Heidi DiAngelo, Strategic Business Development Director at Ridecell, provides valuable insights into the impact women have on the transportation industry, the importance of mentorship through her fleet-based career journey and advice for women looking to enter the industry today.
https://ridecell.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ridecell/
https://twitter.com/ridecell
Heidi DiAngelo, Strategic Business Development Director at Ridecell, provides valuable insights into the impact women have on the transportation industry, the importance of mentorship through her fleet-based career journey and advice for women looking to enter the industry today.
https://ridecell.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ridecell/
https://twitter.com/ridecell
Stacey Papp:
Welcome to the Mile Marker podcast. My name is Stacey Papp and I will be your guide, taking you on a journey into the world of fleet automation and shared mobility focusing on innovations for businesses with fleets.
To say that I'm incredibly excited about this podcast today is an understatement. Joining me today is Heidi DiAngelo, strategic business development director. Heidi joins us at Ridecell with over 20 years experience in the fleet industry and her love of strategy combined with her unique ability to solve the toughest of mobility challenges has really given her extensive knowledge on how the world of mobility is evolving. Her passion for storytelling and finding the right solutions help her guide customers on their journey to stay up to speed in a changing technological world. Heidi, welcome to the podcast. It is so great to have you here today.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Thanks, Stacey. It's great to be here. I'm excited to talk to everybody who's on today.
Stacey Papp:
So I want to start off with a really important question, and it's going to sound strange, but I think it's important to see where you started to get to the point where you've evolved to in your career. So what was your dream job as a child?
Heidi DiAngelo:
Yeah, let's go. So my dream job as a child, believe it or not, was a biologist. I wanted to be a marine biologist and especially wanted to train killer whales because I thought that would be super adventurous and exciting and challenging. And I was a swimmer, so I'd be in the water a lot with these beasts. They seem like to me the perfect beast to work with. So I went to college to study biology.
Stacey Papp:
So now you're here in transportation.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Makes sense, right?
Stacey Papp:
Right. I know you spent a good portion of your career in fleet management, so how'd you get here?
Heidi DiAngelo:
Right. Well, actually it's all been in fleet. So I did get a master's degree in intercultural communications and I was trying to get a job out of that master's degree and I landed a temporary job at organization that most people, most of our listeners will probably know, which is PHH Arval. And it was just supposed to be a temp job, and I will never forget the first person, I knew I love to name-drop because there are some really special people in this industry, and that person was Lou Wagner and he was retired police officer and he managed the fleet at the organization for the salespeople and the internal drivers. And he met me at the elevators and said, "Hey, so you going to take the job?" And I said, "I didn't know there was a job, I just thought is temp job." And he said, "No, there's a job." And he said, "You got to take it?" I said, "Well, I don't know."
I remember walking down the hall and just the whole building was the bustle of people, excited to be there, taking care of each other, taking care of customers, and it wasn't long before I was having a conversation with my then boss about staying. And so in short, Stacey, it was the people, people, people. I love the people and maybe it was a little bit like an ecosystem.
Stacey Papp:
Back to your marine biology roots. Here we go.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Yeah, go back to biology. Exactly. I think maybe it was a little bit like an ecosystem. It definitely reminded me of college, people were just excited for life and working together for the good of other people. So that was back in 2004.
Stacey Papp:
That makes a big difference, like when you see people that are energized and just really at the ready to help, that really changes your perception. You almost have a little bit of fear of missing out like, "I really want to be here, so I want to feel what they feel."
Heidi DiAngelo:
Yeah. So I gave up whatever track I was on and I said, "This is the place for me." And eventually it came back to global, which I was so ecstatic about because I got to work with people from all over the world and I just kept going.
Stacey Papp:
So that's where your cultural studies as a master's degree came in-
Heidi DiAngelo:
You bet.
Stacey Papp:
... it sounds like.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Absolutely.
Stacey Papp:
Talk to us about some of the biggest challenges you faced and overcome as a woman in the transportation industry.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Yeah. I mean, I think the reality is we all face challenges. No matter who you are or where you're coming from, there's challenges when you're trying to accomplish something. And I think the beauty comes, Stacey, when you get to work with other people through those challenges so you can grow from those challenges, you become a better person because of them and you get to encourage people along the way. And the fleet industry is really kind of beautiful because it started around 1940, so it was born out of this desire to help large companies that didn't want to own their vehicles, they wanted to lease their vehicles and they wanted someone to take care of all the services and consult around all those services, take care of it from end to end. So perhaps young, beginning it was not such a popular profession for women, but that has really changed over the years.
