Show Notes

Episode Highlights:
Join host Manuel Martinez for an inspiring conversation with Rishma Khimji, the pioneering CIO of Harry Reid International Airport. Her story begins with constant movement – nine cities across two countries – and leads to managing technology systems that serve millions of travelers annually.

Rishma’s career trajectory breaks conventional wisdom about climbing corporate ladders. Starting as a junior programmer debugging code for IBM, she discovered her true calling lay in making technology invisible to end users. Her public sector experience spans water utilities, police departments, and now aviation – each role teaching her how technology should serve humanity, not the other way around.

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace Your Migration Story: Constant change teaches adaptability and opens doors you never imagined
• Failure Equals Course Correction: Build backup plans (A, B, and C) because your primary approach won’t always work
• Technology Should Be Invisible: The best systems are the ones passengers never think about
• Community Amplifies Success: Surround yourself with people who champion your growth
• Apply at 50% Qualification: Stop waiting until you’re 100% ready – most learning happens on the job
• AI as Augmented Influence: Use technology to enhance your capabilities, not replace your humanity

Resources Mentioned:

• “Smart Brevity” book referenced by Manuel
• Airport common-use technology systems
• RFID baggage tracking implementation
• Public sector technology transformation strategies

About Rishma Khimji:
Rishma serves as Chief Information Officer for the Clark County Department of Aviation, managing technology operations for Harry Reid International Airport and four general aviation facilities. Her leadership spans over 25 years in technology, with experience transforming operations across utilities, law enforcement, and aviation sectors. She’s recognized for her innovative approaches to making technology serve community needs.

Connect with Our Guest:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishmakhimji/

Next Steps: Ready to accelerate your tech career? Subscribe to Career Downloads for weekly episodes featuring leaders who’ve navigated unconventional paths to success. Each conversation delivers actionable insights you can implement immediately.

Transcription

Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. Where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their experiences and their background, to really help uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So I’m excited for today’s guest. I have with me Rishma Khimji and I have crossed paths with her close up, I’ve come close to crossing paths with her a few times. She’s worked on the public sector and when I used to work at VMware, covering public sector. So that’s kind of when I first became aware of her. I’ve seen a lot of what she’s done since that time. So I’m really excited to kind of get to know more about her and how she’s kind of continued to navigate her career. So with that, I’ll introduce Rishma.

Rishma: Hi.

Manuel: Hi, I appreciate you coming on and again, being willing to share your experiences.

Rishma: No, absolutely, happy to be here. So, I know we haven’t always crossed paths face to face but there’s always been an intersection of acquaintances for us. And so I’m very excited to be here because those friends that have already been on this podcast have spoken very highly of you and so I feel very honored to be here. So thank you.

Manuel: Thank you, I appreciate that. So if you don’t mind kind of telling people a little bit more about what your current role is and kind of some of the responsibilities that you have to manage.

Rishma: Sure, so I’m the first chief information technology officer for the Harry Reid International Airport, more so the Clark County Department of Aviation. We are a system of five airports. So we have the major airport, which is the Harry Reid Airport. And then we have four general aviation airports. Those are our non-commercial airports. So like the Henderson Executive Airport, the North Las Vegas Airport, Overton and Jean. And so we have these great airport systems that allow all of our guests and visitors come into Vegas. And the fun thing about it is I manage all of the technology that surrounds the passenger experience and the airline airport relationship. So I make sure that the planes are able to come in and the planes are able to go out, that our guests have a easy and seamless experience while they’re at the airport. But my team, which is a fabulous team, I couldn’t do, in fact, I don’t do much. They do all the hard work. And I appreciate them so much for that because I have such a smart and dedicated team. But we manage over 60 systems that pull the guests from the curb to the gate and the gate to the curb. So everything, once you walk into the airport, actually, even on the roadway into the airport, is somehow managed or has a technical component which we have to maintain, support, and do all the good things for. So it’s a really large job. My job is really starting to focus around the strategic implementation of technology because you might have heard we’re gonna actually open a second commercial airport, the Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport. It’s gonna be 20 miles south of us. But it’s actually gonna be an extension of the Harry Reid International Airport. So right now we have Terminal 1, D-Gates, and Terminal 3. We’re going to rename Terminal 3 into Terminal 2, and then down south of us will be Terminal 3. So just by that naming convention, we can see that we’re gonna have one very large airport system just in two very distinct locations, making it a very unique makeup of an airport. And so in order for us to get there, we are going to start using our commercial airport, the Harry Reid International Airport, as an innovative test bed for a lot of the solution building we wanna do once we come across that very unique setup that we’re gonna have in about 10 to 12-ish years. And so that’s very exciting.

Manuel: That is, and again, I think that’s one of the great things that I enjoy about this is, even though I think I have an idea of kind of what your role is, and each guest will kind of give us additional information. Like me being a local to Las Vegas was not aware that you are in charge of, or that they oversee and they’re all connected all these different airports.

Rishma: Right

Manuel: And then this one, it’s not gonna be a different airport, it’s gonna be an extension. So I’m sure there’s, it’s gonna be easy, right? There’s no challenges with something 20 miles away. (both laughing) Fantastic. So now, if you wouldn’t mind, what I’d like to do is kind of get to know a little bit more about you and just what, kind of where you grew up, and then eventually what got you interested in technology and eventually got you started in your career.

