Marcus Session is the Vice President of Information Technology Services for Tampa International Airport (TPA). He is responsible for leading and advising on technology initiatives throughout the organization. He has 21 years of experience in Information Technology working in a variety of industries. Previously, he served as Interim CIO for USF Health and Senior Director of IT Operations for the USF System. 

During his tenure at Tampa International Airport the ITS team has undergone significant change; restructuring of the IT project management office, information security team, hosting several local technology events, and strengthened relationships with other technology organizations throughout the country. This has increased visibility, collaboration, security, and efficiency of technology initiatives at TPA. 

He has spoken at national conferences, led transformative initiatives, and promoted innovative ideas to help TPA reach its goals, and maintain its status as “America’s Favorite Airport”. He is also a leadership coach, college instructor, and holds a Master’s of Science in Information Technology, as well as a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration from the University of South Florida. He is also a member of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and a Cisco Networking Academy alumnus.

Episode transcription:

[00:00:27] Marcus Session: Good morning. I'm Marcus Session, Vice-President of Information Technology services with Tampa international airport.

[00:00:33] Jahn Karsybaev: Thanks so much for joining us today on the Ivy Podcast. Appreciate you finding time on the holiday week, everyone, you know, taking the time off. So it was great for us to connect.
Tell us a little bit more about your background to your current role. What falls under your purview?

[00:00:49] Marcus Session: Well, you know, I've been Maxi for over 20 years. Sound weird saying that, but no, I don't don't feel like it's been that long, but yeah,of the 20 years, you know, I've worked in a variety of industries, healthcare, helped them search higher education, you know, obviously aviation transportation, industry, you know, got some consulting, on the side I teach, so,a lot of different areas, you know. My current role, I'm responsible for all the technology initiatives and I'll say racial security. Tampa International Airport is America's favorite airport, by the way, so that's what it is. It's Americans living in there. And you know, basically anything we're trying to protect knowledge of perspective, you know, coming up with a strategy or working with departments and our partners to help technology bring value to the organization and help us support our missions and goals.
But most importantly, if I had to sum it up is using technology to provide a great and robust customer experience. You know, we want you to come through Tampa, and you know, not just remember your visit at the beach or wherever you're going, but also remember that, Hey, we have break here, too.

[00:02:01] Jahn Karsybaev: Oh, that's super exciting. I I talked to a lot of CIO, CTOs of different companies, but so this is the first time, you know, connecting with someone who is in charge of, you know, the elevation, the airport kind of from that industry perspective. So I'm super excited. Tell us, so you've mentioned, you know, briefly around strategy and, you know, the need to continuously innovate.
I would imagine that's all, you know, at the core for you guys. As far as building and fostering that culture of innovation, you know, not only in it, but yeah. Organization in general. share with us any strategies or initiatives that you have in place that really help you kind of build that and foster that culture of innovation.

[00:02:46] Marcus Session: You know, it's interesting. The way you asked your question, you kind of said a very good answer that I think people need to think about. You said foster a culture of innovation, not just the team, but the organization and that's the key. So what I try to do is, you know, I try to come, you know, from the organization perspective of including everybody.
So if you think about it, a lot of organizations, the ideas are top down and you have one or two superstars or whatever it is, where everybody has moved to format. What we try to do is we try to cultivate ideas from everybody, but it's hard to do that sometimes. So as a leader, what ends up happening if you say, you know, and, every leader’s seen this, they sit in a room and you say, all right, look, Hey, anybody got any ideas spins we could move forward.
Well, most people are going to sit there and say, well, I'm not going to say anything. I'm just ready to get out of this meeting. When's lunch. Hey, is AAA open. And so, you know, you don't get that feedback because people just haven't been, you know, are comfortable talking or, you know, just having don't feel them enabled or like, Hey, you know, let me collect my check and do my thing.
So what we try to do, we try to meet where they are and give them as many options as possible to submit ideas, give input, get feedback, and conflict, challenge them and ask questions and challenge assumptions. I'm even challenging my own assumptions. You know, if we're rolling something out and say, Hey, what do you guys think?
You know, I know someone in here doesn't listen. Maybe like the idea. I think it's perfect. It's perfect. And you kind of put that to people and we let people through multiple channels. Submit ideas. Now we take those ideas under consideration and we talk about it in an open forum. So if someone isn't comfortable bringing up before an idea they submitted from this, you know, I call them an anonymous channel, and then that question will come up and we'll talk about it. Right? And then that way you get their idea of the baited without having to sort of be the face of it.
[00:04:38] Cause everybody doesn't want necessarily to be in the limelight, but they do maybe want to affect change. And the second part to that is including the entire organization. When I first got there, I met with everybody. I had been in like 30 minute to one hour meetings with every leader in your organization that I could kind of meet with.
Right. And I probably had 70 hours worth of meetings, in the first month, a couple months or whatever, and being there. And I wanted to learn about everybody's perspective, how they spoke about it, how having books about technology, how it intersected, and part of that too, was also laying that groundwork of my plan for what I wanted in terms of billing technology as a tool for them and not just something, well, actually just implementing this thing. So building the ownership in, and that, Hey, I could use it as a tool. So as we did that, and people saw the value when they started getting things they wanted, then they started coming forward with more ideas.
[00:05:35] So having that plan and laying that foundation early with those relationships is what kind of allowed it to happen. And then now not. Centralizing it we're centralizing our innovation and we're kind of having an innovation program. That's kind of over that function. That's within our HR department person, that's kind of the person that's going to be organizing the innovation efforts.
That way it's not just the technology based thing. It's not just, Hey mortgage, just won't spend another million dollars. It's, you know, it's more about whether anybody can something.

