Jeannie Kwon & Jaidev Sankar on the Past, Present, and Future of Amtrak and its Mega Programs
Jeannie Kwon & Jaidev Sankar on the Past, Present, and Future of Amtrak and its Mega Programs
This is not a PR outing for Amtrak; the service is actually and surely improving. Meet the a few of the people behind the sea change.
Hello, friends and loyal readers who’ve stuck with my noticeable absence in the last few months. I’ve been around the world a couple of times and continue to try to report back and I find myself blocked with nothing interesting to say or report, or exhausted with no energy to say it. In the next few weeks, I’m going to assess what to do with this site and try to report back with a more reasonable and consistent schedule.
ANYWAY, I’m back today with another great interview I conducted a few months back with some of Amtrak’s planning and delivery staff (and some comms/government friends to help fill in some gaps). I’m writing this introduction from a window seat on Amtrak’s most recent state-supported route: the Borealis with service from St. Paul, MN to Chicago, IL. This service runs complementary to the Empire Builder and offers an additional daily afternoon service in 9 intermediate stops and terminus points in the Twin and Windy Cities, respectively. It’s slow and steady. My trip will take just under 7h30m, so it’s a good 3 hours longer than a plane trip (all in—including first/last mile to both airports, security, delays, etc.) and/or a car trip (including traffic, pit stops, parking search), but what I get in return is a comfortable journey; I don’t have to deal with airport security and I don’t have to pay attention to the road.
All for $50—about $7/hour.
Because of the time dilation between interview and publish (and the fact that we did this interview before the service opened May 21, 2024), Jeannie, Jay, and I didn’t get a chance to talk about this service—and the fact that the demand is bursting at the ties; so much so that electeds are already considering additional service to beef up ridership even more, bolstered by, incredibly, profit. According to the Star Tribune (and Amtrak’s published financials):
Borealis operates under a contract Amtrak has with the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois. In its first 11 days, more than 6,600 travelers rode the line, according to the railroad's Monthly Performance Report through the end of May. The document also showed Borealis took in $600,000 in revenue and spent $500,000 on operations. The $100,000 profit made Borealis one of only two state-sponsored lines to operate in the black, the report showed. Amtrak has 30 state-sponsored lines.
I was, however, thrilled to talk with Jeannie and Jay for about an hour about the challenges and opportunities that come with planning and delivering modern service for a modern traveler—and what’s next.
As Amtrak leans toward its next 50 years, we’ll need to ensure that the outcomes match the inputs. They’re well on their way—keep reading.
This interview has been edited for content and length.
I joined Amtrak about two years ago. As the Vice President of Infrastructure Project Delivery within the new Capital Delivery group at Amtrak, I'm responsible for delivering some of our key and major projects on the Northeast corridor and across the National Network. This ranges from turnout replacements, track resurfacing, and rail replacements, all the way up to some of the larger projects, including a project focused on tunnels in Baltimore, a bridge in Connecticut and supporting the Gateway Program delivery. I'm based in New York, and it's great to be here.
I’m going to amend that—he doesn't support the Gateway Program delivery—he delivers it.
I'm the Vice President of Mega Program Development and Coordination at Amtrak, also in the Capital Delivery department. Additionally, I’m responsible for Amtrak’s Major Stations—New York Penn Station, Chicago Union Station, Baltimore Penn Station, and Washington DC Union Station.
Sam Sklar
How do your offices work together?
Jaidev Sankar
It's interesting, right? So in Jeannie’s previous role at Amtrak, we probably had more commonality in our mission —delivering the projects with this newly formed group that Jeannie is now leading. It’s an extension of the philosophy that [Amtrak Executive Vice President of Capital] Laura Mason put together in our department, which was, “We want to be able to shepherd projects from the planning phase through delivery,” which includes program development, getting our stakeholder agreements together, working with partners to create a delivery strategy—that will then be handed off to folks like me to execute.
Where we overlap the most is for the Gateway Program. As those individual projects that comprise the larger program get developed and moved to the delivery phase, my team picks it up. So a good example would be the work that Jeannie’s team has done in terms of getting the agreements together for Hudson Yards Casing Three, or HYCC-3, for the work that's started with the tunneling contracts for the new Hudson River Tunnel. Jeannie’s team was involved in the early development of the agreements. Now my team is building up to take that over from her team, and then take it through delivery working with our partners, and working very closely with the Gateway Development Corporation.