Manuel: Sure, so it’s kind of a long story. This is my ninth city. I come from a family of migrants. And so I think just travel and finding home is in our blood, and finding home is really where the love is, not necessarily where the house is, right? So my parents are from East Africa. They traversed over the ocean, landed in Canada, and actually met in Canada, got married there. And then, coming from East Africa, my mom being from Uganda, my dad being from Tanzania, the landscape is very different than it is in Canada, right? So they go through their first winter and they’re like, “Where in the hell am I?” Right? After a few years, my dad had an opportunity to kind of engage in some business ventures with his brothers, and they traveled south from Calgary, came into the States, reached Albuquerque, New Mexico, and was like, “Okay, this is somewhat reminiscent of home.” And that’s where we all moved. So I grew up in a community of about 150 to 200 people that are either centered around us through familiar relationships or through generational relationships, right? So these are people that my dad or my mom or my uncles have known, previous generation, like their parents knew each other, their grandparents, right? It’s like this whole thing. So I come from a very networked community. But with that also came opportunities for my dad and my mom to kind of venture out and see what else was available. And so in this cooperation with his brothers, right, we moved to different cities, looking for the right mix of work and family life. My parents, workaholics, but I mean, if you think about it, those immigrants that come in are always looking for the better opportunities for their children, not necessarily themselves, right? So they center themselves around being very, very strong workhorses, if I can use that term, but my parents worked their butts off. And so we moved a lot. And then once I graduated from college, I had already been to four or five cities by then, but then I moved to New York City all on my own, got a job at IBM, 9-11 happened, moved back to Albuquerque. And then from there, just started building my career a little bit more and more and more, got a job in Reno, so moved to Reno, then to San Francisco and out here. So nine cities later, I’ve figured out some of what I want to do with my life. I don’t think I’ll ever figure out where that pinnacle will be, but it’s been an adventure nonetheless. I don’t see challenges as negatives. They’re opportunities where you can either figure out which direction you wanna go in, a big proponent of change and chaos. I think in chaos, sometimes you find your gaps, and that’s where you can really focus on enabling change. So that’s a little bit about where I come from. So I think just being in those different cities, going from small cities to large cities, back to small cities, having a large family network, having a large community has given me opportunities that I don’t think I would have had if I just stayed in my own little center.

Manuel: And I’ve noticed a lot of similarities in kind of our stories really, same thing, my parents and my grandparents, immigrants and kind of building that community, they work hard for the next generation. And I think one of the qualities that I’ve seen, and again, this is just primarily through LinkedIn posts, is I can see kind of like that giving nature that comes from you. And even, you talked about your great team earlier, you can see that you appreciate and that that’s important to you, not just, hey, how can you help me accomplish my goal, but it’s, how can I help you? How can we kind of uplift? And I’m assuming a lot of that comes from kind of the community structure that you came from.

Rishma: Yeah, I really believe in the saying, right? A rising tide lifts all boats. When you can center and focus on one piece of the problem and find the solution that elevates that solution building process, you’re eventually also going to be elevating other things around you. Maybe it’s not even just trying to figure out a problem, but when you can find success for someone else, that success is gonna radiate to their community and it’s gonna lift them up as well, right? So for me, my success can’t be anchored with just me because then I’m going to be stuck flat, right? That’s what anchors do, they don’t let you lift. So if I only anchor my success on myself, then I’m never gonna bring those around me up as well. And then that’s just not building equity in your systems, right, and the goal to humanity is to ensure that we have justice and equity. And if we can center our mission around that, then I think we have an opportunity to not just help ourselves, but help others around us. Because there’s always the economics of wealth building. And if you look at it from the practical point of it, right, is that when you start building wealth, you can also build others wealth, right? By giving back into the system the feeding of that dollar, right, it allows this feedback cycle, this loop that allows others to do the same. So not only is it based in economics and its real world experience, it’s not this philosophical thing of help others and they will help you. It is something that is proven that by lifting yourself up and giving that energy back to others, you are gonna lift them up and you are all going to rise the way you need to. And so why wouldn’t you do that?

Manuel: Right, no that’s awesome. And I love the, that idea, that mindset, and then the fact that you don’t just talk about it, right? You’re actually living it. Yeah. So kind of going back, you talk about your parents, migrants, and then having moved around, and I’ve talked to a number of people that have had similar experiences, did that make you open to kind of venturing out on your own and what led you to New York and eventually kind of working at IBM? Like what drove that passion to say, okay, it’s time for me to focus on myself and kind of start to build my own career?

Rishma: So a lot of that I will actually attribute to my parents. So my parents are very non-traditional in the sense that a woman in our culture is not just meant to be at home and have babies and raise a family. They can do that for sure, if that’s the choice they wanna make. But my parents really centered education and higher education as part of my life trajectory. And so it was expected I would go to college, it was expected that if I wanted to go beyond college and get other degrees, I would do that, right? And so when I graduated with my bachelor’s, the first thing I did was I was like, I don’t wanna be an Albuquerque anymore, right? This is too small for me. I had the itch in my veins to like get out and do something. And I had a couple of friends in New York City and I just went for it. I packed my bags, worked for summer, saved up some money and bought a flight and took off. My dad was excited for me, but that was the first time I’ve seen him cry because I think he knew that I was really entering adulthood at that point, right? I was no longer the little girl. And my mom was just like, you wanna do it, then do it. Like, go. There was no, oh, you know, think about what’s happening. What are you gonna do? It was like, you wanna go? You know what to do. Prepare yourself and get out there. So I was really fortunate that I had parents who expected more from me and more for me than what was the cultural norm. And so I was able to kind of break the chains of legacy with that. And so I moved to New York, met with a few people. I had been there earlier for an internship with Merrill Lynch. So I had built up some networks and things like that. And through those networks, I got a job through a consulting firm with IBM. So it’s an IBM firm, but it’s a consulting firm. You know, these large conglomerates have these things. And so I actually got to work on the Lucent contract. So I’m really dating myself here because Lucent doesn’t exist anymore. But they were a phone manufacturing company, right? And they split up into Avaya and all that kind of stuff. Right? So this huge history back in the early knots. Is that what we’re still calling it? Right? So got the job, helped them build the first online warehouse. So I was a junior programmer at the time. So it was my job to go in and check the code. A lot of QA testing on it, right? Fixing a lot of the low level priority bugs while the big ones were done by the development team. And just making sure that we were staying on track and all that stuff. So part of a big team. And it was my first real adult job. And it was so exciting. And I think even then I realized that I don’t want to do just this forever, but I don’t know where I want to go, but I don’t want to do this forever. But this is good enough for now. Right? And so I just settled into it. And then 9-11 happened. And that changed, right? The whole world. Just changed the world. And a few months later, my dad had a heart attack. And my dad and I are very close, or were very close. And I came back to Albuquerque to visit him in the hospital. Went back to New York after a week. And found out that I was being laid off. So, you know, there was a boom and then there was a bust. And right after 9-11, there was a bust. And so I was part of the layoff. And again, that was just another way of the universe taking care of me because I got to travel a little bit. I got a severance package, all this good stuff. I got to travel a little bit. Went back home, hung out with my dad, right? He was recovering. And then landed a tech job in Albuquerque, which back in the day was not huge, right? It was not a big thing. But it was a great software house. They built court management software for the public sector. So a lot of the tribal and small to medium cities used this software. So I got to be on the QA and programming team there. And I just kept moving up there. Went into program management and project management and then training. And so just had a great career with them for almost eight years. Got my masters during that time. And then realized I was ready again for more. And went into the public sector at that point and haven’t looked back. It’s been an amazing adventure. And as much as I believe in community and as much as I believe in helping others, I also believe that the universe will give you the opportunities when you’re ready for them. And every time something has come my way, I’ve had to go for it, right? It wasn’t just handed to me, but the universe opened that door. And that’s part of where I really see opportunities because it’s okay to not want something or to want something to put it out there. And then the universe will say yes or no to it, right? And if it’s saying no, it’s gonna give you something else that you just didn’t ever realize or thought was available to you. And if it says yes and you get what you want, then you’re going to make it even that much more special because you knew it wasn’t just handed to you, right? It was something that might’ve been yours, but you had to still work for it.

