Today, Aquasight founder and CEO Mahesh Lunani sits down with Calvin Farr, Chief Executive Officer of Prince William County Service Authority, providing water and wastewater services for over 360,000 customers.
Calvin talks about changes to workplace culture in his two decades in the industry. The days of a two-generation workplace, where Baby Boomers order around Gen X'ers, are gone. Now, with 4 generations in the building, there's a much more collaborative approach, where employees aren't afraid to challenge the status quo and engage in open dialogue with their superiors. He's also seen more collaboration and less adversarial relationships under consent decrees.
Calvin talks about the size of PWCSA, and the fact that he inherited a great organization that takes pride in customer satisfaction. One of his biggest concerns is the rapid growth in his area, and being able to serve an increasing customer base. But despite being one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, they need to take care of underserved communities. Mahesh and Calvin discuss how the bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL) can help with that.
Having a "deep bench" is also a big issue for Farr. Folks are no longer working the same job for 30 years, and the pandemic has caused "the great re-evaluation." It's important to recruit the next generation of employees. It's also important to have a diverse team at PWCSA, reflective of the community they serve. The CEO has modified the core value of respect to now be respect and inclusion.
We also talk about cybersecurity and the real threat that now poses to water systems. And how can advances in technology be leveraged to improve service to PWCSA customers? Calvin says we are now "data rich."
Our guest also talks about being an assertive and authentic leader, building a network of stakeholders within his community, and taking pride in watching his employees grow.
PWCSA Website: https://www.pwcsa.org/
Calvin Farr Bio: https://www.pwcsa.org/executive-management
Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/
Mahesh: Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm with Calvin Farr, chief executive officer of Prince William County, Service Authority, providing water and wastewater services for over 360,000 customers.
Calvin is a professional engineer. And he's been on the boards of NACWA and AMWA. He has been a lifelong public utility professional, having worked at WSSC Water, City of Atlanta as assistant commissioner, and recently as director of utilities at city of Richmond.
He has a bachelor's in civil engineering. Master's in environmental from John Hopkins University and an executive masters in public management from University of Maryland. I guess I would say a Calvin is highly educated. I very much look forward to the conversation with Calvin and challenges and solutions for the water sector and especially water and wastewater in the Eastern seaboard communities of the United States. Welcome Calvin.
Calvin: Thank you, Mahesh. Good to be here. Good to talk to you.
Mahesh: Really looking forward to You've been working in this sector, water-based, water utility world for close to two decades. During this time, what has changed significantly for the sector?
Calvin: Very good question. So there's two things that I think about, and I'm always thinking about people, workforce and culture.
And I've seen a major change in regards to how things are managed in regards to the workforce. When I came up, it was a technically two generations, Gen X and baby boomers, and even managing that. Nowadays, depending on where you are, you actually have four generations in the workplace.
So seeing a shift from a command and control type of leadership to more collaboration and welcoming feedback because, quite honestly, the kids we created, the younger folks, they ask a lot of good questions on why you do certain things and why we shouldn't do it that way, or why we could do it this way.
You actually have to be honest with them, and welcome their feedback because I think there's some things we taught them. And so we've seen a major change there. It also, from our core business, in regards to infrastructure improvements and being compliant with environmental regulations.
I've seen a shift and just my personal experience, being a part of a number consent order and negotiations and implementations, and dealing with enforcers from state and federal levels. See, there's more of a partnership nowadays as opposed to being as contentious as it was. And thank heavens that our state and federal partners are now getting it in regards to affordability challenges.
Considering more integrated approaches because, Mahesh, folks being compliant with consent orders and consent decrees depending on the jurisdiction they've put all their funds into those efforts where other matters are deferred. Like your water system, and you got to lead service lines that you need to do address decades ago, but you couldn't spend any money on it because you were worried about your sanitary, sewer overflow consent decree, but also even the areas of stormwater where that's been deferred in regards to funding.
