Developing a Diverse IT Force, with Matthew B. Parks, Sr.

Sr. is the VP of IT Security for the Pace Center for Girls. He's been working in the nonprofit organization for over 10 years, and has been saving the day in IT since 1995. Matthew, how are you?

would say. Occupationally, it's treated me well, and has allowed to have afforded me a pretty good living. So not only do I appreciate what IT has brought to me, but I also evangelize to others that it is a great path if you want to pursue a career that is going to benefit you. For Pace, again, I'm the vice president of IT and of security. So it's kind of in the name, but I'll go into depth a little bit. So I have at present a team of

about 14. At the present we, Pace Center for Girls is a nonprofit organization that has been around for almost 40 years. And in that time, we've helped 40 45,000 young women reach their potential. What we do is we help young ladies who have some type of trauma, and we help them reach their potential and fulfill their destiny, as is the shortest and briefest way I can put that. We help to you know, right track them into better

opportunities. They come from, you know, disadvantaged situations, in some cases, not all, but in some cases. And again, I want to make sure I'm clear about that because that is a misconception. And trauma is something that permeates throughout all strata of society. So it's not exclusive to disadvantaged folks that have trauma in their lives, I want to make sure that I'm clear about that. So in any case, we help to

right track them. And we help to make sure that they indeed are ready to meet the next challenges in their lives. So that's pretty much our mission. So my part in that is that I helped to make sure that the trains run on time and that

they're safe. We make sure that they that the network is there, that we have a staff that can be productive, meaning that they are able to do their jobs every day without having to compromise from a technological perspective that the technology isn't a burden to them, that it's an augmentation to the job in the work that they do. And we do so and we make sure that we try to keep that in as secure

environment as possible. So along with the virtual security, cybersecurity, we also handle great swathes of the physical security as well.

for myself, as a started off as an assembly Tech and a wire monkey, for a company down in Clearwater, Florida, when I was in school, I wanted to get this magical mythical one gig hard drive, because at the time, you won't believe this, but we were being sold that, hey, you'll never fill this thing up. Right? Yeah, seems ridiculous now. But you know, 30 years ago, that's what we were telling people. Because in fact, we didn't have anything that could really fill

them at the time. But programmers and others have helped with that over time. But yeah, I have files now that are a gig, you know, PowerPoints, so photographs that I have, but anyway, so we, so I was building my first computer and I walked in, and I wanted to get this. I'd save my money and I was buying parts a little bit at a time. And so I bought the Ram had an old motherboard that I

put together it had a case. And so the hard drive was the last piece I wanted it was the most expensive and I walked in and I didn't account for the tax. So because I was short by five bucks, I wind up having to get 850 megabyte hard drive because I couldn't quite afford the one gig hard drive at the time. And that was back then, that was $285 as opposed to the $299 it would have cost for the one gig hard drive. So that's how much times have progressed and

changed technology. We work in an industry where things tend to get better and cheaper over time. So it's a it's an amazing thing to look at when you look back. my phone could run on a one gig hard drive. I mean, our phones come with like 16 gigs now. It's standard.

what was your favorite video game growing up?

know, back in the day. And then, like recently, I've been playing Ready or Not, is one that I've been playing a lot. Death Loop is another one that I've been playing a lot recently. And so those are two that stick out in my mind. Oh, and Gotham knights, which I'm really enjoying a lot. So those are two of the ones those are three that I'm playing currently. But yeah, I go back a long way. I mean, I'm a kid of the 70s so actually we actually had a we actually played on myself and my brother on

television. Yeah.

just jump everywhere. So they tried to have these, you know, bots, but yeah, Perfect Dark. What, question number two, what exciting personal tech are you

excited about on the horizon?

several years now. And I've recently just upgraded to the, I had the first two iterations of the Microsoft duo, which again, from a productivity device, I find, I think it's still the best. And I've recently upgraded to the Pixel Fold for work and, um, like literally like yesterday, so I'm still kicking the tires on it. But it's really has been from a productivity perspective is really hard to

beat those form factors. Because of the larger screen, the the increased real estate, which, you know, studies have shown that increased real estate and having multiple screens have increased productivity in the desktop. So it's a harder sell for people to under to really implement them from a personal perspective and how this works.

