Pioneering Digital Transformation in Infrastructure – ep.145

On today’s podcast, I am joined by Jennifer Schmitz, CEO of Lattice Industries Inc., as we dive into her role in transforming digital infrastructure with a focus on enhancing financial organizations globally. We discuss her mission in pioneering reshaping financial technology that builds smarter digital infrastructure to strengthen communities.

Jennifer Schmitz is a dynamic leader with a robust background in financial strategy, global management, and data innovation. She currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Lattice Industries Inc., where she leads the development of the national resilience hub network. Under her guidance, Lattice Industries is reshaping global infrastructure by leveraging data to empower communities and enhance digital opportunity.

Jennifer’s career is deeply rooted in her expertise in financial markets, particularly from her time as one of a very select few women trading specialists in the Chicago Mercantile and Chicago Board of Options. There, she managed a team of specialist floor traders and played a crucial role in market operations and the digital transformation of financial marketplaces, honing her skills in risk management and analytics. This experience provided her with a solid foundation in financial risk and strategic decision-making, which she has carried into her leadership roles. Those roles included a focus on fraud, risk management operations and operational benchmarking to optimize digital networks for financial institutions.

Her academic credentials include an MBA in Global Management from Mills College, and specialized international finance coursework from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, where she also served as President of the National Association of Women MBAs (NAWMBA) Fisher Chapter. Jennifer holds a BA in International Studies from DePaul University and has studied archeology in Greece and Malta.

Jennifer’s leadership at Lattice Industries aligns with the company’s mission to create smarter, more resilient infrastructures based on the needs of constituents. Her unique combination of experience in financial markets, global management, and innovative data-driven network solutions positions her as a trailblazer in the digital infrastructure industry, driving sustainable growth and community empowerment on a global scale.

Melyssa Barrett:  Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melissa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started.

Welcome to the Jali Podcast. Today we’re excited to have Jennifer Schmitz. She is the CEO of Lattice Industries. She is a leader in transforming infrastructure through innovative data solutions inspired by the visionary work of Norman Anderson. In his book Vision, Jenna is at the forefront of creating smarter, more resilient cities. She is literally revolutionizing how we use data to empower communities and shape the future of living. Let’s dive into the conversation on the power of vision and strategic infrastructure. So I am just so excited to have you on the Jolly Podcast because I personally have worked with you for, I think it’s decades now, but you are one of those women that you’re doing things that are totally different, unexpected, kind of bringing things together and working in areas where you typically don’t see a lot of women. So I’m excited to hear the kind of tell everybody about some of the things that you’re doing and maybe you can talk a little bit about your vision as well. So first of all, thank you for being here, but first I want to make sure to just kind of set some context because I think you come, Jennifer, with so much background, you have kind of this hodgepodge of different things that you’ve done in the world, in life, and I just kind of want people to understand where you’ve come from so that they can appreciate where you are and what you’re doing.

Jennifer Schmitz:  Okay, well, I thank you for having me because a pleasure to see you in action. So where do we begin? How does the first we get to do crazy things in the world to try to make it a better place? So I’ve recently turned 52 years of age and I had to do a little kind of saying, how the heck did I get here? And what we really focus on and what I focus on and everything that I’ve built is really going someplace and making it a better place by the time I leave. As you brought up a very odd background, I was one of those average kids who had parents, good parents. My mother worked in the school district outside of Chicago. My father was an engineer and they put us all his kids through five kids through Catholic schools. And of course after that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, spend time, do I want to go to this school, that school, which is a privilege, right?

Both my parents being highly educated. So we didn’t have a choice. I had to go to college and I had to incur my own debt. It was part of our situation. So it wasn’t an 83 rise. So we started working everyone in my family. It was an interesting growing up, we never got an allowance. It was always you had to earn money doing something almost on a one-to-one if I wanted a little television that I had to go cut the lawn for like three weeks in a row. So it was this thing we were brought up with that you had to earn it. My parents have a background. They were middle class people. They are all hardworking throughout their entire lives, and we just had to earn everything we did. So we never assumed anything was free, even though I lived in a very nice neighborhood.