And even when I was at PHH, there was many, many women that I got to work with that was encouraging for me. I would say one of the challenges that we face in fleet is the challenge that any woman faces, which is balancing your family and work life. But I would say that over time, especially in really cool organizations like Women in Fleet, which many of our listeners are probably aware of, and so this is where I'm going to do another shout out, which is going to be to Lori Olson, she works at GEOTAB today, but she does a lot with Women in Fleet and a lot of women do. And it was born out of a desire to work together and to really, this is an important word, I think celebrate women in the workforce. And I think there's a history maybe of thinking that women should look like men or they should act like men who are successful.
So there's this idea of maybe becoming more man-like, stronger, more cutthroat potentially. These are just some of our stereotypes of maybe what a successful person might look like in the workforce. But I think what's really been cool about the evolution in fleet management and probably outside of that too, is that we've become to get excited about women working alongside of men and gotten excited about the special characteristics and life experiences, I think, that women can bring to the boardroom as daughters, as sisters, as mothers, as friends of women, as friends of men who have a women's perspective.
All of those things bring a special element, it brings diversity, I think, to the boardroom and to the workforce. And I think that even if you look at Women in Fleet, which is a great example, it's not a club for women, it's a club for people in fleet management, men and women alike who say, "Hey, it's valuable to be working alongside women and having that different perspective. So that has been really fantastic. And the mentorship that's involved with Women in Fleet is something that I think has really lifted things as well. So I always encourage women, we're getting started to find a mentor and to be a mentor if you have that opportunity.
Stacey Papp:
I think you touched on something really important that I'd like to explore further is just that idea of balance. So you talk about the industry as we know it, when we hear the word transportation or logistics comes across as very masculine. That's no secret, it just seems very male-driven. And in the past, it has been, and with the evolution, I think of just the working world in general with more women entering the workforce and having it be common. I was just talking to my mom the other night and she did not work for the first two years of my life. And she even said to me, she goes, "I was going crazy because I've always worked since the time I was 15 and legally could work," in the state in which she lived in. "I've always been a worker."
And that two year break while she was home with me was great. But she goes, "That's part of my identity was to contribute and be productive and feel like I was contributing to something." But that idea of balance in the boardroom in those ideas, and I know you're a big proponent of that, I think is incredibly important. Just to touch on a little bit more, because that's where I think we tend to lose the narrative. It tends to become one gender or another rather than the yin to the yang.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Yeah. Well, I think this is a really cool development too, because I think there's so many ways that this is developing and I think it's wonderful to take a moment and celebrate where we are and where it's going. And I think if you look at organizations today, there is a desire for greater balance, I think, between work life and home life. Now granted, we're not always doing it right, but we definitely are making a stronger attempt.
Stacey Papp:
But you're doing it.
Heidi DiAngelo:
We're doing it. And COVID has helped that some too. I think that was a horrible experience and it's still affecting many of us today. However, there is a beauty that's come out of it, which is breaking down the compartmentalization, which is very typical of humans. We say, "Okay, this is Heidi at home, and this is Heidi at work, and this is Heidi in her sports space, and this is Heidi at the library." And we have very different versions of ourself. But what COVID has done for us is we jump on a call and there's cats walking all over the screen and you say, "Ah,
Stacey Papp:
That's so true.
Heidi DiAngelo:
... that person like cats," or they have art all over their walls and you know, "Ah, they love art," or their kids are running in the background. So it's breaking down some of those barriers between our compartmentalized lives, which I think is a wonderful thing because then that's bringing in a state of humility and transparency and reality. And I think this is helping in the workforce as well, breaking down some of those barriers between genders that we might have thought had existed in terms of what's possible. And I have to give kudos to my husband, of course, because there is no person in my life who's been a greater cheerleader than him in overcoming some of these work life balances and acting as a woman who's working and taking care of children because he has come along beside me and said, "You know what? I'm going to take care of the kids in this instance. I'm going to cook the dinner, I'm going to put the kids to bed. I'm going to be here when you're on a work trip, Heidi."
