Hey, PUC update with Leo Essentian. Thank you for joining us, Leo. Thanks, Jay. Thanks for having me. A more complete introduction. However, I rely on my co-host contributor, Marco Mangelstor. Welcome, Marco. Thank you, my friend. Always good to be back with me and Amano, another Madre. Marco, can you give a proper introduction to Leo? Sure. I'll thank you again, Leo, for joining us today. It's always such a pleasure. And Leo has been with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission now for about two years. And I always like to ask kind of my Dorothy Wizard of Oz question at the end of the film, where Glenda the Good Witch, or actually it's the scarecrow that asked Dorothy, well, what have you learned, Dorothy?  And what advice would the Leo of today give the Leo of a couple of years ago as far as views and doubts and tips to we're working as a commissioner of the Public Utilities Commission? Remember, Leo, this is a family show. Yes. I remember when I first got appointed by Governor Yige, basically he told me, you know, go in there, right? It was the last so many months of Randy Wase's term when he retired early. And he said, go in there and kick the tire. Right, and then come back and tell me if you want to want to re-op for the real six years. So I actually did that, right? And I remember because it was opening day 2020 when the shutdown is not happening yet. And I ran into the governor at the Capitol and he's like, oh, we need to talk, right? Because you went and kicked the tires. And I said, well, I already put my application in the governor, so he was doing the indication. But, you know, I think the one piece of advice I would probably give myself or anyone else, right? Thinking about joining the commission is, be prepared for anything, especially someone, right? Coming in and you're not in the energy space per se, like 24-7, like Marco is or, you know, kind. I mean, you're coming in there and you're going to learn that the commission does a lot and there's a lot of topic, right? And it all interconnect and you got to figure out how it all interconnect. Unintended, but you have to like this deal and you got to deal with it, right? And I mean, two years have gone by and I'm getting a little bit more accustomed to everything. But still, right? There's still a lot of stuff. That, you know, I got to go back and look at old files and things like that to kind of bring myself up to speed on where we are. And that's probably one of the things that I think we need to do, right, is going to have this. It's going to check in with everyone and say, where are we? We're probably in the energy scheme in Hawaii. I mean, things have been moving so fast and the light that, you know, we just have to do that. That's my piece of advice, Marco.  Got the heck out of the car. I could have test-drived the car, right? But I only had six foot, basically, to do it. And, right, and back then there were things that the commission had goals in mind. And for the most part, we've accomplished those goals in the two years. There's still a lot more that we need to do, but, you know, for what they set out to do, right? There's got to think, right? I'm coming in in July and those goals are already set by the chair at that time, right? Jay was the current chair and the like. So you're kind of going in there to try to support those goals as well. So maybe if he gave me more time to test-drive it, I would have done it. I'm still glad I asked you that question. But, you know, I'm the type of person, Jay, you know me. I mean, I'm the type of person. It takes some time. I know, I realize it takes some time to get to know everything, even though I came from the energy space prior, but, right, I'm the open-minded person and like I'm there to kind of just soak it all in first and then see where we can go. You know, you had experience with government before. Oh, you know, you were not a newcomer to the, I want to say the wheels of government when you joined the PUC, but now after two years and seeing it under a kind of stress test, right? COVID has been a stress test and, you know, it continues. You know, what else have you learned? Has your view of government changed sitting actually on a commission of this scope and power? Yeah, I think, right? I still find myself sometimes thinking about, right, how government actually operates, right? As a commissioner, I'm on the regulatory side now. Yeah. I'm the guy kind of taking in all the information and making decisions and, right? I think those information could come across a lot more clearer, right?  I'm a planner, right? I like to see how you planned it and then how you're actually implementing it. So COVID has not helped in that regard because you got to make snap decisions. At the same time, right? We have requirements to take a look at everything that comes in the front door and to render a pretty workable decision. Can't rush that those items either, right? You know, they say that if you're in government and government is by definition political, it always is, it has to be the way it works. And you succeeded something, then somebody else takes the credit. If you fail in something, then you own it. Yeah, that's true. Or somebody tells you you own it. Yeah, right. Whether you really own it or not, it doesn't matter. What's your favorite docket? What's your favorite case, Leo, over this time? The one that has the greatest moment for you, the one that writes itself down in history, that one. Probably have to say, well, I came in halfway on it, but I think the PBR, performance-based regulation, a lot of hard work went into that by the parties. I won't take the credit for that. I just remember, I still remember my first comment to the working group was, right? You can lock me in a room or you can lock commissioners in a room and we could come up with the framework, but no one's gonna be happy. That's why that's how I asked them to be involved and stick with it, right? And to their credit, right? Maybe a little bit more than a year, 15 months or so, they stuck with it and came up with a framework. And it's a new way of how the company or wine electric is gonna look at its profitability and the light and try to prioritize their projects. At the same time, yet to be seen, right? It's only a year in, right? And they're still adjusting, right here and there. And that's what we wanted it to happen, right with me. We're like, right? In the mainland and in other areas, there's been bits and pieces of PBR. We have the full package, right? Yeah, including all the incentives and all of that. So, right? A year in too early to tell, I think going well. I mean, there's still, yeah, there's