And I think part of it too, is, you know, the developers have to get on board as far as being able to make their programs or applications or apps take advantage of the extra real

estate. So those are two of the things that but yeah, that's that's one of the things that from a personal perspective, I'm excited about everything else, I mean, I've kind of you know, I kind of sit back and I want to get a little bit more on but that's something that really appeals to me I'm in and to see if there's something that I would apply from a personal

perspective. I guess the other one because I'm a movie guy is too the increasing, the way that the price is coming down on larger screen televisions that are higher quality, again, taking advantage of that cost curve that we have in technology with things again get cheaper

and better over time. And I think that's something where post COVID More people are, you know, taking advantage of using their all of these streaming services to have content so having a nice theater theatrical experience at home is something

that I think that I see. It's something that excites me and something that I'm constantly playing around with and trying to make sure we have the best experience because we started going back to movies and stuff you know, and recently we just saw Mission Impossible dead reckoning. Oh, yeah.

him, it's probably him. You know, he's flying helicopters and flying planes and just it's really amazing that he's kind of the last action last great action hero of our time, I guess.

Brad Pitt. And so I still go over to other countries and do the ads, they just don't do him in the US.

process that as well. But that and then learning some of the mistakes that were made to allow us to be so vulnerable. And then, as we corrected those mistakes, learning, also that, you know, there was some level of exposure of sort, there had been some exfiltration of data that we weren't aware of, because we weren't set properly through the security premises that we had in place, or at least we were told were in place. And so yeah, that was that was a that was a dark year,

I would say. And I couple that by saying again, we just come up with COVID. So COVID, we were surprisingly prepared for the technology piece, because we had already migrated to teams, we pretty much 98% of our our staff have laptops, because we're mostly mobile and phones, probably about 40% of the staff. So we were able to handle the stay and work from home orders pretty well. But it brought in new challenges and, and brought

in new things. So that was a dark time because it really stressed out the team because we really pushed the limits of a lot of different paces from a security perspective. And from a connectivity and productivity perspective. It pushed us really, really stressed us out. And then coming out of that. And then you had the ransomware attack that happened that it was a I'd say 20 to 21 and probably you said dark day I probably say it was probably a darker period that I had that we came

throuhgh. But you, know just like anything else, you don't really appreciate the light until you've gone through the dark. So having all of that come to come to fruition and you know, coming out on the other side cleaner, is something that I really look at and celebrate.

tremendous and from gaining different points of view, having a force that has exposure to varying degrees of technology, what does a diverse IT force look like? In your mind? What does that mean to you and how do you go about recruiting?

environment at large. So that's a very important piece to me is to make sure that we do that. So in the recruiting part of it is just making sure that there's a level of exposure to in your application, or in the job description that you post that is, I guess, more friendly, so it will be more open to bring in

more candidate. So working with the, you know, either recruiting company or your HR to tell them that, I want to make sure that I'm getting resumes and applications from a wide swath of what America looks like, I want something that's representative number one. And number two, you know, I want to make sure that we reach out to whether it be colleges or schools that we may not have, that may not be traditionally on your list of your, from your

candidate pool. Because, to me, those are opportunities that I want to at least afford. And when I say that, you know, it is, um, I'm going to hire the best candidate, regardless of your skin color, regardless of you know, experience, regardless of acumen, I want to hire the best candidate, that is also the

best team fit, right. But part of that in something that I learned in my personal life is that, personal professional life, is that the interviewing process is also a learning experience also, because there are times when you know, I know that I may have been under-qualified for position, but I was able to get in front of the recruiter or in front of the hiring manager, and I was able to sell myself and my skills and through that interaction that was able to convince them to look at a

different direction to go in a different target than they may have already had in mind. So the opportunity itself, opening the opportunity, to me is an important part of the equation. I also think that from the candidate perspective, it helps them so that they have a diverse experience when it comes to job searching. And they're asked those questions, you know, the live fire questions, you can simulate this but you know, it's hard to do when you're when there's nothing really on the

line. Whereas, you know, when you put it out there, you know, is you've got that's your shot, right, you've got to shoot a shot. And it's really a thing helpful for beneficial so even if we don't bring them in, I feel that that's something that helps enrich the candidate for the next opportunity is that they were able to sharpen their iron against our iron.

