Leading with Impact When the Stakes Are Water-Level High

Introduction: From Energy to Water – Meet Quisha Light

Rina Alexin | 00:00-00:50

And today I’m joined by Quisha Light, the interim director of the Portland Water Bureau, where she oversees the operations, infrastructure, and financial management of the Bureau to ensure the safe, reliable and high quality delivery of drinking water to Portland’s residents and businesses. When we met, she was driving digital transformation at Portland General Electric, it was clear to me even then that Quisha brings a rare blend of strategic vision, leadership, and operational expertise. Today, I’m excited to be talking to you, Quisha, about what it really means to lead product work in utilities, from innovating under constraints to building trust with the communities you serve. Welcome to the podcast.

Quisha Light | 00:51-01:05

Thank you. I’m so glad to be here with you. It’s been good over the years. So thanks for inviting me.

Rina Alexin | 00:57-01:05

Of course. And Quisha I know your story, but why don’t you tell our listeners your story about how you got into product leadership?

Entering Product Work at Portland General Electric

Quisha Light | 01:06-04:27

Yeah, so as you mentioned, prior to being at the Water Bureau here in Portland, I was at Portland General Electric and I started out with a project that was given to me. We had a problem, right? We realized that we we had lost about 20 to 30 % of our ⁓ commercial customers, particularly our large customers, because in Oregon, those customers have a choice in getting, in who their electricity provider is.

And I was given a project to go and come up with, put together a team to come up with a program that would help draw these customers back in. And I had no clue, to be honest, of what I was doing. But I knew how to project manage, but to create something that customers wanted, all the things that came with that, I put together an amazing team from across the company. Long story short, we were able to educate ourselves, pick up some books and pieces of things and do some reading and learn and put together a great program. The program’s capacity sold out within two minutes of us opening it up. We brought back like 20 % of those customers that we lost. So fascinating success.

And then from there, the company said, well, you know what, we’re gonna open up. And we want have a team that’s focused on innovation. We want a team of disruptors. And they’re thinking about new programs and products that we can bring to our customers. Because as the theme was at that time, the future is electric. So how do we capitalize on that? So I was ⁓ put over a team of, at that time, like 30 people focused on EVs, clean, renewable energy, ⁓ what we call demand side work where, you know, we work with customers, like if you think about your smart thermostats and ⁓ where you work with the utility and they can control or they’ll ask you to turn it down, turn it up and you get a rebate or something. So we were working on different programs of that nature.

And that’s what led me to you all because I was told to put this team together and you got these 30 folks and some of them, I’m a project manager, I’m a product developer, but none of them knew what that meant. And so we reached out to get some help around how do we start to train these folks on what a product developer is, what a project manager is, what do we do, how does each role play in all of this, and understanding what it means to go get market insights and how that shapes what you ultimately deliver, learning what it really means to iterate and move quickly.

That was the journey. And then I found myself, after doing that for a few years, a friend told me about a position at the city of Portland. I was like, sure, whatever, throw my name in a hat. Put my name in a hat and ended up at the Water Bureau as their customer service director. And now after three and a half years, I am the interim Water Bureau director, which has been a wild ride because it is a very different world.

Moving from Private Utilities to Public Water and Government Constraints

Rina Alexin | 04:28-04:38

Tell us more about like, how is it different, right? You’re working in a, mean, utilities are large, but they’re not necessarily government. Now you’re really working at the government. So how is that different?

Quisha Light | 04:39-06:53

⁓ you take, for instance, I had in the private side, you have maybe a steering committee or a best your board and they’re moving your executive team, they’re moving the work forward and you can get to them, move things along. I have to go here. Not only do you have to go through your internal checks within your own bureau, then you have to take it to council. And all of this stuff takes months. And because now you’re dealing with politicians.

So before you can get it to council, I have to have briefings with council members. I need to make sure their staff understands it. You gotta go do some community engagement because if you haven’t done community engagement to someone’s liking, they’re not going to approve your thing. We have a public advisory board that we have to go in front of that oversees things with our water bureau. So they’re just the oversight for good reason. Don’t get me wrong, because public health and safety.

For good reasons, but it’s a lot and it keeps, it makes it harder to just be able to try things. Our procurement process alone, it takes a long time, you know, to, I have had to, to try to get a pilot going, took me two years to get a pilot to go. So it’s just a lot of time. And then you also have,

You know, I have really great smart people, but they take this mission seriously that at the end of the day, what we deliver is water. Now, all the programs and things, people are like, those are nice to have, but the core work we do is deliver water. So your program stuff, that goes on the back burner. No one wants to talk about that, even though you’re talking about what it takes to get people to pay so you can keep delivering the water.

And I’ve had to say that so many times, the engineers or what nobody cares about, I’m like, you get to do the project because a customer paid a bill. If the customer doesn’t pay the bill, you don’t get to do the project. So you need me to make sure the customer pays the bill. And I’m telling you, this is how we get the bills paid.

Building a Learning Culture and Customer-Centric Strategy at the Water Bureau

Rina Alexin | 06:54-07:18

It is, I think this is a really good conversation because I don’t think many people have the opportunity to work in the public sector and the private sector. And I love that you took the jump to bring maybe some private sector thinking over to the public sector. Because yes, at the end of the day, like you said, you’re delivering water, but it doesn’t fall, I mean, actually it does kind of fall from the sky.

Quisha Light | 07:19-11:17

No.

It gets to the house.

So yeah, so the private thinking that you have to do, us your journey now that you’ve been there a few years. What has been adopted by this organization?

I think first and foremost, what has been adopted is a learning culture. I feel like now we are a learning culture. We are not afraid to fail at something. And ⁓ so I just want to start by saying that is a huge win where they’re like, I get more people coming to me saying, do you mind if I try this? So that’s a huge win because where I can give them space to try things I do.

Now, if it requires extra approvals and other things, then we, okay, we have figured out how to navigate those processes and make them happen faster ⁓ because we built the relationships that let us know who we need to hit and to go to and say, look, here’s where we’re going. But the other thing that I did, I think that was really different. They were used to coming to things in a piecemeal manner.

And what we did is we sat down and said, look, when we look at what customers need or what we need from customers even, what does it look like? What does the future look like? We sat down and really started to think about what is the future? And for us, a big thing was we want to go from being a utility where 80 % of our customers are calling us to a utility where

80 % are going online and getting what they need. And then we are reserving that space and time for the 20 % to call us who have complex issues that need more time for us on the phone, all this stuff. And so we are really focused on delivering the platforms, the programs and things that are necessary for customers to be able to serve as much as they can to serve themselves. And we’re changing, we had a lot of our assistance programs.

We’re branding them under one umbrella now. So when customers come, they just tell us who they are, what their information is, and then we put them into the different programs and they don’t have to go try to figure out which program should I apply for. So we’re not wasting a lot of their time. So they don’t mind going online. So there are a lot of things like that that we, but it took us stepping back and getting used to saying.

What does the future look like? Where are we going? What are we doing? And I think that has been a huge change because one of the things that I realized doing product development with the energy utility was we had, you know, yes, we had ideas and it was all great, but it needed to fit into this strategy that the utility had around the future is electric. And, you know, we know people are going to be using more electricity.

How do we capitalize on it? And we needed somewhere to start. And so for us, wasn’t, you know, the future is water or anything, but it was this premise that we want our customers to be able to self-serve as much as possible so that we can spend time making sure that, you know, I have people now being trained on how to do better knowledge management so that whatever customers are going to look for, it’s there and they don’t have to keep.

We’re not making it hard for them to find what they need. How do we have the videos ready? How do we have all this stuff? So we’re in the process of implementing our plan, but we have, I think we have a really good plan because we know what we’re going for. The goal is 80 % self-service. And that was the strategy. And that’s where all the programming, everything is driving towards that from a customer standpoint.

The Human Cost of Leaks, Huge Bills, and Water Insecurity

Rina Alexin | 11:18-12:15

So I want to point out two things because I want to make sure that our listeners hear it because I think in your context are very, very important. First one is actually what you said is that we’re not afraid to fail. ⁓ And I think coming from somebody in a corporate or a private setting, that is part of the culture. It’s important, right? But in a government entity that’s delivering water, mean, has anybody felt the pain of not having water?

