Irina Filippova
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
And it really just means staying in integrity with yourself, with what you say and what you do.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Sure. Well, I've ventured into this change area primarily because I wanted to see the change in leadership of large companies, leadership on the political arena in terms of achieving our decarbonization goals. And I guess I wasn't seeing enough persistence, enough integrity in getting through the transitions that we had to get through as quickly as we needed to get through them.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So I told myself something has to change, something in the way these leaders think and act has to change. But notice, I was thinking about those leaders out there, leaders that I was observing at a very senior level in corporate worlds, in entrepreneurial worlds. But what actually needed to happen, the change needed to happen within myself.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
I studied psychology at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich, and that's where I first had the insight, not without help from a very accomplished depth psychologist to actually see the need that you're perceiving out there as being actually very internalized. with yourself.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
And so really the journey for me was to use what I needed to bring into this world, all my skills, all my experiences, and leverage that and share that with others and really kind of use my own experience as it were as a roadmap for someone else to embrace change, for someone else to have the courage to step up,
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
to act according to their beliefs rather than according to what common thinking may suggest they do. and really follow through, as it were, on the ideas that they had. So that was a period in my life where, again, this reflection around what's happening around me in the world, on the world stage, actually had to all transpire within myself.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Otherwise, I could not be effective as an advisor, as a consultant to established, companies as well as to entrepreneurial companies and their leaders in terms of what they needed to do to make a difference, to make a difference to their strategy, to make a difference to their positioning, to create a better service or a better product for this world.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
But it all again comes back to each person's individual values and the ability to live according to those values and bring those values to bear on what it was that they're building staying in integrity.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
As I've already mentioned, the world of transportation and the world of energy are going through a tremendous transition. All the major automotive original equipment manufacturers actually voted in favor of electrification of ground transport.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Which means that they are very busy investing in battery research, investing in designing and manufacturing new models of electric vehicles from class one to class eight. So from passenger vehicles all the way to the semis and buses. This revolution in transportation is happening. And it's aided.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
by the revolution that's happening in parallel around energy, the source of energy for this transportation, which is no longer your conventional oil and gas, right? This is now at the switch that's happening from conventional oil and gas to electric power. You could argue that the sources of electricity may come from conventional sources as well. That is true.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
However, as we've seen over the past two decades, renewable sources of electricity are continuing to grow, making it cheaper, making it reliable, and of course, making it cleaner. most importantly.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So for us, the biggest challenge right now is to help solve this energy and transportation equation in a way that does not create a burden for owners of large fleets who are actually trying to embrace this revolution in transportation, revolution in logistics.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
What we're trying to do is offer them the opportunity to focus, continue to focus on their core business once they made the decision to electrify and enable us to take care of the rest so that they don't have to think about where the energy for these new vehicles is coming from, how it's being delivered at what cost,
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
how to maintain it, how to essentially have the same level of reliability and uptime for the electric fuel that these new vehicles are requiring that would match their current experience with conventional. So essentially we're coming up on stage to say we are the providers of that electric fuel for this new transportation that you're embracing, that you're about to transition to.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
And we're going to be an end-to-end provider. So you don't have to worry about where the electrons are coming from, how they're being delivered to your vehicle, whether it's reliable and how much it costs. We took care of everything. All that you do is you pay us your electric fuel costs the same way that you currently pay your conventional fuel costs out of your operating budget.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
That's correct. That's correct. And I'm also saving you from potentially your biggest challenge, and that is doing it yourself. Procuring electric vehicle charging infrastructure the way you would be procuring appliances is the wrong way of going about it.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of companies try to go that way, try to just order chargers, thinking that chargers is easy and ubiquitous and available. That is not true. We're still in a very nascent industry. Charging infrastructure is something that requires a lot of nuance and
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Otherwise, you're going to run into major costs and delays in terms of deployment of that infrastructure, which is why we're very focused. A lot of us are utility experts as well as energy and transportation energy experts. Because this is what we do day to day. A typical fleet is going to be a company focused on logistics or manufacturing and logistics, right?