So you see these areas, you'll see this stuff now. So I think our federal and state partners actually get it in regards to more integrated approaches that have been approved. Helping local jurisdictions, spend funding, in an appropriate way to address all these issues. So I think that's been a major change too.
Mahesh: Right. No, I love the way you described it. The two shifts, a command control work culture to a collaborative work culture because of the four generations you're seeing in the workforce the same time. And second is a contentious relationship with the regulators to a collaborative relationship. I think that's really good for the sector as a whole.
Calvin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Mahesh: Now I wanted to talk about your control as a CEO at PWCSA. Can you describe in numbers this organization, but more importantly, what is the pressing need that you residents are asking you?
Calvin: Yeah. Just to give you an idea, Prince William county, probably 45 minutes south of DC.
And we're considered that, I guess the Northern Virginia corridor. We serve about 360,000 folks, about 96,000 accounts. We, in my opinion are a pretty lean organization. We have about 330 employees. Hardworking folks, 2,400 miles of water and wastewater pipeline. In regards to treatment of wastewater, we have one treatment plant that services about half our normal flow in regards to average treated 30 MGD. And then you send a additional wastewater to UOSA. Upper Occquan Service Authority. We don't produce water here. We're actually a wholesale customer of Fairfax water, and that's about 30 MGD there. Annual operating budget,when I say we're lean, and had support of our board. But also as we continue to invest in our infrastructure, Trying to address best practices and running a utility. Probably need to staff up, but we're about a hundred million dollars a year operating budget, and about 470 million over five years in capital.
This is always been really an high performing organization. So I inherited a great organization. What I'm leading to is I don't get a lot of customer complaints. Or any consistent issue that we need to address from a customer standpoint. I think we do a great job trying to make sure we have world-class customer experience with us. We survey our customers constantly.
So any interaction with our customers who had a water main break or some other issue. We actually survey those customers and we do an annual customer survey and we get very high marks, but that doesn't mean there's no concerns from our customers. What's interesting about Prince William County and the Northern Virginia area is that we're one of the three fastest growing counties in Virginia.
So we have to maintain the infrastructure, but also at the same time, there is growth here in the county. So about half of our county is developed and other half is rural and there is a discussion in our population and our local politicians about some more growth and things like that. So the question that comes up for service authority is water supply, quite honestly.
We're going to be able to provide additional water to additional population, and that's either a discussion for folks that are against growth or for growth. That's always going to be a discussion, and rest assured we'll be fine in regards to what we see in projections in the next 20, 30 years.
But that doesn't mean we don't continue to explore other ways to address climate change down the road and things like that. So those are right now, overarching concerns in regards to how the service authority fits into the discussion about growth here in the counties really water supply. When we pose that question to me is pretty, pretty easy.
I know some of my peers tell me a lot of other things that their customers really want, but right now it's water supply and those concerns with growth.
Mahesh: Good. It's interesting as a water utility CEO, you are inheriting a high performance organization. You're figuring out how to cater to a growth demand, which is not typical of what we hear about a water utility CEO. So that's a good spot to be in. Now, I get it that the residents have a lot to be happy about how things are going, but I'm sure that challenges you have at PWCSA that you're trying to address, what are those and what are the strategies you're deploying to meet those challenges?
Calvin: Yeah. So some things that keep me up at night is our workforce quite honestly. So we're not any different from anybody else, regardless of this, big quit or big resignation or the one I liked the best is "the big reevaluation." You had folks that actually taking a step back during the quarantine in a pandemic and realizing that this might be a change for them. I can't really fault them for that.
So we're really no different in regards to increased turnover. That is concerning. And how do we address that? We have to understand that, and again, I get back to the generational discussion, but we have to understand that folks aren't going to stay 30 years. It doesn't matter what you do. They're probably not gonna stay 30 years.