Have hot water for a few weeks in July. That was painful, right? So in your context, so important in terms of the kinds of failures that are allowed because the public depends on you so fundamentally that you cannot lose that trust as a utility, right? And that affects, I think, the rest of what you’re kind of talking about of the importance of

Quisha Light | 11:50-16:25

It is painful, I’m not gonna lie.

Yes.

Exactly.

Why is there so much oversight and why does it take so long? Because it affects every single citizen. Yeah.

It does.

And I can tell you, I just remember like the first real story for me with a customer where I realized what I was doing now. And it’s not that electricity isn’t important. It is. get it. Electricity is so important. But when I had a situation with this family,

that just, you know, they had a leak.

And because of the nature, we don’t do monthly billing, we do quarterly billing, that’s just another issue, but we won’t go there. We don’t know that a customer has a leak until 90 days later, because we don’t have the data right now. We’re working on getting that data, the meter set up so that we can have that data, but we don’t have it. And this customer, this family got a $14,000 bill.

And they didn’t contact us. He just didn’t pay their bill. And then they were without water. And it was a friend of the family that actually contacted us. No, and finally a friend of the family actually told them you should go to the news.

So not only did we not get a chance to correct it, it just goes straight to the news. don’t know to come to us. They don’t know that we have, we deal with this all the time. We just would have written that bill off, help them, giving them, help them get resources to get it fixed. They don’t know any of this. But this is because this is not only a family that is where language was a barrier, know, income barrier, all these things, they just…

We’re like, look, it is what it is. We got to live like this. And when my folks went out, were just like, Kweesha, wow, this house leaked essentially the size of some Olympic swimming pool. And it happened from a winter storm where they didn’t realize a pipe had burst. But it wasn’t the pipe in their house. was a pipe that had been left. ⁓ An old building had been torn down behind their house.

But that was connected to their home. All of these things. it was just a really, but this family. And once we got connected, even though, it went through all this stuff in the news and I had to be on the news talking about why this people got a $14,000 bill and why you all treating these poor people this way. But when we finally got connected to them, got all the resources, show them what they needed to do to fix it, we got everything. And they were just like.

We just didn’t know we could call you and get the help. And we just, you know, we thought we were just gonna keep living without water, but it’s hard living without water, because we were having to buy water. And I’m like, and bottled water costs a heck of a lot more than the water coming out of your tap. And it just, so for me, all the things that can go wrong when we don’t get it right are real important. ⁓

And that story and connecting with those customers, understanding that was the first time truly where I realized water is real for people and we don’t need people to feel like they can’t call us. And we need to be careful about the things we do so we don’t unintentionally cause harm. And right now, one of the things that I’m driving my organization the hardest on is getting the meters in place so we can read people’s meter every single day and know if they have a leak. That is just not okay.

It is the most stressful thing when we see those bills and then the customer is calling us because they got a 15, 20. I’ve had one where the person got a $40,000 bill because of.

Innovation, Oversight, and Touching Every Resident in the City

Rina Alexin | 16:26-16:54

Right. So that I think brings me to that second point. So I had said there was two. One is just the critical nature, the actually critical nature of everything that you do. And the second one is you touch everybody, everybody. And so isn’t there, is there a better place for there to be innovation than in a place that has

It just exactly the impact that you can have. And honestly, I remember when I was in business school, somebody from the Harvard Kennedy School came to talk and said, you all are doing it wrong. Business school students, you should be going to government because you’re thinking about, ⁓ great, I’m going to manage like a million dollar P &L. What about the $30 billion P &L? Right. The impact. So how do you balance that and still create space for innovation because of

Quisha Light | 16:55-21:32

Yeah

You do have the ability to have outsize impact on so many people.

Yeah, I mean.

