The month that was: NYC, Irvine, London, and of course… a book

In my last article, I gave you a hint of the ‘madness’ that September/October would be based on internal and customer meetings, big announcements, and significant industry events. I was able to experience a good part of this while touring our key operations, so let me share my excitement, and some very personal stories.

NYC and the MTA

It’s difficult to start with anything else than the 42nd Street shuttle tunnel connectivity launch event in NYC at the start of the month, together with MTA’s Janno Lieber , Chairman & CEO and Jamie Torres-Springer , President, Construction & Development, and representatives from the three US carriers John Rec from Verizon, John Emra from AT&T, and Mike Bath from T-Mobile. So much work has gone into this for so many years with the MTA and the carriers that culminated in this launch, which is a first of many as we still have 300+ tunnels and 410+ miles of tunnels to launch. I know many people like Jeff Garte , Eric Mercer , and the local and marketing teams, must have felt, like me, very proud. I was very impressed with the local press reception of this news and recommend you take a look at the press conference. ?

I went to see Jamie and his team at the MTA afterwards for our regular review, where Jeff handed over a small "trophy" to mark the launch. Here are my two favourite pictures around this milestone.

While in NYC, I had the pleasure to visit our Private Network lab/centre at our midtown base station hotel (BHS) where we went through the ecosystem of architecture, partners, devices, and some of the use cases too.

And finally, here’s one of my personal stories…we filmed our One Boldyn internal podcast with Josh Reynolds , who basically ‘took it over’. No real way to fully describe it except that we filmed for 1.5 hours on a caleche in Central Park with so many surprises that could become a Netflix 7-episode series of "A romantic ride with Josh"… I had lots of fun!

London & Connected Britain

September was also the occasion for Connected Britain. Boldyn and our team in the UK had a fantastic double award win with the ‘Connected Innovation’ award with TfL and the ‘Community Improvement’ with Sunderland. Congratulations to the teams, speakers and winners! See my favourite picture of Seán Keating on stage with an intriguing slide!

While I was not able to attend the event, I spent a lot of time in our London office around leadership. It was great to re-start my skip level meetings, where I obtain lots of insights and ideas on what works well, areas of improvement, etc. …always extremely helpful for me. We have also been preparing one of our key leadership events of the year, Beyond, coming in October with a very exciting program, more to come on this one. I also spent a few hours with the leaders of our Advanced Leadership development program to talk about my journey, leadership, culture, what's important to me & Boldyn and how they can be the multiplier of our culture as key leaders. I "replicated" this and more with Telco Titans, an interesting independent digital telecom news outlet, which will trigger a piece of work that might be slightly uncomfortable for me to read but hopefully insightful about our business and our culture.

Board, Board and more Board

For the first time, we brought our Board to California as one of our key locations for our US & Global business. And what a great week we had at the Irvine office, starting Monday with that special coffee ?? and with my personal chauffeur Christos Karmis picking me up from the hotel.

And as the title says it all, no matter how many times we have done it, for a fast-developing business like ours that also requires shareholders' support for growth, preparing for one of the 3 main Board, Audit and HR committee meetings of the year was no small task. It was not about showing a rosy picture, it was about being open, honest, and transparent; showing what goes well, what does not go so well, what we are doing about it, and the progress and support towards our plans for the company’s growth. ?I met in advance with one of our main shareholder representatives, Max Biagosch (pictured), who unfortunately didn’t come to California due to a last-minute commitment. Having a person like Max (who sits on the CPP Investments Board) directly involved with us is very unusual for CPP to do and has been a great driver of our success.

The Board focused on our progress after the first 2 months of the financial year which is very encouraging, and other in-depth reviews including:

• Boldyn businesses in the US, UK & Ireland and Italy.
• A deep dive into our pipeline against our FY25 objectives but probably even more importantly against our long-term growth plans.
• TfL given the critical time in this gigantic and complex project.
• Important strategic developments of our business including private networks (in Europe and US), our venue-funded business, the evolution of the small cells demand (which shows good momentum in the UK/London), some of our most exciting "Transit" opportunities as well as fiber & the Military/FTTH.

Still in California…

This was our last face-to-face Board meeting of the year, and it was worth it, as we had the opportunity for a townhall with everyone at the Irvine office, followed by a nice gathering with food and (Californian I am afraid) wine outside. The many questions from our team allowed us to get perspectives from pretty much all board members about the way they feel about Boldyn, the positives, the areas that “keep them awake at night” etc.

The week on the West Coast allowed me to also record our 4th internal One Boldyn podcast. Here’s another personal story…I was told a few hours before the filming that we were going to the Balboa Island and filming on a boat! I was then asked to wear a captain hat (unfortunate picture below). I’m not sure the escalation around podcast filming is going to end well but putting this aside, it was great to feature Amanda Fitch who had a lot of inspiring things to say about her role but also running a demanding professional career and a large family. I’m looking forward to it!

A Book

And before I end my recap, see below a very interesting book I read in the last few weeks, in between trips. It’s called Hidden potential. It’s highly recommended, and don’t take my word for it only, it turns out it is one of Josh’s recommended books as well, he mentioned it to me during our adventurous Central Park podcast filming…who knew?

As I post this article, I am ending a busy and exciting week in Rome. Stay tuned for next month where I will talk about all things Italy. Until then, stay curious and keep leading boldly!