Manuel: And how are you preparing yourself for these opportunities, right? Because you mentioned that you kind of grew and you develop. Are you relying on your place of employment to go through and kind of help upskill you? Are you taking initiative on your own to kind of after hours kind of build this skillset so that I agree with you that it’s, if you put it out there and you’re genuine, what’s going to be for you is for you and what’s not is not. And you may not agree with it. You may not realize it at the time, but I’ve had those opportunities where I’m like, “Oh, I really want this. “I really wanna go and it doesn’t happen. “It doesn’t happen.” And I’ve tried multiple things and I’m okay with trying different areas. For example, one of the things where I was like, I wanna work at VMware. Like once I got, I’m gonna do this. And it just, it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t happening. Finally, when it did happen, it was something completely different that I would never have gotten. I would have never gone after originally for myself. How are you preparing yourself for these types of opportunities? And that early on, did you realize that, like did you already have that innate that say, “Oh, what’s for me is for me?” Took me probably the better half of my career to finally realize, “Oh, that’s not how this works “just because I want something. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna get it, “but I have to work.” Like you said, you have to work for it. Nothing’s gonna be handed to you. So I’m just kind of curious how you kind of upskilled and then realize that I’m gonna go for this opportunity.

Rishma: Yeah, that’s a really good question because it really makes you reflect on how you’ve approached your decision-making. For one, the upskilling is done at work, after work, all the time. It’s just done all the time. Whether you’re upskilling on a tech skill, you’re upskilling on a leadership skill, you’re upskilling on a human skill. Whatever it is, you have to be in learning mode all the time. And sometimes you have to learn how to stop learning too because you’ve got to give yourself a break.

Manuel: Yes. (both laughing) Rishma: But every opportunity you have should give you some learning experience as well. Given that, internally I’ve always known that I want to go up and up and up, meaning I wanna move up the ladder, the career ladder. Or I want to, nowadays I don’t say I’m really looking to move up the career ladder. What I’m looking to do is to build my circle of influence. And the reason I say that is because I don’t have to have a title to be influential. And if I want to be influential, I have to know what I’m trying to be influential about. And so right now, where I am today, after 25 plus years of being in the career field, being in technology, what I’m really looking forward to is aligning to the mission of continued growth, modernization, and innovation. And if we look at modernization, it’s really a moment in time when something’s either modern or not. So modernization is this continuous application of modern philosophy, right? Like you gotta keep moving in order to continue being modern, does that make sense?

Manuel: Yes.

Rishma: Okay, so it’s not a fix, something fixed in time, right? So–

Manuel: It’s not a finish line, it’s a journey.

Rishma: Correct, absolutely. best way to say it. And so what I’m really looking to do is to say, hey, how do we move our services to that next level so that in the context of the airport, that we can let our guests through the airport and they have such a seamless experience that they don’t even think in the back of their mind of, and I’m like, I don’t know what to do, I don’t want that to happen to our passengers and our guests. I want them to come in and say, yep, got in, got my stuff, got through security, I’m good at my gate, I’m having a drink, I’m playing on the machines, right? Because please play on the machines, that’s my salary. But they’re playing on the machines and they’re just having a great time. It’s part of their experience of either their vacation into Vegas or their vacation out of Vegas, right? And it takes a lot of technology to make that happen. And it takes the invisible kind of technology to make that happen, right?

Manuel: Yes.

Rishma: And so I want to be in a space where I can say, hey, I can see this tool or this system being a part of our ecosystem here at the airport. Let’s investigate it, let’s invest in it, let’s build on it, and let’s move that experience to the next level, right? That’s influence. That’s not a title. That’s influence having that type of conversations with the director and our senior leadership and saying, hey, I think this would work, and building that trust relationship and saying, let’s do this, and getting it done, right? That’s where I wanna be. I wanna be strategic, I wanna be innovative, and I want to really harness what modern technology is. And it’s, like you said, it’s never ending, right? It’s the journey.

Manuel: Yes.

Rishma: And so that’s where I am now.