So if you have a handful of universities that are your favorites that you select from, you're going to be receiving a handful of thought patterns that are derived from these universities and B if the different personalities the different exposures yet widen, widen the scope of the universities that you're selecting from, widen the scope of the geographies and you're going to have a team that has more experience and exposure to a wider swath of IT and technology and cultural

experience which I think is applicable to IT as well. It's almost like it's like those people that know multiple languages are able to think and cross pollinate ideas perhaps more effectively than those that know a single language like me, for the most part. Yeah, I

completely agree. So after you have on-boarded a, one of your new IT employees, what, so much of the IT role today is developing people skills and it's communicating a vision to a board, communicating not just the bits and the bytes and the the technical know how of of how this is going to optimize a computer process. It's this affects the bottom line at the

company, it's developing a relationship, it's understanding the politics of the situation, how do you go about training a traditional, more technical minded, from a diverse background individual into a well rounded leader that can communicate a vision to the likes of a board?

isn't. Where if you think about the accounting department, for example, there is a direct link because of the way that they interact with the business. You can go through a myriad of other departments, you know, whether it be HR or any of those and those actually have a more direct path to that leadership, business leadership than it does in IT. So it does take additional cultivation, because most of the IT folks are, overwhelmingly, I don't want to

over generalize. But overwhelmingly, the numbers show that we're mostly introverted, that we mostly myself included, it also shows that we tend to not, which means we don't tend to naturally build relationships, which is an important piece of the business piece. It's something that if it's that question, I always get asked a What would you tell your younger self? Networking and relationships, do it earlier.

Learn that. Something I'm trying to help, you know, my son and others who are coming into this to understand. So yeah, well, as we talked about, that we discussed, the relationship piece, we talked about the need to learn how to zoom out and look at it from an organizational perspective, because again, we're task oriented, right, we have a ticket comes in, and we need to

solve this for this ticket. And we tend to zoom in from that perspective, and we have to be able to zoom out and look at it of how this one ticket affect this much of the productivity, and this productivity affects this particular location. And this location affects the rest of the region and the rest of the organization. So being able to zoom out and know that, you know, this one thing that you're doing today, contributes to the greater productivity of the organization, the greater health

of the organization. And then from that perspective, looking around and saying, how do I, my first you have to understand, how does your IT department, what cog on the wheel are you? How do you fit into the organization past, present and future? Then where do you fit in your IT department in your contribution to the department's

greater contribution. So those are the things that you have to learn from a leadership perspective, because you have to think beyond yourself beyond that ticket that you're working on today. You have to be able to think more organizationally. And then you the other piece is learning that, you know, you have to go from that operational to tactical to strategic, to be able to move into the different strata of leadership in

organization. One of the thing, you know, Admiral Grace Hopper, she had a quote that says that you manage things but you lead people. And you know, that's one of those important distinctions that you don't, all managers aren't leaders. You can have great leaders that were great managers, but inherently all great employees don't make great managers. And all great managers don't make great leaders, because it's a specific skill set. Is there some innate qualities about leadership that

are there? There are, I think, I think that you can make a good leader, but I don't know if you can make a great leader because I think that You know, it's kind of one of the examples that we talked about in there as we we use, but I juxtapose Michael Jordan and John Elway, and we talk about their careers and you know for who they are in their respective sports, they are considered some of the best if not the best at their position.

And not just the position, you know, some of them are considered, you know, Michael is considered the greatest basketball player by many. John Elway is considered one of the greatest quarterbacks, which is the top position in football. And so there is that argument the whether he can be considered among the best ever. And you look at their transition into the executive part of the game. So that's one of the things that I take apart is, you look at Michael Jordan's path to that.