So some of the challenges with that and also recruitment and retention, so all related. Recruitment is, do folks actually know you can have a career in the water industry? We all know that when you deal with your local water provider as a customer, you think that's all we do is turn off water and turn it back on, but there's a lot to it.
A number of careers are at a water utility, not just engineers or field technicians. We need mechanics, electricians the whole gamut of opportunity. The recruitment, we have to do a little different and also some challenges, like I said we're lean in certain areas. That concerns me.
And when I say lean, we don't necessarily have the bench strength. Folks leave, and then you have a gap at that point. So another challenge too, is transitioning back to the office. Folks who have been out of the office for two years, some a hundred percent tele-work and we've taken our time bringing folks back compared to our regional partners on purpose because we really want to be careful as we bring people back.
Making sure folks are comfortable. Bringing them back is going to be a big transition. Making sure they come back to their culture or welcome them back. So those are some of the challenges. Now, some of the strategies: our budget's coming up and have instructed staff to look at ways we can increase our staffing beef up our staffing levels again for bench strength.
Cause I think the turnover rates, hopefully there may get a little better, but, get back to where it was. We don't know, but staffing up, bench strength expanding our recruitment strategies in regards to not just posting the job online. That's not really going to do it. We have to reach out to folks, go to job fairs, form apprenticeship programs with our local schools, community colleges, word of mouth, continue to do that and things like that. So those are some of the things we've got to do some things differently to appeal to folks. Now we have the hybrid approach where we're going to implement in regards to telework, which seems to be something folks really want in regards to recruitment and coming to work considering flexible schedules, more flexible schedules. So we got to do some things differently and to appeal to the next generation of of workers.
Mahesh: I truly understand that you are up against headwinds as it pertains to several things. Re-evaluation of employees, the water sector as a competitive sector, both from an attractive point of view and compensation point of view.
If not for people, I think organizations are perfect, aren't they? But we need people and I do agree with you on the bench strength. You need to have redundancy just like you have redundancy in the water sector, right? How you supply water.
Calvin: Absolutely.
Mahesh: So it keeps you up at night. Let me shift to the focus on investments. Okay. You talked about, you're putting in $470 million in the next five years. Where are those investments going? Where's the money going, number one. Second part to this is how are you tapping into this historic bipartisan infrastructure funding that's coming down the pipe?
Calvin: Yeah, absolutely. So the bill, the infrastructure funding, that's outstanding.
That's a really good news. That's an illustration of our federal partners are actually getting it. You know what I mean? But overall just before I get to that part is, in regards to what we're investing in. And we're lucky here in Prince William County to have infrastructure, not necessarily past their useful life.
There's some instances of that. When I say for an organization, they've done a great job of annual investments and the infrastructure. Of course we slowed our spending during the COVID, kind of held back, but we are picking it back up or in regards to your capital funding and getting our work done and execution rates and things like that.
So really we're no different than anybody else. A major investment we have going on is our design build projects, a hundred million dollar project at our H.L. Mooney wastewater treatment plant. The facility is older and we're just improving certain aspects. But we're no different than anybody else in regards to the needs to replace our water mains and rehab our sewer mains.
One thing where we're being aggressive about here too, is investing in our wastewater pump stations and improve our SCADA systems and things of that nature. And what I really love about it here is we take preventative maintenance very seriously. As we renew the system and we have additional growth, that doesn't mean we don't maintain it.
We don't wait till things break and have problems. So we have regular maintenance and then also cyber security and physical threats. Unfortunately, we have bad actors in this world now, and they've proven to show and to go after water utilities and wastewater utilities. So the investments in cyber securities there in regards to the bill.
You know our challenge here and the perception, maybe it's my perception, but Prince William county is viewed as one of the wealthiest counties in the country, quite honestly, depending on what source you look at and what you read, but that doesn't mean we don't have needs. And what I love about this infrastructure funding is the priority for disadvantaged communities.
Which we do have here in Prince William County. So now we can focus on those areas, get the federal dollars for those areas to improve those areas. Address environmental justice in those areas. And when we do that, we're able to spend money and funds in other areas of the county. So I have a lot of work to get done.