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
This is what they do best, potentially delivery. We are in a business of energy. And what we're telling our customers is that we're going to provide them with a solution that's going to work well, going to work reliably. It's going to work for them over a long period of time. And this is where we come in with our value proposition so that they continue to focus on their core business of logistics.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
This is a great question. And we, of course, think a lot about what risks we're mitigating and whether there are any risks that we're creating for our customers. And yes, sometimes we do come across this type of thinking that says, well, if I invite, if you will, an ecosystem partner, a third party into my universe, right, into my facility or onto my parking lot, is there any risk?
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
And I guess the best answer for that is you mitigate that risk by providing a very, very clear set of guidelines of how we operate and protecting the client, the customer, from any downside exposure, be it on price, be it on the quality of our work,
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
bid on that performance guarantee that we provide contractually so this is what contracts are for and they certainly safeguard safeguard our customers from being overly exposed It's also a matter of trust. It's a matter of trust because, as you know, in the nascent industry, there's lots of players that might have different types of agendas.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So you do have to, and we do this as well, I do this all the time with our service providers, you do have to secure trust.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
references from current customers right from those who actually can vouch that this new company this new kid on the block in this market in this industry can actually do what they said that they would do you have to see very carefully who is funding this company and for what reason
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
We happen to have a very stable, very secure infrastructure funder who believes in what we do and has been doing this for a long time. But it's not everyone. It's not every company. And sometimes strategic investors and others make different views on how to treat the company in the future. And then you have to meet the people.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
I had a great believer that even though we've been obviously through the years of COVID, we started this company, the operations of this company in the years of COVID, believe it or not. And that did not hamper our growth. Quite the contrary, because again, the trend to electrification was already there and it was very strong.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
But you do have to sit with people and you do have to align on your values. Be it a customer, be it a vendor, be it a partner. We always go through an exercise. on any major deal, on any major partnership, because if your values don't align, it's not going to work, quite honestly.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So we have to educate our customers about who we are, not just what we do and how we do it, but who we are and why we're here.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So our goal is to expose them to as many of us, as many of our colleagues as possible so that they can see that the level of professionalism with which we approach our challenges is very high and that we do what we said we would do rather than sign a contract and then perform suboptimal.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Thanks for having me, Vince. It's a pleasure. I grew up in Moscow, as you know. My father was a nuclear scientist, so he was in energy. But I was not. I was interested in languages. And when the time came to choose a career, I truly wanted a career that would expose me to different cultures and the way the world works. worked as it were.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
That's a great question. I'm typically asked what excites you and then on the flip side, what scares you? And sometimes it's the same thing that excites me and that scares me. And that is, of course, the potential, right? We're at the very, very start of a massive transition. again, of the transportation industry and of the energy industry.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
These two are fundamental to the way in which our world works, in which our whole economy works. We're at the very, very start on this process and this will continue to grow. But as we grow, there are fits and start, there are peaks and valleys. And as entrepreneurs, we have to be very tenacious and very consistent. And again, stay in integrity with what we have promised the market to do.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
The most exciting part of this job is, of course, no two days are the same. We wake up to another news announcement, another company going through a transformation, another customer going through a transformation. There's new technology coming on the market every single day. We could be going to shows and conferences every week of the year just to keep up with the technology advancements.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So it's going to continue to be a very exciting sector. It's going to continue to be a very challenging sector because, of course, change is not easy. And again, that change has to happen within before it happens outside oneself. So we're talking about a lot of people changing their mindsets, changing the way in which they work, changing what they value.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
It does have to happen on the individual level and it does have to happen on the leadership level because without that, we won't see the impact that leaders can make on their respective organizations, on their respective nations, and all throughout the world, throughout the industry. It's a global chain. And that's another exciting component of this.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
We're constantly in communication with other partners worldwide because, again, we are a global village now. Energy transformation, transportation transformation affects everyone. So we have to learn from those who may be ahead in one area or the other.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
We have to import, export this knowledge and share this knowledge because again, we're trying to accomplish something for humanity as a whole without sounding too lofty. We're trying to create a new way that the transportation works in order to not only reduce the carbon emissions. but in order to create something more sustainable, something more reliable for the future.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So again, this change has to happen at absolutely every level.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So I chose a career in diplomacy, which was a very tall task for, first of all, a female. Typically, career in diplomacy would be reserved to men. But I did succeed in entering the very exclusive Moscow State Institute for International Relations, and I was studying international law.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