Jeannie Kwon
As we're looking at constructability, bringing Jay in early as the delivery lead helps his team deliver down the line. They are the ones in the trenches doing that work. There's a question of best practices and ensuring all that expertise and knowledge also gets integrated into the way we think about setting up these projects as we're studying them and doing the early engineering work.
Including Jay’s team, having folks in station operations, transportation operations, and maintenance to sit in on workshops that we're having is essential. They've got to provide input: what is possible from a constructability point of view, and then the outages. There are a whole number of coordination touch points at Amtrak, and the most vital is with the delivery team and bringing them in to provide their inputs during project development.
And his office is next to mine. So you know, we're constantly yelling at each other: I listen to Jay complain; that's another way we interact.
Sam Sklar
I want to talk about the philosophy of rail. This country has very deep experience building rail, way back into the early 1800s. The freight railroads used to carry passengers up until 1971 when Congress passed Amtrak's enabling legislation, called the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970.
That law broke passenger service away from freight rail, although six to seven freight rail companies still own about 95% of the long-distance rail in this country.
What's the relationship like with these freight railroads? Is there a future where everyone can get along?
Jeannie Kwon
Totally. I love that you've asked this question.
In my portfolio, I've got Gateway in New York, in the Midwest, Chicago’s Hub Improvement Program, and Washington Union Station expansion in DC. There's so much history with these freight railroads—the big ones have bought up the old, smaller freight railroads. We've got operating agreement metrics and we've got rights when it comes to preference—but there is very real tension about preference and delays because we're often running on host railroad trackage and they have the dispatching…
The future is optimistic. So for example, in Chicago there is an FRA-led study that has Amtrak, all the states in the Midwestern region, and all of the freight railroads sitting around the table to talk about how we deconflict, the freight and the passenger movements in the spaghetti that is Chicago.
Sometimes I look at this situation as, “Oh, we're their children, and they want us to get along.”
On a more serious note, the vision is, “How do we create and sustain the health of both freight and passenger rail? Freight rail is so vital to the economy, especially in a place like Chicago, which is the heart of freight rail operations.
That’s the exercise that we're doing right now. There's so much partnership. I'm involved with CREATE, a freight railroad coalition dubbed the “Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency” program, led by IDOT, we're there, and Metra is there. We've got regular meetings with Union Pacific and Canadian National to coordinate the future programs we're seeking funding for.
I do think we all have the same goals, and it's just a question of how we get there. How do we separate reliability for their commercial activities, our reliability as a state-supported contractor, and our long-distance service, etc?
There's a lot that we're working on, and the future looks bright.
Sam Sklar
What changed?
Jeannie Kwon
We’ve pivoted in terms of the philosophy. We have a more all-encompassing regional view—a lot of it is under the FRA’s guidance—none of our work can happen without their direction, the leadership of these freight railroads, and the leadership of the congressional delegation. Everybody's just been stepping up—and we're all committed to doing this together.
Jaidev Sankar
We have to have that collaboration and open lines of communication with the freights because as we deliver projects, we not only have to deal with commuter partners but also our freight rail partners. Having them in the mix on how we're planning and executing projects is going to be key for us to be able to stay on schedule, and meet our cost targets for these projects.
It's pivoting that relationship toward a more collaborative one so that we're bringing them in, as opposed to treating them as a separate entity. I'm seeing some positive movement.
There was a collaboration with Norfolk Southern on the outage along the Harrisburg Line. They were a key partner for the monumental opportunity for us to catch up on our state of good repair efforts to improve service for those customers riding in Pennsylvania. That’s a positive example of what’s actually being implemented right now.
Sam Sklar
Right now, the way for me to get from New York to Chicago is a 19-hour train (without delay) that goes up throughout Albany and across upstate New York, down through Erie, Pennsylvania, around the Great Lakes and rumbles through Ohio and Indiana before terminating in Chicago. In reality, this distance as the crow flies, between New York and Chicago, is really close to that between Beijing to Shanghaii.
My question: what would it take for us to be able to get a high-speed rail connection between New York and Chicago?
Jason Abrams
I would answer your question in two ways: one is [capital] investment. We need to have the money to do a lot of improvements. So, upgrading the rail itself: straightening the track so trains don't have to slow down—even though our new Acela fleet will be able to lean into the turns—but having straight, updated, and upgraded infrastructure will go a long way.