[00:06:05] Jahn Karsybaev: No, absolutely. And you know, I like what you said in terms of typically it's, you know, it's a top down approach and, you know, from a standpoint of innovation, it's really empowering and creating this almost autonomous environment for anybody to feel empowered, not only to bring ideas to life, but also have the resources and the support of the leadership to actually take that idea and work on it, prove that it works, you know, prove that it's going to bring value. And from there on out to actually bring that idea to life, as far as getting that implemented, you know, whether an organization level, department level and so forth, because that then sends the right message to everybody across the organization that, yeah, it's not just being done for PR type of initiatives that their ideas definitely do get considered that a lot of ideas actually that have been brought up, they'd get a chance to, you know, implement it. So I think that's, you know, those are great examples that you provided. Thank you for that.
So from your standpoint, just curious and it doesn't have to be in your industry. Doesn't have to be, you know, related to your company, I like to ask this question in terms of what are the different ideas or trends that really excite you these days? Like, what are you researching, when you're not working or even when you are working, is that something you observed, something that you think will be the next big thing? So what's on Marcus's mind these days?

[00:07:41] Marcus Session: Well, it's a lie, right, so if you think about it, I like to call it digital transformation. 2.0. you know, somebody has probably coined the phrase we do want it, but I'm going to go ahead and just point it to a digital transformation, 2.0, it's part of this fourth industrial revolution. Basically it's automation of everything, you know? And if you think about it, I think about it like this, with the whole thing, with the pandemic and COVID, and the way the work styles have changed, what's ended up happening is that people are now working in ways they never thought they would 9, 10 months ago.
And a lot of companies, you know, CEOs they're sort of, three to five year plan was done in this last nine month period during the pandemic. You know, people are like, well, we're trying to get more cloud or we're trying to get people to, you know, use more of the digital tools and things of that nature.
[00:08:48] Well, you had to turn that switch with COVID. And so now it's kind of like, well, wait a minute, I've just done my digital plan here. What's next. So that's why I call it digital transformation 2.0, because now you have people with digital tools. Hey, guess what we found out? Surprisingly, everybody that resists people is really comfortable when they have motivation to move to the tools and they surprisingly can learn how to use them.
Right. So all those barriers went out the window and what most people have found is they like it. Oh, the people that, you know, didn't like it before now, like it, so for me, the exciting thing is how do I now take these tools to the next level, integrate them, automate functions, get more business value out of them.
[00:09:30] You know, you talk about things like RPA, you know, what's the big thing, right? Robotic process automation, and the biggest thing about it. And the biggest thing that I'm working at is now taking all these things and I call them stuff that it's kind of, it's half off the shelf. Most organizations have tools that they have implemented, and those tools are sitting there like, well, we'll get back to it. Yeah. We still haven't finished that project. We have to finish this project. Oh man. We're going to integrate, this is going to be wonderful. Trust me. Hey, you're going to get that report. All reports in a single pane of glass. You want to get that nice dashboard eventually, right? That's it. Right. Digital transformation 2.0, you've now done the base level. Now you can look at those data sets. And now bring those into the digital tools cause you're gonna have people using the tools. There's somebody that can get value there now. So now you have an incentive to actually implement those tools and finish those projects. So looking at the automation piece and bringing everything forward, and it's just one thing specific to my infancy and automation, we're trying to automate sort of the passenger flow aspect of it to provide a seamless journey.
You know, a combination of using apps and physical tools and signage and different things to give you a better experience in the airport and the transverse you can be because airports are confusing and stressful for people. So we want to give people tools in their hands, mobile apps on their phones, maybe so they can look and say, Hey, I'm gonna need a port here.
Oh, Hey, look, you know, I'd love to eat at this place, but where is it? And it takes you with a blue dot, technology over to that spot. And Oh, by the way, it tells you where the bathrooms are and it gives you a notice, Hey, security takes this long. So your flight leaves here and we need to leave for the gate from where you are in this, at this period of time to make your flight on time.
Right? So those things all come from taking data and existing tools and bring them together to provide a robust experience.