So I think that his excitement as well to get involved in some of those things. I think about my parents and they were fantastic and wonderful and loving and supportive. And maybe roles were just divide a little bit differently. We've set up an environment for ourselves in the workforce where sometimes we need two professions in the family, so it's a little bit different. So you divide up those work and life roles a little bit differently. So I think it's a beautiful thing that my husband is greatly involved with the kids. And I think that support structure has really changed over time. And as I see young families coming up, it's the same concept whether men are taking on some of those roles, they may not have played in previous generations, but they're enjoying that, and so then it becomes a sharing of those roles and responsibilities.
But it doesn't mean that we don't have different ways of handling them and different perspectives being men and women handling those things together. And again, that goes back to having that balance in the boardroom and in the office and in the conversations that those different life perspectives can bring, and that's a great thing.
Stacey Papp:
I think what you said too was also a beautiful sentiment is that we're taking the gender norms out of an industry. So if you look at the industry overall in transportation and logistics, it's always been known to be male dominated, which we touched on earlier. But I think based on what your reflections have been, we're seeing more of a balance come into any industry overall. Whether the industry be known to be more female dominated or male dominated, we're now having a balance shift. And I think that that's something that is shocking in the most amazing way because it's, like you mentioned, you're taking the barriers down and saying, "Well, if they can do it, so can I." Regardless of who you are, what your skillset is, you can do that and it levels the playing field a little bit.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Yeah. Stacey, a couple of years ago, there was a movement in France and probably on that centered around this idea of never without her. And actually there's a campaign that was run by our partner Arval, so always great to shout them out as well. But they ran a really great campaign, it was called Never Without Her. And many of the executives in the organization talked about going to meetings in partnership with women so that you bring that additional perspective to conversations and to decisions. And it was really run very beautifully because, again, it wasn't just a female-driven effort, but again, it was a celebration of having women alongside men in the workforce. And the value that that's broad because it creates, again, that diversity of perspective. And this is where I want to bring in this really cool Indian proverb that many people are probably familiar with, which is the elephant and the blind mice. Have you heard of that proverb before?
Stacey Papp:
I have, but definitely expand on it because I think we could go down a slippery slope with this one. I love to talk about this.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Actually, there's this big elephant sitting there and there's six or seven, depends on what version you read. There's six or seven blind mice standing around the elephant and they go up and they feel the elephant separately and one goes up and he fill the trunk and he is like, "Oh my gosh, it's a snake." And then the blind mice in the back wearing the blue shirt goes up and he feels the tail and he tugs on it and he says, "Nope, you're wrong. It's a rope." And so they all have their varying perspectives depending on which part of the elephant they feel. And that is a wonderful thing, I think is a great illustration about having women in the workforce.
And this goes across the board having socioeconomic differences, having people from different countries, having people just from different experiences in life. And the more perspectives we have on any given thing or experience, the more understanding. The world then becomes more around, we have a broader understanding. And I think that's really what's behind that idea that I just explained about that French movement, which is Never Without Her because we gained perspective. And this is something that I think really is broadly sensed and it takes time to get from where we were before. And I think everybody is on this journey, men and women alike, and it's a great journey to be on together, honestly.
Stacey Papp:
So reflecting back on everything, fleet and transportation logistics, if you were to call out a challenge or challenges that women may face if they're looking to enter into a career in this industry, what would one pop to mind, what would that be like? Or what would you think that would be for some of those women saying, "Yes, I want to enter into this industry and I want to do it confidently, but I might be up against some adversity here"?
Heidi DiAngelo:
Sure. I mean, really any person is going to have adversity no matter what challenge they take on. So whether you turn left or right, there's going to be some kind of boulder in your way. And I think it's cool to bring in one of our Ridecell pillars, which is, "Obstacle is the way." So I think the first piece of advice there is not to be afraid of it, to just hit it head on and hit it on with friends. Find those mentors and people that you enjoy walking with. Men and women alike that can mentor you and encourage you and go on that journey with you.
Challenges might include figuring out how you're going to balance family and kids at home. And I think that, as you mentioned before, Stacey, that could be a potential challenge. And so, just making sure that your husband, your partner or your friends and family who are alongside of you, whether you're single and raising the kids or in a relationship, making sure that you're going to have that support system and giving yourself some grace. I think every person deserves some grace and understanding and no one should have to go it alone. And that includes, so then having those colleagues that are going to be supportive and the friends and the family, partners included as you go into it. But I would say those are some of the challenges that a woman may face.