Manuel: And I like that you mentioned that the circle of influence, it’s not a title, it’s not a position. Somebody at entry level can have that same influence, and you can influence up, you can influence across, and you can influence down. Yep. That mindset to try and go through, and I’ve talked to different people, and sometimes the misconception is that just because something is new and modern and innovative, we need to implement this, but it sounds like you take the approach more of what’s gonna be the end benefit, right? You have an end, I don’t wanna say an end goal, but again, your customers, the travelers, they’re the people that you are really looking for and trying again, make technology work, but make it invisible. As opposed to, if it’s not working well, I can go to the airport, I’m like, “Oh, they tried to scan my badge,” or, “My ID, it didn’t work,” and the wrong gate numbers are being posted.

Rishma: They lost my bag.

Manuel: They lost my bag.

Rishma: Right, the biggest one. Manuel: All those things.

Rishma: Yeah.

Manuel: How do you go through and develop kind of the idea or that mindset to say this, yes, I like technology, but I am more interested in how that technology is going to help at the end of the day, the end customer.

Rishma: Yeah, so one of the things that I think I learned later in life was that when we’re implementing a technology, we’re implementing a solution because a solution comprises of workflows and technology and all these other things, right? A solution is not always going to be just a new tool, but what I learned later in life is that it’s not that we’re looking at what’s the latest and greatest. What we’re looking at is how do I make that customer that much more independent and autonomous for their decisions? And if I can make them more independent and I can let them, and they feel reassured that the decision they’ve made is the right one for them, then I can do that with any packaged technology. It’s really the experience around it that makes the technology worthwhile or not. And I know that always makes sense. I think it’s something that you just have to, you have to dive into what that means for you. So for example, let’s use the airport again as an example. You walk into the airport, you go to a kiosk and you want to get your boarding pass and you want to get your bag tag. And so you go to the kiosk, you do all the things, you get a bag tag, you walk up to the agent to deposit your bag and you put it up on the scale and they take it, blah, blah, blah. Easy enough experience, right? Could we have done that different ways? Could we have done it with maybe not a kiosk, but maybe some other technology that’s out there? Or right now the evolution is to going and just doing it on your phone, right? Could we have done that different ways? Absolutely, and we can see that at other airports. So when we dig down into it, the airport here in Las Vegas is what we call 100% common use. What that means is we use a type of technology that allows the airport to have better control over the space at the airport. You go to another airport, they might be a hub or that airport might have leased or owned spaces by an airline, right? Now, when you have that business model, your technology is going to be a little different because one, the airport might not own it. It might be an airline specific tool set because the airline has that area, right? But here at our airport, that’s not our business model. Every piece of technology at the airport belongs and is managed by the airport. It allows us to have the opportunities to move the airlines to where they are best accommodated based on their capacity and their travel and the needs of the passengers and all that stuff, right? So the airport has the exclusive control over how we move our passengers at the airport. So I use a technology that’s different maybe than other airports. It might look the same to you. It might not have a different experience. But when I tell you that we could have gone a different way, we could have and it could have changed the experience you have now. But right now, I know that our customers have a great experience, right? We don’t have very many lost bags coming out of the airport. Coming in is a different story. But at the airport, we actually have RFID tags built into your bag tag. So we can see and monitor the bag as it’s going through the system for the security checks and getting to the spot where the airlines pick it up and then put it onto the airplane. Once the airline takes it off the belt and says, “Okay, now it’s ready for the plane.” It’s no longer a problem. At that point, the bag could get lost. But most likely it won’t, right? But we’re using these technologies so that the experience of the customer is one unfelt, unseen, and it just works. It allows them to get through the airport with the technology we know works best for our business model, works best for the customer experience. And it allows us to have that management control over how we are going to do things at the airport that might be different than somewhere else. And so when you really look at what is that system you’re putting into place, you have to think of it from the user’s experience. You really do. I joke sometimes and say it’s my mom’s experience. Can my mom do this? She’s a 73-year-old woman. Can she use her phone to do these things? Is she more comfortable with the kiosks? Is it easily trainable? Is it innate to the person? Kids nowadays can do anything. When it comes to the iPad and mobile devices and phones and all that kind of stuff. They were born into the technology. But if you look at the older generations, our, and I’m including myself in that too, our usage of technology is really generationally based. And so I know this is a really long answer to your question.

Manuel: It’s all right.

Rishma: But what I’m really trying to dig into is that you really have to look at your implementations, your design of systems from the level of what is that experience going to feel like? Because if you ask yourself, if you had a good experience with something, you’re going to do it again and again and again. If you had a bad experience with something, you might not touch it ever again. So why would I enable a technology that’s not going to give you the good experience just because it’s the newest and greatest?

Manuel: Yeah, as you said, it was a long answer, but it makes sense, right? Like you gave us insight into, I think you started with talking about that technology and the invisible technology. I had no idea that there’s RFIDs in the bags and that’s how you manage it. But then kind of relating it to, you are also thinking about not just me who’s, okay, maybe I’m comfortable with technology because again, I’ve been in this industry, but also thinking about people who are newer to technology who have been like that older generation. Maybe they are more comfortable with phone, maybe they’re not, but it sounds like you’re taking into account also multiple experiences and multiple different generations, ways to do the same thing so that you’re not forcing everybody to have the exact same experience. Like you have to do it this way. You want the same experiences, like you want it to be seamless and happy, but giving options at the same time. Sure. Does that come from, because I know at one point you said you got into public sector and you haven’t looked back. I bounced around between public sector, private sector, higher education, and I’ve enjoyed it because I get a peek into all these different ways that, I think it’s given me a perspective that had I just been private sector or just been in a specific industry, I can see problems from a different point of view. The idea of thinking about the end-person, is that from your experience in public sector, because now you are serving the community, you are serving all these other people, and is that what has continued to keep you within that realm?

