Eating The Bear Turning weakness into strength
[Music]
because i have a semi-public job
i find myself in front of crowds or
cameras fairly often
and because i’m in economic development
i get asked the question
what is it exactly that you do equally
as often
my response is i eat bears
now hopefully i haven’t already lost you
in all reality
i have the privilege of leading san
antonio’s largest organization
that’s responsible for bringing good
quality jobs to the market
and we also work to make sure that san
antonians have the skill sets and the
talent that it takes
to fill those jobs if you’ve heard about
companies like toyota navistar or hulu
having a presence here that’s because my
team at the san antonio economic
development foundation
worked hard and tirelessly to recruit
those employers
as you can imagine the job is so much
fun
it is so rewarding but we also face
our fair share of challenges when we’re
working to grow the local economy
those challenges they’re my bears
and those bears are both professional
and personal in nature
so let me back up just a step and define
bears for you
the notion of bears as challenges
actually goes back to a proverb
that my father used to repeat to me
quite a bit growing up
some days you eat the bear and some days
the bear eats you to this day
when i am working on a big project
that’s due at the end of the week
or when i’m just having a tough work
week politically
i’ll look down at my phone and see four
words via text from my father
eat the bear jay as simple
as an idea as that is for me
it fills me instantly with the strength
of childhood memories
my family my faith and sports are
everything
which makes again that proverb
incredibly profound for me
we all face our personal bears and
through the course of my career and life
i have found that when challenged there
are really only two variables within
your control
how you prepare for those challenges or
bears
and how you respond to them you simply
cannot control
how others treat you in any given
situation
and you certainly can’t prevent the
obstacles that you’ll be presented
all that you can control is yourself
so in other words i try to control the
controllables
and simply adapt to the rest that’s what
works for me
now figuring that out took some hard
work
my athletic career helped me along the
way i always worked hard in preparation
to win the games but that didn’t mean
that my team
was always successful and it certainly
didn’t mean
that i never made an error or missed a
shot i mean i know looking
at this ballerific picture of me that’s
hard to believe with that that
amount of swagger but we all make
mistakes even those bangs weren’t fail
proof
i missed some shots and i did strike out
but seriously as i grew up
i realized that everybody makes mistakes
it was all in how i responded to those
challenges
so yes of course i would get upset with
myself and challenge myself to be better
but i would also channel that
frustration to help me improve
now how did that work out so i realized
that i needed to
better understand myself in order to
control myself
in these various situations if you fast
forward
to my college and career today i
realized that
you’ve got to be very real very
vulnerable and honest with yourself
in order to be prepared to face those
challenges
and to be prepared to eat those bears
for
me that starts with understanding my
what
and my why what drives me
each and every day to want to wake up
and eat the bear
when i think about that challenge it’s
the faces of those
that i love that fill my heart and fill
my mind
my parents story is like so many other
american families
they worked hard not just to provide for
that next generation but to truly
elevate
my sister and me to that next
stratosphere one that was far greater
than their own
one that they knew we could achieve and
that was the same principle that was the
same idea that my grandparents had when
they were running their small businesses
a ranch on one side of the family and a
tire shop and a daycare on the other
now i feel personally responsible for
making sure that i am setting
that same example for the next
generation of my family
and the next generation of san antonians
alike
as mushy as it sounds this is very real
for me
every time i feel like i can’t push
through or i’m just at an impossible
stalemate
on a challenge that i’m working through
these are the faces that i think about
my sweet goddaughters addison lee and
harper grace
and of course my very own sloane
elizabeth who were expecting in
january of next year am i setting the
right example for these young women
am i showing them that i am fighting as
hard as i can
to get through this challenge to eat the
bear
you know growing up i knew that the
hustle was inevitable
and i’m lucky that i’m naturally
energetic
and driven to work hard and i’ve done so
every day of my life i’ve worked hard at
work at school
at sports at marriage although my
husband might disagree with that one
we’ve worked hard it’s just what i do
i’ve been called a machine
not necessarily a compliment i’ve been
labeled a workaholic and some people
just think i’m crazy
because i always have to be productive
but in all reality for me
it’s what i grew up with it was my
upbringing it was what was expected of
me
nobody would or could or should out
hustle the cesado
and that’s something that i live by even
to this day
now that part the hustle the hard work
that came relatively easy to me
embracing the idea that i needed to
focus on my strengths
but also accept and lean into my
weaknesses
to better understand myself and to be
able to eat my bears
that was a bit more difficult
now there have been several times in my
life that i have felt inadequate
like i didn’t have what it took to eat
the bear
and i’m sure that each and every one of
you have had those
same similar feelings i remember going
back to my collegiate athletic career
as team captain struggling one season
gosh we were off to a horribly slow
start we had a couple of losses under
our belt and
and i wasn’t playing well personally so
it was really hard for me it was tough
to figure out how can i motivate my team
when i’m struggling myself and after a
few long calls with my father
on those bus rides those grueling bus
rides back home
from those away games we talked a lot
about bears as you can imagine
and i realized during one of those bus
trips that adversity builds character
that every single challenge every single
loss every single failure
made us stronger made us stronger as
people made us stronger as
athletes and made us stronger as a team
what we needed to do was harness that
energy harness those learnings to make
us better we had to be vulnerable
with ourselves to be able to come
