A Deeper Look with Joe Paiva

On this episode of A Deeper Look, host Joe Paiva speaks to Matisha Montgomery, Chief Learning Officer for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of A Deeper Look, Joe Paiva speaks with Tony Brannum, Associate Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Client Experience Center.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Joe speaks with Javier Inclan. Inclan currently holds the position of Deputy Office Head for the Office of Information and Resource Management at the National Science Foundation (NSF), though he has held many roles within the organization including Acting Division Director for Human Resource Management, Senior Advisor to the Office of the Director, Acting Division Director in the Division of Administrative Services, and as Deputy Division Director for the Division of Administrative Services.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If there is one civilian agency in the United States whose mission is as important to our national defense – and possibly more difficult – as the Defense Department, it is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The brevity and clarity of CISA’s mission statement, “reduce risk to the nation’s cyber and physical infrastructure,” does an injustice to the breadth and complexity of the actual task. So I invited CISA’s Deputy Director Nitin Natarajan to the studio recently to tell folks how his agency is dealing with those challenges.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For our May 24 show, I interviewed the Press Secretary for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Jeremy Edwards, and FEMA talent acquisition specialist Leemar Thorpe.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For our May 10th show, I interviewed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Chief Human Capital Officer, Jason Nelson. Unlike previous shows that highlighted agencies many Americans don’t even know exist, folks are generally very familiar with the TSA’s primary mission of maintaining the security of U.S. air travel. That familiarity may lead people to think they know more about TSA than they really do, and after 20 years without a major air travel event, some people have started taking the agency for granted. That has led to naive proposals for returning to the same localized privatization model that failed so miserably in the past.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I sat with the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army (ASA) for acquisitions, logistics and technology (ALT), my old friend Young Bang, this week. For those not familiar with the Defense Department hierarchy, acquisitions (i.e., undersecretary of Defense (USD) for acquisitions, technology & logistics at the DoD level and ASA(ALT) at the Army level) wield incredible power with USD(ATL) being first among undersecretaries in the order of succession. Within the Army, ASA(ALT) leads 12 program executive offices (PEO). These twelve offices are responsible for designing, producing and fielding everything from the Army’s bullets, beans and business systems to the entire nation’s COVID vaccinations.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week’s deeper look is with the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Global Markets and Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, Arun Venkataraman is and his deputy, Dale Tasharski. Having worked with both Arun and Dale when I was CIO of the US International Trade Administration (ITA), I knew it would be a fun interview, and they did not disappoint.

The ITA is another one of those little known agencies that have a huge impact on thousands of small businesses in virtually every corner of America. A bureau within the Department of Commerce, ITA has more than 100 offices throughout the United States (including one in every single state and territory) and another 100 plus offices in every economically developed country on the planet. 

The agency has three core business units, including Enforcement and Compliance (E&C), Industry and Analysis (I&A), and Global Markets (GM). Arun and Dale lead the latter, which is the largest of the three, but all units work in a very integrated manner with a single mission: Strengthen American competitiveness in order to bring and keep jobs back in the United States and ensuring that American workers earn the living they deserve for as hard as they work.

Arun Venkataramanexplained the ITA’s top three priorities, to which the business units roughly align 

·      Ensuring businesses know about and have access to the ITA products and services they need to expand their business into new, foreign markets (GM and I&A)

·      Strengthen the US supply chain by bringing critical manufacturing investments back into the USA (GM)

·      Ensure American companies are not placed at a competitive disadvantage by countries that engage in unfair and non-market business practices (E&C)

Unlike most government agencies that have minimal, non-regulatory/non-contractual interaction with private industry, the ITA operates, as Assistant Secretary Venkataramanput it, “hand in glove with industry”. With a primary customer base consisting of the thousands of small businesses that employ 80% of Americans, the entire ITA, and especially Global Markets, operates much more like a commercial consulting firm selling products and services than it does like a government agency. 

In addition to discussing the role GM's Select USA program plays in improving our national security and economic stability by driving investments in US based manufacturing, we spoke about how the Global export Initiative is helping underserved communities such as small businesses in rural areas expand their businesses.

As Arun put it during the interview, the math is simple: “80% of US jobs are in small business, and 95% of the world’s consumers are not in the United States.” So, if US small businesses don’t have the opportunity to compete on a level playing field and win our fair portion of those foreign sales, the US economy and the American people will suffer.

During the second half of the show Deputy Director General Tasharski and I discussed how the ITA has changed over the past 40 years to become a more diverse, inclusive and fun/rewarding place to work.

Please join me this Wednesday for A Deeper Look at the ITA and Global Markets with Arun Venkataramanand Dale Tasharski to learn more about how the US International Trade Administration is helping American small businesses compete and win, and learn about career opportunities both in the civil service and in the Foreign Commercial Service.  

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of A Deeper Look, Joe Paiva speaks with Dennis Alvord, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Development and Chief Operating Officer for the Economic Development Administration.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the inaugural episode of A Deeper Look, Joe Paiva speaks with Katy Kale, the deputy administrator of the General Services Administration. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices