Gina Jacobs - Program Manager at San Diego International Airport Innovation Lab

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Welcome back. I'm your host, Neil Bloom. I am here in studio at Nest, coworking podcast studio. Thanks, guys for having us. And I'm with Gina Jacobs, program manager of the Airport Innovation Lab. Thanks for being here.

Hello.

So San Diego Airport is what we're going to be talking about and the fantastic program that you guys have built. But why don't you tell us a little about where you grew up? Where did you go to school?

So I am a San Diego native. I grew up in University Heights, went to school at private Catholic schools From kindergarten through 12th grade in San Diego, went to school in mission hills called St. Vincent's and then went to high school. It was called Uni at the time, but now it's Cathedral Catholic and also went to San Diego State.

Oh, wow. San Diego Unicorn. That's awesome. Go Aztecs. Right now on quite a run.

I know you can't buy tickets.

Hopefully when this goes live, they're still undefeated.

Yes.

Also in studio, we have Amy Chang. Hello. Staying with us from a previous episode. Thanks for hanging around.

I was excited that Gino is going to be interviewed.

Awesome. Well, we're going to get to know what's going on at the airport, but first, kind of want to talk about your kind of development, how you got to here. So you went to school here and you decided to stay in San Diego or did you move away at some point?

I moved away to Los Angeles for a couple of years. So I was working for UBS Financial Services and promoted to move up there and be a business analyst for their west coast team and their executive office. And I worked in downtown LA for two or three years and then started in grad school in San Diego, living in LA at the time and commuting back and forth. And this was in 2009 during the lovely recession and ultimately decided to move back to San Diego so I could apply all of my efforts to grad school in San Diego. And so I moved back down here and finished school and started working in the community again.

Okay, so I'm sure you, I mean, you grew up here, you knew you were going to end back up here or was that kind of opportunistic at that time frame?

My family is here, my husband's family is here. So we ultimately wanted to come back to San Diego. It's a fun place to live. It's hard to leave, to go someplace else for sure.

So at some point you made your way to amn.

Yes.

Which is where you and Amy worked together.

Yes. Yes.

That was a fun time.

Were you guys doing similar things or are you in different areas?

Very different areas. So I was working on kind of the compliance quality control team also wrote AMN Healthcare's very first corporate social responsibility report. I have an MBA in sustainability, so kind of a non traditional background. And so I helped write a report for them that we published with a bunch of different team members there and helped bring some transparency around sustainability issues at AMN Healthcare.

Interesting.

Yeah, that's a growing trend, especially at publicly traded companies and large companies. So Gina probably worked on one of the first types of those reports of its kind.

Yes.

And an interesting mba that also sounds like it was probably different and new at the time to pick that to study in as well as a concentration.

So I was working in financial services during the recession and did not want to focus on finance or marketing. I'm like, we need to find a better way to do business that's more sustainable for long term success. And so I found a program at Alliant International University here in San Diego. They had a green mba, which was rare. There's only a couple of them at the time. The same program also offered up in the Bay Area Presidio School. And so I went there and did a green MBA and learned about a whole other way that you can do business successfully and sustainably long term.

Interesting. So what did that look like? Kind of applying that to AMN over the once they said this is something we want to do, how did it go into actual application?

I through my graduate program, I became GRI certified. So GRI is a framework for writing sustainability reports. And I did a lot of core work while I was in grad school on sustainability working with Stone Brewing Company. I also wrote a report for them when they were still kind of growing at the time. And so I took all of that and wanted to help bring a lot of transparency and into all the wonderful things that AMN Healthcare was already doing, but also look at some opportunities that they had to maybe communicate better with their stakeholders externally about some things going on internally at AMN Healthcare.

Got it. Okay, so how'd you find your way to the airport?

Let's see. I was at a networking event and I ran into my former director of talent, culture and capability. His name is Kurt Goering. And he and I connected because I let him know I have a diverse background in MBA and sustainability, have kind of HR business background. And he said he wanted someone to come in and help with business strategy from a workforce standpoint at the airport. And they had a position open. And so I applied and got that position working underneath him and then worked there for a couple years. And then the opportunity became available for me to lead the innovation efforts at the Airport Authority.