Stacey Papp:
So I think you may have already answered this, but I'm going to ask it in case your answer might be a little bit different. But what is the best piece of professional advice you've ever received? And this could be at any point in your career, whether you were just starting out or even just yesterday.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Yeah, I think the best piece of professional advice is also always the best piece of just advice for life.
Stacey Papp:
In general? Sure.
Heidi DiAngelo:
In general, I really do. And again, that goes back to the concept of compartmentalizing. This is my life advice and then this is my advice for work. And in all ways, we ought to be wise diplomats, I think we need to act with professionalism. However, it's extremely important, I touched on this before, that we bring forth a posture of humility and transparency so that the people that we're doing business with are likewise the people whom we are serving. And so in short, I would say the best piece of advice I've ever received, or that's been mob before me, is actively caring for the people that you're working with as you might for yourself. And I think, honestly, I mean we think of being true and cunning or those types of things, which can be important, but I think it always comes back to serving the people that you're working with, the customers that you're working with.
And I've had so many people model this for me in my life and in the workplace, in fleet in general. So I'm just going to name out some names because I think it's important to give recognition. And Michele Cunningham was my boss at PHH and moved into Element for some time and she was the wisest diplomat I ever knew, and she stretched me to use diplomacy in the way that I worked and not always to lead with emotion. Liam Donnelly was at Arval and he taught me again this idea of always caring for the people that you're working with, leading with strength. Sherry Calkins from GEOTAB, and Jeff Smith was my first boss at PHH, George Kilroy was CEO of PHH, David Hayward, somebody that I worked with in the industry over all was a customer, a colleague, a co-presenter, Francisco Villamil, he was a colleague that I worked with at GEOTAB, he's from Latin America.
And I can just go on and on, and these people are global too, I mean, these are people in fleet that are in Europe and Latin America, so forth and so on. And these are people that have always modeled this idea of caring. We are so fortunate, Stacey, in fleet management. I just told somebody recently coming into fleet management and they were thinking about, "Hey, this is tech. It's going to be a little bit cutthroat here." And I said, "You know what? I know that there is that experience out in the world and it does come to pass it." That reality does exist sometimes, but we are really fortunate, this industry, Stacey, that it has been here a long time. We started in the '40s, it was small.
We had, I mean, manufacturers, we had fleet management companies and maybe in 2006, we started engaging more telematics organizations too. But we were kind of a small set, but we cared about people we were working with. We were set in service. So the whole point of the industry was to serve others, and that legacy has continued. And what's really cool about this is this reality is true here in North America as it is in Europe. And what you would find sometimes as the industry and as journeys in the industry continued, and this is a thing that we feel together, is that you might be working at one organization one year and circumstances occur and you're working at a manufacturer into the next year, but you're still in the fleet management industry. And I think it's so funny, you travel over to Europe and you go to the events over there and the same thing is happening that the people are staying because they love it, they love the people.
Remember at the beginning you said, "What brought you transportation?" And I always know it as fleet, that's kind of when you're part of a fleet management or a manufacturer, typically we know this is fleet management. People stay here for 30 plus years, they stay in the industry, they know the same people, they journey through life together. So I think we found a special niche. And what I love about right now is that we have a really cool opportunity to bring in the young people and pass this baton onto them of, "Here's an opportunity. We're here to serve and care for our fellow man."
And we're going to do some cool business, we're going to help customers, we're going to further the industry, we're going to look out for safety, sustainability. We're going to help organizations save money together, but we're going to do it collaboratively. I mean, not always for people, so we're not going to be perfect. We're going to make tons of mistakes, we're going to hurt people as we go, but we're going to bring some cool stuff to the industry. And honestly, that's why I'm excited to be at Ridecell today.
Stacey Papp:
Boy, did you hit the nail on the head. So I came from a telematics company a couple lives ago, and I found my second family there, I had no idea walking into that company. And I can honestly tell you and tell everybody listening today, it was a pivotal life changer for me. Those people, what we were doing, like you just mentioned, and I know you have your three S's that you always talk about, which I love, but my favorite story was always the driver's safety story or the driver behavior story. We were helping Joe Plumber go home safely to his family every single night. And you wouldn't think that something like a harsh breaking or harsh cornering alert. And again, this is the telematics world, so I'm peeling it back a little bit, but would make that much of an impact.