I advise them to choose the area that fascinates them, that they have curiosity about, that interests them. Research it. Do as much as they can do to understand trends in a particular industry, in a particular company on their own. People who invest themselves.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
in understanding how the world works and what challenges there are and how they can help address those challenges always land on their feet. I interview folks for roles here at Electrata all the time. We are constantly hiring for different types of roles. Hands down, I would always prefer a candidate who is invested
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
and who is willing to work hard with a self-starter than a candidate who feels entitled to have a role, have a title, because they have done this before at a different company. The world is becoming entrepreneurial. Even big companies are changing in that way. So I would say feed your passion, feed your interests, grab it with both hands and you will find your way.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
The way in which you go about shaping and creating your career, even sometimes trying to do the impossible and You know, my own example can serve in this regard. There are a few very impossible twists and turns, bridges that have to be built. But your tenaciousness, your persistence, your interest in something, genuine interest in something, will differentiate you from others. Do not be entitled.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Just because you have an MBA and you worked hard to get it does not mean that now you have the right to go out there and feel entitled to a big salary and big title in a corner office. That is not what work is about. Work is about educating yourself every single day about what happens around you, why it happens, And if you have that attitude, you'll do well in any career.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
And you'll bounce back from any challenge or any setback you might experience. If you have the Catalan attitude, that is going to be a very short, it's going to be a short lived path. for you.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Because again, it's all about continuing to grow, continuing to learn, and using every opportunity to bring what you know, skilled experiences you have, the knowledge you have, the insights to bear on what the world needs. Find it, create your own opportunities, call on other Yale alums or other MBA school alums that you went to,
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
when I had the opportunity to travel to the United States and see how, if you will, human rights practices worked in reality. And this is where my big journey began, as it were. So the career evolved. I went actually on to work for a UN think tank and peace and conflict resolution. I did that for about five years. And while it was a very, very interesting time,
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
call on your ecosystem to help you with contacts, to help you with connections, but nothing, no connection, no contact will replace what you invest in yourself and in your knowledge, in your tools, in your expertise. Continue to do that.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
It's my absolute pleasure, Vince. Thank you for the opportunity.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
in world politics, being a young person living in New York City, surrounded by kind of all the mystery of international relations. I was looking for something more challenging and potentially even more substantive as I was thinking about my future. So I decided to apply to a business school and of course a business school like Yale, a school of management.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
stands out, certainly stood out for me because of their mission and the focus on leadership for business and society. And that helped me articulate where I saw myself heading as an adult, as a mature professional. I truly wanted to make a difference for society, for global society, as it were. But I also was interested in the mechanic of the business in terms of solving problems
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
some of the challenges that we're facing, not only the mechanism of politics that I was exposed to before. So that's how the journey started as it were. That's when we met at Yale. And when I was enrolled as an MBA student, I did not necessarily have a very clear idea of a path. If you recall, there were tracks, a finance track, a consulting track, a marketing track, a nonprofit track.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
I did not see myself fully on any of the tracks because somehow that definition seemed a bit limiting. So I went down a limp. I got an airplane ticket to London during my spring break in the first year, and I went and introduced myself to BP. That was then becoming a leader in not only energy, but energy writ large.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
With its new branding campaign, Beyond Petroleum, looking at alternative sources of energy, that vision really appealed to me and the company culture very much appealed to me. So that's where my journey into energy, if you will, began with that summer internship. I then got a full-time job offer upon graduation.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Spent some time in Chicago, moved to London, worked in upstream and downstream in a conventional energy space, but always with an eye out to that broader mandate to bring energy line and mobility to people in different ways, including using alternative and renewable sources.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
And my last project at VP, before I decided to move on, actually had to do with relaunching brand and doing so in a renewable fashion. So we had this phenomenal project called Helios House in Los Angeles, where we've rebranded and revamped an old, dirty gas station on the corner of Olympic and Robertson into an architectural marvel. But also, it was an education.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
station that helped us showcase renewable energy technologies, solar, the use of recycled repurposed materials, and kind of a new way of looking at what was a very typical if you will, feature of everyone's life, right? A gas station. And obviously looking at alternative fuels at that time as well. So that's where my journey into sustainability began. This was 2007.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
And I have been on that path ever since. When you look back, do you see any common themes or threats?
