latino network with just a handful of us , we , we , it'll be more impactful if we can join forces we have some of similar struggles and join forces and start this multicultural group .

And we created a mission , a vision and the entire concept of what we would be focusing on in terms of like social community , like networking opportunities , professional development , community service , and we worked on so many things and we formed a concept and then started socializing it to all of the employees and managers .

So many people raised their hand to be a part of this group and not just a part of it , but they were happy to take on any like leadership roles to move this forward . And so we quickly formed a leadership team of like it was 14 people I would host people at my house .

I'd like be like okay , come over on Thursday at five , I'll have line and we can order food or something and let's hash out , let's create plans and like let's do this . And so we , we did it . And then we would start . We did .

We wouldn't , we didn't have financial support from the organization , but we did approach our inclusion and diversity office at the time and she said run with it . She doesn't have funding for it , but fully endorsed us to move forward with it .

And then she eventually got a meeting with leadership and then they approved it and then over time , our programming got funding to be able to do more activities .

A lot of our efforts for recruiting started getting more attention to the point where , where there was no Latino focus to like making it a goal of hiring a hundred Latino interns , and so it's just , we were able to make a difference within the organization on multiple fronts , as well as creating a sense of belonging for employees who were there and so , so you

can start it that way . Or if there's like a company who wants this for their organization , that sense of belonging , and you know family , familia and within their organization , obviously I know how to help create what those strategies look like .

How do you engage your employees , how do you implement and what type of programming does that look like , and you know what are the benefits to be able to even present this to leadership , the business case again , in terms of the value of diversity , which is critical to innovation and growth .

And what's been critical to my success in finding clients has been networking .

I mean , I feel like this whole past year I mean , everybody sees me at every , I went to every for Hispanic Heritage Month and also your network of friends has been key in terms of not necessarily giving you contracts but really opening up the doors right , opening up the opportunity , making sure things like even providing an invitation or promo code to be at an

event where there could be potential clients have been really critical . I just , you know it's still my first year , so all of those events cost money and travel and things like that . So even just that little thing has been so helpful . So I appreciate so many of my friends that have supported me and made those connections . But networking has been key .

So I want to create systemic change by helping , support the government , helping large corporations , create change within those organizations , but then how do we create change in terms of working with nonprofits or even people that just want to create change and don't know how , and so I feel like having that other vehicle to support and help create change .

The nonprofit really has been key .

I've been doing some fiscal sponsorship as well as internal projects , and I'm so excited because we are about to launch our like a large project campaign that's called Canta Grita Volta , and that campaign is going to be focused on empowering Latinos to vote using music , and we've already secured artists that are going to be a part of this campaign and I'm working

with the La Nusa Latin Entertainment Network and it's going to be huge and I'm just excited .

We're talking to partners right now and corporate partners and funders , and just getting everybody on board to be able to launch in the new year and create really inspiring Latinos to vote and changing the narrative that our vote does count and we should not give up our power .

Can you get folks a range of how much money they can expect to make , giving your years of experience when you were at a corporate company and then kind of that transition out like how do you Like make sure that you maintain a standard of living that is still doing good and doing well ?

And then going from there then to going to the government and moving to DC , I got bumped and was making six figures , you know , and , and and . That was a goal right , like I could not imagine . Like growing up , where I grew up and it's like , oh , I'm making six figures for working for it , like I know it's .

It was miter , but it was technically , you know , supporting the federal government working on these national projects and then , and I mean that was , and then it just kept going .

So then it was , it was awesome to be able to Keep getting raises and then when you , when you have more raises , you're able to invest and have homes and just to you know , have them . You know , like I know people , like you know , this is for students like you can buy Mercedes and Audi . I've had those .

So it's lucrative to go into the engineering or tech field .

Friends by Dale Carnegie was a good one and that one so it , regardless of what your field you're in , you're always selling something right , like if it's , if it might be your idea , your solution , like anything , and so that book really helped me be able to Communicate my ideas more effectively , like from the beginning when I started consulting , like how to pitch

Solutions to people , which is really what I said . I don't like selling just for selling . I like selling solutions like creating change .

And the other one is crucial conversations , which is a book that provides a framework on how to have really Crucial conversations and be able to communicate using facts and Understands people's perspective and being able to walk away together with the solution and a better understanding of what the Disagreement or whatever the conflict was .

That , to me , was very helpful .

And then Strain's finders when I got to MITRE , they really focus on strengths , and that's for the first time I had ever heard , because I always felt like I needed to work on all my flaws and Instead MITRE really focuses on focusing on your strengths , and strange finder really helped me hone in on what I bring to the table and really focusing on those things .

So I really recommend those three books .

Make sure you follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn at career cheat code and tell us people or careers you would like to see highlighted . See you next week with some more cheat codes . Peace .