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uh our guest today is sergeant pillai ceo of usd global and we are planning to speak to him
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about a new social impact initiative they are just about to launch called step it up
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america sergeant thank you so much for joining us today thank you uh can you just to start tell us a
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little bit about usd global's business operations and your social impact philosophy
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thank you uh usd global is an information technology services company providing high technology information
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services for global 1000 companies that's our core focus we have southern california
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headquartered company we have operations in 24 countries worldwide in uh uh north america in latin america western
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europe um and in asia now going into africa so uh so we're we we provide uh information technology
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services with large number of engineers in north america and in mexico and in india and what's
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your social impact philosophy when the company was formed in the late 90s we figured that information technology
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particularly knowledge economy jobs are going to compete for talent and this talent the new talent the new economy
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knowledge economy talent is a little different from the from the talent we've had so far and
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this this the folks that join the new firms they are looking for a cost that's
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beyond the p l beyond the quarterly uh pnls and financial performance so we've we figured that in
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order for a company to be successful for the next millennium you need to have a purpose
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larger than oneself something beyond beyond the traditional sense of business operations so the
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whole notion was to create something like that and um and we also figured that in the economy you know while the
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traditional industrial comp industrial revolution came brought about industrial companies which had financial capital as
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a competitive differentiator and then it in the last century it gave it away for
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intellectual capital companies with larger intellectual capital succeeded but i think a new type of capital is
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evolving which is social capital and we figured that has got to be a fundamental fabric of the company
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and what we did right from the get-go our motto was transforming lives and what it
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really meant is using technology we intend to transform the lives of community our customers and our employees that was
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the original mission we focused on two things as a social purpose women and children and on health and
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education were two subject areas that we focused so this philosophy was woven very deeply
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into the fabric of the company it's not something you do as a as an initiative it's something that is
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inherent in how we do how we promote people how we select people and i have to tell you that um
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it has become as much a social and cultural difference for the company as much as our business
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operations and strategy great fascinating your latest initiative is step it up america
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so tell us a little bit about what your vision and objective is for this this program well the snippet of america
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my concept was formed because um i chair the council for stem for uh innovation and um i have a science technology
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science technology engineering and math council um it's a federal council i think the
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whole notion there was to figure out the incredible dearth of um or gap of talent between uh what is
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required for the country and for the whole world in science technology engineering and math and
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what's being produced for example just in oil and gas energy sector alone us
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is trying to be oil independent uh by 2013 2030 uh to do and it's possible because
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of natural resources but the problem is you the u.s as a country has to have two and a half
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million to three million stem educated professionals guess what we produce about 130 000
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stem students uh graduates every year so there's a huge gap in that so that's just one example so there's a
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tremendous amount of talent gap yet you see in the economy a lot of the kids world over are
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graduating into or educated into unemployment facing unemployment as they come out of college
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so there is huge gap between the kids are getting educated while the job's going unfulfilled so we
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said there has to be a better way to match these two things and we can create a social
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socially responsible initiative so we said information technology is the new oil it's a very fungible kind
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of employment uh in a knowledge economy it's not really dependent on where you are
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so we said listen um we can take the ability to train large amounts of people that we already had that we
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did this in mexico and in india and other parts of the world why not bring into inner cities of
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america where we would pick minority women who haven't really had the chance to go
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to a university but has had displayed have displayed the determination to go to a
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community college we will go select them train them take the risk on them and make them information technologies and
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support them by our global workforce and give them an opportunity to be participant in the knowledge economy
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we see how societies are transformed when we did this in mexico and other parts of the world
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we have no doubts that we could do the same thing so we are starting this program
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in atlanta on the on the 19th our objective is to go to 10 cities uh in 10 months 100 uh
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women each so a thousand women in 10 months and then we will scale up from there
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so that's the plan so a a quick follow-up or maybe uh maybe even two um one tell us a little bit about how you're
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going to select these women and then i wanted just to clarify the concept you select
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and train these women and then are they employed by your company do they go on to
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employment elsewhere what's what's the plan um the first first answer to the
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first question is we're looking at different ways of selecting um these women these candidates can all be
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selected through traditional techniques so we are actually using civic leaders we're going to the
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churches local churches we are looking at local community leaders to ask for their inputs in the
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opinion and we're then going to use some internal testing to see but what we're really really looking for
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is the fire in the belly is the real driver because the whole notion here is we have found that in knowledge
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economy low income does not equate to low iq and that's a big myth that many corporations have and that's
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some somewhat embedded in our educational system and in our cooperation so we know that's