We discussed the Frederick Douglass Tunnel project in Baltimore, on the Northeast Corridor . Right now, our trains have to slow down to 30MPH to pass through and it takes more than a mile for a train to stop. So, if a train is going over 100 MPH, think of how long it needs to take to slow down to 30MPH, and then to speed back up to travel speed. With a new tunnel, that maneuver will be a thing of the past
Two: I would lean into partnership; having everybody at the table. We're at this moment for rail infrastructure, DOT, FRA, Amtrak, freights, and commuters are all working on the same page. And we are in the middle of administering these generational investments that we haven't had in 110-plus-years—as old as this infrastructure currently is.
W. Kyle Anderson
The IIJA was such an important moment to get us where we are today. And the Corridor ID program is a good example: FRA announced 69 corridors in December 2023 that are prime for enhanced or expanded service. And part of that partnership is the states submitting their own suggestions of what routes would be best. Part of it is the long-distance study that FRA is doing on restoring some old Amtrak routes that no longer exist.
Since Amtrak's conception in the 70s, we haven't had the opportunity we have today to upgrade these assets that are 100-plus-years old, along the Northeast Corridor that are going to be much more reliable and efficient for our customers. We’re also looking at expanding for the future. As Jeannie was saying, with CHIP, we’ve got opportunities to unlock Midwest state-supported corridor services for running faster speeds—that were really not imaginable 10 or 15 years ago. It’s taken baby steps to get there. But Jeannie’s and Jay’s teams are doing a lot with the project delivery aspect to execute these big projects to get to where we’re talking about going.
Sam Sklar
Is there an example you can point to of something that you found out or something that you learned through the collaborative process or through your just day-to-day job where you're like, “Oh, my God, I can't believe that this little rule or process exists that's preventing us from doing all this stuff,” or an arcane rule or law that you didn’t know about before?
Not necessarily the big stuff, like the partnerships, but a small thing, like, “Oh, there needs to be a stub track here,” and it's three months arguing over whether there needs to be a stub track here, and that's preventing the entire project from moving forward.
Jeannie Kwon
I really wish it was that simple. If there was something quick and easy like that it would have been discovered.
One of the things you do realize is that some of the challenges are extremely complex, which is why Amtrak, the states, the various other agencies that we collaborate with, the freight railroads that we work with, have been at it for quite some time.
If there's anything, I think would be the opposite of simple—this is extremely complex. It does cause a lot of brain damage [Ed. I don’t know if I have to tag this, but this was a joke.], because it's not easy. Rail planning involves a lot of people; it involves governments and states. It also involves companies that are owned by shareholders—and they have their own processes that they have to go through.
Sam Sklar
I’m not asking about the “big thing”. It's not the partnership with UP or CSX—it’s an arcane law, or rule, or procedure. Why things take so long is the question. It's not necessarily the big things, because those are the easy things that we can get to around a table. Is it big things? Or small things? Or both?
Jaidev Sankar
It is both. There are plenty of examples where regulatory approvals have been challenging—that's not any surprise. I can name multiple projects where we need a permit here and we need a permit there. There was a recognition by not just Amtrak, but also our partners at the FRA and FTA, for example, because they realized that we have an unprecedented opportunity here.
With this investment in passenger rail infrastructure, what we, as a collective group want to make sure of, is that this is the first time we get this kind of funding. This is what we’re calling IIJA Round One. We want to be able to show the public and riders and, and are the people that pay the bills—the taxpayers—that we can be good shepherds of their money and deliver benefits on the money that they're investing.
The FRA and FTA are collaborating in ways I've never seen—they have recognized that oftentimes their processes are long. They recognize that when they share projects, especially the projects that Amtrak is involved with, there is an interaction that they're just not used to managing. So there's been dialogue between the two agencies. They're streamlining all sorts of processes from real estate, to approvals, to understanding who lead agencies are.
There's an incredible collaboration that's been driven by the investments.
Does that mean we don't have issues? No. But I do think that as we stand up our team, and we get to understand what the requirements are, there's an openness to having discussions about changing things so that the intent of those approvals is still met. They're not as cumbersome as they were because there's a collective pull in the same direction for the first time that I've ever seen. And I've been a consultant all my life until I joined Amtrak. So I've seen it from the outside.
