Eyes On Impact: Curiosity and Courage for Innovation | AVI Systems

 00:06 
Brad Sousa 
Hey, everybody. Brad Sousa here, CTO at AVI Systems. Now, here's a conundrum for you. How do you talk about technology with executive leadership in a way that matters to them, like matters so much that they personally are willing tolerate the messiness of innovation and see the value in trying something new? Well, today we have with us on Eyes on Impact, Rhonda Holt, CTO at PBS. And this is one of the topics that Rhonda and I, as CTOs, talk about in this episode. Now, more than that, we talk about keeping our eyes focused on the human impact of innovation and how we explain that impact to executives, customers, maybe even to inspire our own team. We also dive into AI, like generative AI in the media industry, and unpack the ethics behind AI and innovation in general.  
 
01:01 
Brad Sousa 
Now, one of my favorite parts of the conversation with Rhonda is when she shares her personal story about catching the technology bug from her father and how that inspires her today to infect curiosity and courage for innovation in the lives of others around her. I love Rhonda's story, but before we get into her story, I want to take a moment and just thank LG. LG's been a great partner of ours for years and have sponsored Eyes on Impact today. Thanks to LG, we've been great at telling our story and helping our customers tell their story in a visually compelling way. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. Are you ready for it? All right, well, let's get after it. Well, Rhonda, welcome to eyes on impact. I am so excited that you're here with us.  
 
01:54 
Brad Sousa 
I've been looking forward to this time together since I first heard from the team that there was a possibility of you joining us. Thanks for giving us your time today.  
 
02:02 
Rhonda Holt 
Thank you so much, Brad. I'm delighted to be with you today.  
 
02:06 
Brad Sousa 
So let's start by helping everybody get a sense of who you are, what your journey's been to become the CTO of PBS. Where did it start for you? What's the passion for you with technology, and in particular, broadcast?  
 
02:24 
Rhonda Holt 
Well, I'm a lover of technology in general, and I think that just started at a very early age. I kind of grew up in central Florida during what I consider the golden age around NASA and space shuttles and that type of thing. So I think I, like every other kid that grew up in that area, was greatly inspired by the entire space shuttle program. So that kind of led us to engineering, technology, math. I come from a background of engineers. I had several military members in the family who were in the engineering side. My dad was career army and communications engineering. So very early in my life, there was always some project going on.  
 
 
03:21 
Rhonda Holt 
And so you got exposed to it at a very early age and developed a love for it. I like figuring out how things work and then that led me into, of course, studying engineering, science and technology. But I guess where computers, where I became kind of fascinated or hooked by computers and information technology was based on having a summer internship at the Department of Agriculture at the University of Florida, where I attended. And in that, I actually worked with a researcher in the Department of Agriculture who was researching at the time a parasite that was infecting the corn crop in Florida. And I had at that time what I thought was the glamorous responsibility of entering all of the data into a database about his specimens. So it was basically bug data. It doesn't sound that great now.  
 
04:28 
Brad Sousa 
Oh, fascinating.  
 
04:30 
Rhonda Holt 
To somebody who's 17 years old. I thought this was great, and it was my first real interaction with real time computing systems. And this was in the day where you shared the computer that were using, that the researchers were using, was actual the university mainframe, and so it was shared with every other part of the business that went on. So it was time sharing. So you'd have to wait patiently all day to be granted a session. And I would wait all day patiently, get onto the computer and enter his research data. And I liked it. I liked them interacting with the machine and understanding how it processed. It was fascinating. And that led me to want to study computer science in college. So that's what I did so very early.  
 
05:29 
Rhonda Holt 
I think in my formative years, I developed a fondness for all things infotech and then went to work after that, after I graduated from college for IBM and spent what I consider my career formative years at IBM. And that was an amazing opportunity to be trained really well early in my career, for sure.  
 
05:59 
Brad Sousa 
And if I remember right, you spent some time at Sun Microsystems back when Sun was like the powerhouse in Sun, IBM, Sun Dell, those experiences, did they shape your perspective?  
 
06:17 
Rhonda Holt 
Know, I think the foundational things about learning to become master of my subject matter information technology as also learning to lead. I had my first managerial roles at IBM, which was fascinating. So just learning in a very, I think, structured, formal environment about leadership, leading teams, leading organizations, leading projects, and accomplishing innovating in the technology space was what I learned at IBM. And I think subsequent roles, particularly at Sun, those skill sets were honed.  
 
 
07:03 
Rhonda Holt 
At Sun, it was about managing larger organizations, larger innovation projects. Sun was a particularly innovative company at that point in time, doing really fascinating things. Being able to be in the middle of that boom in Silicon Valley at that point in time was extremely impactful to me and helped broaden my experience.  
 
 
07:33 
Rhonda Holt 
Honed me, shaped me as a leader.  
 
07:37 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah, it's interesting. So there are certain parts, and we'll talk more about your leadership style. I'm curious as to how you would describe that before we do. I want to circle back to the conversation about your dad, if you don't mind, for a moment. So I have four kids. All four of them are connected to our industry in one way or another, whether they're engineers or creative or producers or whatever they are. Right. They learned their skills along the way, but I think they learned the passion or the love for it from I think it's infectious. Did your dad infect you with that? Is that kind of how it started?  
 
08:21 
Rhonda Holt 
He absolutely did. I think his interest in all things technological at that point, as I mentioned, there was always some gadget, some project, some new piece of technology that was being used in the household, and my dad tinkering with it, and me wondering, what are you doing? And him taking the time to explain it to me and why, and exposing me to what he did at work. All of that, I think, influenced me.  
 
09:02 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah, that's super cool. I want to talk for a moment about your role as CTO, because people often confuse with me, they confuse my role as CTO with CIO. And I'm happy to talk about either. But describe for me what the role of CTO means to you. How would you describe it to others?  
 
09:27 
Rhonda Holt 
Yeah, and I think both of those roles, CIO and CTO, are definitely often intertwined, and I think it depends upon the organization that you actually work in. Size, scope, that sort of thing. Within PBS, my role as CTO is a little bit of both, in that I have responsibility for the underlying information technology infrastructure that supports the fundamental business. That's more of the CIO kind of stuff that I deal with at PBS. The other portion of my role as CTO is more forward looking, understanding trends and directions and technology, understanding what PBS technological needs are in terms of our customers right. Our member stations, and then ultimately the American public as viewers of PBS content, and what are the things that are happening technologically that can impact that experience in a positive way?  
 
10:46 
Rhonda Holt 
I'm very interested in how our viewers how our member stations experience PBS content.  
 
10:59 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah. That's so good. That's so good. So I'm the first CTO at our company. I'm actually the first CTO for a solutions provider in our industry. And so there's a lot of pioneering. When I first stepped into this role many years ago, I remember our CEO, one day, he and I were together at an event, and were walking down the hall, and he just kind of turned to me and he said, man, you're in your lane, aren't you? I said to him, I totally am. I think I was made for this. I absolutely love what I do, but I didn't get there on my own. There were so many people who helped make me ready for the role that I'm in along the way. What's the passion for you and maybe there's a story or two about how people helped you get here.  
 
11:51 
Brad Sousa 
What does that look like for you?  
 
11:53 
Rhonda Holt 
I think probably I am where I am today because of a lot of people who were influential. My growth and development, certainly from my dad and him influencing my love of technology, but also from people that I've worked with and for. When you look typically in the technology space, that portion of my career, I worked at some really awesome companies and had the opportunity to work alongside a lot of fantastic role models for this role. So I've seen upfront sat across the table from a lot of pretty awesome CTOs and technology leaders, right? If they were not CTOs, they were VPs of Operations, VPs of Information Technology.  
 