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
I think the common path that I'm observing here is that I was always a self-starter. So even when I was working for a major energy company, I tended to work on projects that I was originating. At no point in time did I actually take over someone else's role. So every role on every project that I worked on was essentially starting from scratch.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So if you will, it was being an entrepreneur within a very established company and within a very established culture and way of doing things. So that is definitely a common theme. The second common theme was simply curiosity. My career path is completely non-linear, and that was okay by me, I think.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
For me, when I reached kind of the age of 35 or so, the idea of following an established career path was not at all appealing. I wanted to learn about different aspects of energy. I wanted to try myself in different roles.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
I actually joined a early stage startup out of the UK upon leaving BP, and that involved building the US presence really from scratch, from the ground up, and really creating relevance in a new market for that particular business.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So in that sense, the transition from a big established organization to being more or less independent or being an entrepreneurial advisor was not hard for me because I already thought like an entrepreneur, even within, again, an established company. The other component, again, is curiosity.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
In order to be successful in being independent or running a small business, you do have to be very curious about industry trends. You have to be open to building partnerships, relationships, collaborations with others. You have to continuously find ways to in which you can create value, not just for yourself, but for others in the ecosystem.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So those components really lead, I believe, successful entrepreneurs to more success. I've also observed, I've observed a lot being in these different environments and these different spaces. And unfortunately, we don't see a lot of great examples of leadership on either side. I believe in the US culture, there is a bit of a glorification of the entrepreneur.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
We hear all these great stories about unicorns becoming successful overnight. And therefore there is this mystery and mystique of what it takes to build a successful enterprise. And I believe that unfortunately gives rise to tendencies that are not necessarily healthy and don't lead to long-term sustained success for entrepreneurs.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Because again, folks think that if they kind of somehow outsmart the market and become very popular, that somehow is going to get them from point A to point B. And of course, we've seen a lot of unfortunate consequences of that kind of thinking.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
In my mind, Vance, the word leader equals the word courage. There is no leadership without courage. And even though I believe we don't necessarily have a lot of examples of courageous leadership, those who show courage are the true leaders. Did it take courage for me to make the transition from BP to an early stage startup?
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Probably, probably some courage, but I would say more curiosity on my part. Like I said before, I was not wedded to a particular structure of my career. I was not wedded to going from one stage to the next in a very precise way. I always desired to have more freedom and more control over my own destiny, as it were. So that, to me, was very natural.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
That transition was very natural, even though it happened in the midst of the global financial crisis in 2008. So anyone thinking rationally about this would say, well, why wouldn't you just stay with a safe, secure career where you were progressing just fine in a large company versus going kind of off on your own into the unknown. But to me, that wasn't really the dilemma.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
I was attracted by the opportunity of meeting a challenge. My desire was to meet that challenge and to bring all my skills and experiences to bear on meeting that challenge. And if I could do that in the context of a small enterprise, like-minded individuals, great, fantastic. If I had to venture off on my own, then that's how it had to be. So I see courage really as a way of being rather than
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
kind of a quality that you have to have. It's just a way in which you get from one place to the next. And you do have to sometimes jump over large chasms. But in doing so, you have to have a vision of bridging areas that don't really bridge easily. The business that we are now, for example, we're in now, the business of
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Electrifying transportation involves two very established industries, energy and transportation, going through a transformation. And as both of them are changing at the same time and fundamentally, we're here to really bridge everything that they're going through and create an opportunity for fleets to electrify successfully.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
So again, this is an opportunity and this is seeing how you can actually connect the dots in the midst of the storm, for lack of a better term, in the midst of this big major transition and transformation. I would say that most courageous leaders in my mind are those who actually stick to the promises that they make to their people, to the organization that they run.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
Those who continue to deliver on the promises they made to their investors and funders, people who back them, back their idea. And those who continue to deliver value to those who use their products and services, their company's products and services. That's called integrity. And sometimes integrity takes courage.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
It means walking away from opportunities sometimes because they don't fit with the original vision for your enterprise. This also may mean walking away from certain partners or ecosystem players who are not showing up with integrity.