You know, I think it’s the reality that…

you want to do the best for your community. Our mission is that we deliver clean, safe drinking water every second of every day, right? ⁓ And we hold to that mission. I don’t care how frustrated team members are, what’s going on, that mission really matters to them. If you ask any employee, I don’t care where they work, even if they don’t work in the water industry, when they work in a public space.

This is thing that I have noticed. They are serious about, they know who they work for. And they believe in, work for the public, I work for our community, and most of us live in our community on top of it. So this is the place literally where you work, you live, play, and the decisions you make impact everyone. So I want the best. And part of getting to the best sometimes means you need to be innovative. You need to be thinking outside the box.

And one of the things that I really worked on with the team is I don’t need you to come to me. If you really believe that that is the solution to the problem, that’s one thing, because you’ve looked at it, you flipped it all on the side, you brought the right people together, and you said that this is the solution. But don’t come to me telling me the solution if you really don’t understand the problem. you know, where we’ve had and it’s much so one of the things that I’ve, you know, have pushed on

Because as much as we love that we do this for the community, we don’t have a lot of us that have experience talking to the community. So I really had people getting out, talking to the community. If they’re bringing me something new, they wanted to turn on the new Spanish line. I was like, well, these Spanish speakers listen to it. Well, no. Well, then you’re not turning it on. I need you to go test it with them.

Hear from them that they understand it, it works for them, it’s meeting the needs, it’s solving the problem that they can now get to us without guessing and pushing buttons. They can get to us because they understand the line. And it was like, and then they got more feedback than they realized that actually helped them to fix some other problems. So talk to the people that we know, I know they care, getting them to talk to the people.

It’s the other way that we balance all of this. But we don’t let up on the reality that we want to bring the best. And so if the best is a spreadsheet, fine. Then give that, do that. If the best is you need to go out here and we need to explore some other opportunities, we need to try to be innovative, we need to think outside the box. And to be honest, I think my best team at doing that is my field crews who

who fixed ⁓ the distribution system.

Those guys, those women, they will be out there in the cold and the rain trying to figure out, look, we got a family that’s without water or we got 10 or 100 or 50,000 families without water. We don’t have the ability to go and procure something right now because, you know, whatever’s going on, what can we do? And they are so innovative and coming up with ways to fix things and solve for things.

And they use whatever is in front of them. Sometimes they have to MacGyver until we can get the new thing in. But their goal is we don’t want that family being without water for more time than they have to be. And I get more compliments about my field crews because to me, they are probably the most innovative folks in this city. Because their goal is to ensure that customers are not without water longer than they

Rina Alexin | 21:33-22:02

You know, I love that, you know, in talking with you, I realized a couple of things here as well. One is that it’s, it’s, it goes back to the principles of great product management, right? Really understand your market, understand the problem, and then go out and test and do it in a small size bets as possible still there. Right. And so bringing that into a utility, I’m so happy to hear that like you’re bringing your, your, which

Quisha Light | 21:54-22:10

Yes.

We can!

Rina Alexin | 22:03-22:10

I mean, but it does. Hey, I gotta say it like you’re you’re you’re probably saving Portland a whole lot of money and expense working on things that people won’t use. Right? Like that’s actually the that’s one of the things that I wish people would talk about more is that saying no to things on time is it’s a win.

Quisha Light | 22:11-23:00

⁓

Yes, yes. mean, right now I have our leadership team. We’re reading how big things get done because it’s like it became one of my favorite books. And, you know, that principle of think slow, act fast. ⁓ And it is it’s changing our project management is changing our program development. But it really is just the principle of thinking about what you’re doing and making sure you understand the problem.

That’s all is getting at the same thing that product development is. Understand the problem that you’re trying to solve.

Unionized Structures, Motivation, and Creating Space for Growth

Rina Alexin | 23:01-23:41

So then talk to me about your team. you mentioned a couple of different teams. Given that at the start of our conversation, you also were real about the difficulties and challenges of working within the government, right? It’s a two year process to get something done that you really want to get done. That’s on one side. On the other side of that two year challenge is an ability to impact a whole lot of people all at the same time. So then how do you ⁓ assemble like

You also talked about this at Portland General about the importance of assembling the right team. So how do you assemble the right team, given that not everybody wants to work within those constraints?