still adjustments, but for the most part, I think everybody's kind of settled down now. We're still making adjustments as well, right? We work with the working group, right? So you've been in it for more than 15 months, I would say almost close to two years if you go back to, right? Phase one of it. I will have to check in with you again as it goes forward. What's your expectation though? I mean, this is a major piece of work for the commission. It's a lot of, as you said, a lot of new thinking, new ideas, pioneering steps. At the end of the day, Leo, what are you, you know, and you will make an impression on the landscape, on the energy landscape, and on the state of Hawaii for sure. And the state's reputation among other states too. What kind of impression do you want to make and how do you think it will change the landscape? Well, first of all, for Hawaiian Electric, I think it would be very key for them, right? I mean, this is how they make their profit. How they, here to be, you know, a lot of people are called profitable to shareholders, right? Those who are investing in the company. I think it's very important for them to take a look at how they can maximize the use of PPR, right? And there's a lot of, you know, I see it as, it's not black and white, right? You got to take a look at everything and figure out, right?  Right? And when? Right, because we're talking a five-year period that we're going to try to implement PPR, right? And we gave them other incentives as well as take a look at, you know, pilot projects, and you see the slew of EV pilot projects coming in now, right? So that's one form. So it's really, can the company and can the state of Hawaii and all of us actually operate within this PPR framework? I think that's going to be the outside, right? And everyone knows, right? There's what we call off-ramps. I hate to use the word off-ramps, but there's off-ramps along the way. But there's also, you know, places where if the market is not going to help, right? The market sees something wrong and it goes south, right? We have a chance to get in there and to make emergency adjustments if needed, right? And we're monitoring that as we go along. I suggest it wouldn't work without that. It has to be tuned up, you know?  Sometimes people forget that. And that means a lot more to the judicial than the quasi, in my opinion. And that means you have to maintain judicial independence. And you have gone a long way to do that. You have made statements on many issues that show that you care about being independent. You don't want to be, you know, subject to the kinds of things that happen to other state agencies in the middle of the, you know, of a political environment and a heightened political environment because of COVID. And I wonder how you feel about that. Yes, you should feel proud about that, Leo. Oh, yeah, I think we've always tried to maintain that independence.  I think, right, in each period of time, they've always maintained that independence. I think one of the things we see, or at least I see that, right, some of these things are aged, right? That independent thinking and or decisions that came out or statements that came out. And they're a little age. We need to take a look at them again. We actually are, as a commission now, right, we're kind of looking at, you know, what adjustments do we need to make from old, you know, from old dockets, old decisions, right? Because everybody brings them up and then, and then you kind of scratch your head and you're like, well, it doesn't quite work here, right? Or it's impending something or barring us from doing something, you know, innovative or the like. So I think that's what we need to fight, right? There's this independence, but there's also this kind of, I won't call it power, but it's like this independence to also take a look at past actions, right? And I think that's what we need to look at. I think that's what we need to look at. I think that's what we need to look at or statements or anything like that. Connecting. Yeah. You have a bunch of questions that maybe drilled down on what I've been. Asking Leo about you want to, you want to ask some of your questions, Marco. Sure. I think. Docket. 2021 dash 0024 is a juicy one. And that's one that commissioned open earlier this year. So I think that's what we need to look at. And then we need to look at this utility scale. Renewable energy plus storage in many cases. Docket to keep an eye on all this stuff, which is, you know, across many Island of multiple Island. Multiple projects. And there's a once a month kind of report card that. When electric submits to the commission, which is all part of the public record, they haven't put out the one for this month yet, which I'm anxious to take a look at. So I'm thinking that I mean, one big project developer on G pulled out of the 60 megawatt. Project here on the big Island. That was a big deal. And others such as a, yes, have cited forced major issues in terms of putting at risk. Getting product on time. And what is the, the GCOD general completion date. Has been pushed out, pushed out, pushed out. So I'm going to ask you the question I've asked Jenny and also I'm going to ask you the question. I'm going to ask you the question. Well, Jay Griffin. And how concerned. Are you. Leo, how concerned should people on a Wahoo be in terms of. These projects, these important projects that are being pushed out in terms of actually going online. And affecting that. Reserve margin between what Hawaiian electric has available. To generate and what the actual demand is. How concerned are you about the tight reserve margin? The concern is probably more pressing on a Wahoo. At the same time, the concern is actually. Every jurisdiction that white electric is in. Right, because we have some plan retirements on Maui. Right, we call it a power plant. Retiring and then. Right. What. Or the big island has always had, right? I mean, how can we advance. More and more. And you, you mentioned the projects that have been pulling out. On the big island, but we want to make sure that those are somehow replaced, right? Because the planning. Kind of counted on that those items coming in. But on a Wahoo, I think, right. First and foremost, right? The coal plant ends in September, 2022. There was a lot of projects to come on board. And not so much to replace the actual energy coming from it. Some of it was for grid services and the like. But it's more around reliability issues. What can we do, right? To make sure that we still have reliable power. On, on a Wahoo. Come September 2022. Right. When our, you know, modeling that each NEI has thought. Kind of shows gaps here and there, right? Depending on. When they fix up some old generators that are on still online. And we've kind of worked with HECO or each NEI work with HECO to figure all that out as well. And so right now it's, it's really. A little bit of patchwork here and there, right? We've started up some new programs here on a Wahoo. The battery bonus, what we call the battery bonus program. There's another more formal name for it. And things like that to kind of just shore up the gap a little bit, right? And we're talking a 50 megawatt gap. Right? There's proposals here and there to, I wouldn't say repower, but take a look at biomass on Wahoo, right? Converting the AES plan. And then I would say there's no other shortage of ideas on what to do. It's right. I think it's how do we get. These projects that were approved, right? On time, right? You talk about that docket, right? 