And, overall, overwhelmingly, he's been one of the worst executives in the history of basketball. And that is not you know opinion, that is something you can look at every level he's participated in, and his level of success or lack thereof. Then you take John Elway, and you look at what his level of success, to where he was able to build a team, got it to a Super Bowl, and the sport that he played in respect. And so as you look through that, you look at how they were able to achieve

that. And what that means is that just because you had someone who was great at their particular field of study doesn't mean that that translates to them being able to bring others along, because that's what leadership is. Leadership is that you have to convince others that this is the path you have to provide a vision for others to follow. And yes, there may be times when you have to jump off that horse, and you may have to go fight

yourself. But for the most part, you're actually now in a position where you have to lay out the plan, and a vision for others to follow. And then you have to track and project manage, if you will, how well that vision has been followed.

audibles. A lot of times you are the center cog of the offense, you have to earn the respect of of your linemen who are protecting you, they have to have an emotional connection to protect you in a lot of ways rather than mechanically just doing the job. You have to build relationship with your receivers, you have to have a different type of relationship with the running backs that you're handing the ball over to. That idea popped in my brain. I don't know if it transists at

all. But it is interesting to think about if you're a career quarterback, you are in some ways, having to manage a multitude of relationships on a

hour to 75 or 90 minutes. But when we talk about this, but, you know, we also talk about, you know, someone like Matt Millen versus someone like Jerry West, and again, flipping the basketball football analogy, if you will, and even comparing, you know, someone like Jerry West and Michael Jordan, because, you know, Jerry West Hall of Famer, world champion, greatest point, one of the greatest point guards of all time, transitioned into building one of the greatest teams of all

time with the Lakers, and then went to other teams and was able to help build them at least into into competency if not proficiency and relevance. So it is a thing where there there are some there are some innate qualities to that position, if you will, but in fairness, Michael Jordan was a shooting guard, not a point guard, but he was the undisputed leader on that team. You know, they all look to him and they follow his ethos into the battlefield or

onto the court. So, when we look at those things, you look at it again, even in the same sport, you look at someone like Jerry West versus Michael Jordan, or you look at someone you know, who was a leader in his position from a Matt Millen who's you know, again, Hall of Famer, that type of thing. Terrible executive with the Detroit Lions. I mean, they had a what's called the Millen Man March in Detroit to fire him. Those type

of things. Versus again, someone like an Elway and it So, you know, trying to pick those analogs, where you have some successes and some failures. And, you know, breaking those down and seeing how, what were the commonalities of why they were a success, and what were the commonalities of failure. So bringing it all back in, part of it is that with us, I'll use myself as an example, I honed my troubleshooting skills, troubleshooting skills, to a

very fine point. So that means that I had to have that ability to remove everything else, and you know, identify what the problem is. So through all of the noise to hear the signal. So that's an important piece. But going and ascending into a leadership perspective, that's not necessarily a skill that is a translatable skill per se.

Directly translatable skill, we talked about that too, as far as you know, is that what skills are transferable directly, and which ones are indirectly which ones you may have to push back on? Because, again, I don't do board level circuitry anymore, going back to you know, that level of troubleshooting? I don't, it's not part of my role. So how do I keep my razor sharp for the next haircut, then, you know, I had to figure out those type of things. How do I continue to cultivate that in

myself? But also, you know, what skills do I transfer? You know, do I transfer? Yes, I don't necessarily have to troubleshoot those type of problems, but the troubleshooting skills, I learned, they're transferable into corporate and organizational issues, that if there is something coming up, you know, listening to what people were saying, because again, that's something you learn from the Help Desk. If you're effective, you have to

learn effective listening. So part of the effective listening is listening to what folks are saying, discerning what the signal is, versus the noise, trying to get to root problems, root causes, and then solutions that will help to and not treating, not treating symptoms but treating causes, all of those things can translate into how you can operate a business. And so those are the pieces that you have to take with you.