12:49 
Rhonda Holt 
So I feel like I've had a lot of help and assistance and modeling of what it looks like when it's being done really well from the leaders that I've worked with in the technology space, as well as at Turner in the media space. Turner was sort of my first foray into media, and that was out of mainstream.  
 
13:22 
Brad Sousa 
Particular. Is there a particular individual, maybe a characteristic trait or a skill or a nugget of wisdom that you find you've kind of carried forward with you? Just one or two would be I.  
 
13:38 
Rhonda Holt 
Think the thing that inspires me, that keeps me focused and moving forward and leaning into new technological development in my space is curiosity.  
 
13:58 
Speaker 3 
Right.  
 
13:59 
Rhonda Holt 
I think that is just essential. You have to be curious about why things are the way they are and why they work the way they work and what's new here in the space. I think the other thing that's always important as you kind of traverse leadership adventures in different roles is always there's got to be a certain amount of courage, right. And willingness to wander in the spaces that may not be a place that you've been before.  
 
14:42 
Speaker 3 
Right.  
 
14:43 
Rhonda Holt 
I think those two things together, right. The willingness and courage to do that and the curiosity that pulls you there.  
 
14:55 
Brad Sousa 
So I'm going to tap on that just a little bit here. I'd like to spend a little bit more time around that topic. So when people talk about you as a leader, the kinds of ways they talk about you is you're a people first leader. I've heard that. I've heard you're a big thinker, open minded. I've heard that you're inclusive, you're willing to listen to ideas and concepts from all sorts of points of view. How do you describe your leadership?  
 
15:29 
Rhonda Holt 
I think participative is how I would describe it. I like to engage with the organization. I like to see things from their point of view, hear what they have to say. But I also like to provoke them.  
 
 
15:46 
Rhonda Holt 
So I like to ask hard questions. I like to say, what about this? What about that? I think a lot of that is sparked by my own curiosity about the topic. Teams in general bring a lot of expertise to the table, so it's an opportunity for mutual learning. They learn from my experience by what questions I'm asking them. I learn from them by what they're bringing forward to me what they're thinking about a new technology or how it plays into what we're doing. I think it's definitely participative I like to engage, but I think it's powered a lot by curiosity about people. Curiosity about technology.  
 
16:44 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah. So I love that. Within my team, we've really been very intentional about honoring different points of views and experiences. None of us work in the same place. We're all over, and with that comes very different experiences and ways you solve problems. We've worked really hard to create a culture of honor, and I think honor brings with it honor and trust bring with it the ability to be curious and not be so afraid about failing and the courage to try something even though you don't know what the outcome is going to be. So I really respect that. I love what you're saying about curiosity and courage. I actually like to carry that a step further. So I'm assuming that your team is a lot of engineers, maybe some designers or developers. Would that be right?  
 
17:56 
Rhonda Holt 
Yeah, it's a combination, I think, of certainly engineers, architects. I think there are also operational portions of the organization because I have the underlying technology that supports our business. I have the operations team as well, project managers, program managers. So it's a full component of technical professionals and all of the support organizations around them.  
 
18:31 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah. So I think I've seen over the years that engineers in general put myself in the category, we like to see the end before we take the end of the journey, before we take the first step. And while that's an advocate for reliability and organizational sustainability and that kind of stuff, it's actually the adversary of innovation and new ideas. How do you help engineers who really want to reduce the amount of risk possible? How do you help them embrace the unknown?  
 
19:09 
Rhonda Holt 
Yeah, I think I have to model that. I like experimentation. When we're doing something different or something that we haven't done before, the first words out of my mouth are going to be, we got to do a pilot.  
 
19:28 
Brad Sousa 
Exactly.  
 
19:29 
Rhonda Holt 
Let's pick some people, right, and try this out. Let's have some folks experiment with it. And I think that experimentation does two things. I think it supports, enables, and promotes innovation because we try things. I think the other thing it does is it sort of mitigates this need to have something be as risk free as possible from an engineering standpoint by saying, hey, it's okay to create a tightly controlled experiment where we try some things and see what happens.  
 