2021, 024. That started looking at the interconnection process that was delaying a lot of project. Right? And we, and that was going on before we opened that docket. Right? We said, you know, finally needed something somewhere to talk about instead of all the individual dockets. Right? And then we started to look for each of those projects because we saw the delay in the interconnection process. Right? With all the studies and all of that pushing out the GCOD date. Right? Then you get COVID. Right? You get the pandemic. You get the shutdown. And now you got supply chain issues. You get a gamut, right? And all related. But you're seeing, right? Right? Right? And we're likely to have, we're likely to have even more pressing problems. Omicron is here. I know it was, it was not unanticipatable. It's here. And it is going to have an effect. A on the supply line issue. And it's B, it's going to have an effect on the economy in general. So, you know, what's, what's your worst case analysis. About getting things in order for September 1st. Yeah, I think. You know, at this point. He's really just trying to get. As many of those projects that were approved. Right. Up and running. And I think. It's not so much the September 1st deadline. I mean, we asked all of the developers. How you can move up. Right. Minimum of six months. Everybody came back and said, we can't do six months. Everybody came back and said, we can't do six months. A couple of them said, we can do three months. A couple of them said, well, it's three months, but you know, you got to give us one month of a leg. So it's really only two months. Right. So I mean, there are all these different ideas. But the main point is, right. Hopefully. We can shore up. Right. Like about a two to three month different. So really for the commission. It. And you get online. 2022. And then. Right. These other projects that. Are still being approved and the light. Right. Yeah. You have kind of like outside dates. 2023. 2024. 25. How can you come on. Sooner. Right. So it's the whole gamut. It's not only. Those that were targeted for 22. It's. Right. How can we kind? I mean, some things are totally out of our, like, if they're claiming. Like Marco said, some force majeure. And. And I don't think anyone has actually. Involved force for sure. It's just notice. Of course, majeure. Right. That. I don't think anyone has actually. Invoked force for sure. It's just notice. Of course, majeure. Right. One electric still needs to take a look at it. If it's really. Of course, majeure issue and. But some things are really out of. The control of the commission. I mean, the supply chain issue is not only. The supply chain issue, but also the. Withholding by. Department of commerce or customs. Right. Panos coming from a certain. Company in China. Right. And what do you do with that? Right. Some of that stuff is coming already or even in. In the port. Right. But can't get out. Yeah. Well, Los Angeles. His. His 50 some odd ships that are. An anchor outside the port, not going anywhere. So, you know, this just takes us to the question of. Gee whiz with all of that, with all these issues, troubles, challenges, deadlines and all that. You still have to maintain your basic mission. That is to move to clean, move to renewable energy, no matter what. And that includes, you know, a discussion here today. Oh, no. To the extent you can talk about it. Mark, Oh, you want to frame the question about who knew. Sure. We've been talking about this a lot over the months. Obviously it's been a big hot topic and more ways than one. The commission is doing the so ordered evidentiary hearing in January. You know, correct me if I'm wrong here, Leo, you're looking at the market. He leaves. I think it's reasonable assume there will be a D and O from you guys. In order sometime in the April, May, June range, that seems to me to be within the realm of possibility. And then, you know, we'll, we'll see where the chips and the tea leaves fall after that. And I know there's not a whole lot you can say about that, but let me ask you this. Now that we've got, I think a new RFP in the works for a firm generation, firm and dispatchable generation here on this island. Is there anything, stopping Honua Ola aka who Honua from bidding on, on that RFP as well. I do not see anything. The latest on that is a Hawaiian electric. It asked to kind of delay that for, I believe about a month or two. Because of the energy. Right. Pulling out. Right. That was, right. They want to, I think my understanding is one of the things they want to look at is if he can expand that RFP to be island wide. Right. Because I think he was focused on. On the East Hawaii side. And now, right. With. With energy pulling out and then right. Like having to deal with. Right. Cause it's all resource too. Right. Multi resource. It's not just. Renewable resources. We're going to look for renewable. But it's right. Firm and not firm. Firm and intermittent. If you want, if you want a kind, but. Right. That's been delayed. You need some time to take a look at that. How can, you know, we're doing it with. We don't need to do that. Right. On the heels of this one. But I do not see anything. Barring or even. You know. Telling who knew. Not to. Bit into that. As well. I think. The one thing that. Might need to be worked out is the whole. Right. Are you.  