Influencing Organizational Change: A Journey To Diverse Workplaces & Corporate Alignment With Katie Philips
Creating alignment between corporate functions and business objectives can be a powerful catalyst for growth, and the same holds true for personal evolution. In this episode, Katie Phillips, Director of Human Resources and Marketing at GCS, shares her unique approach to embracing change in both her professional and personal life. Listen next time to hear Katie discuss her strategies for aligning business goals, how she opted to leave the workforce to raise children, her journey to vegetarianism, and her passion for promoting diversity in the construction industry. She talks about “trusting that things will work out,” even in the face of fear. Join us as we explore how Katie Phillips flows through the cycle of change and discovers the rewards of intentional living.
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Influencing Organizational Change: A Journey To Diverse Workplaces & Corporate Alignment With Katie Philips
Hear Katie Phillips discuss her approach to creating alignment between corporate functions and business objectives. We talk about embracing change like leaving the workforce to raise children, vegetarianism and promoting diversity. She talks about “trusting that things will work out,” even in the face of fear. Listen to our next episode to hear more about how Katie Phillips flows through the cycle of change.
Intentional Living: Katie Phillips' Journey
Thank you, Katie, for being here. Full disclosure, Katie's my cousin. I'm super excited. I guess I should call you by your married name. Katie Phillips is here. I'm so excited for this conversation. She's a business leader, a mother, a wife, a friend and a human and my only girl cousin, she's known me my whole life. The reasons we're here now is because you're passionate about creating alignment between corporate functions and business objectives. This show is all about talking about change and change comes best when you figure out alignment.
Katie is the Director of Human Resources and Marketing at GCS-SIGAL. This is a growing general contractor company in Washington, DC, which I'm excited to hear more about. I’ve heard a lot from you, but it sounds like you all are doing some really exciting and fun stuff that we're excited to talk about and that you're motivated by working with passionate people who care about innovation, quality and impact.
Another reason I have you here on the show is that you have lived and traveled to over twenty countries and I even got to visit you while you were in one of them, but you are always opting into change. That's what this show is about, confronting the discomfort that comes with change. You and your husband are also vegetarians, which you opted into and you have a passion for sustainable living in your house.
I did not know this, that your house was awarded a Green Home Choice, which is pretty exciting. Of course, your two wonderful children and mischievous dog. I hope to hear more stories about them as well. Thank you for being here. Now I’ve given a little bit of an introduction, but maybe if you could just introduce yourself for audience and how do you live with intention?
Thank you so much, Christine, for having me. It's such a treat always to spend time with you and I'm so proud of you and all that you have done to impact the world and sharing all this good knowledge that you have. I really appreciate joining you in that journey. Yeah, you summed up my intro. I'm very fortunate to work for a great company in the Washington, DC area. As Christine said, we're a general contractor, which means we sit between owners and builders to carry out various projects. We do everything from DC school renovations and additions, even new school buildings to interior corporate fit outs and even multifamily type work.
We're in a lot of different spaces and it's a really exciting time. There's a lot of a building happening around us. If you drive around this area, you're going to see tower cranes all over the place and I no longer think they're an eyesore. I get excited, I think now I to bring it back to change. It's a sign of change. It's a sign of typically progress and investment into something new and better. I get excited about just how tangible the construction industry is. That's been a really fun journey for me.
I have husband, two kiddos and a dog we named Cabo after Cabo, Mexico, which actually I saw Christine in and we went on vacation there once. That's me in a nutshell. In terms of living with intention, I think a lot of it is talking with people around you, talking with people that you trust and care about you, people that see what your potential is and talking about your hopes and dreams and what you want to do with your time and then following up with them and having accountability with those people in your life.
When you speak something out loud, it really helps you stay true to that thing. That's how I try to live it. I'm an extrovert so I process externally and so I like to talk things out and I like when people give me feedback. Certainly, as an HR professional, I'm all about feedback and sharing how things are going and what are we doing, why are we doing it. I try to live with intention and my intentions don't always play out every single day, but overall, it's something I certainly strive to do. Have purpose and meaning and how I'm spending my time.