We were the kids. I had to go work at the pizza place if you wanted to actually make some money. So from there, I ended up going to college. I had no idea what I was doing. I wanted the nicest, longest place that I could go on vacation. So I decided to take an international study slash archeology degree. And it’s ironic I did nothing with that as I grew older except it taught me to know about people. And so that’s where when you understand a culture and you understand there’s a lot of cultures and there’s a lot of things that people do, but you also understand that people are more similar, they are dissimilar. And so it helped me in a career that I would go forward in nothing that I knew before, nothing that I ever had an intention in, but basically come up to some of the biggest things that women have done in their lifetime.

So I started my career after college, one of the few women down on the exchange floor in Chicago. So I actually worked at the Chicago Market Talent Exchange as one of my first jobs out of college. And within two years I had my own own seat. And I was one of the rare, not only being a woman, but I was not related to anyone. I didn’t even have this big finance background. But what it took was hard work and the want to understand what was going on. And I love financial markets because what I did learn is that what makes up a financial market is people. And every time something goes wrong, there’s someone who wants to take that opportunity and take it as far as it can go. So it could either be you or it can be that, and that idealism would be what would shape the rest of my life.

My mother, my grandmother, very strong women. But I’ll tell you right now, my mom taught me the best lesson of life. If you don’t ask for it, you will never get it. So I saw an opportunity, I asked, hi, can I be a clerk down on the exchange? Then I asked, Hey, can I become a trader? Hi, can I become a filling broker? And I moved my way up in a very short period of time, which was unheard of for women in general. And they’re talking in the early nineties. And so I would sit at the age of 22 going through Brazilian crashes by the age of 28, around 28 I got to do the math. But basically I was actually on the trading floor when nine 11 occurred and I was very young and I was a specialist in a company called Raytheon. And Raytheon actually creates the patriot missiles and we were one of the few pits that the FBI after nine 11 came to, and they tracked the financial links to Al-Qaeda through one of the funds that had actually traded through our pit.

And it scared the heck out of me. First time I saw the FBI agent with the F fbi, I sign on the back and said, what’s going on? And so what was interesting is actually learning that technology and risk can go hand in hand and then also they can be exploited, but also you can find the bad guys through technology. So that would again shape my career. So for the next couple of years, I moved to California. I spent some time working in the financial industry, Charles Schwabs based out of San Francisco. And then I wanted to expand my knowledge base and really kind of focus on what is a global market for risk finance and everything. So I went down to Monterey Institute of International Studies where I actually saw a global view of what the world actually is interested in. It was the first time I saw kids that actually had communicated via this video concept across the world to their families that they’ve missed.

And I said, this is awesome. This wasn’t there when I had my undergrad. And I said, well, what happens if they get all this stuff from a technology? And I started to understand that the global, the world was going technical, whether we liked it or not. I mean, I met people from Kosovo that had been in war torn and they’re telling me about what I didn’t know in America about video conferencing. And so you see that there’s this leapfrog effect in technology, and I was always amazed to see, well, what else can we do if we bring in some of these best practices from all over the world? So it was interesting from there, I would go on and I would end up moving out from my BA, I got a nice job up in Marin County, worked for a bunch of financial guys again, and I was bored out of my board.

It was a lot I’d seen in a very short period of time. I mean by this time I’m barely in my mid thirties and I’m thinking to myself, okay, I can work in finance for the rest of my life, have lots of money and I will give bored in five seconds flat. So boredom I think is a big motivator too. So if you’re not keeping someone’s interest, it’s not going to happen. And I’m living proof that I have to be interested and if you’re interested in something, you’re going to go further. So I took the best practices from that and ended up getting a job. My best friend at the time was from Michigan, very interesting friends who say, Hey, you are much better than this. And as I was sitting there making six figures, I go, what’s better than six figures? She goes, something you actually enjoy.