Rishma: So it goes back to growing up in a very community-centric family. My parents always gave to the community through voluntary service, and it is something that is so close to home for me to want to give to others to their benefit. In the private sector, yeah, you have that, because now you’re customer-based, all that kind of stuff. But a lot of that is mission-driven by profit, whereas in the public sector, your mission is really driven by ensuring that your constituent has access to services. The mission’s a little different on either side. And so one of the things we do a lot of in the public sector is really focus on how can I enable services for my constituent and make their lives better while we are doing the things of driving a city towards, being better for our communities, getting the better schools in place, help with the traffic problems. Public sector is more about the condition of living, the people’s condition of living. It’s about how do you better and enable your community to be better. And so I think being in the public sector and really engaging in voluntary service from a young age, I feel like when I’m able to give back and I can make someone else’s life better, then that goes back to the rising tides. I’m lifting up everybody’s experience and just enabling just betterness in our communities. And I appreciate that approach. I love that approach, but I’ve also been in different sectors in the public sector. So I started off with the water authority, so utilities went into public safety at the Albuquerque Police Department, and then the city of Reno, managed an entire technology platform for a city, and then got an amazing opportunity at the San Francisco Police Department. And then, believe it or not, I was recruited for the position at the airport. I talked to my husband and I was like, “I don’t know anything about an airport. Why are they asking me to apply for this job? I’m fine here at San Francisco.” But my husband was still in Reno. I was in San Francisco, so we had this interstate marriage. So we were kind of thinking, what do we do? San Francisco is expensive, let’s just be honest. (laughs) So anyways, he was like, “Well, apply for it.” Well, you never know. Why are you discouraging yourself on this? Lesson number one, stop doing that to yourself. But yeah, I did it. And so I followed the link and applied for it and went through it. And I come to find out later, there was 100 plus applicants. I came down to Vegas for a two-day interview event. (laughs) And in the end, I got the job. No airport experience, but the one thing I did have is technology experience and leadership experience, right? Technology is technology no matter where you go. But I also had the leadership and the customer service focus. And so that has really enabled me to succeed, I hope. Hi, boss, if you’re watching. To be really good at my job. And so I think I’ve enjoyed giving back and that’s why I really enjoy the public sector.

Manuel: And you mentioned you have that leadership experience and you talked about it first. You’re a developer, you’re QA, and you’re going and seeking these different opportunities. What was it that led you into more of a leadership role and made you wanna continue there?

Rishma: I’m bossy.

Manuel: Okay, and it could be as simple as that because again, you could still have the level of influence (laughs) right without being a boss or just being able to kind of set the direction. There’s nothing wrong with saying, I want to be the person that sets the direction, right? I have that level of not just influence, but authority.

Rishma: Yeah.

Manuel: Is that, I guess, what was the turning point that made you wanna go that way? Because I’ve been there and most people have, so my experience was I thought, I wanna go into the leadership route. Yeah. After doing it, not that I had a bad experience, but at the same time, I missed the individual contributor role and started to realize, well, I can still have influence. I can still set direction. Maybe I don’t have the final authority, but I can still make impact and decided that maybe not management, but still be able to have influence. What made you direct and say, I want to go this way and I wanna continue in that direction?

Rishma: So, I’ve had some great bosses throughout my entire life. I’ve been very fortunate to have good mentors and honestly, it comes down to seeing the way some of my bosses did work and either I wanted to emulate that and say, hey, I can see your drive and your focus and I can see from today to three years down the road what your vision is and how you’re gonna get us there. Or I can see, I think we’re gonna hit some road bumps along the way and we may not get to the point you’re trying to get us to in the next three years, but here’s how I would fix that vision. And when I realized that that was a skill set to be able to foresee where we’re going to go and how we’re going to get there, I realized that that is not just a part of being the circle of influence, but it’s also saying I’m going to direct the direction of where we need to go. And so I’m going to take all the feedback in, take that feedback, which is gonna get us to where we’re gonna go, but I’m gonna take the lead and get us there. And I really feel that I have been blessed with having that kind of a vision that I know where we’re trying to get to. We may not always go down the right road roadmap, but I can see the pitfalls before they happen kind of. And so I’m really good at course correcting. I’m really good at pivoting. I’m really good at saying, hey, why don’t we go this way instead? And I think at some point, those kinds of decisions are only really made when you’re in the leadership role. Yes, the circle of influence allows you to generate enough data and sentiment about where we’re going. But in the end, that one person has to be the one to say what feedback is useful, what feedback is not so useful at this time, and then making the decision right or wrong to get us to that next level. And so I want it to be the decision maker. I want it to be the one to say, this is how we’re gonna get to that next level. This is how we’re gonna go to the, this is what the next three years are gonna look like. And you can only do that in a leadership role.

Manuel: And you said that you started to see that that’s a skillset that you could develop. How did you develop that? Because I don’t think that that’s something that you can just say, well, I’m gonna go buy this book or I’m gonna watch this course. I mean, sure, there’s things that can help supplement, but something made you realize that this is a skillset. I have it. I have the ability to improve on it and continue in that direction. How did that come about? I just, I’m curious.

Rishma: I think it’s something where, it is something that I think you can refine over time. I think if you can start mapping decisions and you can start saying, if I go this decision, I will land in this spot. Or if I take this decision, I will land in this spot. Or if I take this decision, I’ll land here. If you are the type of person who can map things out, who can take the detail, very fine minute details, and then see upwards from those details to the larger picture, then you can be this person who can see where we’re going in the next three years and what we’re gonna do and how we’re gonna get there. It takes experience. You’ve gotta be in the technology. You’ve gotta be part of it. It takes learning from failure. You’ve gotta understand that if I failed at something, why did I fail at it? What are my lessons learned from it? And not beating yourself up over it. It’s okay to fail because then it gives you insight onto how things could have been successful. So when you start taking these things, you can start really developing that skill set that says, when I failed, it was because of X, and if I had done this, I could have gotten to this place. I kinda attribute it back to playing Monopoly. It’s like, how do you get away from not paying the 200 bucks or the 100, whatever it is, inflationary prices, might be a thousand now, who knows. But how do you not get into that trap of having to pay that money to move across the board? It’s saying, how do I get the right string of hotels so that I can make the most money? What is my strategy here? A lot of it is luck because you’re rolling dice. A lot of it is luck as you’re picking the cards. But a lot of it is also, how do I fine tune my decision making when I land on something I don’t want to be at, but also taking advantage of where I’m at? It’s something, a lot of it is innate to you, but I think it is a skill set because the minute you start recognizing that if I pivot here or if I step here or if I move there, it’s going to change the trajectory of where we’re trying to get to, then you can really start seeing what those decision models will do and how you can get there. And then you can start using that to your advantage and saying, hey, as a circle of influence, being part of the circle of influence, hey boss, I think if we do this, we may not get to where you want us to go and I can see some pitfalls. Either it’s we didn’t put enough customer training into it, we didn’t put enough testing into it or we’re just not picking the right modules, right? There you are able to start being part of your circle of influence and you’re starting to make decisions and it’s leading you to that spot of, I can now be that leader that says, okay, I see where everybody’s coming from, based on what I’m gathering, all those details, I can see where we probably want to pivot and change and move direction and this is how we’re going to do it, right? It’s something that you learn and something you hone in on and something you learn to refine over time.