Unfortunately, there are other pieces that you will that may attribute a little bit, there are pieces that may get dull over time, and you'll have to find ways to sharpen. So for me,

that's my research time. So I bring in new products to the organization and I, you know, may purchase them, and I'll experiment and try them out to see because it's been an overwhelmingly that's benefited organization, because when something comes up, or we go into this type of thing, oh, yeah, I have a hardware solution for that. So I find ways to keep that sharp in mind, because that's just a desire that I have, because I get that question a lot. Well, you don't

troubleshoot anymore. So yeah, I

don't, but being able to look at these new technological innovations as they come in and new solutions as they come in. It also helps with something else that is beneficial is, it helps with my discussion with vendors. Right. Because when I deal with vendors, a lot of folks that sit in my chair, they don't have the same ability to really discern what they're being asked or what they're being told or what they're being

sold. And so being able to ask deeper, more probing questions, being able to push them into more comfortable positions to have to answer. And then being able to really evaluate whether I'm getting that value. That's something again, that I picked up from my days at the help desk. That helps me to now perhaps, move the organization toward or away from particular vendors, because of the acumen

that I've built over time. But again, those are those skills that you have to figure out that okay, I have this set of particular set of skills to quote taken, and now I'm going to apply those here and how do I apply those and where to apply

those. And so that's where, you know, the whole leadership thing though, so you have to find it in you folks to and your people and give them and stretch and challenge them to see where they have opportunities because again, you know, we have someone who may just be on the help desk, but putting them on projects, will give you an opportunity to see okay, can that person manage the project?

That is an important skill that is and that is not cultivated enough in IT presently from my humble opinion, if they can, you know, can they self manage, how was your time management? So that's what you see what those things are. And those are all translatable skills that can help them ascend from the management and then later into the leadership. You know, it's a long winded answer, but,

stroke of explaining, you know how to conceptualize and view the IT role today, we're coming up toward the end of the podcast and before we leave, I like to ask one question, I'm actually going to flip it around a little bit than the traditional way we

ask it. In the same vein of what you should be doing, as you want to develop your IT career, if you could display a message on a billboard, around the world, that's IT, the industry, middle of the road, and yet towards the end of the career, would be disseminated to everyone in IT of what to avoid? What not to do, that can get you into trouble. What would your message say?

much that job is the same. They have new things that they have to learn over time, new tax laws and that type of thing. But the actual day to day thing, right, is the same. We don't teach technology the same way we did you know, when I started. When I started, we were doing board level troubleshooting with logic probes and stuff. And then once I got into the workplace, in 95, we were swapping out those same boards that we were trying to

troubleshoot. We don't solder onto motherboards, for the most part for not in a commercial environment. You may do that in personal or research, but not in a commercial environment, you don't do that anymore. So just thinking in my own past of the things that I've had to learn and change and evolve and adapt, I would encourage anyone to, to not stop evolving to, to not be

stagnant. And because if you are, this train is going to leave you it is definitely going to leave you and you're going to be in a in a much less successful place than you intended when you started.

seen that before. And then I started looking at other folks who are gray beards like myself, and we're all like, yeah, that's the X Window logo. But I digress. So Twitter is a great forum to find me there. And of course, LinkedIn is also a great place that you want to hit me up. And, you know, those are two main places I would say, to look for me.

You know, you have to know a lot of math, a lot of engineering, to be a carpenter, to be a plumber, to be a mechanic. And those jobs are very high paying jobs. Also, we need to expand that umbrella in IT because I mentioned earlier project management, that is a very crucial role to IT, and to organizations in general. So we

need to do that. Representation is important, exposure of our young people to the field is important, and investment both at the governmental level for a lot of these disinvested environments that folks are coming up in, that will be helpful and of course, the business community because again, there are almost a million IT jobs that are open today and we don't have enough

people to fill them. So businesses and government investment into that because when we talk about not only IT we talk about cyber, it's becoming a national security risk now not having enough cyber people, not having enough people in IT in general because we're losing, we're stagnant in our lead in the IT space. So I just wanted to throw those up before we leave as just another aside, sorry to take up that time.