So I ended up taking a job with her at Visa Inc, which was interesting in itself. It was the first time that someone from a trading pit had to sit in a very large corporation that was global, although I was very used to global activity. We hadn done commodities, trades around the world. And so I took my skillset, saw what was actually happening and what was interesting, it was the same thing that occurred where you see this technology transfer and actually accelerating operations and efficient through technology, which is what I had experienced on the trading floor when it went from hand signals to computers and helping close that gap for a generation that wasn’t used to computers, but they had to move forward. So we saw this was in credit cards and the risk and the financial risk, but also the reward to people who do need credit and how things should be done the proper way.

And as you see, it was a big system that I had to learn about, but it was actually very reflective of what I saw in the commodity exchanges where it actually was a bunch of members, a bunch of people worried about risk, a bunch of people making rules that everybody benefited from and this sense of honor that we all are here for a purpose and this process and system is helping us accomplish those goals. And it was interesting, I kind of took that with us as we then Melissa, where we met with risk. And it was one of those things where you started to realize there’s people out there that want to go forward and there’s people out there that want to go backwards and they’ll take what you have if you’re not looking. There are what they call scavengers and there are hunters. I like to consider myself a hunter.

And so that kind of got to where we were in around 2018, I exited visa. I thought, okay, early retirement, here we go. And then again, I was bored. I was designing houses, I was doing all these things that I thought I wanted to do, and yet I still fell bored. So I said, okay, I’ll help you out. I’ll look at this connectivity, this digital infrastructure everybody’s been talking about, but we’d been doing networks around the world with payments. So I went out and I dealt with the city I was living in at the time, which was Wilmington, Delaware, which was interesting. I was there with President Biden got elected. I was there when President Trump got elected. So I’ve seen very, very amazing things in the last couple of years about how people just react to things in general and how they feel if they feel secure.

And it reminded me working in those systems where, let’s see what cities are doing on digital infrastructure and make sure that people do feel secure. Unfortunately, what I found was there was a void. There was none. Nobody’s in control. At least Visa would control the banks, it would control the payments and everything else. But it was one of those things you’re like, well, what do you mean by Citi isn’t secure? I assumed my city was secure. I assumed my roads were secure. I assume my government has taken care of their business. And that’s when reality struck that said, wait a minute, I’ve been helping the for-profit financial services for all this time, making them more efficient, reducing their risk, reducing their fraud, all the while we’re all at risk. And if we just took some of those good things that we learned from helping those folks out in the financial industry and we applied it to our systems out for people, we could get everybody working together, get ’em a little bit more organized and get a lot more in that. And so that’s what brings us today. And for the last five years now, we’ve been working on trying to make this world a better place by making sure people understand they have digital equity and not to give it away.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah. Well, and I think if, what’s so interesting about this space, because there is really a bit of a void when we think about the broader institutional perspective, we have people that are focused on infrastructure and in many cases, many of the rooms that you have brought me into, it’s literally a lot of the same people that created the current infrastructure and institutions are still in the room.

Jennifer Schmitz:  All those nice men are still in the room 50 years later.

Melyssa Barrett:  I mean, it’s kind of amazing in a way. But with all of the challenges that current infrastructure has in terms of marginalization and not funding particular parts of a city or state or all of those things, it’s like let’s not make the same mistakes we’ve made before. And so what I love about your vision of first of all, your vision is not easy. And to me, things that are worth it aren’t quick and easy. They take time, they’re complicated. Infrastructure is one of those things. And so one of the things that I would love for you to talk a little bit about is you literally are trying to commodify data. And so kind of explain what that means because I think your background coming from the Chicago Exchange really kind of informs your vision in some way.

Jennifer Schmitz:  Everybody’s heard the term, data’s the new oil. Well, if you ever say that to a commodity trader, the commodity trader says, well, is there a trade in there? Maybe it really is the next oil. How can we make it look like oil and everything that drives you? Because you’re like, ah, maybe I can buy it low and sell it hot. So having the background that I had, and we delve very deep in the data science and some of these large financial institutions and every day there’s all kinds of information. But we went through cleansing data. When you work in a payment system, because obviously nobody wants your private information or the banks will let the merchants will kill, they don’t want to give their information, but yet we all use payments every single moment of every single day. And what that was amazing is I started to think about data’s data.