So we'll be heavy on trying to get those dollars for some of our disadvantaged communities here. Also, what I like is a language about workforce development. Again, bringing on the next generation of folks, how do we train them? What ways do we do it? How do we get them interested in the water industry?
And then also again the language in there in the cyber security, I think is a good start in regards to funding cybersecurity efforts, especially for utilities that are much smaller and don't have the resources. Because if the bad actors, quite honestly, will go after them and easily impact them as opposed to the larger utility.
So I think it's been a good start for cyber security. I think it needs to be beefed up over time as we grow over time and learn more about it, compared to, energy sector partners, which they are well ahead of us in regards to cybersecurity. But yeah, so those are in my mind, our top three things that we would be looking for in that funding.
Mahesh: Now, so on the cyber security, I remember hearing you. I think you were on a panel on this topic. So you're episode 20 for 21st Century Water. And I think the most I've heard about cyber security is through this conversation we were having. So clearly I think it's a topic you feel near and dear, and perhaps you are closer to it than others.
Calvin: Yes.
Mahesh: And the threats are not going away with everything going around the world.
Calvin: No.
Mahesh: So as I was preparing for this session and I saw you said something that was triggered my mind, you said turbulent times can be transformative times. Tell me what transformation are you driving at PWCSA. It's already a well-run organization you inherited. So how do you make a difference?
Calvin: Yeah, I think you have to use these challenges as opportunities, right? I'm a firm believer in that for me, it's all about people and culture. So we talk about the transformation. So we just started, it was started a little bit before I got here, but now we're picking it back up and what we have calling our performance excellence.
And performance excellence means the integration of leadership, our workforce, and results, getting good results. The leadership piece focuses on our strategy and our customers because we serve customers. We have to have a strategy on how we serve them, but then also at the same time, we have to produce good results.
So we have to measure ourselves, set goals, use the best practices, matrices, and meet those or exceed those goals. To me to get there, we gotta focus on our leadership and our managers. We know the leadership is not easy and we have to actually illustrate and live by sound and good leadership habits to lead. For me as a new general manager, the culture will change just naturally and culture I'm looking for is a collaborative culture where we communicate and foster open feedback. I want to hear from employees, everybody about what things need to be improved and what's going well. And I don't have a problem with honest feedback and collaboration and we all together come up with solutions. When we go through that collaboration and open feedback, I want people to be comfortable with having frank conversations. Having a culture where folks aren't afraid to make mistakes because there's a risk in everything we do really. And you try to minimize those risks, but there's things that are going to happen out of our control, but that shouldn't stop us from trying things. So that's the transformation, but also interesting to tell you is Prince William County is one of the most diverse counties in it country.
But our workforce doesn't illustrate that. So we're in the process of infusing and embedding diversity equity inclusion into our culture. What's great is, I get the sense that our workforce is welcoming to that too. So my thought is really, we have to match what our customers look like, what our population looks like, provide opportunities to everybody. So it's, to me, I think a great journey to embark. And I think we have the people to do it.
Mahesh: Right. No, I'd say it's fascinating. You talked about that last topic of that the workforce reflects the residents you serve, in terms of diversity. And in fact, Dave Gaddis was on this previous episode, 17. He exactly was transformed his leadership to reflect the communities he served within DC.
Calvin: Absolutely.
Mahesh: So to me, it's very clear. A lot of your emphasis is around creating an authentic leadership so that you drive open culture, frank discussion, etc. But normally when it comes to water sector, you don't say, oh, it's okay to take risks. But make sure that risks are manageable. That's not how we think in a lot of sectors.
Calvin: Yeah.
Mahesh: So I'm happy to see you driving right conversations. You mentioned earlier and I want to bring this topic up. You are running a utility in one of the wealthiest counties in the country, but at the same time you have a portion of disadvantaged communities.
within the county. At least that's how I understood how you're tapping into the BIL.