Sam Sklar
There are only so many times you can go back to the public with your hands out and say, “More, please!” and the history has not been good; and it's a long history,
It's delivery, but it's also communications. We are laughably bad at communicating our wins as a transportation community. We are historically bad about saying the thing out loud—just acknowledging that there's a problem and saying it in a way where people can understand why this problem is happening. No pun intended, but our poor comms constructs this bridge and divides the riders and customers from service providers. Why does the MTA do this? Why doesn't Amtrak do this?
I'm seeing that philosophy starting to change as well. The communication strategy has been slowly getting better, and everyone's got to find their footing. Because you want to say the truth without necessarily causing panic or harm to a project, there are certain things you can and can't say, things you are legally allowed and not allowed to say.
How are you sharing learnings and findings among the internal project teams? And then how does that translate into a larger strategy about rebuilding Amtrak's reputation as a provider of high-quality transportation services?
W. Kyle Anderson
Laura recently spoke about when she stood up Amtrak’s Capital Delivery department a couple of years ago, she said the focus was on streamlining teams among the work product that you're delivering, and not just the work product you’re delivering regionally. We've got the fleet team, infrastructure team, stations team shared among the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, the East River Tunnel, the Susquehanna Bridge, the Connecticut River Bridge, and more.
How are you talking across those lines? As some projects kick off construction, others are still in planning—we’re thinking about the whole megaprogram portfolio.
Jeannie Kwon
We do have folks who are 100% dedicated to thinking about the comms strategy and working with the greater communications and government affairs group. They've got to straddle quite a number of different geographies and projects.
When you get into megaproject territory—$1 billion or more—stakeholder outreach and communications management is so vital to the project.
Thinking about my time on New York MTA’s Second Avenue subway project (which is where I first met Jay), there are so many unknowns. Through an engineering exercise, you'll go through the risk register, you'll do a Monte Carlo with the federal agency that is looking at it, but stuff goes wrong. In construction, there are so many variables; there are so many humans working on a project, right? There are so many various processes that lead into it, whether it’s a long-lead procurement item not getting there on time or all of a sudden the tunnel boring machine’s got problems and it's already 30 feet in and it started boring…but we don't know what these problems are in advance.
You've got to be a good steward of the public dollars for these mega projects, which are so expensive. You're basically building in some folks’ backyards, and in New York, we were in people's front yards, 10 feet [from a store or a front door] on the Upper East Side, jackhammering for months.
There's just so much construction that needs to be managed…there's everything like MPT (the maintenance and protection of traffic), sanitation, air quality…which is why in the megaprogram portfolio, we are a part of comms for the life of the project. We don't let go entirely when a project moves into delivery, right? Our role becomes less primary from the engineering point of view, but we are very involved when it comes to helping the delivery team with stakeholder management and communications management.
From past experience, everybody has got to be a communications person from your foreman down to your skilled tradesperson, because they're all interacting with the community. For broader strategic comms, we have all of our top touchpoints internally to discuss, but when it comes to the execution piece of it, it's like, everybody's got to be thinking about how we communicate better. How do we look? How do we not surprise the community?
And there are certainly a lot of lessons learned from the regions because this is the first generation of these types of infrastructure projects. A lot of those folks who have that experience and that expertise work at Amtrak.
Jaidev Sankar
The projects don't get delivered by me and Jeannie, right? My role is to connect the dots and connect people.
So to your point about, “How do you leverage lessons learned on Susquehanna River Bridge to a Connecticut River Bridge or even to the Frederick Douglass Tunnel? We're constantly learning the process and learning how Amtrak is going to be able to manage and stand up teams to deliver on these projects.
For example, say hypothetically we've had issues with procurement on the Susquehanna River Bridge, we want to make sure that we modify our Terms and Conditions, our contracts, or RFPs, on other projects, and vice versa.