It doesn’t matter if the data is payment data doesn’t matter if the data’s health data like oil can do good or it can catch your entire town on fire. So the key there is actually the management and the governance of what is an underlying factor for so many industries, which by the way is the definition of a commodity. And you can’t give me one industry today that doesn’t run on data. I cannot think of one. Even the most organic farms today have information systems that are requiring cybersecurity. So the idea is instead of just talking about it, let’s formally create a system where data is managed with community, with folks that are informed on how this works and do it together similar to every other commodity that’s done on exchanges in the world. Because guess what, that actually helps set the pace for the manufacturing, for the supply chains, for everything we’re going to do in our future because everything will be connected. And the key there is if we can harvest that at what I call digital equity, then everybody understands that it is the new oil. And if managed properly, we all might be just better off. And there’s ways to do that. And that’s where we take the best practices from the worlds that have been basically trading data for the last 50 years.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and ideally I spent years of my life negotiating data contracts. So if there’s a more efficient way to move data without having to spend three years trying to figure out what data is being exchanged, it’s definitely a win. I would, and I think corporation would love,

Jennifer Schmitz:  Think about just a basic, everybody has a credit report. What goes into everyone’s basic credit report are so many data points. But every year Experian has to cut deals and contracts with everybody that they get that same information from every single year. And just the actual administration of that, a contract cost, the lawyers, if we can take that, what I call that part out of the equation, we can lower the cost, speed up the efficiency that’s driven by data and get us to a place where we have a more secure world, a more efficient world, and we optimize where the slack is. And that’s what we need to actually focus on instead of screwing around with all this what I call shiny elements at the end. I want autonomous cars, I want a smart city. Unless you can manage data appropriately for everybody’s interest, we’re going to be always behind foreign countries that are doing this in sovereign nations that don’t need a democratic process. So the way that it works in our world and our democracy in America is that we are driven by free markets. And those free markets are managed by institutions that get together and agree on the rules of playing in a marketplace. And that’s what shapes those commodities and the world that actually relies on those commodities. And I think what we’re doing, and this is the beauty of where we are, we can connect people and actually do this at the same time. And there’s methods to keep that.

Melyssa Barrett: And I think what’s so exciting to me is coming from kind the corporate for-profit world and then understanding that infrastructure, if you have a smart city or if they’re putting sensors in the street or whatever, that is a form of data. The governments, whether it be city, county, whatever, a lot of governments don’t understand what is required when it comes to exchanging data. And so now you have a benefit to the community potentially, but you also have this management of data and all the risks that go along with that. And so what I love about this model is not only do you bring in the opportunity for technology to be innovative, but then you actually have a public benefit, a private benefit, because I know corporations are going to understand the value of all of this. And then really the citizens are represented in that contractual exchange, which really doesn’t happen much today. I mean, I think a lot of cities, specifically city council struggle with kind of pushing technology forward, but actually engaging the community and helping them understand what they’re doing, right?

Jennifer Schmitz:  And we’ve been across cities all across America from West Virginia to Florida, from Reno to small cities that you can’t even imagine. You look at them and they all have the same problem. They need to be in a cyber world and they don’t have the expertise. Then they’re supposed to control the spend, which they don’t even know what they’re buying because they know they need to buy something. So they get taken advantage of. And it’s sad because I wish I was telling a story that was different from Florida to Washington state, but it’s not, or main San Diego. This is the same context of, and again, and what’s interesting, if you think about it, we outsource things that are utilities. So we can create a data utility where we can actually, the people can actually participate in the revenue generation of it, like a digital tollway.