Strategies To Boosting Diversity In Construction
If only all of our intentions happened every day. That would be great. Also, two extroverts here, so hopefully we don't go too long. Alright, so the next question I want to start out with professional change. You shared when we were doing our preparation that you were able to increase diversity through your HR and recruiting role and in an industry that traditionally is less diverse. Maybe you can share a little bit about how you did that and what you learned through that process.
Yeah, so the construction industry in general has not been known for diversity, especially when it comes to gender. Studies show that around 10% of the workers in the construction industry are women and probably even less than that are minorities. One thing we're fortunate in this area that we have a really diverse labor market, but one of the things that I really wanted to do as a recruiting and HR professional was get a variety of candidates in front of our leaders to make decisions on who we want to hire.
I didn't necessarily have pre-planned quotas and things like that. I just found qualified people and put them in front of our leadership and it resulted in a really diverse workforce. Our company now is almost 30% women, which is pretty incredible in our area. I also joined several women in construction-like organizations.
There's women in construction. There's National Association of Women in Construction, and then there's CREW, which is Commercial Real Estate Women. I joined these organizations so that I could learn more what it is that would appeal to women in our industry. How do we retain women in our industry? I’ve of course found an incredible community in these organizations, but it's been a really rewarding experience. We just hosted an event at our office and it was fantastic to have so many of the women attending the event be actually from our own company. Everyone there was impressed with that. It's been a really rewarding experience.
When you speak something out loud, it really helps you stay true to that thing.
You mentioned you joined these organizations to learn about what might attract women to your company. What are some things that you learned about that would help you attract more women?
I learned that women actually make very good project managers and that's a huge part of what we do. Recognizing that women want to be in a room just like anyone else and have an opportunity to share their voice and to share their ideas. We're really inclusive in our company. We're very collaborative. We have a lot of meetings and we do work in the office, so those things aren't as popular, but I, of course, love it as an extrovert, but, I think that people really have appreciated that there's not these huge gaps between the leaders and new employees.
You come in the door and your voice is heard right away and you participate in the meetings and share your ideas. You're talking to clients. If you have an expertise in a particular area, we're going to pull you in to share your knowledge. I think what I learned is women want the same thing men want. They want to share their knowledge and their ideas and be respected and heard.
I also feel like women like to have comradery. We have a women's group within the organization where we also meet together, we lean on each other, we can support each other, we can share ideas. All of that really helps women feel like they belong and can share things that maybe they don't feel comfortable otherwise sharing. I think just giving them belonging, community and a place to share their gifts and talents is, is what we have to offer.
I will say that even though I'm an extrovert and I talk too much, there's been many times and I don't feel like my voice has been heard. I can see why that would be a priority. All right. Thank you. I want to shift a little bit to a couple of personal topics starting with you and your husband. You're a vegetarian, your husband's vegan. Can you talk about making that shift? I know it's not like you started this when you were younger, it's been recent-ish, so yeah, if you can share a little bit about that journey.
From Texas Steak To Vegetarianism: Katie's Health Journey
Sure. We're this far into the show and Christina and I have not mentioned that we were originally from Texas. We're from Texas and in Texas, you eat steak and you eat meat and potatoes. On our side of the family, you definitely eat meat and potatoes and lots of good food and whatnot. I would have never dreamed that I would be a vegetarian as an adult, probably. I used to judge them, to be honest.
Along the years, when I was pregnant with my second daughter, I found out I had gestational diabetes, which is where you have diabetes during your pregnancy. I started doing a lot of research on what that means, what that could mean for my future. Christine, unfortunately, we do have diabetes in our family. Both our grandparents had it. It is something that I realized I could sit around and wait for this to really get me as I age or I could do something about it now.
At the same time, my husband's father had a health situation happen. The two of us just decided that we wanted to learn more about what were we putting in our bodies, what could we control now? How could we not just sit around and wait to have these various diseases affect us? We started watching all the documentaries. I call them the brainwashing videos, but we started really learning, reading and watching documentaries like I said, and just learning. We just couldn't ignore the benefits and what the research was showing.