[00:11:24] Jahn Karsybaev: Well that's, yeah, that's pretty cool. Those are great examples. You know, I was wondering about the latest trends and innovation, especially from that airport experience, because, you know, yes, some airports do a really great job with this, but sound, you know, it's a painful process.
And you're right. And as far as that being a stressful experience in terms of going in and really not knowing what to expect, so anything that technology can do to help at least to prepare the passenger for what's coming or, you know, any, any type of predictive, you know, suggestions and stuff like that.

[00:12:00] Marcus Session: I think that's, you know, there's a lot of opportunities for improvement so yeah. And one of the things too, Jahn, I didn't really mention biometrics. That's another thing that's out there that kind of goes with the automation piece. But the thing is, I don't always Mitch about Memphis. Cause it was still to the point where it was still scarce components that you set out with people with, Oh my privacy, you know, all these different things like that.
That's not the thing that's going to horizon that that's maybe, it's here. It's being used in certain applications, but how it's going to be used in the future. There's a lot of ideas, but there's not a consensus just yet. So that's another thing that's maybe a little further out in terms of becoming kind of a household thing.I still think there's some conversation you've had.

[00:12:37] Jahn Karsybaev: Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. And would you say that, you know, kind of airlines and, you know, airports specifically in terms of being a little bit slower to adopt new technologies or do you consider, you know, airports to be a little bit more advanced from that standpoint?
Where would you say, we hear a lot about in artificial intelligence, you know, a lot about machine learning. And I would imagine that's going to take its place in airports as well. At some point to, you know, automate, like you said, a lot of the processes and a lot of the things that we have to go through that airport experience. What's your take on that? And just in general, from that standpoint and being able to adopt such technologies.

[00:13:25] Marcus Session: We have a saying in the aviation industry, at least for the airports. It says once you've seen one airport, you've seen one airport, airports are designed with this idea that it brings a certain sense of the city or area.
It's an, so, you know, you want this play because you walk into lax, you're going to get kind of an, an Ellie feel to it. That's at least kind of the purpose, right? You all in our airport, you get, you want to feel like you're in Tampa, you get a sense of the city, you know, a sense of the area, right? So the airports very much so are very different investors, different, you know, from a technology portfolio perspective as well.
So in terms of innovation, you have some that are very, forward-thinking, very own the cost, very cutting edge. And you have some that, you know, are laggards and, and they kind of come very late to the party, and a lot of it depends on just sometimes the airport leadership have it funded, cause obviously, you know, we did record almost 23 million passengers last year.
So that's a pretty good number, you know? But you know, you have Lex, doing, you know, 80 to a hundred million passengers a year, right? You haven't Atlanta airport doing over a hundred million passengers a year. Right. So there's different economies of scale. There's different structures.
So it does depend on that very heavily. Right, but there's some, there's some airport, therefore I would say, you know, a good chunk of what we call it a large sub category, which is kind of a large category. We're lucky we're considered a large hub here at Florida. There's about 30ish in that large of category, I would say, you know, about half of the large hub airports, you know, are really kind of stay try to stay in the front. So I'll push things forward. A lot of it out of necessity, I think by reducing a hundred million passengers a year, if you're not trying to find ways to constantly automate and get more efficient, you're going to have some problems, you know, and it gets out of hand really quick when, cause when people appreciate, you know, you probably travel a lot, this or an airport, you probably don't want to fly through.
Well, you're probably like, man, that's a connection through there now. I'm good. I'll fly an extra hour and a half around. He goes somewhere else. Right? Yeah. And so that's what you're trying to avoid. You want people to want to come to your airport? So it is very dependent upon that. and a lot of the time, you know, we're trying to, we have an innovation group.
In the industry that I'm a part of. And, you know, we try to figure out how do we innovate and continue to bring that new because we're traditional to your point at a base level, do kind of operate a little bit slower just because you haven't had the thing, but aviation hasn't changed in a long time.
Like you don't see a lot of complete breakthroughs or, you know, you don't see a lot of like, yeah, you know, at least visible change in airports, airlines. And it's, I was just wondering, but that makes sense, you know, what you're talking about and the point that you made across, which I didn't really think about that, that maybe some airports, you know, actually operate from that standpoint by design. Like for example, Austin airport net coming to the tech hub. So I'm pretty sure there's also some, you know, strategic plans to make their airport a little bit more, you know, tech advanced from that standpoint. So that's pretty interesting. That's pretty cool, but I never thought about it that way.