Manuel: And as you’re refining it, I mean, there’s this conversation going a number of different ways I’ve found a lot of great questions asked, but the one that I am focusing on is you mentioned being okay with failures and learning from them. It sounds like, and this is my experience and I’m curious to find yours is I have had those failures, I have had those instances where things didn’t go well and I learned and it can go one of two ways in my experience is you can take those and then you can all of a sudden start to lose confidence and you can kind of spiral down and say, maybe this isn’t for me or you can almost take the opposite route, which is more my experiences. Each time I failed it, it drove me to get better and as much as I’ve failed and I’ve failed a lot, it’s built more confidence. So I’m just curious, is that kind of what you’re seeing? Because you sound open to saying, hey, yes, I’ve had these failures, but then I can also see that as you’re learning from that, you’re gaining confidence to say, okay, I messed up, I take ownership, now I’m going to change it different and you’re going to start to make better decisions over time, right? You start to fail a little bit less. Now the failures could be bigger, so that could also be something that you’re like, oh, I’m moving up, I’m the CIO now for the airport, like if I make the wrong decision, it could lead us towards, I want to say catastrophe, but it could be the wrong way.

Rishma: Yeah, absolutely, right.

Manuel: So how did you handle that?

Rishma: You’re right, failure can build confidence, because for me, what I’ve also really relied on is having options. I really believe in plan A, plan B, plan C. And I remember talking to somebody about it, I was like, yeah, if plan A doesn’t work, I’m going to jump to plan B. They were like, well, why do you have a plan B? You’re already expecting plan A to fail. And I’m like, well, that kind of makes sense, why do I have a plan B? I should have just have one plan, stick to it, because I know it’s not going to fail. I’m stupid if I continue to believe in that, because at some point, that one plan is going to fail, how am I going to cover myself when that happens? So I truly believe that you should have options in place. You should have different directions available to you based on whatever happens. Not because you’re expecting the first thing to fail, your first option to fail, but because if it fails, you know how to correct it in a timely manner without causing destruction or catastrophe in your situation. It’s your failover, it’s your backup, it’s your disaster recovery. Those are options B, C, D as well, because it’s the option of what happens when your normal daily activity doesn’t work. And if you’re not planned for that, reality is going to give you a swift kick in the butt. So I truly believe that if I fail, I really don’t want to call it a failure, I want to call it a course correction, because something has happened, whether it was something we didn’t realize is going to happen, it is a characteristic we didn’t know about, or it’s a requirement we just didn’t gather. And so how do I course correct at that point? We saw that this is then moving us in the direction we want to go, we didn’t make the right decision, how do I course correct that so I can at least get to my end goal, whether it’s by executing plan B and plan C, or it’s scrapping the whole thing and saying, how do I start from scratch because I have an opportunity to go back that far, right? It really is, you have to start evaluating risk at that point, what is the risk, what is the reward? And if you don’t have your options in play, then you’re never going to learn from when that option did not succeed. So for me, it’s not just necessarily failure, it is being able to say, okay, I messed up, and I’m going to course correct and fix this, and because I did, I learned something new that I can now put my toolbox for the next time. So when we come across this again, whether it’s at this agency or another agency, I can say, hey, I can pull up my cache memory and say, I remember this, and then be able to apply that solution building into that first option at that point, right? It’s not going to be in plan B and plan C anymore because I know it’s going to work at this time. And then that might not work again because something else might happen, right? So it’s just having these options available to you. Now, you can take failure as a hurtful event and it hurts your ego, it hurts your pride, but it doesn’t hurt your intelligence. And I think people need to start really looking at and separating from themselves as to what is my ego and pride, and really what is my toolset of knowledge and experience? And if you fail, it can hurt the ego and pride and let it for five moments, whether it’s five days or five months, but let it just be five moments, and then switch it to, now I’ve learned and I have new tools for my toolset when it comes to my knowledge and experience, and that’s really where your confidence comes from. Your confidence should not be tied to your ego and pride. Your confidence should be tied to your experience, your knowledge, who you are, right? That’s where your confidence comes from. It’s the good things and recognizing those good things and failure isn’t a bad thing. It just meant that option didn’t work. What are your other options?

Manuel: And I love the analogy you did of the backups and things like that. That’s where I was like, oh my gosh, that’s really it is I don’t expect production to fail. It should work, I’ve designed it, it’s gonna work. Now that doesn’t mean it won’t, but now do I have a backup, do I have a failover, do I have these other things in place and when that failure does happen, because systems will fail, okay, I can pivot to kind of use your word. It’s not, hey, I’m changing or you’re course correcting, you’re pivoting, whatever it might be, into this failover to my backup, and then you’re learning from it. This failed, why did it fail? We have another plan in place. Again, it’s a temporary plan until you now course correct and say, okay, option A didn’t work. We had to go to option C, this will work for now and now I’ve gotta come up with my new sets of, okay, how do I come up with a new option A and probably have two or three options to evaluate. Wow, I just, I love that analogy because it really, to me and most people in tech, hopefully that’s the way they see it, it’s just like, oh, you’re setting yourself up to have more options.

