Networking for Results

Were there challenges you faced with The Clean Network in terms of trying to build buy-in for this greater purpose? And how did you overcome that?

You know, United States Government has all these different agencies and all that, there's a lot of silos there. It's kind of like you would find in any big company, and I had some experience after working at General Motors for 10 years. Back then, GM had 1.5 million employees. The State Department guys would go, "How do you know how to work this system? You're like a startup guy." Well, that General Motors experience comes in handy.

And by the way, the biggest thing there is relationships and building trusted relationships. So early on, I spent a lot of time building trusted relationships in the interagency, with the Treasury Department, with the National Security Council, with the Trade Office, with the Commerce Department, with the DOD, with the intelligence agencies, all those things really came to play. But at the end of the day, it was all about getting results. I really admire the folks that took a leap of faith because it really required a leap of faith, because almost everybody didn't think we could pull it off. But once the results start coming in, then it was undeniable. We had tangible, measurable results, because at the end of the day, we on The Clean Network, we're 60 countries representing two-thirds of the world's global GDP, 200 telcos and many industry leading companies around the world. And really, the results spoke for themselves.