Pandemic alters future business practices

PALMDALE — Panelists for the 2021 Business Outlook Conference Winter Forum on Wednesday morning said the devastating COVID-19 pandemic forced new business practices that will most likely be carried on in the future.

The annual conference was held virtually and in a condensed, two-hour format for the first time due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Antelope Valley Economic Development and Growth Enterprise, also known as AV EDGE, hosted the program. AV EDGE Executive Director Ronda Perez welcomed the virtual audience, and introduced moderator award-winning veteran Los Angeles television news anchor Jeff Michael.

The panel discussion fea

tured Jeff Babione, vice president and general manager Lockheed Martin Skunk Works; Angel Pineiro, vice president strategic Academic Relationships at CompTIA, a nonprofit organization considered one of the IT industry’s top trade associations; Payman Roshan, senior vice president and area manager of the Antelope Valley and Panorama City medical centers for Kaiser Permanente; Kabir Sethi, director of Bank of America’s Global Wealth & Investment Management division; and Skip Hansen, founder and chief external affairs officer of Lifelong Learning, and former CEO of Learn4Life.

Michael started the panel with a question about positive change that the COVID-19 pandemic has either exposed or accelerated.

Sethi, who addressed the panel from New York City, said the most positive change they discovered in the field of wealth management, where personal connections are important, was the ability to succeed in a hybrid digital environment.

“Moving forward the world of wealth management is going to expand both digital interactions as well as people meeting each other in person,” Sethi said. “It’s a much more flexible trend where clients and financial advisers are concerned. It’s opened up possibilities for us.”

Sethi added that the pandemic forced a change that would have taken five or six years previously but that they accomplished in less than a year.

Michael noted that since Skunk Works deals with classified information many employees could not go home. He asked Babione whether he saw greater efficiency using a digital platform.

Babione said moving to an all virtual format was not an answer for many of the programs Lockheed Martin supports in particular for security issues.

“National security is of foremost importance,” Babione said, adding they had to find new ways to ensure that employees could be safe in coming to work.

They collaborated with Northrop Grumman and Virgin Galactic to find the best practices that allow employees to come in to work safely, interact with each other and be as efficient or more than they were before.

“We have pushed a significant portion — for us — of our employees virtual, and that’s likely to be how they interact going forward,” Babione said. “So that has been a bit of a bright spot given the challenges we had.”

Michael asked Roshan how Kaiser Permanente will move forward in a positive way, and whether he sees a bright spot in the future.

Rohsan said the pandemic forced Kaiser into learning new ways to deliver care to patients. Over the past year, virtual care such as telephone and video visits skyrocketed from 8 to 12% to 85% or 90%. it has since dropped down to about 60%.

“That definitely has pushed us to explore different ways of relating and seeing our patients and vice-versa, and taking care of their needs,” Rohsan said.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced students to engage in remote learning from home.

“I think it created many learning opportunities, but in the K-12 there are still many challenges that are being addressed,” said Pineiro, who participated from Pennsylvania. “But I so see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Hansen, said it was a difficult time when the pandemic first hit last March..

“I think what it initially did was show how severely affected some of our communities are with lack of Internet,” he added.

Hansen said teachers on the front lines do more than teach; they counsel students and make sure they get fed.

“If it did anything it made it front and center that we have a real Internet gap with some of our communities, where some of our really roughest neighborhoods and toughest economic areas where we’re focused on just don’t have access to Internet,” Hansen said.

They focused on getting laptops and hot spots to students. Even then, some students in parts of Compton and Los Angeles County did not have a signal.

“Just getting a hot spot to kid and shipping off a laptop is not enough; you need a caring adult,” Hansen said. “That’s why our teachers are our front line workers, and education is the most important piece of this.”

The biggest positive he heard to come out of the pandemic is the push by state legislators to increase access to the Internet through technology for the kids who need it the most.