We made some changes slowly. We started reducing the amount of meat we were eating, but then the more and more that we reduced, we got to the point where we just weren't even wanting it anymore. We realized that it not only benefited our health, but it also really benefited the environment. That was another value that my husband and I both shared from the beginning when we met. When you put those two things together, you can't deny it. I try not to be an evangelist too much about it, but it just works for us. As I said, it got to the point where I no longer wanted the meet anymore. In fact, my mom made her famous pork chop dinner for us and I thought with the cornflake crumbs.
That's family famous.
Yes. I felt so sick the next day and I realized I think I might officially be done with meat. I had spaced out my times of eating it so much. My husband and I had taken a ton of cooking classes early in our marriage and so we always enjoyed being in the kitchen together. We knew we had to learn a new form of cooking. We dove into that and have really enjoyed it. Without getting into all the stats, the stuff about how much water we save, the impact to carbon emissions, all these types of things, it just became a no brainer. My husband kept going with it and he became vegan. I tried and I can't say I can't do it, I just maybe don't want to do it. I like my cheese and eggs.
Anyway, it's been a great journey. We don't force our children to be vegetarian. A lot of people ask us that question. Obviously, we cook solely vegetarian in the home, but we don't prevent our children from trying things. We want them to try things. We encourage it. My daughter has chosen not to eat meat. I think it's because she's a picky eater, but she has eaten meat in her life, she just doesn't really enjoy it. My son does like it. He gets it when he's out. We have no problem with that. I think it has to be a personal choice, but definitely, it can be challenging because people will make judgements or ask us how we get our protein and things like that. It's been the right thing for us.
I love that you talked about tying these things back to your values and how that's really helped you stay focused, but also you've made a shift to making it almost like an opportunity to try something new. Not just vegetarianism, but trying the cooking and that comes with being able to see through the hard part of change and through to the exciting part.
Career Breaks & Re-Entry: Katie's Professional Evolution
Yeah, absolutely. Sticking with personal and of course still on the change topic because that's the point of the show, but there's a couple of places where you seem to have opted into change. After having your children, you decided to leave the workforce and then after a period of time, you decided to reenter into the workforce, both of those were a choice to be made to almost force change upon yourself. I am like that option because I think forcing change upon yourself is an opportunity for growth. I'd love to hear a little bit about that and really what did you learn along the way and maybe what was the hardest part?
Everybody has the right to time away from work. The more we avoid making assumptions, the more empathetic and approachable we can be.
Sure. When I got pregnant with my first child, I was in a job that I absolutely loved. I was getting a lot of opportunity and learning so much and it was one of those things every woman has to make that decision. Are they going to continue to work or not? I say every woman. I was fortunate enough that I was able to make that choice. I would say not every woman has that opportunity, but we knew it would be certainly a sacrifice financially.
In our area, childcare is very expensive, especially for infants. We do not have parents in the area or any family. We knew we would be on our own. We had great friends, but we were one of the first ones of our friend group to have kids. We decided, and really I decided, I mean, my husband was supportive of whichever, whatever I wanted to do in this situation.
I decided to stay home and trust that when it was time and when I wanted to reenter the workforce, that I would just need to get my foot in the door and my skillset would speak for itself. I just needed to trust whatever journey that was going to be. I did quit my job and stayed home. That ended up being the right thing.
My son had health problems. I had health problems. We had a rough first six months and then it was great and then we had a lot of fun together. I was glad it ended up being the right decision for our family. About a year later, we also moved abroad to Germany and I was able to do that much easier because I wasn't working. All of that was hard and wonderful and all the feelings.
It was a challenge certainly as my kids got a little bit older when I was abroad because I felt like I was one of the only women who was staying home and a lot of it, I probably projected, but I definitely felt like I had to explain that, “I'm smart and I have skills,” and all of that, but also recognize that what I was doing was important and the right thing for our family. We came back from Germany and I was ready to start working again. I was fortunate enough to find an opportunity to do HR consulting for a while and basically build a schedule that worked for us and that allowed me to relearn all my skills to learn what had been going on in employment law and all the things over the last few years and slowly get back into the workforce.