Chief Change Officer
#186 Irina Filippova: From Diplomacy in Russia to Decarbonization in the US
and standing your ground, but being flexible at the same time and seeing opportunities and bringing those opportunities to bear on shaping the mission of, of your existing enterprise. So I don't know if I answered fully your question around courage and leadership, but to me, again, leadership is courage and courage is leadership. One is impossible without the other.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
And it really just means staying in integrity with yourself, with what you say and what you do.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Sure. Well, I've ventured into this change area primarily because I wanted to see the change in leadership of large companies, leadership on the political arena in terms of achieving our decarbonization goals. And I guess I wasn't seeing enough persistence, enough integrity in getting through the transitions that we had to get through as quickly as we needed to get through them.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So I told myself something has to change, something in the way these leaders think and act has to change. But notice, I was thinking about those leaders out there, leaders that I was observing at a very senior level in corporate worlds, in entrepreneurial worlds. But what actually needed to happen, the change needed to happen within myself.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
I studied psychology at the Carl Jung Institute in Zurich, and that's where I first had the insight, not without help from a very accomplished depth psychologist to actually see the need that you're perceiving out there as being actually very internalized. with yourself.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
And so really the journey for me was to use what I needed to bring into this world, all my skills, all my experiences, and leverage that and share that with others and really kind of use my own experience as it were as a roadmap for someone else to embrace change, for someone else to have the courage to step up,
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
to act according to their beliefs rather than according to what common thinking may suggest they do. and really follow through, as it were, on the ideas that they had. So that was a period in my life where, again, this reflection around what's happening around me in the world, on the world stage, actually had to all transpire within myself.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Otherwise, I could not be effective as an advisor, as a consultant to established, companies as well as to entrepreneurial companies and their leaders in terms of what they needed to do to make a difference, to make a difference to their strategy, to make a difference to their positioning, to create a better service or a better product for this world.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
But it all again comes back to each person's individual values and the ability to live according to those values and bring those values to bear on what it was that they're building staying in integrity.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
As I've already mentioned, the world of transportation and the world of energy are going through a tremendous transition. All the major automotive original equipment manufacturers actually voted in favor of electrification of ground transport.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Which means that they are very busy investing in battery research, investing in designing and manufacturing new models of electric vehicles from class one to class eight. So from passenger vehicles all the way to the semis and buses. This revolution in transportation is happening. And it's aided.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
by the revolution that's happening in parallel around energy, the source of energy for this transportation, which is no longer your conventional oil and gas, right? This is now at the switch that's happening from conventional oil and gas to electric power. You could argue that the sources of electricity may come from conventional sources as well. That is true.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
However, as we've seen over the past two decades, renewable sources of electricity are continuing to grow, making it cheaper, making it reliable, and of course, making it cleaner. most importantly.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So for us, the biggest challenge right now is to help solve this energy and transportation equation in a way that does not create a burden for owners of large fleets who are actually trying to embrace this revolution in transportation, revolution in logistics.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
What we're trying to do is offer them the opportunity to focus, continue to focus on their core business once they made the decision to electrify and enable us to take care of the rest so that they don't have to think about where the energy for these new vehicles is coming from, how it's being delivered at what cost,
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
how to maintain it, how to essentially have the same level of reliability and uptime for the electric fuel that these new vehicles are requiring that would match their current experience with conventional. So essentially we're coming up on stage to say we are the providers of that electric fuel for this new transportation that you're embracing, that you're about to transition to.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
And we're going to be an end-to-end provider. So you don't have to worry about where the electrons are coming from, how they're being delivered to your vehicle, whether it's reliable and how much it costs. We took care of everything. All that you do is you pay us your electric fuel costs the same way that you currently pay your conventional fuel costs out of your operating budget.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
That's correct. That's correct. And I'm also saving you from potentially your biggest challenge, and that is doing it yourself. Procuring electric vehicle charging infrastructure the way you would be procuring appliances is the wrong way of going about it.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of companies try to go that way, try to just order chargers, thinking that chargers is easy and ubiquitous and available. That is not true. We're still in a very nascent industry. Charging infrastructure is something that requires a lot of nuance and
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Otherwise, you're going to run into major costs and delays in terms of deployment of that infrastructure, which is why we're very focused. A lot of us are utility experts as well as energy and transportation energy experts. Because this is what we do day to day. A typical fleet is going to be a company focused on logistics or manufacturing and logistics, right?