So tell us, what was the beginnings of that innovation effort? I mean, didn't just. I'm sure it didn't start as like, hey, we want a lab or we want to just like help incubate startups. Who was that brainchild that was thinking of that and saying, this is, we want to get to this path.

So the idea really started with my current director, Rick Beliotti. He had been in the airport for a little while working as the director of IT and recognized that it's really hard for small businesses entrepreneurs to break into the airport space. We traditionally tried to work with the Same kind of people over and over again. And so we wanted to find an opportunity to bring in small local businesses, entrepreneurs that had new ways and new solutions to apply to the airport environment. And so he had the idea, secured the space from our former CEO Thela Bowens, and and then he kind of started the program on the foundational aspects of the program. Then I came in and really kind of laid the program framework out and built the program from the ground up.

Wow. What time frame was that? How long ago?

That was June of 2018.

Oh, not that long ago.

No.

Oh, wow.

What outcomes have you seen so far? How many companies have come through or what's the most interesting tech that you guys have implemented at the airport?

So we've had 16 companies come through. Maybe not the most interesting tech, but the most interesting solution I've seen come through was CRE Guitars. Jonathan Spangler, a really cool idea. I mean he has a fully foldable rock quality electric guitar that you can put in the seat in front of you on an airplane. And that is just a really, really innovative idea. I don't know that there's any actually out there in the market that can compete with him. So that's really cool. And we brought him through the lab.

Very cool. So can you explain the actual program itself, how it works and the time frame?

Yes. So we offer two four month programs a year. They kick off in the spring and in the late fall time period, so March and usually August. The programs have like workshops weekly on how to become a sustainable startup business. And also we have airport specific content because our environment is hugely complicated and we want to orient the companies to working in our environment. So we partner them with airport experts in a variety of fields based on their solution and help them ultimately work towards doing a control test in our innovation lab or an applicable environment. And then we also, if they pass that level, we put them into a passenger facing environment where they can test with actual passengers.

Okay. And so not every company gets to go through phase two.

No.

How many do you know percentage wise?

I can't think off the top of my head. I've only had a couple that didn't get to go through to the actual testing. We work in a very compliance driven environment. So certain things like safety, you know, ADA compliance, those things do come up and we have to adhere to them because we're in a public environment.

Do you want to talk about any other companies that have gone through?

Had so many.

I can bring one up. I've invested in one of them at your gate.

Yes.

One of the first that went through. Right. Were they in the first class?

Yes. So at yout gate was. So first there was fuel rod, which was prior, kind of like the pre. Pre innovation lab program. They worked through and tested their solution with Rick and a couple others in the airport. And then we had at your gate who submitted to a traditional RFP or request for proposal in our environment to bring a dining solution, a mobile dining solution into the airport. And they worked with us for over a year and a half and they're still there today and they're hugely successful. They basically. It's like Uber eats at an airport. They bring your food to the gate wherever you are.

Yeah, it's exciting. It's validating that. This week Starbucks announced that they're going to start trying to do that in certain airports, which I think is complete validation of their model.

Yes.

Which is awesome. So one thing we didn't really touch on is the space that you guys have, which came from kind of shutting down the commuter terminal, right?

Yes.

And so you have this pretty much airport. You have an airport that is not being used, that is fully functional from pretty much. Right. From someone driving in all the way to getting on the plane.

Yes. So our office buildings are actually in the old commuter terminal. So I think around 2014 or so they. Or maybe earlier they deactivated that terminal space. So usually you would fly from San Diego to Los Angeles and back through that terminal. When they deactivated that terminal, there was extra space on the first floor that was not being used. And it used to be ticket counters and baggage carousels. And so basically we were able to acquire that space and it operates as like a mini terminal. And so companies can come in and test their prototypes and iterate their prototypes within the actual lab itself and within that space. And we have flight displays and kind of. It's really a mini airport environment. It's around 3,000 square feet.