So it's sharing real-time learning across teams—we have regular meetings with the teams working [on different projects across the organization] and it’s really, really critical for people that have been at Amtrak for a long time to know that resources have been building up around them as we're standing up this capital delivery group. We're trying to build a sustainable and cross-functional org, that can not only manage the projects from the planning through execution but also make sure that along the way we're not tripping up on the same mistakes. It’s a work in progress, but we do have some formalized procedures that have been set up by the team that sits next to me and Jeannie, the team that's called “Project Services,” which is the Center of Excellence for project management, cost control, and schedule control. We're building up those capabilities to make sure that we're feeding back and so that there’s continuous improvement,
What we're doing right now is picking up on the things that people at Amtrak have been doing for many years, and then taking them forward. It takes all of us to be able to get these projects delivered. It's constantly making sure that people are aware of what's going on.
Sam Sklar
There's a there's a meta-point here about resiliency, not necessarily of the projects themselves, but of the people working at the org. Amtrak has gone through many leadership changes and is going to continue to go through leadership changes, so how are you ensuring that these standards are spread so far and wide that a change that leadership can’t sweep up projects they personally don’t like? It's about building systems and bringing people along.
I would venture a guess that not everyone agrees with the new approach of spending so much time on communications compared to value engineering to get a project done. I've been in rooms where there's just a lot of hemming and hawing from the old guard.
From an engineering perspective—people who don't necessarily do comms in their day-to-day work or whose job description doesn’t specifically describe comms—how have you found those conversations to go? Are you seeing that the engineers are more open to different types of procedures or is it a lot of dragging people along until they see results?
Jaidev Sankar
It starts at the top. Stephen Gardner [Amtrak’s CEO] recognized very early that with the investment that Amtrak is getting through the IIJA, we have to pivot from just being an operator to an operator and a builder. Amtrak is receiving more money through the IIJA than it has received in its entire 50-year history combined. So there was this immediate recognition that we needed to stand up a different process for how we actually execute projects..and still run trains. So he brought in Laura, and then we developed the capital delivery team.
The way that we’re structuring the capital delivery team at Amtrak, is we're going to be the builders—that doesn't mean that we’re not preserving our service: safe, reliable service that meets our on-time performance targets.
Communication is a common theme here. We've been able to align our commercial teams, our transportation teams, and our corporate communications teams around how we facilitate the project work. What does that alignment then do to the way that we look to run our trains and deliver on the transportation mandate that we have?
Amtrak is a 50-year-old agency; it always takes time for culture change. I would literally say, Sam, from the time I started just under two years ago to now, the nature of the conversations about needing track access to deliver x project have turned from more challenging to less challenging—that doesn't mean track access isn’t still challenging. After all, we still have to run those trains, and there was a recognition that we have to figure out ways of working with our partners at the MTA, New Jersey Transit [on Penn Station Access, for example] to open up overnight windows to get work done. We've opened up windows for Portal North [Ed: A bridge replacement in New Jersey that’s on time and on budget] so that the contractor team there can actually get work done along the right-of-way to set some critical elements over both tracks, which you don't want to do a track in service.
For Penn Station Access along the Hell Gate Line [between Sunnyside, Queens, and New Rochelle, Westchester], we've opened up many hours of overnight work windows by modifying our train schedules, which Amtrak hadn’t really thought about in the past. But there's a recognition from the top that has driven down through the organization so that we're all working together to figure this really tough problem out—it is not easy to run trains and deliver construction projects on adjacent tracks.
Jeannie Kwon
How do you sustain a continuity of best practice of excellence and performance, when you have folks who are leaving? We had to build an organization when IIJA was announced. That organization has been built; we're about two years old and already we've had to change. You don’t just add a division within a company to execute these billions and billions of dollars of work—the rest of the company has to grow and change along with us: the management team and the frontline contracts have to change. There’s law, procurement, hiring, controls that need to change, and project finance. The whole company has had to change in response to the creation and development of capital delivery. Capital delivery is on track to be 700 people by the end of this year…
Jaidev Sankar
…aggregated up from between 200 and 300.
Jeannie Kwon
I've worked at other railroads before and this is not unique to Amtrak, or quite frankly, any other organization, especially when you're standing up something that feels new and is evolutionary and transformative. There's also a lot of opportunity—but you said it, Sam, you have to create systems.
It is absolutely about people, but you need the systems, you need the policies, you need the procedures, you need the standards, you need the protocols in place, and we've had to create that in two years. We've had to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, figure out what still works, and then also what needs to grow.