And then as you charge that toll to use that you charge the industries and the folks that need the data and you can start to pay for some of that infrastructure. But what what’s nice is it’s giving something back to the community. Let them own the utility, let them have the benefit of the internal operations where they protect the region, and then also allow them to have a bit of the equity that’s actually coming out of that digital environment. And that way everybody’s involved, everybody cares, and they don’t feel like it’s just Google or Apple who’s making all the money on technology. They feel like they’re getting something in return, which also helps the biggest companies because this is a governance issue. If you can’t come to a compromise, they’re going to start forcing things down and that’s never good for business.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and that’s so interesting to me because as now we talk about, I mean, you’re leading Lattice Industries. I’m leading the data institute where we’re focusing on the governance policy and digital equity driving that innovation while your company is truly creating the technology for the commodification of this data, which really, I think both of us probably wake up every day trying to make sure that we are thinking about digital inclusivity and how we can engage the community, local communities to make sure that, and that the government itself is actually engaged. But it’s really interesting to me because this becomes another reason why it’s so important to vote up and down your ticket. Oh yeah. And I’m not even getting into parties or candidates, I’m just saying your policy is created at your city council.

Jennifer Schmitz:  That’s what people need. And I am the average American, as I say, I didn’t really know even who was on my city council when I lived in multiple places. What I started to understand doing this job, but we’re going to these cities, trying to help them structure their infrastructure model for the next 10 years or 20 years, is that your city council folks who are just elected folks of the community may not have that expertise and it’s relying on them first before it gets to your regional or your county or your transportation agency that might be more sophisticated. These are real people. So if they can’t see the benefit, it doesn’t move. And then that keeps everybody behind. So what we’re trying to do is go out and educate those people, Melissa, because for years, for less 20 years, and it’s made a lot of people rich, but we’ve given our digital equity away.

I’m not even going to touch social media, but where I’m going, I mean it’s ridiculous. And I think we all know that. I mean, I get frustrated when I get, and this is one of my biggest issues with Lattice and I know with the Data Institute is the exploitation using in technology, the exploitation of data, but that is not going to get anybody anywhere. We call that arbitrage. I’m going to get what you’re giving away in the middle in the financial world. And the key is an efficient marketplace, and this is literally the definition of efficient markets, is when there isn’t an arbitrage that somebody can’t take that stuff free in the middle anymore. So if you’re going to actually have digital equity, it should be some, the benefit needs to go back to the community so they can make more data, which provides more digital equity, which drives the innovation and pushes our technological industry and our industries across the board further ahead use AI the right way. That’s what I’m asking in the world. And I think if we understand the value of that, we can propel our society so fast into the future. We just got to be able to buckle up and just enjoy the ride.

Melyssa Barrett:  Absolutely. So I want to flip a little bit of a switch here because I really do want to make sure that we give some honor to, I know a couple of folks that have been so instrumental in mentoring you, and certainly I’m so thankful that he even left us a book to read, but Norm Anderson, I just want to kind of give him a shout out just to, and maybe you can talk a little bit about Norm and CGLA and all of the things that they have done and are doing in the world, because I think his leadership and vision is just so interesting in terms of how you’ve been able to take his legacy, if you will, in some way and kind of put it in this context.

Jennifer Schmitz:  Absolutely. Norman Anderson, who was the CEO of CGLA infrastructure founder of the Strategic Infrastructure Performance Institute, which is out of Washington, DC had been an infrastructure literally since the seventies. Joe, since I was born. He had an interesting background that I loved. He was actually in the Peace Corps served, I believe you met, I think, but I had a deep sense of other countries and other cultures, but his strength was infrastructure and he helped develop policies for America for really looking at these folks on these projects around the world and how can we leverage this infrastructure, push it forward in advance America. He was very, I mean probably the most influential person I know that worked on the infrastructure bill that actually got passed and actually helped to bring this concept of public private partnerships. And in the case with the people that’d be the P four to infrastructure, because he saw the writing on the wall.

There’s not enough federal money to replace every single road, every single bridge, every single community structure across America. We’re going to need private investment, but also there’s a purpose. Private investment should come from industry because it’s an industry’s best interest. And if they have the finances and we have the ability to create the legislation to make this pass, then those two beautiful things together are actually what grows the next 50 years of America’s productivity. And he told me, he goes, sometimes I remember because that infrastructure bill had to go across the aisle and infrastructure is not much for the Democrats in this field are not very strong. But it was one of those things where we started to build, we’re all Americans and these are our rows. Nobody’s paying attention to the most fundamental part of what builds our economy. And that is actually the way to get it to and from the store and the manufacturing from producer to port the things that nobody’s been thinking of.