Right. And I think that's always been the question. Right. When you do these all resource. Type of RFPs, right. And. Right. I think. Right. For me. As a planner. Right. At this point and see what I've seen. Right. Right. For me. As a planner. Right. At this point and see what I've seen over the past couple of years on the commission. I think we really need that balance portfolio. Right. Not. Not one resource is going to solve all of our problems. Well, the. Near term and. The. The farther term out. I think we need to really look at. And be open to. Any type of resource. Kind of coming in to, to hit. What Jay was mentioning, right. Our, our eventual goal of. 100% RPS in 2045 being. Right. It's a zero carbon. And the light by X. By the same year. I think we, we need to be. We need to open it up a little bit more. I think we've always, we've always said that as a commission. It's just how you're looking at the RFPs and what's coming in. What is competitive at the moment. I think I, I remember talking with K. You see a couple of years ago that this was before. They were coming in with their hydro. Project on the West Kauai.  Right. And for you see, right? I thought, well, we're going to cross that bridge when we get there, but I see it, right? You did all the low hanging fruit. Right. The more competitive price. Things solar. Basically. Right. And now you're getting into the more expensive, more technologically advanced, more. Right. Capital intensive project. Yeah, it's going to be expensive. How do we deal with that? Before we break Marco, we only have one, one question. One more time for one more question. And that is, you know, I mentioned early on Leo that, that the commission has to have as a quasi traditional organization, a certain amount. A large amount in my opinion of judicial independence. But you are subject to getting questions. And so if you're going to get questions, you can get questions from legislators. And other agencies, I suppose. If I were sitting as a judge. In a purely judicial. You know, environment. I wouldn't myself, I wouldn't take questions. Thank you very much for your question. Have a nice day. But I'm afraid you can't necessarily do that. What's, what's going on? Why don't you frame the question about this Marco? And I think it's a great question. I'll go back to that. It's over. I'll go back to that. And then what do you want to maintain? What do you want to call it quasi traditional independent? Sure, Jay. I mean, there. There are a number of elected representatives in this case, at least one senator that I know of Senator done and done and the Della Cruz that chair of the WAMP committee. Who was taking a, should I say, keen interest in the activities and decisions of the public if you look at your crystal ball there, Leo, is we got a legislative session that was scheduled open in less than two months in January. And there are always a whole bunch of bills introduced in the first days, right? What do you anticipate or what do you see as possible legislative, I wanna be careful here, legislative suggestions in terms of the priorities and the decisions of the PUC? Well, you know, I look at it from the planning standpoint, I think, right? And it's the appearance of how these decisions are coming out. I think we need to, like I said, right? We need to be a little bit more balanced. We need to start considering other items on the, in the portfolio, if you will. And I think some of the, right? What the legislature is seeing, right? They look at the action, right? And the actions don't seem to be at balance. I think that's where at least some of the senators on the ways it means coming there, been to their meetings on Hawaii, their visits on Hawaii and also on Maui, right? And there's more and more of them on WAM that have these questions. And some of them blend into other, there are other committees as well, right? With Senator Warkai on energy, also Senator Misalucha on energy and the like, right? They're coming up with these questions and all of them seem to pan around, how can we be a lot more balanced, right? How can we be a lot more open to different types of projects? And yes, there's trade-offs, right? If you talk biomass, right? Yes, there is the greenhouse gas issue, right? But then where does, my question has always been even to like HNEI, where in the range of resources is biomass as far as GHG, right? And the like, and you know, I did it somewhere, it's less than fossil fuel, right? But it's more the solar, right? That's the kind of answers I get back, right? Not definitive and then not anywhere close to Hawaii-based data because we just don't have a lot of that data per se, but that's the kind of answers we get. In that gradient, Leo, where does it stand as against LNG? You know, I haven't looked at that one. I haven't looked at LNG. It's a theoretical question only, I guess. Yes, yes. But I think, you know, we're gonna see some bills coming up that will take a look at what the commission looks at, how we should be looking at it, right? And I think the way I always look at legislation it's not an immediate thing because even if it was an immediate thing, right? It would take us six to 12 months to set that up. And by that, right, you're into a new administration, you're, all right, so that's the other part I take with a grain of salt or a discombing session, right? It's the second year of the biennium, it's an election year, the administration is gonna change midway through that fiscal year, right? How much does it really get done, right? And I think that's gonna be at least the key I'd be for some legislators, some of it, right? I hear things and I kind of like, well, you know, well, great, we're gonna at least start the discussion. Right, it's one of those. I mean, Jay talks about me being in government a while, maybe I'm painted that way with how I look at the legislative sessions. It's a valuable experience. Yeah, yeah, I mean, right? With the pandemic, what I see is that there's a lot of fish to fry and a lot of stuff to get resolved. I think one of the key is going to be, and it's not only for the ledge, but also for the administration and also like for us specifically. And in that regards, that's why we're a quasi-judicial, right, Jay? We're still an executive branch agency, right? So the legislature can poke it prod on us just like how executive branch can poke it prod on us. So I think it's gonna be, what is the priority? What is the priority? Which one will make sense to do? Which ones are on a spectrum? Even if you pass it, we'll go, right? We'll really be set up a year from ex-state, right? I mean, it's going to be, I mean, I can also see the flip side where they tell us, hey, hurry up and do it by the end of the year, right? Which means the end of the administration, right? We'll put the pressure on. I can see that as well. I'm not sure which way it's gonna go at the moment or say that, but I think, I don't know. I'm one that expects that kind of stuff having been in government, right? I mean, it's a time, but it's also, right? When you look at it from another standpoint, it might be the time to do