 
20:20 
Rhonda Holt 
All we can do is learn from that, and then ultimately, when we get around to doing whatever the final solution is, we're better informed and we're doing better risk management because we're sort of understanding the lay of the land and what could go wrong before we start off down that path.  
 
20:43 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah, that's so good. So like you, we go through a process of ideas that we talk about and then they kind of create a pattern and we realize, hey, we may be on to something. And then you get it into a proof of concept and then into a pilot. For us, I guess this is not going to between just you and I, but it'll between you and I and a few hundred of our closest friends. Two-thirds of the things that we start in proof of concept don't actually make it to a product release. But I say sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. I don't know that we ever fail. So explain that process and why you're okay with not failure, but learning.  
 
21:32 
Rhonda Holt 
I think we evolve, right. Anything that gives us a greater understanding of the problem we're trying to solve or the possible solutions to get to that problem, that's just plain old good R & D work, right when you're doing that. And I think anyone that's been in the innovation space or in the science space knows, right, experimentation. There is no replacement for experimentation and good lab work on the ground or good field work, depending upon your area, that supports whatever conclusion or hypothesis you're going to draw from that drives your project. So I think getting that baseline, helping to refine our assumptions, what we know, clarify what we don't know, I think it makes us better at managing the risk ultimately. And we get better results out of the projects.  Because we're just more informed when we go into it.  
 
22:45 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah, I love that. So I share with my team often that the proof of concept is for us and the pilot is for the customer. And in the POC, we're trying to demonstrate that the concepts that we think we understand will actually solve the problem that we're seeing. But the pilot introduces the consumer of the technology into the process. And I share with people that maybe a little embarrassed to admit I probably delivered hundreds of systems that 100% meet the spec but are never used because we forgot to bring people into the equation. How do you do that? How do you bring people in?  
 
23:30 
Rhonda Holt 
Well, they're part of this grand conspiracy that we're doing here to roll out this new technology. So we have to make them part of the plan and it has to be based around solving their business problems.  
 
23:47 
Rhonda Holt 
Ultimately, technology is about making people more productive and more effective at doing their jobs right. And we are sort of in the position as being the ambassadors for that as well as actually executing ultimately on that solution. And so part of being a good ambassador about that is helping people to understand what it can do for them.  
 
24:18 
Rhonda Holt 
And so when we're picking these pilot projects or proof of concept projects, we try to pick pain points, right. We try to build the project around a pain point that a particular customer is having. And by solving that pain point, we're doing a couple of things. We're legitimately demonstrating, improving that our thoughts on how we approach dealing with that problem are correct, our assumptions are valid. The other thing that we're doing in working with the customer and having them be part of this and solving their problem is we're also creating additional advocacy ultimately for this technology solution when we roll it out, because we're going to have a happy customer here who has a problem that we've leveraged some new technology or process to solve on their behalf. So when we're trying to roll this out to other parts of the organization, they're going to be helping us message around this.  
 
25:28 
Rhonda Holt 
They're going to be helping us train other teams around how to effectively use this because they feel some ownership and partnership for the creation and development of the solution. So I think it's how you do anything with people and gaining trust and commitment to any cause, right. You create a value proposition with that customer.  
 
26:00 
Rhonda Holt 
You make them part of the process. This product or solution is just as much theirs as it is ours. It's not something we're doing to them. It's something we're doing with them.  
 
26:17 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah. So good. So you use the term grand conspiracy. Talk about that. Because I love the term. Talk about it.  
 
26:27 
Rhonda Holt 
Just my way of thinking about adding, at least for me anyway, adding a little excitement to what we're doing. Everybody, particularly humans, love a plot.  
 
26:42 
Rhonda Holt 
So we are rolling out this technology because we have a grand scheme to do XYZ. I think a story.  
 