[00:16:51] Jahn Karsybaev: So for you as an executive, you know, in charge of it and all of the information technology for your organization, I'm pretty sure, you know, at the core of your, you know, just being a leader is, you know, surrounding yourself with, with A-players. So with the best talent and whether you're recruiting actively or passively, I'm pretty sure you are always on the hunt for, you know, the top talent.
So tell us a little bit more about your interview style or, you know, for the candidates that go through the technical assessments, all of those great things before they get to you. Once you sit down with a candidate, give us a glimpse in you know, of that interview. What do you do, do you get creative with your interviews?
Do you keep it pretty traditional? And then more importantly, what do you look for in some of the responses when you talk to a candidate?

[00:17:44] Marcus Session: So, what we try to do is we try to have a little bit, you know, a little bit of the traditional one, a little bit kind of Orthodox methods if you made, you know, and we're not asking people, you know, Hey, how did the egg get into the part and kind of, you know, mumbo jumbo kind of things like that, but what I try to do is I try to make it, what we wanna do is we'll make me comfortable. I'm a pretty personable person in the sense of people back. I see myself a person and want you to be comfortable, because you want to see what you're like. And, you know, I don't want to call it, you know, we're term wartime and peacetime, but when you come in for an interview, right, it's, it's a big moment for you in a lot of cases, you know, you've got to suit all.
You may have not worn a suit for years, so we want to relax. So we try to relax you and try to make it, you know, environment, feel a bit more casual. then typically it's, tried to a lot of laughing, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of comedy to loosen people up because what I want to do is I want to see who you are, who person is, you know, kind of a high and the representative as we like to call them, because truthfully, I try to look for soft skills and, and some of those intangibles a little bit more than, technical skills. Cause there are times that I'm saying, you know, I put a job out there, you know, I'm going to get it. 300 resumes and a lot of cases, right. And I'm going to lay out everything, Hey, the certified and I have all these technical skills. Awesome. Right. But the differentiator is fit where you fit in the organization is, is the aviation authority or Tampa international airport, someplace that you would want to work and that you want to come be a part of this team. Right. And so that's, that's really how we do it. And so I try to, you know, I'll ask questions, you know, just about, Hey, well, Yeah.
[00:19:27] What was your biggest, what was your biggest failure? You know, and how did you overcome it? Right. And in that question, people would suspect, Oh, well, you know, one time I had this customer or I was writing this piece of code or this things like that. Right. Then that question, you get to hear how people solve a problem.
[00:19:46] You get to hear how people are detail oriented. and then I'll, I'll throw it out though. It didn't say that, right. Because what I like to do, I guess my differentiator is I put myself in a rabbit hole because people work for those first-line questions. They don't work for the drill down because they don't know what it's going to be.
So then I'll say, well, have the customer fields. It's probably gonna have the customer, if you'll have that person feel when you solve a problem or what were their feelings like, what were you detecting right now? I'm digging into their thought process. Did they show empathy? You know, did they think about the customer?
[00:20:18] Right. And you can kind of tell, you know, a natural reaction versus someone saying, Oh crap. I didn't think about it. Let me make it up. So, we try to do it like. No question I've asked is, you know, Hey, if, if your, your significant other or family member or your wife or whatnot was sitting right there, what would they say?
The number one thing you need to work on it. And most people are prepared for that question of, Hey, what's my weakness. But now they have to think about, well, wait a minute. What would my. What would my wife say? This is a matter, right? I love the different questions.