Quisha Light | 23:42-30:18

This is my toughest issue. So it’s not even just that people don’t want to work within those constraints. It’s also that we have this really unique structure where we have about 90 % of our workforce is unionized. So that means that you can’t just move people around where in a private company, most of the time you can say, hey, I want to pull this person and pull that person in to work on a project.

I can’t just move people like that because I have to ensure that I’m not impacting where they fall in the line and within their classification. What is their status? Are they number one, number five or whatever? I have to open it up. ⁓ And I can’t just assign people to things in that way ⁓ without getting a grievance from the union. And what that has done in some ways

is it has created this space where… ⁓

people don’t need to feel motivated to go and do and learn and take on something new. They don’t have to because their position is locked in. I have some employees who are like, this is the job I’ve been doing. I don’t want to do another job. And you can’t make me do another job. And I’ve had to really walk that line of helping educate employees

Well, one, I’ll be honest. Initially, I started with creating opportunities for people by saying, you know, I found the spaces where I didn’t have to necessarily follow those very stringent rules. I learned, I went to the union, said, okay, well, where do I have room? Because I need to be able to do things and I don’t have time for all these processes. So what can we do? So I learned the spaces where I could maneuver outside of some of that.

I would just say who’s interested. And the people that were interested got those opportunities and got to show how excited they were, all the things they were learning, everything that they were impacting. And those people that were sitting back like, ⁓ why they get that? I didn’t get that. And they could go and complain, but there was nothing they could do. And you do that enough times, now people become interested.

Now they want to raise their hand. So we have a lot more of that. I created job shadow programs, did a whole bunch of things to get people interested. I put training dollars on the table saying, OK, here are some areas that we need people to start getting training in, particularly in the data, software, technology spaces. I was like, I need people who can analyze data, who can read code, who can do all types of things, play around. And I’m putting training dollars on the table. I have set aside.

I think my first year I set aside like $20,000 and like whoever wants to get trained is first come first serve. I probably had two people that first year, but one person she went through, became certified in like two or three different things. Got to move up, all these things. And not only did she get the money, but then the union gave her money.

To keep going and so she was able to finish her degree and do all this other stuff. it was, people got a chance to see you either you can stay stuck or you move forward. But then after I had gone through the process of creating the changes, I finally, the next step was here’s where we are. Once we implement these things, we will no longer need these positions. So either you are gonna get trained in something new or your position will no longer be needed.

And we will do our best to try to help you find something else within the city. But here’s where we are.

Rina Alexin | 27:44-28:30

I bet the unions love that.

Quisha Light | 27:47-28:08

But

the unions couldn’t say anything because I had followed their processes. And they were like, nope, you need to be listening and getting trained.

Rina Alexin | 27:54-28:38

Yeah.

Okay, so you found a way to work. You basically, what I understand in a couple of years, you understood the system, you understood the edges of the system, which allowed you to play differently. And then you took those learnings, you created those proof points and brought it back in such that, because I think also like what you were saying, a lot of people who end up in public work, they genuinely do want to do well for the public. But there is, I mean,

Quisha Light | 28:39-30:18

Yeah.

It’s just honest, some people lose motivation once they realize, I could basically be here for a while. And that doesn’t really work when you need, when so much about this world is changing. People deserve, the people of Portland deserve great service that changes with it.

Yes.

Well, and I will say, and I don’t put it all on the people because those legacy structures were also built by the leaders that came before me. They allow people to just, they only wanted people to do just the job that was in front of them. They didn’t talk to them about other opportunities. They didn’t talk to them about the need to ⁓ be learning data analytics or to understand how ⁓

how the customer service world was becoming more digital, ⁓ more digitized. they didn’t talk about that. They weren’t offering them trainings. They weren’t keeping ahead of things. They weren’t talking about how all of these things needed. They need to be preparing people. They weren’t doing that. And so I understand why people got comfortable too. But. ⁓

