Video: Meet The CIO, CTO of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania

hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it Channel all to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso my guest today is Michael Pompei CIO and CTO of Girl Scouts of eastern Pennsylvania this episode is such a full circle moment for me because I was a girl scout for many years growing up but this isn't just another nonprofit the Girl Scouts are an Enterprise level operation raising billions of dollars from cookie sales every year it's up to Michael and his channel solution providers to make sure the Girl Scouts of eastern PA is secure efficient and able to focus on providing the foundational life skills to help girls grow so what does that take you're about to find out welcome sir and thank you so much for joining me today no thank you Katie I really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you today absolutely and I have to tell you I wor my Cadet green I'm so prepared for this as a former Girl Scout I've been telling everybody who will listen about this for days so thank you for being a part of the show listen and thanks for just being an example of just the mission and just how you know the girls we serve go everywhere and change the world in so many different ways it's so many times I I'm at a Tech conference or an event someone's like I used to be a girl scout I used to do this I was like okay well you're still a Girl Scout right once a scout always a scout you're still a scout yes that's right so thank you thank you for representing your green that makes me so happy I'll dig out my there's got to be a patch for this so if I can earn that got media we got media patches we've got yeah we've got that definitely J stop in your local Council they'll take care of you fantastic thank you for the tip I will absolutely do that so as everybody could tell uh what you do is just so incredible and I think that when it comes to working with the Girl Scouts anywhere in the country people don't think immediately about technology they don't think about security uh and for you this is nothing this is nothing new this has been your entire career and so I wanted to take a moment to really let you kind of talk to me about your career Journey because we've been an IT leader for many years across different organizations that are very near and dear to your heart so can you tell me a little bit about your journey to being a CIO at Scouts of eastern Pennsylvania and how it led you there I think used the most appropriate word journey and that's exactly what it's been and for me it's really been uh you know an amazing trip to the various organizations I've worked at you know organizations that had either a mission Focus or a Community Focus but who also needed uh help as it related to sort of you know leveraging technology or different strategy or bringing a sort of a different perspective to things so for me my journey you know to being you know uh you know CIO here at the Girl Scouts is interesting in that I never really wanted to be a CIO I actually started I wanted to be an engineer I actually went to school for for electrical engineering and things of that nature and so as I started studying engineering um you know the way it was taught many moons ago when when I was in school uh did not leave me with the passion that I thought I would have for engineering so you know kind of roam around you know take some different courses fell in love with criminology of all things criminal investigation forensics right really lit me up it's like this is just this whole Hidden World but I always brought all the technology all of the engineering along with me for the ride and when I finally started my career I saw a tremendous Gap related to organizations the data that they try to collect and then their ability to use it so that's what kicked me off and then I started developing software to actually bridge that need and then once I started doing that I saw you know what there is a need for someone who understands both sides of this equation that could bring technology and what I like to call a tree and Rock formed for folks to understand so that everyone can improve and so that's what kind of really started me off so I've worked in education I've worked in community planning mapping GIS government Workforce a lot of different areas so my journey to the Girl Scouts actually started during covid of all things right we all remember how Co was remember how scary a time it was and one of the things that I knew was that once this thing is over as long as Western Civilization survives I need to get back to that original Mission of help helping organizations that want to empower and help other people and so that was my drive and when the opportunity came to have a conversation with the CEO of Girl Scouts of eastern PA and to see just what they were doing I saw that similar thread an organization wanting to take advantage of the latest technology wanting to do their job better not just for the sake of moving product or not just for the sake of you know scoring a better deal for licensing but really empowering uh various communities particularly communities that traditionally don't see themselves as part of the Girl Scout Mission and when I saw that a light bulb went off to me to said you know what here's an organization that is worthy of my talents they should have a person like me on their team so that's kind of what started me on this path uh being CIO here at the Girl Scouts of eastern PA let's talk about your role now because as I said at the beginning you think about Girl Scouts obviously you think about cookies you're not really thinking about cyber security and it and and digital trans information so walk me through your role as the CIO and your responsibilities at GP sure so you you hit the nail on the head right A lot of times people think about cookies camps and crafts But the Girl Scouts is so much more the Girl Scouts is an Enterprise like any other Enterprise and just like that they have their needs so my role at as CIO here at uh Girl Scouts of eastern PA it's interesting is that the the hardcore technology the the gears and all the you know from the Jack back stuff is probably the third priority on my list my first priority really is about how do we leverage our tools data and bi to affect our strategy the girls we want to impact the communities we want to serve where are they how do we do that more efficiently and