Certainly, I was hard. I felt like an imposter for a while. I think we all feel that way a lot of times, but certainly at first I did and as a consultant walking into these firms and being paid to provide knowledge and experience. I felt like do they know that I been at home reading board books for the last few years, but just leaning into it and trusting that no, I do have something really great to bring to the table. In fact, I probably have more to bring because I have had a very different experience over the previous years. I ramped up to full-time quite a while ago now.
I'm so fortunate that my kids are supportive of what I do and they think my job's important, which I’ve got them fooled, so that's great. A very supportive husband and we tag team the whole thing and so it's, some days are hard the kids are sick or they're out of school, but every choice you make, every journey you take, it's going to have its blessings and its challenges.
Alignment: Living with intention involves having purpose and meaning in how you're spending your time.
I think just knowing that helps me make decisions because it comes back to what you were saying, Christine, about values. Just going back to what do I value? What's my intention? How do I want to spend my time? You make a choice with the best information you have at that moment and then lean into that. That's my journey.
Yeah, your point about like being the stay-at-home mom and feeling like judged or whatever, I think about that a lot actually. You sharing your experiences with me, now that my kids are in school age and I'm volunteering more with PTSA or they call it PTSA here. I think he thought it was PTA. Anyway, the point is I think about it a lot because it's just another example of you don't know what other people are going through.
I also have friends that don't have kids and they often get tapped for work thinking they have the time. I think about like people who have a smoking habit, they get to take a break every twenty minutes or every hour for however long it takes to smoke a cigarette. It's like everybody has all these things in their life that are important or are important to them or are an addiction.
The point is you don't know what's going on and it's not helpful to really make those assumptions about where people are. I realize after the fact that I don't think I really made my point clear. The point is, I don't think we need to judge people for the reasons they may need time to themselves away from work. It doesn't really matter. It's not really any of our business. Everybody has the right to have time away from work. The more we can not make assumptions, I think the better off and the more empathetic and maybe the more approachable you can be in interacting with others.
I have a friend that's currently trying to get back into the workforce and I hear her talk about her experience and she is downplaying it so much and that's just not fair because she's, like you said, had a lot of experiences that other people haven't had. She's managed a budget more than a lot of other people and it's all about this idea that your personal experience is not what other people's personal experience is going to be. Let them explain for themselves where they are and don't make all these assumptions.
Absolutely. Yeah, I'm sure you do too. I have friends in a variety of situations and my next-door neighbor who's a dear friend stays at home with her kids and I love that and it's so great for her. I think about how talented she is and how many gifts she has that she's sharing and that she can share from her vantage point. I used to want to put on my resume at the time that I was at home and say what all I was accomplishing. I dealt with an unruly coworker or unpredictable teammate I
Negotiation, right?
Shifting your diet can benefit both your health and the environment; it's a win-win.
Negotiation, working under pressure, all of those things. Yes. I added to mine, I helped manage international moves and all of that. Yeah, their skillsets gained in whatever. It's all about embracing the situation that you're in and recognizing what you can learn from where you're at.
Green Building Revolution: GCS & Sustainable Construction
A couple more questions. Shifting back away from personal back to your company, you shared that working for a company that is tied to your values is really important. It sounds like some of the ways that your company is tied to sustainability is by being a part of the Green Building Council, but then also there are a lot of things happening in the DC area that are tied to green building. Could you maybe share like what is the Green Building Council, what is happening in the DC area just to give a little bit of context and then we can talk maybe about some examples of the work your company's doing?
Yeah, sure. Many years ago, one of the members of the SIGAL family helped found the Green Building Council, which helps with documenting what the regulations are, sharing best practices, giving a forum and a place for people to come to to share ideas and to help push the envelope and work with regulators and sharing feedback on what's possible.
Our company has really been on the forward-looking side of things when it comes to, and early adopters when it comes to sustainability. We built one of the first net zero schools in the country. It was an elementary school in Arlington, Virginia, and it's a phenomenal school. My kids went to summer camp there and then it was a number of years before the next net zero schools were built, but because it is incredibly costly and whenever you're dealing with new technologies, the price can be really expensive at first, but the prices have come down and things have evolved.