The way capital delivery is set up organizationally, as you have a Center of Excellence creates those policies and procedures, and guess what..? We needed a policy on change orders. [Jaidev: We needed a policy on creating policy!] It's not a “back to basics”—it’s creating the basics and the fundamentals. It's incredible what's been accomplished here, and part of why I was really excited to come to Amtrak and why I think people are excited to come to Amtrak is we've got so much done—these projects are going to become real.
Jaidev Sankar
We're not afraid to make changes to align with where we are in our growth. It was a recognition of the projects that we have to manage and the way that we need to manage our larger programs, that created Jeannie’s role, which never existed before. I love the fact that we're also not afraid to revisit what we've done and see if it still makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, we're pivoting to make sure we are adapting to the situation that we're in.
Sam Sklar
It’s the little things that help to build the big things that wouldn't necessarily be so obvious to a bystander [or a Congressperson]: you need a policy on change management or you need a policy on making policy. And these things add time and complexity from the inception of an idea of, “We want to build x all the way down to the customers, who might want to take a train—they don't care about Amtrak’s best practices. Their goal is to go from Boston to New York without a million problems along the way.
It's building that external trust through building internal process at the end of the day. The little things may be arcane and boring to most people [not to me, says me], but procurement is really challenging. on its own and throw in “Buy America” provisions, and the challenge of procurement is compounded—but the publics just want safe comfortable trips and they don't care how you do it, and the popular media also doesn’t care how you do it. Bridging that gap is a communications challenge, to say the least—do you start with why? How do you maintain favorability through constant setbacks?
W. Kyle Anderson
We did a survey last year [in 2023] asking what people want for the future of rail. This one was not specifically about customer satisfaction, but our ridership approaching record levels this year [in 2024] from 2019 is one way to calculate that. Something like 83% of respondents shared that they were supportive of the IIJA investments that Congress passed to invest in passenger rail. A good point is people are favorable to the infrastructure investments that we're making and not just the service we're operating.
Sam Sklar
People are starting to see the outcomes of our investments and not just talking about the eventual outcomes of our investments, which we do a lot of in this country: lots of yapping about how our infrastructure is failing but little in the way of delivery. That’s changing.
What's one thing that you see Brightline [a private operator that’s running service in South Florida and *knocks on wood* eventually from Los Angeles to Las Vegas] doing particularly well, that you’d bring to the Amtrak way of doing things?
W. Kyle Anderson
The fleet team in Capital Delivery gets a lot of positive remarks from riders about the equipment that Brightline operates. They've got Siemens [German in name] train sets, which we're also purchasing for our Airo service, and are practically the same with some modifications. It was in some ways surprising to learn just how much people really care about the equipment they ride on. The fact our fleet has lasted us 40-50 years is amazing in its own right! Everyone rides Brightline and says, “Oh my God, the trains are amazing—why can't Amtrak be like this!” We’re soon adding very similar modern trains to Amtrak routes, and they’re on the way!
Sam Sklar
At the end of the day, it's building legibility and building that demand for rail—and people want more rail The biggest takeaway for Brightline is the positive PR saying, “Okay, I do want to ride this, even though this service is more expensive than flying or driving. There are other benefits to me, and I want this in my home state.” There’s a missing touchpoint that needs to be made [by who? to whom?] regarding how we communicate these positive polling subjects to elected representatives. What's the pathway there? And I think that's an area ripe for a lot of growth we can have in our local- and state-level conversations. That's not either of your jobs per se, but it does affect the global ability to get more money to build things in the future.
Any last thoughts?
Jaidev Sankar
Being new to this side of the business and joining an agency for the first time, what's striking to me every single day is how dedicated and excited people are here, which is an incredible opportunity for Amtrak. I didn’t think that we had that kind of reputational draw in the past. Without the metrics, I do think the level of talent that we're attracting to help us deliver on these programs is just phenomenal. That's been a real bright spot for me.
Jeannie Kwon
Given the mandate, and how challenging it is, and given the opportunities, the talent, and the culture that we have cultivated, led by our CEO, Stephen Gardner, President Roger Harris, our executive leadership team, including our EVP Laura Mason…there's an incredible amount of drive. The thinking is very modern when it comes to the way that the leadership of the company thinks and the ideas that they promote: how do we actually want to partner and be collaborative and what does the partnership look like? It's really refreshing and is not only what attracts people but also what keeps a lot of employees here. I have zero buyer's remorse—I'm working harder than I ever have—because there's so much passion and pride here.