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
This is what they do best, potentially delivery. We are in a business of energy. And what we're telling our customers is that we're going to provide them with a solution that's going to work well, going to work reliably. It's going to work for them over a long period of time. And this is where we come in with our value proposition so that they continue to focus on their core business of logistics.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
This is a great question. And we, of course, think a lot about what risks we're mitigating and whether there are any risks that we're creating for our customers. And yes, sometimes we do come across this type of thinking that says, well, if I invite, if you will, an ecosystem partner, a third party into my universe, right, into my facility or onto my parking lot, is there any risk?
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
And I guess the best answer for that is you mitigate that risk by providing a very, very clear set of guidelines of how we operate and protecting the client, the customer, from any downside exposure, be it on price, be it on the quality of our work,
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
bid on that performance guarantee that we provide contractually so this is what contracts are for and they certainly safeguard safeguard our customers from being overly exposed It's also a matter of trust. It's a matter of trust because, as you know, in the nascent industry, there's lots of players that might have different types of agendas.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So you do have to, and we do this as well, I do this all the time with our service providers, you do have to secure trust.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
references from current customers right from those who actually can vouch that this new company this new kid on the block in this market in this industry can actually do what they said that they would do you have to see very carefully who is funding this company and for what reason
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
We happen to have a very stable, very secure infrastructure funder who believes in what we do and has been doing this for a long time. But it's not everyone. It's not every company. And sometimes strategic investors and others make different views on how to treat the company in the future. And then you have to meet the people.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
I had a great believer that even though we've been obviously through the years of COVID, we started this company, the operations of this company in the years of COVID, believe it or not. And that did not hamper our growth. Quite the contrary, because again, the trend to electrification was already there and it was very strong.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
But you do have to sit with people and you do have to align on your values. Be it a customer, be it a vendor, be it a partner. We always go through an exercise. on any major deal, on any major partnership, because if your values don't align, it's not going to work, quite honestly.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So we have to educate our customers about who we are, not just what we do and how we do it, but who we are and why we're here.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So our goal is to expose them to as many of us, as many of our colleagues as possible so that they can see that the level of professionalism with which we approach our challenges is very high and that we do what we said we would do rather than sign a contract and then perform suboptimal.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Thanks for having me, Vince. It's a pleasure. I grew up in Moscow, as you know. My father was a nuclear scientist, so he was in energy. But I was not. I was interested in languages. And when the time came to choose a career, I truly wanted a career that would expose me to different cultures and the way the world works. worked as it were.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
That's a great question. I'm typically asked what excites you and then on the flip side, what scares you? And sometimes it's the same thing that excites me and that scares me. And that is, of course, the potential, right? We're at the very, very start of a massive transition. again, of the transportation industry and of the energy industry.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
These two are fundamental to the way in which our world works, in which our whole economy works. We're at the very, very start on this process and this will continue to grow. But as we grow, there are fits and start, there are peaks and valleys. And as entrepreneurs, we have to be very tenacious and very consistent. And again, stay in integrity with what we have promised the market to do.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
The most exciting part of this job is, of course, no two days are the same. We wake up to another news announcement, another company going through a transformation, another customer going through a transformation. There's new technology coming on the market every single day. We could be going to shows and conferences every week of the year just to keep up with the technology advancements.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So it's going to continue to be a very exciting sector. It's going to continue to be a very challenging sector because, of course, change is not easy. And again, that change has to happen within before it happens outside oneself. So we're talking about a lot of people changing their mindsets, changing the way in which they work, changing what they value.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