Rishma: You’re setting yourself for continuity of business, right? Continuity of operations and that’s really–

Manuel: What it comes down to.

Rishma: What it comes down to, right? We can’t let services stop, especially in the public sector, right? What would happen if our traffic monitoring system went down? I mean, there would be chaos, right? Now the stoplights would work, you know, and we would just be like, we think traffic is bad now in Vegas, can you imagine what would happen if our management system died, right? Like we can’t do that, so how do we, so translate that from the tech speak into reality and life speak, right? What are you going to do to enable yourself to continue moving and operating in your life as the authentic self that you are and the way to do that is to know I have options in life just because one thing didn’t work out for me doesn’t mean nothing else is going to work out for me.

Manuel: Oh, agreed. So I guess this is a good way to kind of transition into, you’ve moved into these different roles, how are you evaluating when it’s time to move on to the next role? So for example, when you talked about the airport, sure you have your husband, you know, there’s a human element to making these decisions. How do you go through and evaluate? So I’ll tell you for me personally, it’s been growth. Some people have gone through and again, everybody has their own experience, but to me once I feel that I’ve probably not mastered it, but I’m not getting the challenge that I have in a specific role, for me I can tell that it starts to affect my family and just, you know, I’m not happy and I start to pivot into, okay, maybe it’s time to look into something else. Maybe it’s the same role at a different environment. Again, going from public sector to private. Maybe I wanna try and move up a role, try and something completely different. Like at one point I thought I wanted to do networking. Turned out that’s not for me. So how do you go through and evaluate your different options and pivot within your own career?

Rishma: I think the first thing is when you start not learning anymore, it’s time to move on, right? If you’re not learning anymore, everything is monotonous to you. Getting up in the morning is just a struggle. It’s time to move on. And I’m not saying move on from the organization either. I’m saying maybe it’s just move on from that role and find another role that is better suited to you. There’s two ways to move on. One, find another job at another organization where you know that it is, you look at a job description and you’re like, “Oh, this is going to teach me how to do business analysis. I don’t know business analysis, but I know how to do analysis. I know how to gather requirements. I really want to learn and take those skillsets to the next level. I want to go for this job.” Or it’s, “Hey, I’m not learning anymore in this position and I really like my organization.” Then it’s time to have that conversation with your boss to say, “I’m no longer succeeding here. Where and what can I do to get to that next level?” And that boss, hopefully, is a good boss who really wants your success, really wants you to be successful in the role that you’re in. We’ll say, “Let’s look for another skillset that I can develop for you, that I know that your current skillsets will enable you to learn from, and let’s move you there.” So there’s a lot of ways to evaluate what’s working, what’s not working. The first thing is, “Am I happy or not?” And then you have choices. You have option A and you have option B. Then there’s also the sense of, “I’m not happy because of the level I’m at. I don’t want to just have the same position at a new organization and learn the organization. It’s more, “I’m not happy because I know I can do more.” Then, again, you have other options and you have to start looking towards that. For me, a lot of it was, “Where can I make the biggest impact in my community?” Was I making a huge impact at the San Francisco Police Department? Absolutely. Was it a great experience for me personally? No, it wasn’t, because I had to deal with some toxicity, if I can say the word correctly, and I had to really figure out, was it worth the challenge or not? And so you have to ask yourself these really tough questions sometimes. I might be giving away an amazing opportunity because the environment’s not working for me. And I will tell you, I was blessed and extremely honored to be the CIO for the SFPD. Chief Scott, who’s now in LA, was an amazing chief, put in so many amazing reforms and changed the culture and nature of policing, that I was there with enough time under my belt that I was just so impressed and so incredibly proud to be a part of that. There were other parts of the job that I had to deal with that just was not, it didn’t fit into my core personality. It didn’t fit my needs and it didn’t really enable me to grow. So I had to leave. But I’m making it clear, it wasn’t because of the chief and the officers that I worked with. It was not that. There were some other issues at the department that I had to deal with. And that’s gonna happen. You’re going to face that no matter where you go, no matter what your gender, no matter what your nationality, you’re going to face that situation and you’re gonna have to figure out how you’re gonna get out of it. Again, you need to figure out where your options are for that. But I will also say that coming to the airport, I have learned one, what the nature of airport business is. But two, in the same sense, I’ve really learned what it’s like to make sure that people can benefit from an experience that again is invisible and seamless to them. When you walk into an airport, I don’t think you understand how much anxiety it induces on people. They walk into an airport and it’s all of a sudden, do I have enough time to run to the restroom? Do I have enough time to check my baggage? Do I have enough time to get through security? Am I gonna have enough time to get to my gate? The lines are long, the kids are screaming, nobody’s comfortable, everybody wants to get through. There’s just this sense of heightened anxiety because of the nature of travel. And if we can do something at the airport to kind of help reduce that anxiety through our services, which is when you come in, you have all the kiosks right there. We try and make sure airlines have enough kiosks that the line isn’t super long, it goes pretty quickly. Our services are up, so we’re doing PMs all the time. We’re trying to get corrective maintenance as quickly as we can. If I can enable that process for passengers and guests to feel less anxiety, I have done a huge customer service. My team has done a huge customer service, has done something great for humanity, I’m telling you, because I don’t know how many people are just afraid of flying, afraid of traveling. When you walk into an airport, I mean, you can see sometimes anxiety on someone’s face. Some of us are just natural travelers, and I get it. We love it, we know how to time ourselves, right? But there are some that just don’t, and when you come to Vegas, right, you’re already in this mode of you come into Vegas, you want to vacation, you wanna go to the resort, you wanna gamble, you wanna drink, you wanna party, right? And then when you’re leaving, you’re in, oh my God, I gotta get home, I’m tired, like I’m broke now, right? And I just need to get home. But all of that is such an emotional up and down that anxiety is really easy to introduce when you have those high emotions.