it, right? I've always said, right? A lot of my talks that I've given over the years, right? We're at a turning point on everything that we need to do, right? Economy, energy, I think Jay heard me said as far as climate issues, right? We're at a turning point. And when is that real date and then we got to really go over the hop, right? And I think, right? This session could be the one, right? To kind of set the tone already for the coming of four to eight years. Hey, we're out of time. Marco, we're out of time. Could you give a very exuberant thanks to Leo for coming down and close the show? Would you mind, Marco? Well, I'll close it with this one. Leo said poke and prod. I thought poke and prod. And I thought, whoa, I'm getting hungry. And then you said fish to fry. And I thought you could do with a panko crust or a little garlic butter and wine. So I'm even hungrier now. So, but in the meantime, as we all wait for lunch. Yeah, thank you so much, Leo, for joining us today. It's always such a pleasure. I always learn so much and I do hope we can count to have you back on with us soon, my friend. Thank you, Marco. Thank you, Leo. We hope to see you again soon. Aloha.


If you want to have an effective fast, remember this advice.  I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they'll ever get. When you fast, comb your hair, wash your face, then no one will notice that you are fasting except your father who knows what you do in private.  That's Matthew 6, 16 to 18. First, notice that Jesus said when you fast. This implies that we ought to do so regularly. Secondly, we are instructed to fast privately. Now it's not like fasting loses its power should someone find out you're fasting. This has to do with motive. Finally, fast prayerfully. Fasting must be paired with prayer. A fast without prayer is just a diet. Fasting is about disconnecting from the flesh and the desires of this world and focusing on and relying upon the Lord.


Mark Fulton, who is Associate VP of Technology, Strategy and Innovation at Nationwide. Mike joined Nationwide in January of 2017 and during his time leading the technology innovation team, they've built prototypes, leveraging technologies like mobile devices, cloud, AI, chatbots, voice assistants, blockchain, smart contracts, augmented reality, 360 video, virtual reality and internet of things. A lot of stuff been going on there. Mike's also an adjunct faculty member at the Ohio State University teaching, managing digital and serves on the governing board of the open group as an elected representative. And Mike's joined by his colleague from Ohio State, Dr. AC, I've been advised to call him, but John pronounced it perfectly earlier, but his professor in management sciences at the Fisher School of Business. Aravind's research investigates innovation, learning and knowledge creation issues in a variety of areas, including high tech, R&D, manufacturing and healthcare delivery. In recent years, he's begun to study the challenges involved in developing patient centric healthcare models by conducting field experiments in collaboration with several physician and nursing leaders. Aravind is the academic director of the master of business in operation excellence and executive master's program preparing leaders to drive, build and sustain continuous learning culture in organizations. In the session today, they will discuss the journey to bring the Digital Leadership Academy to life and executive education program at the Ohio State University inspired by the open group digital portfolio. So I'm guessing you're leading off Mike, but welcome, warm welcome from the open group to, again, Aravind. Thank you very much. AC, can we hear you okay? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we got you. Thank you. All right, so thank you everyone wanted to thank you for this opportunity to talk a little bit about some of the work that AC and I are doing at the Ohio State University. One of the things I did want to do for the conversation today is set a couple of ground rules. So just so we're on the same page. Ohio State is new to the open group where we're coming into the open group for the first time as we engage with the digital portfolio and are trying to leverage that digital portfolio as we try to educate the learners that Ohio State and what it means to be digital going forward. So we want your help in trying to understand how we can have the biggest impact. We also want to make clear that as you go through this conversation today that you understand that this is a vision that is emerging. And so we would love any and all feedback. As we go through this conversation, whether it's in the QA panel or the chat and we'll try to we'll try to tackle that today. If we have time for Q and A, but before we jump into kind of what we're we're in visiting, I want to have AC just sell a little stage for us around what executive education is at the Fisher College of Business. Thank you so much, Mike. Good morning everyone and good afternoon wherever you are. Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity as Mike mentioned. This is a unique opportunity that Ohio State and Fisher College of Business, which I belong to, is partnering to really understand and manage the needs in the digital space. So I was just listening to a wonderful presentation the previous time where they brought in certain challenges that are very unique in the IT digital space. Let me tell you a little bit about Fisher College of Business, primarily the executive education, which might set the stage for the conversation that Michael is going to lead forward. So as you as you might know, Fisher is a part of the business school is a part of a larger university or Ohio State University, which has about 60,000 students and several hundred thousand alumni all over the world. Now in the executive education side, we are our programs are primarily oriented towards a couple of important groups. So one would call us like practicing leaders who are actually practicing what we call as top level operational capabilities and then aspiring leaders who want to get there to actually be one of those practicing leaders. So so we have had programs orchestrated into three or four different buckets that actually allows us to educate them to achieve whatever they want to achieve. So in particular, there are a couple of programs I was listening to the previous start, but we talked about operation value streams and how do you really manage it value streams. So we have a program called the master of business and operational excellence. And I'm proud to say that that's one of the our institutions along with MIT to some extent is being