It does have to happen on the individual level and it does have to happen on the leadership level because without that, we won't see the impact that leaders can make on their respective organizations, on their respective nations, and all throughout the world, throughout the industry. It's a global chain. And that's another exciting component of this.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
We're constantly in communication with other partners worldwide because, again, we are a global village now. Energy transformation, transportation transformation affects everyone. So we have to learn from those who may be ahead in one area or the other.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
We have to import, export this knowledge and share this knowledge because again, we're trying to accomplish something for humanity as a whole without sounding too lofty. We're trying to create a new way that the transportation works in order to not only reduce the carbon emissions. but in order to create something more sustainable, something more reliable for the future.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So again, this change has to happen at absolutely every level.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So I chose a career in diplomacy, which was a very tall task for, first of all, a female. Typically, career in diplomacy would be reserved to men. But I did succeed in entering the very exclusive Moscow State Institute for International Relations, and I was studying international law.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
I advise them to choose the area that fascinates them, that they have curiosity about, that interests them. Research it. Do as much as they can do to understand trends in a particular industry, in a particular company on their own. People who invest themselves.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
in understanding how the world works and what challenges there are and how they can help address those challenges always land on their feet. I interview folks for roles here at Electrata all the time. We are constantly hiring for different types of roles. Hands down, I would always prefer a candidate who is invested Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
when I had the opportunity to travel to the United States and see how, if you will, human rights practices worked in reality. And this is where my big journey began, as it were. So the career evolved. I went actually on to work for a UN think tank and peace and conflict resolution. I did that for about five years. And while it was a very, very interesting time,
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
in world politics, being a young person living in New York City, surrounded by kind of all the mystery of international relations, I was looking for something more challenging and potentially even more substantive as I was thinking about my future. So I decided to apply to a business school and of course a business school like Yale, a school of management,
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
stands out, certainly stood out for me because of their mission and the focus on leadership for business and society. And that helped me articulate where I saw myself heading as an adult, as a mature professional. I truly wanted to make a difference for society, for global society, as it were. But I also was interested in the mechanic of the business in terms of solving problems
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
some of the challenges that we're facing, not only the mechanism of politics that I was exposed to before. So that's how the journey started as it were. That's when we met at Yale. And when I was enrolled as an MBA student, I did not necessarily have a very clear idea of a path. If you recall, there were tracks, a finance track, a consulting track, a marketing track, a nonprofit track.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
I did not see myself fully on any of the tracks because somehow that definition seemed a bit limiting. So I went down a limp. I got an airplane ticket to London during my spring break in the first year, and I went and introduced myself to BP. That was then becoming a leader in not only energy, but energy writ large.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
With its new branding campaign, Beyond Petroleum, looking at alternative sources of energy, that vision really appealed to me and the company culture very much appealed to me. So that's where my journey into energy, if you will, began with that summer internship. I then got a full-time job offer upon graduation.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Spent some time in Chicago, moved to London, worked in upstream and downstream in a conventional energy space, but always with an eye out to that broader mandate to bring energy line and mobility to people in different ways, including using alternative and renewable sources.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
And my last project at VP, before I decided to move on, actually had to do with relaunching brand and doing so in a renewable fashion. So we had this phenomenal project called Helios House in Los Angeles, where we've rebranded and revamped an old, dirty gas station on the corner of Olympic and Robertson into an architectural marvel. But also, it was an education.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
station that helped us showcase renewable energy technologies, solar, the use of recycled repurposed materials, and kind of a new way of looking at what was a very typical if you will, feature of everyone's life, right? A gas station. And obviously looking at alternative fuels at that time as well. So that's where my journey into sustainability began. This was 2007.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
And I have been on that path ever since. When you look back, do you see any common themes or threats?