[00:20:50] Jahn Karsybaev: Oh great. Because you know, it's so awesome. I love it personally, because you know, for us at Prosource, that's our bread and butter. We partner with organizations of different sizes to work on, you know, very niche advanced, you know, IT skill set, we helped to find onboard and recruit and all that great stuff. And one of the things that, you know, I used to be on the other side of the table where I was the hiring manager.
Yeah. And to your point, one of my favorite questions of all time was also kind of in a sense where you asking about not from the spouse perspective, but in the sense that, Hey, if I was to call your current manager or the previous manager, like what, what do you think they will say is your greatest weakness?
It also kind of allows you to see, kind of that level of detail that the candidate is actually hearing, what are you asking? A lot of times they just jump straight to like, Oh my weaknesses is this, but no, that's not what I asked. Actually. I love that. I love that.

[00:21:54] Marcus Session: One thing I ask people too, if it throws people off and I'll talk to people, laughed about the reactions and the way they interpret the question is very interesting.
I say, well, so what are you going to do? If you don't get the job? And I just look at them and then they're like, Oh, I like they're not prepared for that answer. Cause I I'm asking you basically, what are you going to do if you fail, right. You came in here to look for a job. You didn't get what was your next step?
And a lot of people just don't think about it. And so it gets an interesting response. And, and it's funny because, you know, I've had to do this internally. Positions where, you know, people that currently work for me and people that work, I think trying to get a different position. And then after the thought of being like, you know, when you asked me that I knew it wasn't getting the job well, no, that's not really that wasn't the intent of the question.
It wasn't pre determined that you weren't getting it. I want to know, are you, did you just apply for this job because it's there. Right. Or is this part of a bigger plan for you in a personal development goal? Like why, why do you want it, you know, like, like what, what is going to drive you? Because if you're saying, well, if I don't get it, you know, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. I'm happy. I'm fine for that. That's telling me that, that you're not really, you just kind of doing it because it's there and that's not necessarily going to preclude you from getting it. Well, that's going to tell me, is that you just kind of. You don't have a plan. You're not not super motivated.
You kind of just rolling into the next thing, which is fine. You may still be qualified. You may still get the job, but it's great to know people's motivations because, and if I can get it bad, if I could glean enough of that information from other questions I can ask you directly, what's your motivation?
[00:23:35] You may not really tell me the truth. Exactly. I'm going to glean some of that stuff from other ways. So that's kind of how I try to approach it. I try to relax people and get them to be the true self. And then I try to get as much information as I can to really get a sense of the first technical skills.
You can train a lot of people who are great, technically, you know, but I want to know how they problem-solve. You know, and in the intangibles, and social soft skills.

[00:23:59] Jahn Karsybaev: That was great. You know, at the end of the day, I talked to a lot of executives, you know, on a daily basis, different sizes of companies and all that.
And it all boils down to kind of exactly where you talking about, the overall message is that at the end of the day, it's also an opportunity for a candidate to interview me as an executive fits, you know, what are they stepping into? And also allows me what you're talking about, to get to know them a little bit on a personal level, who, you know, who they are as a person, and try to, at least through that short, very short assessment, very short conversation to see if, you know, there's a potential fit into the type of culture that we have in our organization.
So that's pretty exciting, you know, and, as a joke, I always say for our listeners, if you're going to be interviewing with Marcus, that you have some insider information though, I gotta switch…

[00:24:46] Marcus Session: questions up.

[00:24:48] Jahn Karsybaev: Exactly. You know what to expect. Thank me. Thank me later. If you get the job, the kind of follow up question I have for you is, I guess, from the airline and airport industry, from that standpoint, it's not something that we hear, you know, on daily basis that it's, you know, the industry where a lot of, at least from IT perspective.
That's kind of almost the household industry for a lot of software engineers and developers, you know, to be in, from your standpoint, what strategies or initiatives that you deploy to really attract the top talent? Something that's really, really hard to find the guys that are not sitting on the bench, you know, really unicorns.
What are some of the strategies that work for you?

[00:25:40] Marcus Session: So for me, it's being visible and being able to tell our story, right? Like you said, you know, I'm the first person from the aviation industry, and so I try to get out there. I'm president of an organization called Society for Information Management - SIM, you may have heard of it before. So I'm the president of the chapter for Tampa Bay. so I participate in a lot of events there. We've partnered with HNV Strategy, which is another organization that puts on IT events. I've done some events with them. I'm doing podcasts with you, right. To get the brand and the thing out there, because when the interesting part of IT is no one that no one in IT, for the most part, I mean, me included, never woke up in the morning and said, you know what, I'm going to apply for a job at an airport.