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not true uh so we're going to give these women a shot um yes they're going to be hired and will
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be our employees but they will be building these technologies as our employees as
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consultants for many other corporations because that's our core business so if i'm in atlanta uh we would be hiring
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them into our atlanta office as usd global employees but they will be providing services for large
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corporations in atlanta region so that's really the model so it's a self-sustaining model
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that they don't they shouldn't suffer social displacement of having to go relocate somewhere and
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leave their kids and their families behind that's the whole idea how will you assess their skills and how
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what's the training program going to look like so um the training program is somewhat different
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um it's getting customized for this type of demographics i think it will be a combination of critical thinking
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skills social behavior skills and fine-tuning of that information technology skills of course
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which is a core curriculum we have now perfected the technique to create accelerated human capital development
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because we have had uh we figure right now we can take somebody who is not an engineering
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graduate and can make them an information technologist in less than six months of training
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actually give them pretty high paying jobs as long as the aptitude exists we think that that would be the time
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frame for the training uh well as the program scales we will know if we need to fine-tune or
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recalibrate that um the training will have multiple components uh one is the score training the other
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one is the um software skills that we will focus on so we they will have one of the challenges that many of them
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have is not having a visible role model so we are going to bring in women uh minority when particularly have
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done exceedingly well in these careers as instructors uh well-known individuals um so they can
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see role models so role modeling is as important as the road curriculum so that's a combination of things we're
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planning to do now who are your partners in this venture have you already signed up a
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group of companies who have agreed to employ these women once they pass through your training process well
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we have uh we have uh now in city of atlanta we have all the major corporations in atlanta
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are interested in helping us they are waiting for this to get launched i think about in
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there are about ceos and top executives of the top 10 or 15 companies are showing up uh in
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the launch to participate and once we finish the training program many of them have expressed
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interest to participate in this already there's been tremendo tremendous amount
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of interest both from the political leaders civic leaders and from corporate leaders
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into this program because as you know bringing jobs to inner cities and transforming their lives is
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very very um important for those companies for those leaders but there's never been
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a scalable uh you know results driven program of the scale and this this nature so many of them are backing us so we are
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not alone in this we have several partners who are helping us and and what's the
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start date when do you actually think you'll start november 19th which is next week yeah
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that's for launch atlanta so uh help us uh visualize or think about the typical candidate or typical
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candidates should i be you know should we be thinking about women who are unemployed
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who've had a professional career but maybe quit who you know who are young and just starting
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out what's the what's the view i think we're going to initially start
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with women who went through the community colleges and just starting to enter the
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workforce as you know economic situation is not great it's not a job friendly economy at the moment
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so many of them have gone through but they are heavily underemployed so we're going to go through that's the
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bulk of the initial selection out of the women who have graduated from community colleges
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with some uh good core skills but they have not been able to find good jobs but then we will expand to other
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categories such as women in other parts like social work etc who who cannot take a job by traveling
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because their economic situation do not allow them to do that in this kind of business in knowledge economy these
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women don't have to travel and so they can be more responsible more available to their families at the same
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time can work in a high-paying job so that's really what we're looking for initially but then it
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will scale once we reach the 100 number of hundred in every city then we will scale up to different you
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know different other branches this this is this sort of division great do you want to take that sure now
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uh so so it's a very ambitious program uh you after atlanta you have said that you
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want to roll it out in 10 other cities uh can you give us a sense of how much usd
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global plans to invest in step it up uh america uh do you have any co-investors and how will you sustain it uh over time
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well you know the the um initial investment uh will be in the vicinity of 20 or 30 million dollars but um but i
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think as we scale i want i want this to be a self-sustaining program so as the women
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are trained and they become employed that becomes a revenue that potentially can
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underwrite some of the ongoing costs i understand that there is a financial risk to the company but we think
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it's worth taking their risk because i think every community every society all of us in fact uh look for one thing
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that is that is vital and that is to get one more shot and i think this may give these women
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one more shot at at you know in a career that they never had a shot before and hopefully can transform those
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communities and their homes and my point is that may create a social momentum just like what we have seen
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in other parts of the world i'm a big believer i'm an optimist i think this could turn on a social
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dynamic an economic dynamic that could make it sustaining um just by the sheer interest of the
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corporations that have come already lined up i think i think this program we won't be limiting to 100 people i
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think we would be expanding far beyond that so based on the kind of work you've done
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uh in other countries can you tell us what you what are the success factors what are the key points
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that allow you to train people this quickly to you know to ensure that they actually
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become skilled employees and effective employees uh so i i would take a couple of
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examples uh when we went to mexico when and when we started going into not mexico city or