Do most companies take advantage of it, utilize it or. I'm guessing. I mean, the guitar. Not necessarily. Don't need the. Or I don't know, maybe you're testing.

Really?

Okay.

So we require all the companies to do their first round of testing in a controlled environment. And a lot of that does take place in the lab unless they're doing something in a parking lot or off site.

Okay, got it.

Are you forming any relationships with the other airport authorities so that the incubated companies have the opportunity to expand into other airports?

Yeah. So in our environment, we are working with peer airports across the country that are Kind of like friendly to innovation. And if they contract with, if we contract with one of these companies, there is the potential for another airport to piggyback on top of that contract. And we also can help them draft up their scope of work and information that they can then use to be a better candidate for another rfp or, you know, reach out to our peers across the country and say, hey, we've got this great company. Or they can reach out to us and see what mechanisms they have to bring that company into their environment. So it really does help reduce that barrier to entry across the industry.

Have you seen other airports pretty much start something like this or are you still kind of the only one?

We are the only one with a fully functioning lab program with dedicated space. Other airports are doing pilot programs or partnering with co working spaces or other incubators within the city, but we're the only one that has everything on site.

Wow.

Are you seeing companies mostly from San Diego or are the companies coming through nationwide because your program is so special globally?

So our most recent cohort we had a company from Australia. They had a concept called Noodle Cart. It's a loose parts children's play cart that can be created into unlimited setups for kids to play and there's no electronics. It's all kind of like a play system for kids. It's awesome. And so they wanted to break into the airport space, but they're based out of Australia and they participated in our program. Cool.

Very cool. What are you looking for in future companies? Are there areas where, you know you're missing and you're saying we want to have, I don't know, this kind of thesis going forward or is it going to be pretty broad always.

So our most recent opportunity that we just closed was Waste Management Solutions. So we're working through some of that right now and we'll have another program kicking off on March 18th. And then beyond that, we will be looking to find solutions in the autonomous connectivity or autonomous transit sector really to help drive transit in the region here in San Diego. So we're looking to do that in the future as well.

Very cool. Do you poll kind of the other employees and say, hey, of the airport, what do we need some innovation in? Is that how some of these come about?

I do a bunch of stakeholder meetings with different department heads and managers across the organization and the waste Management solution came from that because we wanted to figure out how we can utilize the lab to solve real business issues that our employees are facing on a day to day basis. And Processing large volumes of waste on an airport is very expensive. And so we wanted to see what we can find to help with that solution. And we have really strong sustainability strategy, and so we wanted to really align those two together. And so this is one mechanism to do that. And then we're looking to the transit sector next because we know there's a lot of things happening within that segment right now, and we'd like to see what we can apply in our environment.

Really cool. So you said batch is just closed?

Yes.

So when will the next application process open?

Let's see. The next program will start in August. We'll probably start the application process in around May.

Okay. Not too far away.

No.

And the best place to find stuff. Online or social? Both.

Best place is to go to innovate.san.org that's where we post a link to our application on there and all sorts of information on the program itself. And we even include all of our agreements that the company is required to sign as well. Just we're fully transparent of what you're signing up for.

Awesome. Well, you're born and raised San Diegan, so you've had your fair share of tacos, so I can't. Maybe you don't just have one spot, but do you have a few favorites?

El Zarape on Park Boulevard, because it's in my neighborhood that I grew up in. And Salud in Bar Logan.

Definitely. Do you have a favorite taco at those places?

I'm, like, mostly vegetarian, so they have some really good vegetarian options at Salud.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, Gina, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for opening the doors of the San Diego airport to help incubate our companies and we're really excited to see what else comes through.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest coworking in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter neilbloom as well as Fresh Bread, Food, Tech and tacos in tech Pod on Twitter too.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos? Tacos in tech. You know we got it.

Hey.

It.