Calvin: Yes.
Mahesh: Now equity, environmental justice, even net zero, are major themes in the sector, right? Can you describe how at PWCSA you're addressing it? Is it one or two strategies or tactics you're doing to serve that aspect of the population?
Calvin: Yeah, absolutely. There's more than one. It's a lot. It's honestly, Mahesh, one of the, probably the biggest challenge I've had in all my engineer. Regards to culture and having these difficult conversations about diversity and equity and inclusion you got to have real honest conversations.
So as we embed those into our culture, we have to live by it. So we've changed one of our core values to respect and inclusion. Before respect, but now it's respect and inclusion. I tell staff I'm always going to require a standard of excellence here, performance excellence here.
We want the best people, the best talent. When I say that it's got to be diverse, it's going to be diverse because if you hire the best people, you're going to have a diverse workforce. It's proven that diverse workforces are higher performing so an emphasis is getting the best talent, having that as a part of our culture.
And we've had those discussions with our employees, focus groups and town hall meetings and telling them where I'm coming from in regards to that. Not to exclude anyone. I'm welcoming to everyone, providing those opportunities to folks in our county. We could assume a number of things of why we don't have that many women in our workforce as an industry or minorities. But now is the time to say, hey, there's career opportunities over here, there's opportunities and there's a lot of folks that may not even know there are opportunities. So we've got to get to those areas and "Hey, we're hiring over here." These are the career opportunities we have and in welcoming them and also internally to our organization.
When I talked about our capital improvement program, There's opportunities for our small and local and minority owned and women owned businesses to do work with us. I think we can help out the community that way. Help folks live that American dream and owning a business. And we have the funds there's opportunities there we're establishing a program for that kind of in a gradual way.
See how it goes. I talked about the environmental justice and disadvantaged communities. We're working that into our asset management program as a factor to focus on those areas, not just overall infrastructure needs, but also in those areas that need that. Cause I'm a believer in infrastructure improvements shouldn't just be done by who has the most money and it's gotta be equal. So we're doing that. And also the conversations about net zero. About how we can be more efficient and consider different fleet options and renewable energy. So we having those started those discussions and planning those efforts now.
Mahesh: There's no dull moment, isn't it?
Calvin: No. That's the fun part though.
Mahesh: That's right. Now, I want to talk about technology for a second because technology is making a huge difference in every sector, right? Whether it's a consumer life, the financials, the e-commerce, automotive etc. What is the role of technology in this sector and what are you excited about the most?
Calvin: Yeah, to me, technology is very important. When I talk about our journeys, performance excellence, or anybody's journey. Meeting our expectations or exceeding expectations of our customers, technology's gotta be at the forefront. You gotta be able to make decisions and justify those decisions.
And I'm a hundred percent believer in data driven decision-making. Technology helps with collecting information and using that information to make solid and sound decisions. That's where technology comes in. In my opinion, technology also helps our employees do the jobs but better. Be more efficient.
And what I love about it and excited about it is. When we get our employees, fostering innovative ideas and continuous improvement in Prince William county Service Authority, our folks, they get it. They're always looking to do their job better. Innovative ideas, the improvement, welcome to new ideas.
I love that because when we welcome them, where we're spurring collaboration and inspiring our workforce, let's be honest. Technology, the latest and greatest thing to help us do our job is actually fun. That's exciting. Stuck in your ways and status quo, we're doing it the way we've done it for 40 years and that's awful boring in my opinion.
That kind of, as far as our workforce and especially when they're a part of it decision-making and things like that. And then the technology has gotten to us for what we call information rich. We're beyond the major data collection effort. Now we're information rich where we can make sound decisions.
We review our data dashboards on a weekly basis. Real time information about how we're doing. So technology, it's at the forefront and what helps us is our board, a board of directors. So they've been outstanding. It comes from the top. They're all about innovation and pushing for us to use the best technology very supportive in that effort, I don't have to convince them to go off the latest greatest that will help us in serving our customers.