[00:26:29] Jahn Karsybaev: Yeah. That's what I was getting it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:33] Marcus Session: You just don't think it's there. And when I took over one of the first things I decided to do was transforming the organization. Look, it has a great brand. You know, if you're coming through Tampa and people start telling you who to talk to, who traveled in airports a lot, they're always talking about us. We're always one of the top one, two or three rated airports for customer satisfaction. You know? So in the aviation industry, we're well known, but outside of that, it's one of these things that you don't travel a lot.
If you know, you don't flatter this region of the country, things like that, you know, you've heard of the media, the Tampa Bay, Buccaneers, you know, things like that. Other things that the city may be known for, but you'd never know that airport doesn't come up. So. I try to get out there and be present, you know, and we try to use innovation to do that. Like one of the things our CEO has been on multiple news, news stations, NBC independent live because we were one of the first airports in the country, if not the first airport to do COVID testing, it was hello. And that was an innovation that we came up with because we want to be a forward thinking innovation.
We know that right now in order to get the traffic back and get the industry back on its feet, we have to make people comfortable traveling and we aren't going to be comfortable traveling. Yeah. You know, airlines tell them to wear a mask and all those other things. But let's be honest, you're getting into a crank claim, with, you know, 150 of your best friends.
[00:27:59] Right. Depending on the size of the plane. So you're just, you're breathing the same air and all those other things. So like I said, it's already a stressful restraint. I've got to go through security. I had to get my bag. Now you've got to throw. Mats and germs and hand set a pattern wipes and all that stuff on top of that, right?
We can say, you can get tested before you get on the flight. Now, some places require you to get this done. So that's one of those things that's like, wow, I would've never thought to do that. Oh, this place in Tampa is knowing that that brings recognition to the week to the airport. And obviously me being present in the air to be a part of SIM being there, doing those kinds of things, because the brand, once you learn about us, We're doing a lot of things, right?
A lot of experiences, a lot of that just kind of sells itself, you know? So for me, it's telling that story, we never got out and told the story. And so I've been telling our story and telling them the things that we're, that we're doing and what we're doing to it. We're doing fun and innovative things here as well.
[00:28:58] And truthfully, you know, it's a plus we meet people where they are. We try to provide an experience or a work environment for everyone. And so we're building a brand new building, a nine story building, and we're going to put some innovation in there and we're going to do some hoteling, but we have some people that want to have a permanent.
That's why I have a permanent home. We'll provide that too. so we try to meet people where they are so that you could work here. There's an experience, this something for you. And that's what it's all about finding the right fit and, and trying to find out what people value and what they want. Right?
Like, look, I'm not out competing with Google and Microsoft and all those companies. We're the next year after that you've worked with those companies you've gone and made a ton of money. You've worked the grind you've done the 90 hour week. Come to a place now where you can take those skills and innovate on your own dime or on your own sort of, in the way you want to, and bring those innovations to a place and, and provide, provide your platform and get to tell your story.
That's what we get people to do. And I think a lot of people, a lot of talent we've gotten, they've enjoyed that and they've come in to enjoy the slower pace, and still being able to innovate and do some things. But, but having a lit tle bit of a calmer pace to Workday. So that's how I do it. Tell them the story and getting out there, telling my brain and rest and let it work.

[00:30:21] Jahn Karsybaev: I love it. I love it. You know, a lot of executives that I host on the podcast, you know, a lot of them get that value of being able to get out there and get the message, you know, about themselves as an executive about the leadership style about the organization, the brand it's all about.
Because sometimes when I talk to the other side of the executives, the questions that I get, well, you know, why should I participate in the podcast or something like this? And it's, you know, usually that's what I get at it's really, you know, your opportunity to also, you know, get the message out there and attract the top talent and really, you know, because you can't really read that.
You know, in the company description about us, it's all text, when you actually hear that directly from the source, I think that's completely different. And it's a while you were giving some of those examples, I actually looked up some of your Google reviews and it's like, it's wow, it's impressive. You guys have closed like 7,000 Google reviews and all of them, almost five stars.