And when you hear those stories, I mean, there's always the tragedies that no one ever wants to repeat and they shake you to your core. But moreover are those stories of success where you kept somebody safe. In the meantime, like you said, we were doing some amazing things, but we were doing them with people who had this blood boiling passion for fleet, for what we were doing, but also for the greater sense of the community, so for each other. So I mean, it was so cool. And that's very long-winded, this is about you, so I apologize, but I laughed and went to an advanced materials company, ended up coming back to the world of fleet because it was just like a magnet to me for the exact same reason that you mentioned earlier in the podcast. Actually, two reasons, balance and humanity.
I wish I would've known this is the talk track it's going to take, I would've totally renamed this podcast episode, but think that you have brought in such a really welcomed reflection on how those of us in this fleet community and industry, why we do what we do, why we continue to log on every morning and log off late at night and what really is the backbone of what we do. So I want to thank you for that because that's not something we talk about every day, we talk about what's the ROI, what are the metrics, what's the data, but there's also a human component, again, gender agnostic of why we're doing what we're doing.
So I want to thank you for mentioning that. I think that's really going to resonate with a lot of our listeners all along the way because there's certain motivations for all of us of why we do what we do. And it's been really cool for you to share couple of your motivations are. So one last question I want to ask you before we go, and I'm so sad that we're almost done with our time, but what excites you about fleet and more specifically, so shameless plug coming up for listeners, what excites you about Ridecell?
Heidi DiAngelo:
Yeah, that's perfect because my next thought in my head was really, you talked about safety, sustainability, and savings. And we talked about humanity and we talked about people, people, people, and we talked about the greatness of the fleet management industry. And really we're trying to do something, we're serving the greater good, we're bringing people back safely, and we're hopefully creating new revenues, opportunities for our new avenues for sustainability. And so, the fourth S that we're going to add is simplicity. And the reason I'm excited to be at Ridecell is because we have an ocean of data that we have now access to things, to organizations like our telematics companies that we've talked about and GEOTAB and all these different organizations that OEMs are now capturing information as well and feeding this information into a great data lake and doing cool things with it. And Ridecell, what we're doing is we're taking that data and we're transforming it into power to reach those goals of safety, sustainable and savings.
And so here's that S, it's simplicity. What I'm excited about is now bringing simplicity to the industry because we've had all these different organizations and now we bring in new very slick, new organizations that are at the forefront of technology. And so we have a lot of things converging right now and the opportunity to leverage this data and really reach those goals with using information to autonomize solutions. And this is really going to bring, I think, the industry forward. But not only that, I'm hoping that there's going to be opportunity where we get to maybe take an hour off of looking at our screens and understand and analyzing data and information and get back to doing what we really love, which is taking care of our families. Hey, maybe it's grabbing a surfboard and going for a surf on that wave we just talked about, right?
Maybe it's going for a hike, maybe it's cooking a really cool meal, but it's getting packed to the humanity, and it's getting back to our whole purpose, which is keeping people safe on the roads and bringing them back. It's taking care of our land and our earth so that we can enjoy it and go for that hike or plant that tree, or take a walk in the garden or take your kids to the playground, whatever it might be. We are really doing something I think here at Ridecell that is hopefully going to get people back to maybe even a simpler life. And that's really at the end of it, that's what I'm very excited about.
Stacey Papp:
And we just came full circle back to balance, back to humanity. So I want to thank you for joining me today to talk about this topic. I mean, we've covered the gamut, so I'm so excited that we started talking about women and fleet and tech and we've talked about just life in general. So I want to, again, thank you. I want to really thank you for sharing your story with me and our listeners today. I think you are one of the movers and shakers of this industry that I can't wait to see you just blow it up in the best possible way because there's no doubt you absolutely are going to, and you already have, but gosh, you have so many more miles ahead of you to do such beautiful and amazing things. So no doubt that that inspiration is translated into the ears of many today. So thank you again, Heidi. The pleasure was truly all mine to listen and talk to you today.
Heidi DiAngelo:
Oh, thank you, Stacey. It's always great to talk to you. So I look forward to next time.
Stacey Papp:
Absolutely. Until the next time, keep moving the world better.
Thank you for listening to the Mile Marker podcast. Stay tuned for another episode full of insights and ideas to keep the mobility industry moving forward. In the meantime, follow us on social media and be sure to like, comment and share today's episode.