Mahesh: It's good to have board on your side. And also given the thing that keeps you up at night in terms of having good bench strength and a backup plan in many respects technology could be your backup plan. So they can do more with less.
Calvin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Mahesh: Now you only Eastern seaboard, serving communities up and down perhaps on the coastal lines or close to it and you're expanding rapidly. So how is climate change impacting your utility and how are you preparing for it?
Calvin: Yeah, so I think that climate change, you never know what it's going to bring in the future.
Right now, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, I think the last, within the last five years, we've had the two wettest years on record, but that doesn't mean it's going to be like that decades from now. You never know. So with the rapid growth here, again, not just Prince William County. Discussion with Northern Virginia county discussion is water supply.
Some things that we're doing to prepare for that as we're master planning and water supply is one of the aspects of our master plan. And there's some strategies that we're considering. You have to consider everything really. Additional storage, purchase more water from our wholesale provider, even considering treatment plants and things like that.
So having those discussions what does the future look like right now? It looks fine in the next 20 to 30 years, but you never know past that. So you gotta prepare now for those future plans. I think we have a good partnership in the region. We have to always continue to find ways to enhance that partnership.
How do we help each other in regards to water supply? And I think we have great partners here in Northern Virginia, so we have to continue those discussions and make some sound decisions on the future.
Mahesh: This is a paradox in the sector that on one side people want instant gratification. That's the world we live in, but you're thinking 40, 50 years from now. Maybe past our useful life. But if not for the people 50 years ago, planning what they plan for us today. We wouldn't be here. An interesting thing that you're thinking about 50 years from now, the water supply and security, water security, so that you can sustain the growth.
And I hope the sector and all the politicians and the city managers recognize how these long-term planning comes into play and the impact of it. So your two decades into water leadership. I have a question on this. What is a water leader for the next decade? What are the core skills they need to possess? Because a lot of things that are changing in the sector.
Calvin: Absolutely. Some things that jump out to me: I'm sure that the whole gamut of leadership skills that is needed. Some things that jump out to me and one of you has to be collaborative. Again, the next generation of workers are not going to conform or deal with command and control. They're again, going to ask questions on why, and why should we do it that way. We can do it in another way. The thought process which I do love, and they bring a lot to the table. You gotta be collaborative. You gotta be able to listen.
That's a strong trait of a good leader. You have to listen. As a leader, you don't know everything and I don't know everything. So you got to listen, you got to be able to coach because folks are over time are going to meet adversity. They're going to be challenged. You have to be able to coach people through and you got to provide honest feedback to them.
And it goes both ways. Another thing you gotta, I think you gotta be, you gotta be assertive and you know, the word assertive, not meaning make rash decisions or quick decisions, you gotta be assertive in the decision process and setting the strategy and not just setting the strategy, but actually following through and executing a strategy.
And you gotta do that. You gotta be assertive. Cause there's a number of challenges we have now, and we will have in the future and you can't take that approach of kicking the can down the road, it's not going to be my issue in five years kind of thing. Be able to be assertive now in your decision-making.
And then, like I said before, you gotta be authentic. You gotta be yourself. I'm quite honest with you. I'm not comfortable around people that I find that they may not be themselves for whatever reason. So I think great folks in this world and just be yourself, be authentic because the leader is going to have a hard time leading if people are.
I feel that you really have a passion for what you're leading them about, so you gotta have a passion for, you gotta be yourself. It goes back to this self-awareness you got to be yourself, know what you're strong at, what you're weak at, and be able to relate to people in an authentic manner.
And I talked about those three things, but in the next decade, you got to have the ability to lead change. You've got to manage change. Leading is change. That's not always easy. And as we change as organizations, you gotta be able to lead it and you need those three skills, at least those three skills even to get through that.
