Nancy Cox and Nigel Ballard
Overview: Working to Reconnect People
When natural disaster strikes, the scope of damage can be overwhelming. For Intel, the scope of the damage from Hurricane Katrina was shocking, and it prompted an immediate response. Managers quickly formed teams to organize the thousands of employees who called in to help, and coordinated a wave of donations of equipment and skilled volunteers. The company provided organization and deployment of everything from money to skilled workers to an experimental wireless network—cutting edge technology that dramatically improved relief efforts in a rugged environment where the infrastructure had completely collapsed.
Although Intel is a large corporation (90,000+ employees), it is extremely flexible, well organized, and able to respond quickly to unusual situations, such as Hurricane Katrina. The corporation also has a strong, sustaining, top-down and bottom-up culture of community service. Executives act as role models for community service, creating business processes that encourage employees to donate their time, skills and money. Employees and executives alike are heavily involved in their communities. In the wake of Katrina, those business ideals, processes, and actions provided critical help to relief organizations and evacuees throughout the stricken region.
Leading with Expertise
As Intel and the rest of the world were realizing the extent of the damage, managers with personal experience in disaster-related areas quickly stepped forward. For example, Nancy Cox, Intel's Greater Americas Region IT Manager, was asked to lead the coordination team for the hurricane relief effort. She had gained emergency management experience several years ago when her manager and another Intel executive were murdered by Hutu rebels in Africa.
Nigel Ballard, who manages Intel initiatives for low-income, underserved or immigrant populations, had extensive prior experience with civil and military wireless equipment. While the shock of the hurricane damage was still reverberating through the country, he was immediately asked to join the tiger team Intel had assembled to manage aspects of wireless technologies and deployments in the stricken area.
Said Cox, "We had a team of unique people with very different strengths, who came together in this crisis in a perfect mix of yin and yang. It was a unique experience in business and, in the face of one of the worst natural disasters the U.S. has ever seen, has been one of the most satisfying coordination jobs of my life."
A Flood of Volunteers
One of the first things the coordination team had to do was manage the volunteers. With thousands of Intel employees calling in to ask how they could help, keeping track of offers was a massive effort in itself. An entirely separate team was assigned just to take over that task. That team quickly set up a database to organize volunteers by their skill sets, regions, and so on.
It was an invaluable process to have in place. With it, the coordination team was able to find the people with the right skillsets—such as wireless technology experts or those who work with Internet service providers (ISPs) and cell-server providers—to assign to critical needs. Hundreds of employees were assigned to provide technical support. Others immediately underwent Red Cross training—a mandatory step before volunteers would be allowed into the disaster area—and were deployed in the disaster zones between Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Still others were organized at local centers that were preparing to receive evacuees, at fund-raisers for relief efforts, and with other important response groups.
For example, during "Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast," the network TV-sponsored fund-raiser for hurricane relief, several large corporations were asked to provide call centers for accepting pledges. Intel didn't have a call center that could be harnessed that quickly with the number of seats that were needed. However, the modern technology in standard use at Intel’s Folsom site allowed Intel to reconfigure the desk-side equipment into a virtual call-center. Friday evening September 9, the night of the concert, 600 Intel employees gathered in Folsom to accept phone calls and take pledges, helping to raise millions of dollars for relief efforts.
Immediate Response
Even as floodwaters submerged New Orleans, Intel mangers were already on the phone, organizing a response. Said Cox, "When we went into this, when we gathered the night the levies were breaching, we were saying, 'Oh, God, what are we going to do to help?' We knew we had to act quickly, to figure out immediately where our resources could have the most critical impact for those tens of thousands of people who were fighting to stay alive."
Wendy Hawkins of the Intel Foundation had already prepared for the first counter-punch. As the first shocking damage reports came in, she immediately pledged $1 million for hurricane relief. The Foundation then offered to match every dollar Intel employees gave, up to another $1 million. (To date, Intel and its employees have donated over $7 million.)
The Intel team also approached the Red Cross Organization with an offer of assistance. "That was absolutely the right decision," said Cox. "It gave us the ability to support a tremendous number of people throughout the region, rather than help only pockets of people here and there."
By the time the Labor Day Weekend ended (September 5), Intel's coordination team had a people process in place, a hardware process in place, and a "fellow-traveler" process for working with other technology companies that would be needed to provide complete solutions. As damage assessments and critical needs lists began to come in, the Intel team was ready to act.
Intel Redirected
Because of Intel's expertise in Wi-Fi* solutions and WiMAX technology, the Intel team initially thought the Red Cross would ask them to help set up wireless communications. Instead, they were told that the biggest contribution would be to help the Red Cross in setting up computers at relief sites.
Explained Cox, "The Red Cross is primarily focused on three critical, basic human needs: shelter, food, clothing. Everything else is gravy. So they didn't need WiMAX at their relief centers. They needed us to help them do their jobs; processing evacuees and helping these devastated people find their loved ones and get their lives back. WiMAX was a critical need for the region, not for the Red Cross shelters."
Read more at Intel.com
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