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guadalajara or monterey but to second or third tier cities like in lyon or smaller cities like central fox
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and stuff like that so when we took the kids from there the traditional wisdom was that it's got to be a four year or
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five year engineering grad and you know they must have this kind of qualifications
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since we didn't have those kids in those in that area we started looking at other
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uh types of disciplines and we found that by using a variety of techniques for accelerated competency development that
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includes the traditional classroom training which is sort of an immersion program
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it's an intense program combine that with the self-paced online virtual education which we have
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the infrastructure and content for which is very khan academic typish uh information technology training uh so
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it's so the pace the whole notion is the traditional education typically has time fixed competencies
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variant right you have four weeks to get this done three weeks to get this done so we
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shifted that around we said time is variable but the competency you have to reach a certain level of proficiency
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before you that was the magic sauce because different people from different background learn the initial
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foundational blocks of knowledge at different pace but once they get a minimum set of standards they
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accelerated the same place that was the shift in the training program that we implemented
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and that's the program but it takes some customization for the demographics you
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operate it's it's finely tuned to succeed in that environment that's what we're going to
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do in atlanta and what are the challenges you're facing now as you go forward in atlanta and you know to
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begin this program in the united states well you know my my sense of my challenge originally was a lot
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higher than uh than what actually turned out and the first and foremost is to get the right the right
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candidates you have to be careful you have to attract them we are going into a section of the
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society that may not have had this particular job as a career plan so to convince them make them aware make
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them excited make them engaged and make them recruit and and and and that's one and the
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second thing is preparing these women to be corporate citizens so there's a lot of things that we take for granted
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that may not be part of their uh ecosystem such as dressing for success so one of the things that they may have
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a lot of differences about if you can if you don't know how to dress to go to you're going to very
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large corporations some of the largest in the world you know they may be very smart but they may
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just be hesitant so you got to take them over that that's that's a little bit of challenge
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keeping them in the program sometimes could be a challenge because they have uh they have uh kids
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to take care of for uh parents to take care of usually the women have the responsibility to take
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care of them so we got to balance their schedule with with the education and then finally i think
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finding the companies that would on our payroll but would employ them take a shot give them give them a chance
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because it's not a program that many companies are comfortable with have done this they've done it in small scale
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in some cases but never have done this in big scale so you need some uh some business leaders who want to take
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the risk on this program to say you know what do this with us for example one of the
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leaders that i was very impressed was frank blake the ceo and chairman of home depot i went and met with him
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and within a few minutes he said this is a fantastic program come to atlanta me i will participate in this my team
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will par i'll take the risk with you that's those those type of leaders are
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the ones that we need so that that initial you know there's always that initial hesitation to see if
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it works somebody has to take the risk we're taking the financial risk and others so
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we just need those sponsors so that's the other challenge we're beginning to find a lot of
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companies um actually lining up to do this so that's that and hopefully as we grow
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the investment that we are making becomes more manageable so that there is a it's a sustainable sort of program
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that's exactly what i was going to ask you about next what value do you see this program creating
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for the young women for the companies companies that employ them for usd global and for society as a
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whole it's a great question um i think uh the value i see it in in those four dimensions
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actually um the first and foremost for the companies that employ this government uh many of these
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companies have been in those locations in those cities for decades you're talking about very large
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companies and it is many of the business leaders know that they have to make a difference
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in the community because it is the community they operate that goodwill and the ability to make a positive
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impact in those local communities is critical for those ceos and the executives so it gives them another tool
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to be relevant in those communities so it's important for them it's important for the women
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who are employed in this program because this is the first time in many cases in those families have ever had a job in
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a knowledge economy and for that matter white collar jobs um so that's a big
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deal it's a transformative deal they become the role models in the society it's a high-paying job this jobs
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information technology jobs typically as a start-up job start at about 30 or 35 thousand dollars a year
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very quickly you can get up to 70 or 100 000 a year and even higher so this are uh this this can be quite uh quite a
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lucrative and quite a rewarding career and it's a it's a career of the future
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so that's important for for for those communities i think for usd global uh it's significant because first of all
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it aligns with our mission of uh jobs technology training and peace which is the four pillar stones of what
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we stand for and impacting and transforming lives of the communities we operate it brings in a huge amount of diversity
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um and and if you look at it it's interesting because we are a global player um
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we are an information technology provider so we use talent from all over the world
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but we what we do think that information technology the demand is so high yet almost all this demand
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is supplied by a few hot talent hard locations in the world and we think information technology is
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the new oil of the world it can be distributed more evenly so we're trying to sort of make it a