how do we keep our eye on that needle number two for me is then helping to support our transformation our regional approach we serve nine counties here in South Eastern PA so you've got all the different varieties of communities from Urban Philadelphia to alany out west Delaware County at the South and there's a lot of different nuances different populations within that footprint everyone has different set of needs how are we making sure that we Marshal our resources as well as the ability to communicate with our army of volunteers to make sure that ourmission is delivered that's number two for me and then number three is the traditional things you think about when you think about a CIO or CTO is the technology the applications the stacks the environments things of that nature so that's sort of the one two three that I manage here in my role at Gesa so let's talk about how you Leverage The it Channel talk to me a little bit about some of the partners that you leverage for your it needs what do you Outsource what do they manage how do they help you run your business run this Enterprise as you so apply said and how critical are they to the operation these partners are more critical than ever no one's got the ability to do everything inh house anymore and if and if you are trying to do everything inh house I guarantee you you're dropping a ball on something because the amount of expertise the amount of change coming at cios and CTO today is staggering so you definitely need some type of partner even if it's just perspective related to just what's out there just to help you plan and leverage your resources appropriately so for us here at GSP we Leverage The Usual Suspects you've got your manage service providers your security providers you deal with oems as it relates to hardware and gear Consultants as it relates to expertise in certain areas and various one outs that you have to deploy so that's what I kind of see in my portfolio of Partnerships that I have in this organization during my previous path through at various other nonprofits or government entities you also throw in independent software vendors folks are going to be integrating different uh tools into the hardware that you may be purchasing because once again you've got Limited resources limited bandwidth limited headcount how do you leverage these things to sort of have a what I like to think of as a rightsize approach to Enterprise size needs so that's kind of what I see uh in our area and the importance of having these Partners I I can't really even speak to it without having them because you just could not do this work efficiently and effectively without them you're telling me you can't just be in all nine counties at once telling everybody how to not uh click on the wrong thing on their computers and so on exactly exactly no and what's interesting is that you know my first year you know trying to you know understand a lay of the land so I did what I like to call my you know my unofficial concert tour of all of our properties because typically you're thinking of oh I'm thinking of laptops and network gear and routers and things of that nature but these are deployed across 1300 Acres of property so I want to put my eyes on these these different things so as I'm driving out to these different locations you're literally driving up a mountain uh you know to some of these places there are you know places where I was like there are legit Bears on site I'm like there's like a black bear out in front of this place um and it helps you get a different perspective just related to how technology even supports some of these remote areas and these camps that our Our Girls visit in U Liv and it is no joke I we had a a situation where one of our um carriers was out at one of our sites you know uh rolling over and bringing in some Fiber and you know you're you're taking a look at the service tickets making sure things are get updated and then suddenly just like this blank response and so I'm out there I'm like hey did the T go on site they're like yeah but he left under durest I like under durest oh my goodness do something happen what's going on and and then the person just put in the taking a picture of a black bear and I was like yeah that that'll do it that'll do it instead of saying duress you should have led with bear correct I really also want to make sure that we bring up the cookies because I I here we go we're talking about the Girl Scout cookies the first time I asked you about this I had no idea what the industry the the literal industry that was the cookie industry for Girl Scouts talk to me about your your budgeting situation based on the cookies and give me a little bit of background on Enlighten my audience on the cookie sales that it's much bigger than they probably think outside their grocery store it definitely is and you know one of the things that's amazing and it was one of the things that took me a while to learn coming to work for this organization is that one it is the largest girl Le self-based business on the planet uh this is a business that does number three to your more well-known Brands like Oreos and kebler and things like that2 billion dollar um these girls are able to do via this program and it teaches such a tremendous amount of entrepreneurial skills dealing with customers doing Outreach doing marketing it's just an amazing program of itself so I I I one I have to start with just the program itself just what it does and allowing girls to raise their own Revenue to support various types of activities trips initiatives in the community so many different things our young people are doing so it's just an amazing um program now related to the first question you asked about the budgeting and how it impacts everybody loves cookies right and you know you see all the jokes about oh you know Girl Scout cookies they're like dealers I can't say no to samoas or thin mins and things of that nature and I get it I get it I've stood in tractor trailers full of cookies and and spent way too much money on the cookies but one of the interesting things that can be a challenge in this environment is the volatility as it relates to you know this particular program depending on what consumers are interested in comp depending on the weather depending on just a number of different things you can have a tremendous year um very very quickly or you could find challenges uh you can see you know spikes and demands for certain flavors that are harder to get