recognized as one of the top institutions in developing curriculum on operational excellence. So so the way we think about this is how do you really understand value streams from a customer? How do you really think about making changes in your organization? How do you really then make those changes and how do you sustain those changes? Because in this time and age, as you think about making changes, changes happen every day. But how do you then like really like sustain them and actually like evolve through the journey. So most of our programs are actually having the same philosophy be it our executive MBA program. We have several analytical certificate programs that are part of our MBA offering. And then our executive education where we very closely work with several organizations both locally in the US and also globally. So we have strategic partners in India. For instance, we work with groups like Tata where we actually work closely with their training centers to train them all on the philosophy of creating learning by doing. So one of the most important thing that Fisher and executive education is it's very easy for us to teach something. But it's very hard for them to really absorb and apply until you have some learning by doing so we base all our curriculum and offering based on our research. So being a part of a land grand mission university Ohio State is one of the top institutions and really the top institution in this area of operations and operational excellence. So we actually rely a lot on those learning where we work very closely with top organizations and then really understand their problems and actually like try to understand and then deliver programs. Now, how does it all apply here as Michael is going to lead the next few sessions. We realize that digital is one of the spaces that we have not yet really paid a lot of attention. That's why this partnership with open group is extremely critical, but we know our strengths. We know that even in the digital space, you're going to deal with process, you're going to deal with people, you're going to deal with change management. So all those things are something that we are very proud of in terms of our academic as well as practical relevance. So where we are going in the next few months primarily thanks to Michael is how do we take the next step and into the digital space. So that's where we are and I'll turn it up to Michael who actually is going to walk us through some of the things that we are thinking about in terms of programming in our executive education. Michael. Yeah, thank you AC and what I would say is this, this vision that we're going to talk through here is inspired by a couple of things. One, it's inspired by the, the, the priority of digital across organizations. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that today because I know that all of you here on this call are very, very familiar with how important digital is and the impact. It's having on our businesses on consumers lives and basically everything, especially post pandemic here. It's just transforming the world that we live in, but it's also inspired by the, the history at Ohio State and the executive education program and that operational excellence program that AC talked about the strength and being able to deliver a conversation around leaner or conversation about by streams. When we look at digital and we look at the digitization of companies internally that it has been doing for 4050 60 years. What we're now calling digital is is really trying to bring forth to leverage some of that expertise that we have been using internally to digitize the operating models of companies and now to impact the, the business unit. I'm sorry, not the business, but the business models and the customer experiences that companies deliver to their customers. And so we feel like we can leverage and utilize some of that same knowledge and expertise that the MBA program brings to the table. The second inspiration that I wanted to talk really quickly about is the open group. There's two pieces of the open group that provide inspiration for this program. The first is the work of managing digital and DP box. The, you may remember a year, maybe 18 months ago. Charles that's and the Dean over at the University of St. Thomas stood on a physical open group stage and shared the story of how the digital practitioners body of knowledge is being leveraged education in in the University of St. Thomas and that was an inspiration for me to bring the digital practitioners body of knowledge to the Ohio State University and and to leverage it to teach managing digital here at Ohio State for undergrads. But what we really saw was the opportunity to take that to the next level to expand on that to really try to have an impact on it professionals across the industry and help to reskill not skill. All I keep professionals for the digital age, leveraging that third inspiration, which is the full open group digital portfolio, leveraging not just DP box, but reference architectures like it for it. The Rob talked about in the previous presentation, leveraging architecture methodologies that can help with the digital transformation that can help with the creation digital products like potentially toe gap for the Azure architecture framework. These elements of the digital portfolio that the open group brings to the table really inspired this program and the full scope of what we think we can deliver as part of this program. Now we think there's a fairly big opportunity here, but at the end of the day, that opportunity is based on having an impact on re skilling up skilling people. Digital transformation is not a technology issue with a people issue. And today, I would argue that the vast majority of people whether they are people that are in the enterprise, who have to live and breathe an additional enterprise, or whether they are, and you can see some of the statistics here that talk to the, the folks that are inside an enterprise. Or they're the people that are actually going to create the new digital products, leveraging new practices and new capabilities, or whether it's the leaders that are going to help define the digital enterprise of tomorrow. We all need to reskill enough skill for this new digital age and we believe that there's a fairly significant opportunity. According to the World Economic Forum, they believe that there's there's some good progress. But as you see this chart, we believe that IT is kind of leading the way, but we're still early in that journey. We're still experimenting with what the new practices look like. We're still learning the new capabilities that we need to be able to