26:55 
Brad Sousa 
It's all about the story, right.  
 
26:58 
Rhonda Holt 
We're in media, there's got to be a good story that folks can relate to. So this is part of storytelling in my mind about technology that makes it accessible to others.  
 
27:17 
Brad Sousa 
I agree with you. And one of the things that I spend a lot of time with, my direct reports, my leaders, is we spend time crafting that story, being intentional about it, identifying who the villain is that we need to vanquish, identifying who the hero is. What's our role as the guide? Right. How do you help your team imagine what the story is that you need to tell?  
 
27:44 
Rhonda Holt 
Yeah, I start off by asking them, really? What's the story? How are we going to articulate this to a layperson audience who may not understand the benefits of the technical specification here that we're rolling out to them? So what is our story behind? This is how I typically start. If you're explaining this to your grandmother, right. And your grandmother is the venture capitalist here, what's your story?  
 
 
28:27 
Rhonda Holt 
How are you going to explain it in such a way that she understands it and thinks you're a sound investment to make. And then we talk through it. It's all about finding that common ground. Is it the right metaphor and analogy that makes the problem that you're trying to solve very accessible to the average person.  
 
28:59 
Rhonda Holt 
And you have to be able to talk about it in terms of something that is relatable they've experienced. Oh, I know what that is. Well, this is like that frequently. Having them understand the nitty gritty details is not necessary to tell the story.  
 
29:22 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah. I shared with you before that we've worked with a number of PBS affiliates. Sometimes that's building a set, sometimes that's working with the creative and digital media workflows, and sometimes that's just operational. It's around UC and conference rooms and meeting spaces, whatever that is. When we tell the story amongst the engineering team, it's around spec and tech. But, when we tell the story around the customer, the ultimate consumer of that technology, it's really around how it's going to impact their life. It's really around the outcome that's going to level up their world. And that's so important for me. That's so important for my team to be able to tell that story because that's going to define how the project is actually going to level up the consumer of that tech rather than just an operator of it.  
 
30:30 
Rhonda Holt 
Exactly. It's how you gain interest. How you get adoption of technology is that there's got to be some affinity with the end user or the consumer of that technology. They have to understand it and the story behind it. Why you think it's important and why you believe it's important to them. I think that is so critical information technology. And when you skip that step frequently, those are the cases where you don't get broad adoption of a tool that could be so impactful, but it's not recognized as being impactful by the target audience.  
 
31:26 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah, I really love that. I imagine a lot of the storytelling that you tell is to the rest of your executive team. Right. And they don't want to hear about resolution or frame rate or storage capacity. They want to hear what it's going to do for the viewer, for the members, whatever it is. Right. How do you explain the messiness of innovation to your executive team?  
 
31:57 
Rhonda Holt 
Wow. It's an ongoing conversation about it. It is not perfect. I think evolution, usually our evolution of technology, which is how I usually talk about it. There are different stages. The stuff that is the most interesting, the most innovative is also the stuff that's earliest in its evolution.  
 
32:34 
Brad Sousa 
That's right.  
 
32:34 
Rhonda Holt 
Where it's full of unknown. It's not done yet. It's still being experimented with. That's technology at its riskiest. That's when your venture capitalists like to jump in.  
 
32:50 
Rhonda Holt 
And then there's in the middle right. Where you get the fast followers. It's where it's been out there for a while. And it's well known and well understood, its limitations, its strengths and weaknesses. And people are just starting to adapt. It creates applications, use cases that leverage it.  
 
33:15 
Rhonda Holt 
And then there's the case where the value engineers go in and they make it even better. They perfect it, they make it cheaper, they make it more accessible, easier to get. And it's very akin to what happens when pharmaceuticals are developed.  
 
33:37 
Rhonda Holt 
The path that they take from being an experimental drug to a generic drug is pretty much the same path that technology takes as it evolves. It's that S curve that it goes down.  
 