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global phenomenon as opposed to being concentrated on one or two locations so we think that can be a disruptive
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model and can be a competitive strength for us to say we're going to do this thing somewhat differently
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so we we think that would that would be that would be significant for us so we think that it's a win-win win for
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all parties and and i think job creation of course is the top agenda for the government
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um and especially jobs in stem and what better way to insight that than running programs that takes decades
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to fulfill the promise this we're talking about giving jobs in a few months so the question i have is how have your
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employees responded to this idea you're bringing in a new group of employees a new set of
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trainees what's the response very very excited because many of the leaders stay in our company
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it's a knowledge economy company not because they want to be just successful
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because our month race if you want to be successful there are lots of companies in the world
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and technology companies in the world that can make you successful because you have good degrees you're working in
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information technology the heart of sector one of the hardest sectors you're
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going to be successful but if you want to be significant the distinction between being successful and
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significant is different and uh we give them an opportunity to make a difference
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and that's what get the juices going so a lot of the existing leaders in the company is
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volunteering in large numbers to participate in this program but as the new type of
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uh as this as this this set of communities coming come into the company it definitely will create a more global
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more diverse uh and hopefully more creative and and and and more uh uh you know diversity of ideas and perspectives
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which we need to move the company forward so i think everybody looks at it positively
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how will you measure the program's social impact um i i'm not a social scientist so i'm
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not really sure uh how we impact i'll tell you um when i go to mexico now uh i sit down and talk to the kids who
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got the jobs uh with usd and those kids didn't come from the traditional background that you and
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i can some some cases unimaginable background and their passion and commitment is probably
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one of the biggest rewards of being in the business um and and clearly um that's what i'm looking for
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and this is this is not only commercially a you know i hope that would be very successful but also
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it in my view could be extremely rewarding just to see the impact that we could we could make i think
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creating a thousand jobs in high tech in 10 months and then possibly scaling up to several thousands
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probably in my view could be one of the largest job creating initiatives in the country today
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so i'm really hopeful that that creates the impact that we're hoping for both
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from both not only for for these women in the communities but also for the corporations and for usd global so it
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becomes a sustaining and ongoing effort uh do you see taking this initiative globally do you think or
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have you already in some ways taken it globally and now you're bringing it domestically ah
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very interesting so we have been approached by uh prime minister rahoyam of spain
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and i went and met with him a couple times he wants to start a program in spain so
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we are starting the program to train 5 000 people in spain you know spain is now the place with a lot of
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employment these days still so this would be a pretty big impact to spain i think
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it's a terrific location for information technology so we we're doing something
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very similar in spain we're just initiating another effort to go to a specific country in africa
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so we think this is a true global phenomenon but this particular initiative is going to
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be focused in the us to create jobs here where we're going to figure out how to
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learn from each other because we've already done this in mexico we're doing this now in spain
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and um and in africa and and another initiative that is that is very much on the cards is to
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do a similar program for women in saudi arabia one of the challenges there is the women
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are highly educated so it's a little different process but they just can't drive to work
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because of the social system but see information technology jobs are fungible and therefore we can give them jobs
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which is socially acceptable but these uh women want to be productive in society and it's a necessity so
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we are initiating a program in the middle east to do that so i think this concept is highly scalable
00:26:01
one last question where do you see step it up program in five years if if i were to have my brothers uh
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first of all i think we want to be known for having disrupted the social ecosystem in some way in positive manner
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uh and giving jobs in high-tech making minority and diversity uh appear in stem jobs
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27 percent of the workforce of minority and women yet only three percent of stem
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jobs are amongst minorities there's a huge gap so this is first of all would
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reignite uh that i hope that this effort would do that this effort hopefully would
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hopefully could bring a renaissance in in in in having the minorities participate in
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the knowledge economy which is so significant because 75 of the jobs of the next 50 years will be
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in the sector hardly being participated by the diverse you know minorities so if we can bring them we will have a
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participatory economy which is healthy for everybody so i think that would have and the whole
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concept of inner cities in many cases are somewhat in a vicious cycle because they don't have certain
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conditions uh they don't have enough role models and therefore they go back to traditional jobs and you know it's a
00:27:20
sort of a vicious circle hopefully this can break their chain and get these companies get these
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women and their families look at this these kind of jobs as new jobs to aspire for and the kids
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could go and and get those jobs go to community college go to universities and get those
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jobs and thereby changing the societies so those that's hopefully that's what
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it's that's what i want to be known for the numbers i don't know how many but
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i'm certainly looking for you know we you don't have to really create the fire all you have to
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do is have to have a spark and hopefully the the the the winds of change will find it in the
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flame of somewhat relevant so that's what we're looking for well sergeant thank you so much for
00:28:03
speaking with us today thank you thank you thank you very much you