Now in Washington, DC specifically in the district, they now are requiring that every new build be a net zero ready facility. Any of these schools that we're renovating or building has to be net zero. We just finished our first one and we've started another one and we also built the first net zero rec center DC rec center in the district. We're finding ways to meet those standards. We don't have a lot of land. These are smaller sites and so we don't have space to put tons and tons of solar panels and whatnot. We do have a fair amount of sunlight, but that's just not going to cut it as the only method.
One of the biggest things we do is put geothermal wells in, which is been really interesting. I'm not an expert on it, but I did get to go out to our current build, which is Malcolm X Elementary School in Southeast DC and got my boots super dirty as I watch them drilling the wells to put these geothermal tubes in. It's really fascinating how it works. At this particular school, we're putting 74 in.
I know it's quite a few and it takes a lot to pull this off, but it's really quite an investment that pays off quite a bit and will really create buildings that are self-sustaining. That's been our big focus. Obviously, DC has a lot of regulations. Regarding lead standards. A lot of companies who build here want to meet lead standards. We certainly are experts in that area as well. We have several folks on our team lead certified and know what all the ins and outs of that entails.
Alignment: Shifting your diet can benefit both your health and the environment; it's a win-win.
Also, in this area, Amazon actually built their second headquarters here in Arlington, Virginia, just a few miles from my house. Through my women's organization, I got to tour the headquarters twice, once when it was just steel and concrete and then when it was completed, and it was fascinating because what Amazon required, the building standards that are used in Washington state were where their original headquarters is.
They brought all sorts of new rules and requirements and things that builders in this area our trades were not familiar with. It really pushed the envelope and it was fascinating going on the tour after it was finished and hearing the different trades talk about, “We had never done this or that before,” and we got to do it for the first time. That's how change happens.
Some of these things that they did are probably not affordable for most buildings at this point, but a lot of the things are things we can implement. Even though we have a different climate here and things, there's still a lot of the tricks of the trade they were doing in Washington State that we could apply to our buildings here. It was fascinating hearing people share their knowledge in this area.
There's a lot of forums and a lot of educational sessions, these organizations I'm in that put on so that we can all learn how we can be thinking about these things. Owners want it. They want to be able to say that they're doing right by the environment with whatever building they're putting in place, which is I think a great change. I think you probably know way more about this than I do, but about corporate responsibility and how corporations are pushing these standards as well. In a place like the district, Washington, DC, local government making such strict requirements is what is pushing us forward.
Yeah, it's interesting. I think one of the reasons lead is so successful is probably largely because there's so much efficiency that comes with it that decreases cost, which is really the secret sauce is if you can hit both the sustainability agenda and the bottom line.
Triple Bottom Line & Corporate Responsibility
We are perhaps a little cheesy about it, but we do talk about the triple bottom line, which I'm sure you've heard that before.
For our readers, though, please elaborate.
Technology advancement is inevitable. We are better when we embrace and adapt to change.
Yeah, sure. Triple bottom line being meeting sustainability standards, meeting your cost requirements, and then also, actually, am I forgetting the third one?
It's usually like community or people aspect. There's lots of different ways in which people talk about the triple bottom line. Yeah, basically being able to drive and meet what the requirements are and the end goal from a consumer perspective. It was like meeting the consumer needs, meeting the profitability needs and meeting the sustainability needs or society or what have you.
Trusting The Journey: Katie's Philosophy On Change
This was really great. I love how we started off with this idea of accountability when you talked about how you live with intention. I think accountability is such an important aspect of change because it's easy to say something, it's harder to follow through. What you talked about is how you use your community to help you stay accountable and to push through and actually realize the things that you're trying to realize.
I also really appreciated how, when we were talking about the diversity shift at your company, you talked about understanding the audience and understanding who you're trying to target at, who you're trying to talk to and entice, which is another really important aspect of change is understanding what is it that's important to your audience that you're trying to influence. You said this over and over again, which, as you were talking, I realized how many times you said this actually in our lives. It’s this idea of trusting the journey.