We could not move forward with that and you know, and I think some of that just being really Transparent trying to motivate trying to encourage trying to create opportunities Where now I do have it, you know people know that look if I’m not going to Ask you to do something and not train you or ensure you have the resources But I can’t make you like you said I can bring you to the water, but I can’t make you drink it

It’s so…

Smart Discount Pilot: Using Data to Proactively Help Customers

Rina Alexin | 30:19-30:52

Well,

so then tell me, okay, so we talked a bit about the challenges, right? And then the unique ways in which you are finding space to create, I guess, innovation culture, product culture, even, bits of that of what I heard. ⁓ You have an ability to have impact on a lot of people. ⁓ I’d love to bring that story, know, front and center. Do you have an example of like all of the work that you’ve put in,

The people that you’ve invested in, what are some wins that you have had?

Quisha Light | 30:53-34:13

Yeah. Well, you know, for me, one of the wins is I told you we got that two year pilot we were trying to get going and we did the first phase of it. And yeah, sorry, it was it’s a smart discount pilot. the idea is that we were we have the question of whether we could use AI or machine learning to help us

determine whether a customer had a need for financial assistance without them applying for it. Could we see things in their changes in their payment behaviors? Could we have access to other data that the city may have or that publicly available data that would tell us that this customer of ours may need, you know, a 10%, maybe, or

maybe they’re leaving a certain amount of a balance on their account. And, you know, and is that a sign that maybe they just couldn’t afford to pay the whole bill? But if we offered, you know, a 10 or 20 % discount, could they pay their whole bill? So we were just trying to test this question to help us understand willingness and ability to pay too. And when we did the first wave of it, I received so many

calls ⁓ and letters and emails from people who were just like, how did you know I needed that? ⁓ We were stressed this much trying to figure out what we were going to do. Especially from a lot of our elderly people in it, our seniors were like, I just thought I was gonna have to not pay.

For my medicine because I need my water and all these things and I don’t want to let the bill, I didn’t want to pay half the bill, but then you offered me a 50 % discount and I didn’t have to worry about that. And it was, so we know there’s a need, we’re still working through the model, working the way that we wanted to, but we know that there’s a need out there and the stress that we took away from people, because they didn’t have to go do the embarrassing thing of asking.

They didn’t have to go through the embarrassment of filling out a form, having somebody ask them a bunch of questions, especially when you have people like we had one family where the father had just lost the job. And so it was like, we really just needed a break this month and you all gave us a break and you didn’t even realize it. And, you know, and the wife was just like.

I almost wanted to say, should I say something? Do they know they gave us this discount? you know, I heard so many of those stories that let me know that there is a need. Like I said, we still need to calibrate and get the model before I can feel confident in it. But I know there is a need and that is real to us.

Data Sharing, Water Insecurity, and Leading with Lived Experience

Rina Alexin | 34:14-34:50

I love this story. Thank you so much for sharing because, man, we’re doing this for other people, right? And carrying… I’ve been in situations where, I mean, I tell this often when I… So when I was looking for a company to buy and I ended up with 280 Group, I couldn’t pay my credit card bill at that time. It was a big risk, big risk. And…

It’s just, are moments everybody goes through it in their life where it helps you, I suppose, to feel seen by someone. And it’s interesting that you’re able to use, you know, pretty advanced technology to do it. And ⁓ I’m also hearing, I’m glad, Akrisha, they’re very lucky to have you thinking about like, we need good data to be able to serve our constituents better. ⁓

Quisha Light | 34:51-37:22

Yes.

Yeah,

that is a huge need for us. And some of it, we don’t even share it well between the government agencies. Like we’re the same entity and we don’t even share the data well between us. ⁓ And our bureau has been one of the main ones trying to get agreements with individual bureaus saying, do you want to share data? Do you want to share data? Of course we didn’t have to go back and make sure the customers understand that we’re doing this, but customers are like, well, aren’t you already, you’re the city, right?

But we don’t share data very well within the city and it is unfortunate and we are stressing people out. I will tell you just on a personal note, coming into the water industry,

It was the first time to actually bring me back to a reality of growing up with water insecurity. And I didn’t even, and it tells you how your brain just put something out of the mind. I didn’t think anything of it because it was just the way it was. But for the first 12 years of my life, we did not have running water in our home. And I never thought anything about it.