And unfortunately it puts us behind. And he was so adamant, he said, we have to move. And it was so inspirational. We had different viewpoints on things, but the one thing we both agreed is that infrastructure, a lot of the infrastructure in our country was formed like the Broadway system. The tollway system was actually from the Defense Act bill. And these are not just roads, these are our prosperity, these are our security, these infrastructure projects, and we all need to get involved and we all need to benefit. And it was putting that together. So he created what we call the New American model, and it was just a image of that where you could actually use a financing, use the structure of government, create special purpose vehicles that focus on what this was because there was benefits. You can’t run everything through their government because sometimes expertise, like data scientists, their salaries are so much higher than what the government salary cap is.

You’re not going to even buy talent. You can’t. So it’s an inefficient before you even start. And that was what he really drove. And then he said, if we work together, what every project should do is create a revenue model out of it. And that’s where data came in. So I never knew about infrastructure and construction and all these things going on around the globe and carbon credits and things that I’ve heard about, but it’s amazing what goes into the infrastructure world. It’s huge. It’s the biggest money in the world I’ve ever seen. But it touches everything from energy to transportation. And the sad part was, as he says, if we do not move out, and I believe this because I’ve been talking to folks to do infrastructure out of the world because of Norman America will be left in the past. And so it was his thing and he ended up, he taught us a lot. And right after that infrastructure bill passed, unfortunately Norman also passed. And it was one of those things where it was like, wow, literally it was his life’s work.

Melyssa Barrett:  Well, and I mean, every time I think of him, I unfortunately never got to meet him in person, but I am the one who sees the impact that he has created on a daily basis. Like I said, I’m grateful he has a book out that he published just before he passed called Vision. And so look it up, vision by Norm Anderson, Norman Anderson. He is just a brilliant, he was a brilliant man. Yeah,

Jennifer Schmitz:  Great write, he could sum it up in two seconds. He told me, he goes, the other side of the aisle just needs a big hug. We got to get this infrastructure done. And it was writing that book that he did. It was really a roadmap for our country and infrastructure. It was one of those things that we have to do it this way. And it was a legacy to him. And anybody who gets a book or knows infrastructure, he used to write for Forbes Magazine on infrastructure. He is an expert and I am just glad to have had the time with him that I did

Melyssa Barrett:  Well. And I think what I appreciate about him so much is not only did he write about infrastructure, but he wrote about the intention that we need to have around inclusivity and equity. I mean, he literally wrote, we can’t just think we’re going to put some stuff in. We need to be intentional about how it impacts our communities and the equity that needs to be shared in terms of whether you call it an opportunity zone or a marginalized community, whatever you want to call it. But at the end of the day, everybody needs to be included. And that requires full intention when you’re talking about modifying our entire infrastructure. So I mean, I just wanted to give kudos to him. I think, I mean, it’s an amazing legacy that he leaves and he’s one of those people that I don’t think gets the attention that he truly deserves for the vision that he created. So I definitely

Jennifer Schmitz:  Do that. I think we had one common trait. We both believed everybody else could be wrong. And it was interesting because that’s what drives you to prove yourself being right. And we’re living and breathing the results of this work. And I take my hat off to that every day.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah. So tell us a little bit, maybe you can talk a little bit about how this works in different industries in general, because you’re talking about cutting across so many different industries, whether it’s academia or transportation or carbon.

Jennifer Schmitz:  Well, what we first had to do was go educate people across both sides, industry and government, and then give them a concept that they could actually grasp in their hand. So everybody talks about data, but they really don’t get it. And so what we said, resilience, and we started talking about the theory of resilience. And so where we went to is that we understood that people need to understand what’s going on. They need to see seal and touch it. Like smart city. Well listen, as anybody wanted to find a smart city, there’s about 500 different definitions of a smart city, which means it ain’t that smart.