I just trust that it's going to work out.
I remember you saying that right after you left college. I remember you saying that right after I got married and I was in Germany trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. You were living in Germany and I was visiting you, but you said it a couple of times. I just trust that if I take this leap of faith, which is terrifying and scary, you skipped over that part and you just go, “I just trust that it's going to happen. Just trust the process, trust the journey,” and then you did it again when you came back into the workplace. “I just trust that this is all going to work out.” There's something to be said about having that optimism and belief in the waves of change. I think it's a really great mindset.
I certainly want to say there's definitely days where I'm not as optimistic, but I think the key is also who do you have around you in life? Your partner or your best friends, your colleagues. Are you surrounding yourself by people who are just gloom and doom and find the negative in everything or do you surround yourself with people who say, “I don't know, let's just try it.”
Thankfully, that was one of the most attractive things in my partner that I saw. I said, “I want to live life with someone like that. Whether life's hard or easy, I know that he's going to have a positive outlook.” That has really served me well. To tie it back to our common origin, our grandparents embraced a lot of change throughout their life and really modeled that for us and our parents too. I think that's a huge lesson and value, just noticing when are the people around you encouraging you and finding the best in things, or are they just always a Debbie Downer?
I love it. All right, so one final question. Why embrace change, Katie?
I think you embrace change because we have one life to live. I think I am so fortunate. I'm not that far along in life, but I'm far enough in life that I appreciate that I can look back and say, “I didn't just stay in one place. I didn't just do one thing. I didn't just do what was comfortable, but I embraced the changes that came and I found change. I love how you word it, opt in, because typically, you're going to be better off for it. You're going to learn something new about yourself. You're going to surprise yourself with what you're capable of. Same with the people around you as they embrace change. I look at my kids and when we moved abroad and back and abroad and back and how resilient they are and how they embrace change is very inspiring to me.
I did share with Christine. Benjamin Franklin said that the two certain things in life are death and taxes, but I think he should add change to that list because it is certain we are all going to experience change. You just got to embrace it. I do have one other story I didn't tell you I was going to share the story, but so with technology, technology is obviously advanced so much. I remember early on in working, Windows came out with a new version of Outlook and whatnot, and I remember complaining, “Where's the print button? They moved the print button and all this.”
I had this moment of realizing that thinking about our grandmother, Opal, and how much technology advancement she had witnessed in her lifetime. She had seen the invention of microwaves and personal computers and smart phones and the millions of things in between. Even at quite old age, she was still doing stock trades online.
I remember walking in one day and she was making a stock trade. I was like, “Oh my goodness.” It was such a great example to me. I had that thought that I really shouldn't complain when Windows upgrades. We're going to be better off if we just embrace these things. That's been where I think I got a lot of my optimism when it comes to change and try to apply it to my life.
That's a great story because probably not far before she was doing the stock trading online, she was calling my mom to be like, “Now how do I get the blinky thing from the top of the page to the bottom of the page,” which is the cursor in Word. She struggled to figure some basic things out, but then once she figured them out, she then was trading stock online. Embrace it and then use it to your advantage.
Who knows where it will lead you?
Yeah, exactly. All right. This was great, Katie. Thank you so much.
Thank you. It's always so fun to talk to you and thanks for having me on.
Yeah, of course. Thank you. Tune into our next episode where we go deep on extended producer responsibility. What is it? What is a producer responsibility organization, and why should your company care?
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About Katie Phillips
Katie Phillips is a business leader, a mother, a wife, a friend, and human on this earth. In the workplace, Katie is passionate about creating alignment between corporate functions and business objectives with a focus on the employee experience. As the Director of Human Resources and Marketing at GCS-SIGAL, a growing general contractor in Washington, DC., Katie is motivated by working with passionate people who care about innovation, quality, and impact. Having lived internationally and traveled to 20 countries, she also values the impact of diverse perspectives both in the workplace and day-to-day life. Katie and her husband are vegetarians and have a passion for sustainable living; their house was awarded a Green Home Choice certificate in their county. Katie also enjoys living life with her two wonderful kids and mischievous dog!