[00:31:31] Marcus Session: That's the thing, right? Like most people would have known it. Now. Maybe people want to travel to Tampa. We have some of the top rated beaches in the country, in this area, you know? So it's very interesting.
And just to give you a tidbit of that, right? So as part of our SIM chapter, the global CIO for PricewaterhouseCoopers, is a member of the chapter right now. Our org is very different, he's got thousands of people, he's on a plane, he's got Microsoft and all people's customers, you know? Right.
You know, we're a smaller shop. And, you know, obviously serving much one to 3 million passengers a year, you know, partnering with other airports, working with the government, opposite TSA, FEI and the people. Right. So it's interesting. We're having a conversation and we didn't have been in the airport and we're doing a tour.
Most of them never tour network. Right. Just being able to see the inner workings. I'm talking about one of the projects we're doing one of the highly innovative projects of using GIS mapping tools to map our airfield assets. We connect that to basically what we call the work management system.
[00:32:34] Essentially, if you think of a service now, those kinds of things, but it's one, that's a little bit more specialized that connects to our GIS system. And what we did is we automated that and digitized that system for our FAA inspection. So the FDA, what they used to do, they come down and they'd have these huge binders and it goes through the binders and say, okay, this airfield light cause airfield lights that we have to go down to airfield lights and things like that, to be a regulatory compliance, I can only be out for certain periods of time that you want lights on when you land.
[00:33:04] Right. So they used to look at these binders for the service records. We've now digitized all of that, right? So I'm talking about this guy, you know, global CIO for PricewaterhouseCoopers. He's like. I never knew what such a system existed. So think about it. Think about this guy, one of the largest companies in the world globally, and I have this GIS system that we're doing all this cool stuff with and he hadn't, he didn't even know that that was the thing.
So he would have never known that had we not had that exposure and I told that story. Right. So. Well, when I hear executives, they will watch, should I do a podcast? Why should I head up on this? You know what they're doing in that, regardless of making it about them, like, Hey, I'm this, you know, executive that works for this company, Jahn, why should I, and you're a podcast that's going to to help you, but no it's going to help your organization, cause yeah, I think by most organizations don't leave with their IT group. You know, you don't go to like, you know, Deloitte and Touche to say, Hey, click here to learn about our IT team. You know? So you have to get on telling those stories and be the advocate, because most companies aren't IT companies, most companies are regular companies that use technology as a function. You have to make IT part of the business and tell that story to bring that talent.

[00:34:16] Jahn Karsybaev: Yeah, absolutely. No, I couldn't agree more with you on that. And then it's, you know, you give a perfect example of how you collaborate with associations that you're heavily involved with, and that definitely helps in the sense that, you know, you probably don't see immediate results, but if you do that, you know, consistently that definitely contributes to kind of building that right brand image of the organization, the leadership that's part of that.
[00:34:41] So that's really cool. I, you know, I love stories like that. What, what are some of the most challenging or the most in demand skill sets, for, for, I guess, for you and for your industry to find, especially in this current market, w [00:35:00] how do you guys go about sexually, you know, attracting that type of skillset?

[00:35:03] Marcus Session: So obviously information security is one. And I mean, we know about the growing gap there in terms of the amount of jobs that are available. Versus the, you know, amount of available talent. so that's definitely the number one, number two for the sort of, I would call the, the new, the new jobs in it, or the changing job that it, you know, when you're talking about going from, you know, the traditional SIS admin role to more, you know, cloud architects and, you know, different things like that.
That is really where the industry is going and where things are trending. You know, having people that have AI experience and people that have RPA experience, those skills are very much, it's hard to find. And if you do find someone. They command a high, a pretty high salary because the skills are sparse and there's a lot of companies looking for that right now.
And what I feel like, I feel like, you know, just like anything on a curve of adoption, we have people that are at the front, you have, you know, the early adopters and then you have like laggards, you have people in the middle and all that kind of stuff. The thing about it is. I feel like it is going through a hard time sort of industrial revolution at this point.
You know, if you want to call it the fourth industrial revolution and yummies disarm to have our reference, Andrew Yang earlier, do you want to use the term that he uses? But I look at it a little bit differently. He puts it more towards the fact that robots are autumn or automation is going to kill a lot of jobs and all those other things that you have to reinvent themselves.
[00:36:40] Right. I'm talking about the same thing, but in a little bit of a different way, the industry has already moved forward in a lot of cases. And what's happened is the industry has commoditized itself. But what you have is you have a lot of, sort of, especially in the operational, a lot of CIS admin, a lot of people in that role that haven't wanted to change.
There's still feelings like, Hey, racking servers and setting up systems and all that stuff, that's still very much needed in some cases, Hey, I should be an exchange admin, you know, Those things are not like an exchange admin on your resume right now. That's what you're leading with. You're not going to be in demand in the market.
So finding people that have the new job titles, because with it, we don't standardize anything in this industry. So at one company adopt had them maybe one thing and another company, something else. So you don't know what the skill sets are. So truthfully having people's titles match, what that new thing is.
[00:37:37] I haven't seen that in a sort of large scale change where it's like, Oh yes, this person definitely has skills with, you know, Azure and AWS and also things that I need, you know, but now it's kind of like, think my Oracle has their own top. Salesforce has their own cloud. AWS has their own cloud and you can go on and on.
You can list 50 different cloud companies. Yeah. The stacks were a [00:38:00] little bit different, the skill sets, a little bit different. So I don't necessarily. I can't find someone that has the mix of all the clouds that I have because the clouds are very specific to me. Right. So that's why, when I talked to him earlier about finding people that are problem solvers, they have the skills you've worked with a cloud before.
[00:38:19] I have to kind of just accept that and find out if they're a good learner and can pick things up because we're in this weird commoditization mode where the old style people are trying to figure out what their new job is. Right. And the last thing on that, in the scary part is, think about everybody that grows up with technology.
My daughter. She's three. She has been using an iPad, gosh, for a year and some change now. And she clicks on as she moves things around. She knows how to get the applications and switch and all that other stuff. People now coming along have eight technical skills. And guess what they can do, they can use an interface on a cloud system and set things up pretty easily.
You're not setting up storage rains like you were before that that skillset is needed in some regards, in some places. But it's changed. You need now people that can act with the business guy, you know, have some of that business and business analysis skill set, and then be able to apply that to a technical system.
That's already a platform that's already kind of built for you, and then you just work within it. That's different than pay on the CIS admin. You know, I've built this server, look at this data center, I set up a kind of skill set. So it's hard to find that because. A lot of the people's backgrounds on the resumes that can do that job.
Don't have it in. So, you know, just this mixing, this, that mix and that kind of transition that we're going through right now is what's made it more difficult, but obviously cybersecurity for obvious reasons, too.