together and move forward
now that next season i went down with a
career ending elbow injury
and i realized at that time that that
previous year
all the bears that i had previously
eaten all the adversity
that i had dealt with was all that could
prepare me
for this next challenge one of the
biggest challenges one of the biggest
personal challenges i’ve ever faced
at that time i had to challenge myself
to understand what value proposition i
brought to the team
suffice it to say this was a tough time
in my life
you know softball was paying for my
schooling
it was apart if not the majority
of my what drove my identity you know
who was i without it
where would i go next this was a tough
time
for me but it was also the biggest
learning opportunity
i’ve ever had i was able to learn a lot
about myself personally
i focused more on my studies because i
wasn’t out having to travel with the
team
and of course i embraced the grueling
physical activity sometimes four days
and even more
trying to work to get myself physically
healthy again to potentially
return to the game that i loved now that
was tough
because i was trying to figure out at
that time how do i motivate my team from
the bench
motivate my team from back home when
they were off traveling for games
while i was attempting to motivate
myself to get back
to normal it was tough truly a tough
time
but i pushed myself and realized at that
moment in time
that the value that i brought to my team
wasn’t necessarily in my physical state
it was in the mental resiliency that i
brought
i have never been even when i was at my
healthiest state i have never been
on the softball field the biggest the
strongest or the fastest
but i was always the team captain i was
always the change agent
and the leader again i had to embrace my
weaknesses at that time even a physical
weakness
to be able to realize what i brought to
the table to be able to realize how i
could motivate my team to move forward
in a variety of different capacities
even on the bench even on the sidelines
because after all you don’t have to
prove yourself
if you are working continuously to
improve yourself
and when you’re around tables like i am
with some of the nation’s top ceos and
our local
top ceos it is so easy for those
thoughts to creep back
into your mind that you have to prove
that you have what it takes to belong at
that table
each and every time those thoughts start
creeping back up i have to remind myself
to pause
and reflect because one it is a great
honor to have a seat at that table and i
am representing
far more than just myself there
but i have to take those opportunities
to really learn
from these folks at the table to learn
what good looks like
to make me better as a person to make me
better as a ceo
and as a leader great opportunities
to see the way that our top leaders
operate but it’s also a great
opportunity to sometimes see what bad
looks like
and to pick up on some of those negative
things that i might not want to
incorporate into my leadership style
my professional growth and career
trajectory
has been anything but linear i rose up
through the ranks
at cps energy our nation’s largest
meanest municipally owned electric and
gas company
i have always been driven to learn and
not necessarily earn
so there at cps i took on all the gritty
around-the-clock work that nobody wanted
i ate the bear
i ate a lot of bears i was hungry still
lamb
but it all paid off i became the
youngest vice president
in the history of that company my next
gig
was the job that i’m in today and let me
tell you
when i was first contacted by the
chairman of the economic development
foundation
mentioning that i should consider to
apply i thought there is no way
there is no way one i was on a great
trajectory at cps energy i had a lot of
good things in front of me
and after all what did i even know about
economic development
besides infrastructure and rates i mean
that bear
that bear would surely eat me wouldn’t
it i mean all the odds were against me
so talk about non-linear now
oddly enough it seemed that what served
me well at cps energy
and all those different bears i had a
chance to eat had actually prepared me
for the job at edf because i had to work
to rebuild that organization work to
reposition that organization
it’s been four years since i took on
that assignment
that big bad bear and i’ll tell you
that it hasn’t been easy but i am so
proud of how far
our team has come the progress that our
community has made
and where we’re at today you know as a
community
we understand our strengths and our
weaknesses just like i had to do
personally as a community we are diverse
and
we are growing leaps and bounds by way
of population that’s a great strength of
ours
but we also have some weaknesses we lack
educational attainment
income inequality is another big
challenge for us in poverty
but we’re looking at ourselves in the
mirror and we see those challenges and
we’re working daily to improve
to eat the bears both large and small
and to make progress
day in and day out personally
my biggest bear lives inside my head in
the form of an inferiority complex all
of those
inadequate feelings i was previously
mentioning to you all
but bears can come in all shapes and
sizes
they can be fierce competitors they can
be political
or personal challenges and then of
course there’s the most recent bear
probably the biggest bear that each of
us have faced yet
in covid 19 uncertainty what are your
bears
are they bigger now that kovit has come
into our lives
none of us could have foreseen this
challenge that we find ourselves in now
it is one of the biggest bears but i am
hopeful
that this pandemic brings on the best
kind of awakening kind of like a
like a new year’s resolution but much
more meaningful
in our lives you know this could be the
time of invention
innovation transformation i hope that
you apply for a job that you think you
might not get
maybe start running or taking on yoga
something to that effect
take on classes that are far outside of
your comfort zone create your own
response to this pandemic
we are all in it together no doubt even
when our bodies
are tired our hearts and minds can
overcome
so i say let’s grab a fork and let’s eat
this bear
now how do we do that we’ve got to be
prepared
right by allowing ourselves to
understand our what and our why
to give you that hustle to give you that
drive and we also have to be nimble
in our responses by understanding that
you can only control the controllables
and you can only control yourself
remember
that some days you eat the bear and some
days
the bear eats you we grow stronger in
winning
we grow stronger and losing and we grow
stronger in learning
thank you
you