you know the Bakers work with all the various councils we're all independent so we all try to manage this needle together as it relates to that but that can present a challenge because the threats don't go away the needs don't go away from an Enterprise so how do you make sure that you've got the appropriate sized approach keeping your eye on that needle as well as the data that might let you know whether or not you're on or off track because as we all know right our little cookie dealers there's a limited time set to make this Mark as relates to this so we have to have all of our systems running our data lined up the information clean because when we pull the trigger with the baker to produce X number of batches those cookies are in flow so they need to get from there to our customers to our troops and out the door and so data becomes such an important piece of that as it relates to not only the revenue that the girls can earn but how we support our services in the following year so that's just one piece that's different um here um at Girl Scouts of eastern PA the other piece um is our volunteer base so much of our service and program delivery are delivered by volunteers so how do we make sure to set up systems that they can access that are not cumbersome and clunky but allow them to do the work that they need to do as well as allow us the transparency into the activity so we know where we need to place our bets as it relates to Services Staffing Outreach marketing communication fundraising even compliance needs based on all that information so that is a huge uh piece for us when it comes to budgeting for you year-over-year is there a way that maybe Channel Partners can consider your needs and approach you better knowing what those budgeting restrictions are based on those cookie sales sure definitely I think you know one being open to have the conversation to take a look at you know ways that we can keep our eye on and reduce any swings as it relates to expenses and forecast things uh particularly as an environment grows and needs different levels of maturity different levels of services different levels of governance and being able to keep the eye on it versus what can sometimes happen with a particular vendor is that you just suddenly get an invoice for an increase without any forecasting without any forn knowledge that this is coming your way I think that's where really good Partnerships where folks understand your business understand how you operate and are walking a path with you become even more important because now you've got someone that knows hey these are the three times of year that are really important for this particular organization how can I get ahead of any challenges that may impact them if things don't go their way it requires forethought it requires understanding it requires boots on the ground sometime just kind of seeing what's going on getting an understanding of the lay of land to to better service because that is so important particularly if you can have such a wild swing we're talking six weeks for some councils to make 80 to 90% of their budget so if anything goes off within that it can have a long Ripple and a long tail to it and as we've spoken about we've definitely seen impacts that aren't expected and we've also seen ones that impact for example we we're coming off of the uh crowd strike driven Microsoft outage so you think about things like that and in a six we period losing a few days is critical to that budget those budgetary needs and that Revenue so incredibly important to consider on that level going in the same thought where your your partners your channel partners are helping you be able to move forward as a team um and as the CIO and CTO of Girl Scouts of eastern Pennsylvania you mentioned unteers and that really gets me thinking because immediately I think about security and some of the needs surrounding that what is the security Outlook at Girl Scouts of eastern Pennsylvania is there are there any unique challenges there and do you rely on channel Partners to help you stay safe essentially well certainly I believe every industry probably facing the same threats sometimes people may make the mistake of thinking oh well you're the Girl Scouts no one hates you it has nothing to do with that right it has nothing to do with whether or not you hate us or love us you know everyone is a Target and whether or not it's something direct or something that comes from someone else's data breach we're affected if you think about what happened with change health care close to 75% of all households are estimated to be involved in that breach that includes our staff and it also includes the families we support so we definitely need the help of our MSP our uh security service providers to also sort of keep our perimeter tight so you asked a question about unique need because of Volunteers in usual nonprofit environments the idea is okay well you know what I force compliance because someone's an employee right there's that sort of you know carrot stick relationship uh between employee and employer but when you're leveraging volunteers you don't necessarily have that while you can provide the tools that folks can get the training and and folks can you know to do the sign offs you have to make sure that uh visibility into know what folks are accessing what is available is Ty en uh as much as possible because leakages can happen with people just doing things accidentally and making sure that you leverage the tools so for us a lot of tools are provided by the mother organization Girl Scouts National but we also have tools we deploy ourselves and just making sure that you've got the right compliance environments just from a vendor management procurement perspective first to make sure that you're dealing with peoples that have products and Partnerships that can support your needs there way thereby if you've got something that happen you've done everything possible to make sure you can ensure that that data is safe and doesn't go places it should not hey this interview isn't over I couldn't fit it all into one episode so come back on Tuesday for part two thank you so much to Michael for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch on YouTube at Channel Insider news and Trends you can also listen to every episode as a podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode once again I'm Katie boso and I will see you next time

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