We had, we went to the outhouse, we did the whole thing. And ⁓ it wasn’t until I was in a meeting and someone was like, well, what do you know about blah, blah, blah? And you don’t understand and you all answered. And before I knew it, I was just like, who in here has had to go out to a well and get your water and bring it in? Who in here has had to use an outhouse?

So don’t tell me what I don’t understand. Whose parents have had to receive government assistance? I knew and I feel the pain of our customers. And that’s why, while I want to do the really innovative stuff, I want to be doing, developing new programs. I want to do it well and be fast and innovative. I also want to do it with care because it is very real, the impact that you can have on a person.

Rina Alexin | 37:23-38:07

Well, I could raise my hand for some of those as well. So I agree with you. And I think that’s why I wanted to bring you on the show to just genuinely talk about this because it is you’re you’ve been raw and honest this entire time about yes, it is challenging to work in this scenario, but it is truly mission driven and you’re helping people. So I would love to end on what what advice do you have?

Advice for Product Managers Considering Mission-Driven Government Work

Rina Alexin | 38:08-38:21

For someone who maybe hasn’t truly found their calling, but feels like it may be in mission-driven work. ⁓ Maybe, and since our listeners are product people, let’s focus on what they could be doing different, yeah.

Quisha Light | 38:22-40:35

I tell them to take the chance and look at a government entity because

You go into it, know that you’re gonna have to be patient. Don’t lose your passion, right? You gotta keep the passion. But in government, here’s the thing, you don’t always move fast like you do in tech and private spaces. But as we just said, the impact runs deeper. I am excited that I get to build products that families depend on. I get to build programs. I get to deliver a service.

That families depend on every single day to live. And that is real purpose-driven work. And that’s gonna stretch you more as a person, as a developer, as a leader in ways that the private sector will ever stretch you. And I’ve been there, right? I’ve done it because we need the bottom line to be a certain thing ⁓ because, you know…

The board wants to move into this new space and you need to move quickly and need to deliver and you gotta have this ROI and all these things and

You may have to be a little bit more methodical here and move slow, but boy, when it’s time to move, you need to be ready and move and be ready to deliver. And you get to, like I said, have just a really deep impact. And it’s usually not about the money. It’s just it’s usually not. So and I.

I want more people who have been on the private side to come into the government space. Bring your thinking, bring your skills because they are needed because unfortunately many people in the government space aren’t behind because that’s what they choose. It’s oftentimes training and investing in the new skills isn’t just the primary thing that folks are focused on.

But the more that we get people who have been in that private space, coming into the government space to help expand the thinking, to help us grow, the better it’s going to be. you won’t know you won’t make the same money, but I can’t tell you that I don’t regret it. I love what I do and I’m glad I get to have this.

How to Connect with Quisha and Closing Remarks

Rina Alexin | 40:36-41:39

Yeah. And I would say that, ⁓ from what I could see in talking to a lot of product people, a lot of them feel, ⁓ maybe lost, lost in terms of like, what is really the mission underlying my work? Like, what am I actually doing? And, ⁓ to your point, like this is really a mission driven, mission driven choice. Well, I so enjoyed our conversation. How can our listeners follow you or keep in contact after they hear this recording?

Quisha Light | 40:50-41:22

Yes.

You know, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I love connecting, getting connected to new people. So please reach out, especially if you’re someone I get people, I’ve had people all the time reaching out who are thinking about leaving the private sector and wondering what it’s like to move into the government space. So happy to talk through if you got a specific role or something that looks interesting to you, because an analyst in the government space could actually be a product developer. So.

You never know by the title. So please reach out on LinkedIn. That’s the easiest and best way.

Rina Alexin | 41:40-42:30

I fully recommend anyone listening to do so because you’re also just a delightful person to get to know. ⁓ well, thank you so much and thank you all for tuning into another episode of Productside Stories. If you found our conversation today valuable, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend and subscribe to Productside Stories so you don’t miss a future episode.