33:54 
Brad Sousa 
That's right.  
 
33:55 
Rhonda Holt 
So most of the time when I'm talking to the executive team, I'm giving them some reference of where are we in the evolution of this technology and how it relates to our use case.   
 
34:14 
Rhonda Holt 
Where do we need to be? At the very bleeding edge at the beginning. We don't have to be first. We just need to be in that fast follower range. And when is the generic stage good enough for this? We don't need to invent anything. We just need to wait until it's dirt cheap and then come in there.  
 
34:38 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah. In that stage, it's all about scale and repeatability. Right?  
 
34:43 
Rhonda Holt 
Exactly. So it's about framing.  
 
34:47 
Brad Sousa 
In the early stages. I apologize for stepping on top you. For the early stages, it's important, I think we've learned that how important it is to bring the customer along with you that they understand. Are you an early adopter? Because if you're an early adopter, we're an early adopter on this technology, we can learn together. Right?  
 
35:07 
Rhonda Holt 
Exactly. And that goes back to what is the business problem we're trying to solve. And there is analysis that has to be done with respect to can we or should we be an earlier adopter of this particular technology? What is the risk associated with it?  
 
35:31 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah. So Rhonda in your world today at PBS, are there one or two technologies that you are paying a lot of attention to? What are the kinds of things around your mind?  
 
35:46 
Rhonda Holt 
I think there's nothing radical about this because I think it's what everyone else is paying attention to right now with generative AI.  
 
35:55 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah, for sure.  
 
35:56 
Rhonda Holt 
That's the sort of new thing that has popped up, that we're trying to understand how it applies to what we do. And that's twofold.  
 
36:10 
Rhonda Holt 
On the creative side, as producers of content, what are the implications of generative AI for that? And then on the operational side, what is the role that generative AI plays in a space where the answer is already known? Typically, in an operational space, we know what we need the answer to be. Right. And with machine learning and then sort of just very basic automation, in many cases, you solve those operational problems. So the question is, okay, is there anything that you get by using generative AI in that instance, that's a question mark, or it remains to be full. So I think generative AI is in that early evolution where we're trying to understand how it might be used and what are the risk rewards of doing so.  
 
37:21 
Rhonda Holt 
And if you're going to use it, what policy or governance needs to be around it to make sure that it's being used in a responsible and constructive way.  
 
37:36 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah, I remember in the old days, like 2019, I think it was 2019, I was at NAB with my Director of the Broadcast Practice, and we were talking about machine vision and AI for cataloging and understanding what media assets we had and all of that kind of stuff back in the day. Generative AI has taken the world kind of, or at least the conversation about AI in a new place. How do you coach your team to take advantage of generative AI?  
 
38:16 
Rhonda Holt 
Well, certainly it starts with experiments, right. Understanding what the capabilities of the technology are, what the do's and don'ts. I think the big challenge that any organization or team is going to have with generative AI is making sure that you're not stepping on someone else's IP. And that is the concern in the engineering base. Being concerned about exposing your engineering or technology staff that has the responsibility for developing IP to other folks whose IP has always been a no. Because you want to try to avoid contamination.  
 
  
39:07 
Rhonda Holt 
Because that's how you get yourself in the problems. Inadvertently. I think the same thing still applies here. If you're going to experiment with it, learn about it, learn its capabilities, how it works. But also when you're using it, be conscious of attribution to whoever the primary sources are or whatever you're leveraging.  
 
39:37 
Rhonda Holt 
And so the guardrails that we put around it are about transparent. Use, being transparent about it. If you are using it, getting permission, this information is somebody else's IP or copyrighted in some way. Give proper attribution to whoever the creator's authors are. Acknowledge that. Provide data or information to AI that is proprietary. That's right nature, because it becomes community ownership at some point when you do that. So be very cautious about that experiment, though, and learn.  
 