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
I think the common path that I'm observing here is that I was always a self-starter. So even when I was working for a major energy company, I tended to work on projects that I was originating. At no point in time did I actually take over someone else's role. So every role on every project that I worked on was essentially starting from scratch.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So if you will, it was being an entrepreneur within a very established company and within a very established culture and way of doing things. So that is definitely a common theme. The second common theme was simply curiosity. My career path is completely non-linear, and that was okay by me, I think.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
For me, when I reached kind of the age of 35 or so, the idea of following an established career path was not at all appealing. I wanted to learn about different aspects of energy. I wanted to try myself in different roles.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
I actually joined a early stage startup out of the UK upon leaving BP, and that involved building the US presence really from scratch, from the ground up, and really creating relevance in a new market for that particular business.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So in that sense, the transition from a big established organization to being more or less independent or being an entrepreneurial advisor was not hard for me because I already thought like an entrepreneur, even within, again, an established company. The other component, again, is curiosity.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
In order to be successful in being independent or running a small business, you do have to be very curious about industry trends. You have to be open to building partnerships, relationships, collaborations with others. You have to continuously find ways to in which you can create value, not just for yourself, but for others in the ecosystem.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So those components really lead, I believe, successful entrepreneurs to more success. I've also observed, I've observed a lot being in these different environments and these different spaces. And unfortunately, we don't see a lot of great examples of leadership on either side. I believe in the US culture, there is a bit of a glorification of the entrepreneur.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
We hear all these great stories about unicorns becoming successful overnight. And therefore there is this mystery and mystique of what it takes to build a successful enterprise. And I believe that unfortunately gives rise to tendencies that are not necessarily healthy and don't lead to long-term sustained success for entrepreneurs.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Because again, folks think that if they kind of somehow outsmart the market and become very popular, that somehow is going to get them from point A to point B. And of course, we've seen a lot of unfortunate consequences of that kind of thinking.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
In my mind, Vance, the word leader equals the word courage. There is no leadership without courage. And even though I believe we don't necessarily have a lot of examples of courageous leadership, those who show courage are the true leaders. Did it take courage for me to make the transition from BP to an early stage startup?
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Probably, probably some courage, but I would say more curiosity on my part. Like I said before, I was not wedded to a particular structure of my career. I was not wedded to going from one stage to the next in a very precise way. I always desired to have more freedom and more control over my own destiny, as it were. So that, to me, was very natural.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
That transition was very natural, even though it happened in the midst of the global financial crisis in 2008. So anyone thinking rationally about this would say, well, why wouldn't you just stay with a safe, secure career where you were progressing just fine in a large company versus going kind of off on your own into the unknown. But to me, that wasn't really the dilemma.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
I was attracted by the opportunity of meeting a challenge. My desire was to meet that challenge and to bring all my skills and experiences to bear on meeting that challenge. And if I could do that in the context of a small enterprise, like-minded individuals, great, fantastic. If I had to venture off on my own, then that's how it had to be. So I see courage really as a way of being rather than
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
kind of a quality that you have to have. It's just a way in which you get from one place to the next. And you do have to sometimes jump over large chasms. But in doing so, you have to have a vision of bridging areas that don't really bridge easily. The business that we are now, for example, we're in now, the business of
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Electrifying transportation involves two very established industries, energy and transportation, going through a transformation. And as both of them are changing at the same time and fundamentally, we're here to really bridge everything that they're going through and create an opportunity for fleets to electrify successfully.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
So again, this is an opportunity and this is seeing how you can actually connect the dots in the midst of the storm, for lack of a better term, in the midst of this big major transition and transformation. I would say that most courageous leaders in my mind are those who actually stick to the promises that they make to their people, to the organization that they run.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
Those who continue to deliver on the promises they made to their investors and funders, people who back them, back their idea. And those who continue to deliver value to those who use their products and services, their company's products and services. That's called integrity. And sometimes integrity takes courage.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
It means walking away from opportunities sometimes because they don't fit with the original vision for your enterprise. This also may mean walking away from certain partners or ecosystem players who are not showing up with integrity.
Chief Change Officer
#281 Irina Filippova: Courage Is the Career Plan
and standing your ground, but being flexible at the same time and seeing opportunities and bringing those opportunities to bear on shaping the mission of, of your existing enterprise. So I don't know if I answered fully your question around courage and leadership, but to me, again, leadership is courage and courage is leadership. One is impossible without the other.