So it was one of those things where we said, okay, what is also needed is we need to build systems that are forever that can be self-sustaining, that can be resilient. And what ended up happening is we saw that that would be a great idea if we actually had the people to install it. Resilience means workforce. Resilience means we can continue this on, but if you don’t have all those parts, you ain’t got resilience. So it was finding and looking at where can we take advantages and put all our resources and assets together. And what happened was it started to turn into almost like a workforce development play for the next 100 years. And so as cities start to adopt, and we’re seeing this in projects we’re doing in Delaware and projects we’re doing in California, we’ve been in Florida, we’ve been in West Virginia, we’ve been in Ohio, we’ve been all these states talking about all this wanting more, and they just dunno how to start.

And so what we did is use, we have a history of understanding how to deploy systems around in the global, we work together at Visa. And what I noticed is the first thing they need to do is they got to have a processing center so you can get the stuff, be able to be shipped the data. And so we started looking at the concept of using some of the opportunity zones to create hubs for digitally underserved communities that would actually participate as part of the workforce development to help deploy secure networks so that this data can actually be transferred between parties that would actually want to pay for some of it and then bring that revenue and income and equity back to that hub, which has been sponsored by the community, and therefore the community participates in its growth. And that concept blew the cities away. I said, no, no, no, it’s a utility you guys, your data stays here. You guys are, you’re going to have this new organization that ideally not only is workforce but will train workforce and it will keep your community growing and help deploy the digital infrastructure in new jobs in a new world that people might be just interested in. And by the

Melyssa Barrett:  Way, and by the way, deliver value back to the city,

Jennifer Schmitz:  To the community, exactly. Like this whole new concept of, hey, you want to do this, you’ll get paid.

And it was like, oh, for real. And that’s where we’ve taken our best practices, we’ve taken our knowledge, we know when there’s fraud going on and stuff that we know for our old past and said, listen, what if we teach you how to fish? And so that’s what we did. Instead of handing ’em the technology, we decided, listen, we’re going to teach you on how to make your own and make it bigger, how to scale it and how to connect to the rest of the world so that you can give that little girl who’s sitting in the hills of West Virginia a chance to get on her own webpage and sell her own goods and become the next billionaire.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah, equal access. Exactly. It’s the thing.

Jennifer Schmitz:  It is, equality comes in so many different forms. I think the key to equality means equal. And when you’re saying equal, that means equal playing field. I’m not asking you to give it to ’em. I’m asking you to give them the opportunity for them to get it themselves.

Melyssa Barrett:  Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. Wow. Well, we could talk about this forever and ever. So I know I’m going to have Jen back and we will maybe dive into more detail as we go, but I just want to thank you for joining me for this conversation. I think what’s nice about this conversation is the more we talk about things like smart cities or resiliency hub, workforce development, all of those things, the more we actually get people to understand why there is such a need for investment in infrastructure. And I think is to your point, there is a lack of knowledge about what that means, not only to our infrastructure, but also to our economy, to the risks that we are enduring as we manage it today. There’s a lot of safety components that come into play with all of those things. The risks are real. So I just go back to your quote earlier where you said your mom said you don’t get anything if you don’t ask. And so I want to also just let people know how to get ahold of you and so that they are aware of what your company is doing. So maybe you could just end with that.

Jennifer Schmitz:  Well, in that case, you can find out a lot about the activities they’re doing, how we partner with public entities, how we make sure that we give advice to the right folks by visiting us@wwwlatticeindustries.com.

Melyssa Barrett:  Alright, that’s it. And I think I know you have Instagram and a bunch of other social media, LinkedIn and all of that. So

Jennifer Schmitz:  Facebook, you betcha. We’re on everything. Just look us up. Lattice Industries.

Melyssa Barrett:  There you go. So I look forward to another conversation with you. I know we’re going to get into some additional detail with the Data Institute coming up, talking about carbon exchange. So hopefully folks will look out for that episode as well. But I just want to thank you, Jen, for joining me for this conversation.

Jennifer Schmitz:  You’re very welcome. Thank you again for having me.

Melyssa Barrett:  Thanks for joining me on the Jali Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.

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