40:34 
Brad Sousa 
It sounds to me that part of the techno ethics for you around generative AI is transparency. Acknowledging the contribution that AI has made, or maybe those who have contributed to the learning model or the GPT that you happen to be using. Acknowledging that, acknowledging your contribution to that library now because you've now added to the learning of that library. So fascinating. That's great.  
 
41:03 
Rhonda Holt 
Deliberate and intentional about adding to that library.  
 
41:10 
Rhonda Holt 
Don't do it accidentally because you've released information that you just weren't conscious of the fact that you've contributed to this community source. So be deliberate and intentional about how you interact with those AI engines.  
 
41:30 
Brad Sousa 
So our time is almost up, but. I'd like to actually just tap on that one more time. So we talked about early adopters and the early stages of innovation. AI, generative AI in particular, has brought to the forefront the need to contemplate, in my opinion, the techno ethics of early adopter technologies. In the past, it was all around, does it do what it needs to do? And today it needs to include exposing to our customers that we're in an early stage here. It needs to include the idea of transparency as you're using generative AI with some of their use case material because they're in the journey with you. So it's an interesting age that we're in, I guess, or season that we're in.  
 
42:25 
Brad Sousa 
And I don't know that I necessarily considered the techno ethics of early adopter innovation as part of it, but it sounds to me like you do as part of your development process.  
 
42:38 
Rhonda Holt 
I think you have to usually these are the kind of discussions that get had when you're developing technology that's life threatening in some way, or can be life threatening, like for medical devices or for space shuttles, for example. Questions of ethics come up or building bridges. Right, right. I think in terms of training and education, there is always some ethics course that engineers are required to take in formal education around stuff like this. I don't know if this is the first time or maybe it's the first time that something so pervasive, so readily available to everyone in the infotech computer space has come into existence.  
 
43:54 
Rhonda Holt 
In all of those other industries, it's usually pretty specialized in getting or having access to that kind of technology. Here you have something that's broadly available, anybody can access it. And I think if you are on the creative side, where you're producing or creating, I think you are required.  
 
44:24 
Rhonda Holt 
I think ethics require you to have some kind of guidelines that deal with transparency. I think in particular, when your audience of the American public yeah, for sure, that's a requirement, that you be transparent about its use and that you respect sources and the art of others in doing so.  
 
44:59 
Brad Sousa 
Yeah, I think you're absolutely on point. And if you and I as CTOs, if what we're delivering are technologies that actually make an impact to humans lives, then there's an obvious ethnical question that has to be answered as you're delivering those kinds of solutions that really matter to people. So I think that's brilliant. It's a wonderful conversation. Thanks for having it with us. We're almost out of time. I want to land a plane here. So if there's somebody who imagines themselves on a journey to technology leadership, whether it's a VP or it's a CTO or a CIO, what's the takeaway from your story that you would like them to hear?  
 
45:48 
Rhonda Holt 
I think you have to love the technology for the sake of technology because I think that's what inspires you within that sort of progression of technical roles and responsibilities that you can have with increasing leadership, responsibility. I think you still have to be fascinated by technology, fundamentally, and like it and enjoy it.  
 
46:28 
Rhonda Holt 
It makes all of the other things worthwhile, I think, because you're still learning. But you still have to believe, I think when I first started to study technology, and probably like every other student of science or technology, you have to believe that technology can make people's lives better.  
 
46:57 
Rhonda Holt 
That's what inspired me as a freshman going into college. This stuff can make people's lives better. This can solve all the ills of the world if we harness it and use it in the right way. I think you have to believe that. I still believe that today, and I think that's what inspires me.  
 
47:21 
Brad Sousa 
Rhonda Holt CTO at PBS. It has been an absolute joy. Thank you for giving us your time today. It's been a pleasure.  
 
47:29 
Rhonda Holt 
Thank you so much for having me. I've had a lot of fun, and it's been great talking with you, Brad, thank you.