deliver. And our leadership teams are still trying to figure out what this looks like. So what we're trying to do here at OSU, the Digital Executive Education Program, we've created a very simple framework that we're trying to drive the conversation prams. It talks about the vision. It talks about understanding what your blueprint for a digital enterprise might look like. What are the building blocks of your digital enterprise? What's the value to your enterprise of becoming a digital enterprise? We talk about transformation. We're recognizing that your enterprise is not digital today, but that you have that digital vision and you want to get there. But what are the methods? What are the approaches you need to get that digital transformation journey? And then execution. Once you become a digital enterprise, there's a whole set of new capabilities and practices that you need to be able to run that digital enterprise day to day and to be able to deliver new digital products to market successfully. And so we're trying to create a curriculum that will support that. And again, inspired by an vision by the open group digital portfolio. We're moving fast. This whole program actually was inspired and initiated by some thinking that was going on in early Q1. But the need has been dramatically accelerated by the global pandemic that we are all experiencing.  And so we're moving fast and we're going to launch 2 programs here in fall of 2020. An executive guide to managing digital and a practitioner's guide to managing digital. An executive guide will be focused on trying to really define for leaders of the organization and for people leading transformations. What it means to be a digital enterprise? What are the building blocks of a digital enterprise? And how do we define digital delivery? If we talk about what we're envisioning, we're envisioning this being rooted in academic research from MIT. You may, if you're familiar with the digital space at all, be familiar with Tini Ross's book Designs for Digital and the 5 Building Blocks of a Digital Enterprise that are outlined in her research. We're going to leverage that. But when we get to some of the elements that we're going to include, the elements of digital delivery culture and mindset that are not necessarily a part of her framework. We're going to leverage some key open group material. We're going to leverage reference architecture like IT for IT to help us better understand what are the capabilities and information needed to really drive seamless digital delivery. So I think that's a real important component of what we're going to be bringing to the table. And then the practitioner's guide to managing digital. And for those of you that have been around the open group for a while, this should be very, very familiar. This is weaning heavily on the digital practitioner's body of knowledge. And it's really following that same learning progression of founder concerns like digital value, digital infrastructure, digital product development. Team level concerns like product management, work management, operations management, and so on and so forth as we go up the BP Box learning progression. And so we think there's tremendous value in having those two frameworks as foundational elements for our whole program. But we are looking at a program that's more comprehensive because it's key that we're identifying those really important roles for the future of a digital enterprise. Roles like a digital product manager, a digital architect, or a digital, digital executive. And so we're designing a series of role based certifications that will include foundational courses like the ones that we talked about in a few others. For example, topics like digital ethics, but also some role specific courses. Horses that might drive conversations around business model transformation, innovation, design thinking, agile and DevOps, agile architecture. All of those kinds of things will be elements of these role specific courses that we plan to offer. And then in order to really bring this learning to life to really add the significant values so that it's not just knowledge, but it's all also some element of practical experience. We're going to incorporate custom projects in our, in our digital certifications so that every single one of these folks that goes through this certification will have experience with a real life project that brings everything together. And helps them understand from that role based perspective, what are the things they need to do to work in a digital enterprise. And finally, it's important that we include an element of community into this program because we need to learn from each other. We need to inspire each other digital is a transformation that the entire world is undergoing and if we're going to be effective, we need to be in conversation about the best ways to do that. So that's the vision for what we're planning to. As I mentioned, strong, strong alignment to the digital portfolio from the open group. We're going to weigh heavily on the digital practitioners body of knowledge. We're going to weigh heavily on the agile architecture framework and IT for IT. And then as part of the capabilities and practices, we're going to leverage the open groups thinking around business architecture. Business architecture in my mind is absolutely critical to digital in a way that might be a little bit different than applying technology to the internal operating model of an organization. If you're, if you're going to really transform that customer experience transform that business model, you have to understand and have the capability to have a business architecture. So that's going to be a core piece of what we incorporate in our program. So that's really what we want to talk about and share today. I went kind of a mile a minute. I know we're just trying to catch us up a little bit on time. But as, as we kind of come to a close here, our ask of you and I didn't have time to pull Q&A questions as we go, but what's the, what's the feedback you have? What's your reaction to this? Do you feel like this is that the right set of roles? Do you feel like this is the right set of topics? Do you feel like this is the right sort of program that's needed to help us as an industry re-skill and upskill for the digital age? And as we look to that, does incorporating and banking in open group certifications right into the middle of an OSU certification make sense to you? Is that something that you, you as a potential learner might be interested in? So that's what we want to talk about today. I've got maybe a couple of minutes. I know we're right up against a rake, but maybe a question