[00:39:47] Jahn Karsybaev: For sure. Yeah. I would imagine that's, you know, the forefront in terms of the most in demand skill set.
And I like what you're saying in terms of, you know, not so much focusing on their past experience and number of years that they had accumulated, but versus, you know, their ability to, you know, to adapt to ability, you know, willingness to learn. you know, I think I couldn't agree more with you from that standpoint and that'd be a lot more important, than just a number of years of experience.
So that's very cool. Marcus, last but not least, what are you currently reading or what is, what is one book that you always recommend to others? Why is that?

[00:40:23] Marcus Session: Well, so I'm currently reading the Phoenix project, and you know, I'm a little bit late to reading that a lot of people have read it and been recommending it for years.
So I finally got around to reading it. Right. And you know, it's pretty good so far. Obviously we were, you know, agile training and all those other things, and it's something we're looking at. And obviously that that's a big, big movement in the industry, so, that book is actually pretty interesting.
It was very well written. And one book I recommend is the start with the Y I believe is what it's called. And the reason for that is that's very central to my core. Like why, like, why are we doing something? You know, what problems are we trying to solve? Why did this problem happen? You know, You have to start with a question when something comes in, you have to, you know, my wife always tells me that it's never a simple answer with you.
You always answer a question with a question, right? Because I need to get clarity around the request and I need to do the context and I'll leave people with that. You know, you have to understand where someone is coming from. That's why I met with everybody in leadership, as much as I could to give their idea and their vision.
And what you learned is there's a lot of competing. Things in it and, or, you know, just in the organization, in terms of what people see that the organization's vision is from their perspective. Right. So how do you bring that together into a cohesive thing? Sometimes I tell you a lot of times that I actually am caught in the middle.
And so if you start with the why, well, why do you want to do that? Yeah. You know, I mean, the example I would give people is if someone came to you and said, Hey, look, man, I want to put clown hats all throughout the airport. Do you just do it? Or do you say, well, why do you want to do that? You're going to ask that question.
So you have to start with that. So that's why I recommend that book because I think it's a good starting point for people because ultimately. I see people are problem solvers. That's what we are at our core. and that asking that question helps us down the road to that. I love it.

[00:42:37] Jahn Karsybaev: I love these recommendations. Definitely gonna make these available in the episode notes. Marcus, can’t thank you enough for your time today. All the lent expertise, I know it was a short visit and he had very insightful conversation. I look forward to staying in touch with you and perhaps do another episode in the near future. See how much I've changed and how you guys are dominating the airline industry.

[00:42:58] Marcus Session: Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on and I'm looking forward to it. And then, Hey, I'll just leave everybody with this. Fly TPA, America's favorite airport.

[00:43:07] Jahn Karsybaev: I love this. Thank you for listening to the Ivy Podcast. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed on IvyPodcast.com and all major podcasting platforms like Spotify and iTunes. As always. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a rating on iTunes.

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