Manuel: And thinking about it because I do have to travel quite a bit, and I’ve traveled for work, for personal, you’re right. I show up to this airport, and again, it’s a familiarity thing to where I’ve always been comfortable showing, and maybe it’s an over-reliance and knowing just how the airport works, but I’m like, oh, I can show up with X amount of time, and I’ll be fine because I know that you’ve done a great job, and even the team there, I don’t have those experiences. When I get to the other airport or when I’m leaving, especially if it’s somewhere new, it may not be as extreme, but you’re right, you do get that heightened sense of like, oh my gosh, I’ve gotta get back home now, what time should I be at the airport? Okay, once I get there, I’ve never–

Rishma: How far is the gates from security, right? One of the biggest questions.

Manuel: Do they have the signage correct? Like where do I go to find all this technology, like the right things or the right technology to leave me where I need to go? That’s very, it’s very eye-opening.

Rishma: Yeah, right, I mean, you don’t realize it unless you work there and you can see it day in and day out, and my boss, the director at the airport, Rosemary Vasiliades, she has always said, look, we are the first look of Vegas and we are the last look of Vegas. So we have to be ambassadors for the airport and for the city as a whole, and the moment we are able to change someone’s day and their perception of travel or their perception of fear and anxiety and all that, we have done something extraordinary for that person that they will take with them always. They may not always remember exactly what happened, but they’ll remember being taken care of and feeling safe, right, and when you go to an airport, you want to feel safe. And so, you know, I really attribute a lot of what, how I feel today based on the learnings I’ve had at the airport, not just the business, not just leadership, not just technology, but also the sentiment of how can I make someone’s day just better.

Manuel: And as you’re growing, you know, your leadership, your skills, it sounds like you’ve taken a lot from different experiences. One of the things that I’ve noticed, in my opinion, you do very well, is you bring visibility to yourself, to the team around you. You know, I’ve seen you at conferences speaking and it’s not just, you’re making yourself visible, but at the same time, again, that, you know, the tide raises all boats. What made you start to kind, and I don’t, I’ll be honest, I don’t know at what point this started, but I do see you speaking at different events, leadership, you know, you get asked to speak. Is this something that you’re actively seeking out? Is it just from you being more visible? Like, if somebody is looking to kind of grow their influence and grow their career, especially in this day and age, I think it’s very important to become visible. If you’re just a resume, a piece of paper, it’s hard to convey who you are. You had at the time of this recording, a post that I think was very timely in that you talked about how, you know, there’s AI, there’s all these tools, but how do you use that technology to quickly summarize so that someone who goes to your site and can see not only your experience, but who you are as a person, how did that come about and, you know, kind of what would you recommend to somebody that might either not be doing it or starting to do it? Like, how do they continue to, you know, build that skill set?

Rishma: So for me, to be visible and to gain that visibility it’s something that’s happened for me and with me over time. So look, the higher you go the career ladder, the more your name is out there, right? A lot of times it’s based on, you know, how great the services were that you helped develop at the city or at the police department or at the airport. And those are great accolades and I love having the accolades, right? But I did not do it all on my own. What has happened, what all the good things that have happened at the different organizations I’m at are done by really smart people and I have to give them the credit for what they have done. I remember being that peon programmer, right? The tester, the project manager, the business analyst where something went really well, we did this great release, it was, you know, in the public’s eye, blah, blah, blah. And the boss saying, oh, I did this great thing. There was no cherishing of the team that did the work, right? There’s always gonna be one face to the product and to the delivery and the implementation. Great, that’s why we have all these great people in our environments, right? In the technology world, right? You have all the CEOs and CIOs and all that kind of stuff. But what I made, the decision I made early on was when I get to that position, I’m not going to do that because what I’ve learned is I became that person that says I’m not happy anymore at this organization and I then used my options to go somewhere else because I knew I wasn’t going to get recognition for the work I’ve done. And I’m not looking for the public recognition. I’m just looking for the, you did really great, look at what we produced, right? We all are deserving of that gratitude. It’s a piece of humanity that I think sometimes we forget to give to others, which is appreciation, gratitude, it’s a type of affection that you give to people you respect. And that’s where I’ve realized that when something happens, it’s thank the team, honor them, know that they are smart people because for one, I’m going to surround myself with smart people, people smarter than me, right? Because those are the people doing the work. And two, it’s going to lift the boats. It’s that rising tide. Not only do I look good, right? Because there’s always that little part of the ego and pride, right? That says, hey, I want to look good too, right? So not only am I going to look good, but everybody else around me is going to look good and they’re going to benefit from it. So the visibility piece is not just for me. I want it to be for me, but not just for me, right? So when I go and do these talks or like talking to you today or at RSA or the different conferences I’ve been to, HP, all these great places that I’ve been to that I’ve been so honored to speak at, I’ve realized it’s just another opportunity for me to brag on my team. And I think that the more I hype up my team, the better we are all for it because then they really know that I appreciate and adore them and thankful to all the things that they do. And in the public sector, I can’t give you a raise, but I sure as hell can give you the respect and gratitude you deserve.

Manuel: Well, and then not only that, but I’m sure that you’re doing it, if you’re doing it publicly, I’m going to take a guess that you’re also doing it privately with them. You’re giving them that gratitude and that appreciation. But the fact that you’re also doing it publicly, again, public sector, you can’t give those raises, but now this is giving those people the opportunity to get the recognition that they deserve. And it might even be just something as simple as within their family. Like, “Hey, you know what? I saw this thing where Rishma talked about all this technology. I know you work at the airport and I didn’t realize all these things that you’re doing behind the scenes.” So now they’re getting recognition, even maybe within their family, their friends, that type of, again, that visibility and just bringing that awareness to now, they feel a pride in saying, “Yes, she’s thanking me, she’s bringing it apart, she’s bringing visibility and awareness to what I’m doing.” And other people are also saying, “Wow, that’s pretty cool. I wasn’t aware because like I said, even me, I wasn’t aware of all the technology. I know that there’s bits a