or two, Steve, if we've got them. And then if anybody has other questions, feel free to leverage the URL here to learn more, to submit a question to us, or even to get some information about the pilot that we're going to be running here in September. Mike and AC, thank you both very much. Warm virtual round of applause for that and for making us up some time as well. But we do have a couple of questions. So first point that came in, what's the danger of having IT investing and implementing technologies without a business vision? Isn't this the catalyst of technical debt? Wouldn't starting with the Y, i.e. a vision be a better place? Absolutely. Absolutely it would be. And so this isn't about IT starting with a technical vision. This is about a digital vision for the enterprise. And I would argue that that's what's different about digital. Digital is all about how we're going to transform our business organization, our business model, our customer experience, and then how are we going to leverage technology to help us do that in the most effective, transformative way possible. Technology has been able here here, but it also is opening up new what's possible. Things that we have never been able to do before, ways that we've been able to interact with people that we've never been able to do before, assumptions that we've had historically about how we had to interact. In fact, I'll give you a really good one from my day job, right? As we talked about, I'm doing this from an Ohio State perspective where I'm an adjunct faculty, but my day job, I work at Nationwide. And in our world, we interact with our customers through an independent agent. And this pandemic and our push towards a digital enterprise here at Nationwide is making us rethink what is the role of technology to enable Nationwide to interact directly with our customers versus always forcing us to interact with agents. What's Nationwide's role in interacting with agents differently, leveraging technology? And how do we support agents with technology in new and different ways? So it's absolutely being driven by a business conversation, but it's also a new set of capabilities that we have to really rethink what's possible because of the technology capabilities, the new digital capabilities and practices that are coming to the forefront. Yeah, there's some fundamental business model and design issues there that are going to be impacted by this. Question, maybe this one for AC or all you might, but how are other universities or centers of academic excellence focusing on the same area? Or are you aware of doing so? Yeah, so I can add that, Michael, I do think again, if you think about it, the concept of digital enterprise, digital work is not new. I mean, this has been going on for a long time that I even as far as I know as a researcher, I've studied my own research past, I've studied how companies actually have to involve in digital work and manage time zone barriers when they're operating all over the world. But what has happened is again, just because of COVID-19, there has been an increased emphasis from all universities, given that they're also teaching online, to think about how to engage with our audiences, be it students or executives differently. So where I see, I think there are so many different universities. I think we've already talked about a few MIT being one. I know Austin, UT, Austin, Texas, they've done some work along these lines. Carnegie Mellon has done some work. So I do know that there are some proceedings to it. But what I want to make a point, I think going back, tying it back to the previous question is this cannot be a be all and end all. And this is like a way to think about our work differently. And how do you now align everything? The way we do work, the way we communicate, the way we actually coordinate, the way we understand customers, the way we design, the way we iterate back and forth, the way we experiment, everything has to be thought through differently given that now there's a new form of communication. So given that, I think there is so much push from other universities and other institutions, great institutions all around the world on this, but it's nothing new. That's what I want to say. It's nothing new, but there are some existing things that aren't there. Right. And some increased urgency on getting it done, obviously. Absolutely. Okay. Will this program underline the fact that the functioning EA is critical? Yeah. So to your point, I believe that enterprise architecture is a critical part of, and one of the best practices to enable the digital transformation. I've always said architecture is the bridge between strategy and execution. And if you remember the framework I outlined, you may remember that our framework is vision, transformation, execution. Well, without saying it overtly, there's a pretty big spot in that framework for architecture. So, yes, architecture will be part of the messaging, the vision elements of our framework, and our roles for digital executives. Architecture will obviously be a critical part of the transformation and our role related to digital architects. And then an understanding of architecture and the importance of it will also be a part of the digital execution elements that we'll bring to the table too. Great. And thank you for that. And a final question, because we are eating into the break. Do you see digital architecture replacing enterprise architecture? And do you see differences between them? Great question. And I am not going to try to answer that right before we go to a break because that'll take far too long to answer. Right. In short, I believe that there are some new things that we need to think about and consider in the context of digital transformation and digital enterprise. Whether you define that as enterprise architecture or digital architecture, I think is maybe not even a valuable part of the conversation. I think the more important piece is what are the specific capabilities and practices we need to effectively drive a digital transformation. And I don't really care what you call the toolbox you pull the tool from. Right. Right. And just a last final real specific question. We talked about other universities doing things in this area. Are you aware of any other universities developing courses specifically around the DP box in the open group? The only one I am currently aware of is the University of St. Thomas. Right. There may be others that I am personally not aware of. But and actually Ohio State has one already available with more to come. Right. Gentlemen, we'll again, a big thank you for your for your time and and your. Thank you for having me.