So you gotta be ready for that. And then talk about the collaboration, but not just collaboration with your staff or your team, but your committee. And community leaders, you can't have your water and wastewater lens on without understanding the economy which you serve, the people you serve.
So you gotta build a network, local politicians, local citizens, your local leaders, a regional and national water utility leaders that try to, when we talk about these boards that I'm on and get to these conferences and talk with other leaders that have more experience. You get mentored by them, or you provide advice to them when vice versa, just the whole collaboration thing.
So I think that's needed cause we have to collaborate to solve and address some of our current and future.
Mahesh: Yeah. I don't feel like, Calvin, I'm speaking to an engineer. All these topics sound soft. Collaboration, authentic leadership, which, by the way, I love it because people will see through the bullshit, if you're not authentic.
Calvin: That's right.
Mahesh: Most people do because we are all getting media savvy. So I truly believe in that authentic leadership concept, you have to be real. Now I want to wrap this conversation up and I learned a lot through listening to you and how you are shaping your life.
What are you most proud of to date and what is the one legacy you want to leave behind to the community you serve and to the sector as a whole?
Calvin: Good question.
Mahesh: It's a heavy question. I'm sorry. There's so many elements to it.
Calvin: There's a couple things if you don't mind me saying. Most proud of over my career, I've been at some organizations. What I'm most proud of is watching folks grow and being able to foster that growth either from coaching or providing opportunities or anything. When I hear from former colleagues or current folks that work here and you hear the stories about.
They got some training and some experience and they got promoted and things like that. I' m actually most proud of others advancing in their careers and taking on opportunities. Also what I'm proud of is my own journey. Cause I don't like to toot my horn too much. You read off some of the the organizations I've been a part of that was all done really on purpose, really to gain a leadership experience and the executive level and at some point running organization.
So that was always my goal. And I could have stayed at WSSC for the rest of my career and retired. But I jumped out on faith a little bit. And it was scary at first. Gained the experience to be a top leader and I've been fortunate to become the new general manager of Prince William County Service Authority.
And I know I've been here a year, but it still feels new. I'm very proud of being appointed as general manager because not only is it fitting my aspirations, but also when it was the first time I met our board and I didn't know anybody here in Prince William county really. I was appointed based solely on my merits, on what I brought to the table.
And they were satisfied with my thoughts about our vision and what we plan to do day to day and how are we going to help and foster our culture here and our people. And so I'm very proud that they appointed me as new general manager, especially of this high-performing organization. Very proud of those things.
The legacy part. We're just starting a legacy for me getting to know our community, getting out and about more getting to know all the leaders and how things are done here in the county. My legacy really is want to make sure we have a strong connection with the community, provide those opportunities.
Like I talk about with job creation, remain strong and our connection with our public schools. Open their eyes to our local up and comers, from high school to middle school and elementary school, enlighten them about the water utility industry. Legacy again, provide jobs opportunities for contractors and small local and minority and women owned contractors.
And then also really love the possibility of helping our less fortunate folks who had financial hardship and these disadvantaged communities, helping them get through tough times. You know,, we are a water company, but I think we can help regards to making sure they're served working through their issues, infrastructure improvements.
Overall, I'm definitely going to leave a legacy, but also how do we improve it in certain areas of disadvantaged communities in our county? So that's a kind of a nutshell of the legacy I would like to leave.
Mahesh: No, that's outstanding. Calvin if I sum it up, you are managing the water sector in one of the wealthiest counties in the country, Trying to determine how you want to manage the growth of your sector. Heavily focused on workforce culture, talent. Try to be an authentic leader, as you said, it rightfully so and really enjoy watching other people grow. That's, that sounds like you really want to be a coach and enjoy their aspirations.
I want to thank you for so many angles of discussion we had today and you're only one year anniversary into your role. I'm sure you're going to make a tremendous impact.
Calvin: Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you.
Mahesh: Thank you for your time, Calvin. I appreciate it.