Episode 28: Leading with Purpose – Owner-Centered Strategy and Community Impact with Audra Blasdel

Episode Introduction:

Welcome to Luminate: Navigating the Unknown Through Creative Leadership, where we explore the journeys of visionary leaders making a difference. Today, our host, Sarah Hempstead, CEO and Principal-in-Charge at Schmidt Associates, is joined by Audra Blasdel, the Division Lead of Waypoint Strategies. With a diverse career spanning government, nonprofit, and educational organizations, Audra brings a unique perspective on leadership, community-driven project management, and servant leadership.

Episode Overview:

From her Indiana roots and early experiences in team-focused sports to her time managing complex projects for the Indiana Department of Transportation, Audra’s journey reveals the power of fostering connections and aligning with community needs. Audra shares insights on navigating client relationships, adapting strategies to meet project goals, and balancing career and family in an unpredictable world. This episode offers valuable takeaways on servant leadership and crafting spaces that truly serve the communities they’re built for. Join us as Audra recounts her story of developing Waypoint Strategies to guide clients in managing and maintaining their facilities with empathy and understanding.

Key Highlights:

• From Fairways to Project Management – Audra reflects on how her early experiences in competitive golf taught her about teamwork, adaptability, and the importance of contributing to a shared goal. These lessons became essential in her leadership journey.
• The Role of Family and Community – Growing up in Indiana, close to family, Audra experienced firsthand the power of strong community ties. She shares how this upbringing influenced her approach to leadership, grounding her in servant leadership principles.
• Navigating Complex Projects with Purpose – Audra highlights her experience managing the state’s Recovery Act transportation projects during the 2008 financial crisis. Her strategic, people-centered approach ensured the successful execution of hundreds of infrastructure projects, including a rail bridge that preserved local jobs.
• Waypoint Strategies – An Owner-Centric Approach – Audra describes the founding principles of Waypoint Strategies and how it differs from traditional owner’s rep services by focusing on understanding each client’s mission and values, charting a path that aligns with their unique needs and goals.
• Balancing Career, Family, and Well-being – Audra shares her perspective on “enoughness,” balancing professional and personal life through a flexible, day-to-day approach that prioritizes making intentional choices.

Conclusion:

Audra Blasdel’s journey underscores the importance of servant leadership, empathy, and resilience in strategic project management. Whether by adapting quickly to challenging conditions or building community-centered projects, Audra’s work exemplifies how thoughtful leadership can bring people together and drive meaningful change. Tune in to discover how you can navigate your own leadership path by listening, connecting, and always putting people first.

Transcript

Sarah Hempstead: Welcome to Luminate, navigating the unknown through creative leadership. I'm Sarah Hempstead, a season leader in creative problem solving, principal in charge, and CEO at Schmidt Associates. And today we have a special guest, my friend, Audra Blaisdell, the division lead of our very own Waypoint Strategies.

Audra's career has spanned from not for profit to the profit world, government work to educational organizations, and she's here today to share some valuable insight on strategic leadership, client focused project management, and servant leadership. Audra, welcome to the show. 

Audra Blasdel: Thanks, Sarah. It's really great to be here.

Thanks, Sarah. 

Sarah Hempstead: All right. So we always start with back at the beginning, how people ended up where they were. You are one of our few almost native Hoosiers. You lived in Indiana for almost your whole life. So tell me the story of how you ended up here and why you stay. My, 

Audra Blasdel: yeah. So you're right. I am an almost fully native Hoosier.

If it counts at all, my mom was a native Hoosier who was just a transplant at the time I was born. So I was born in Glasgow, Kentucky. So 

Sarah Hempstead: close. 

Audra Blasdel: So close. It's a feather in the cap for the Louisville office. They certainly love that piece. And but born in Glasgow, Kentucky, my dad was a highway design engineer.

My mom was working in printing and advertising. Down there is welfare company and they met, married, had me, had my brother, and then at the age of three had the opportunity to move back up here to Indiana and we located on the west side of Indianapolis. We were 10 minutes from my mom's parents, which was really formative throughout my life as well to have that resource so close.

And that's where we remain. So why'd you stay? I think that answer is rooted right there in family. Right? Growing up, my grandparents were right there. My parents were there. We did so much as a family, and I think, and it wasn't until I got older that I realized how unique it was that I had dinner every Friday night with my grandparents, or that I can count on one hand the things that a parent or grandparent missed in my life, and those aren't just the big things, those are like swim meets and golf tournaments, and that, and that my brother and my cousins can say the same thing, and so that was a really unique piece, and so that kept me really rooted and grounded here.

I did briefly leave after college. I left, I took a time, I had been working in the summer through college for the American Junior Golf Association, traveling all over. Phenomenal to do as a college student. Not so great when you're trying to figure out how to be an adult. So that, that got really interesting.

And Got a good opportunity to come back here and work and since then have gotten married, have a son and every once in a while we say, Hey, is this what we, are we sure? Are we good? You can do that moment of level setting. And, but we think about what life would be like and what we will be leaving behind.

We, our families are still here. Our network is now here. We've built professional lives here. And we don't want to take any of that for granted. And really, that's what keeps us rooted and grounded here in Indiana. We also love this city. And we live in a unique little place, the town of Speedway, with our big racetrack, but our small town feel, and it's really great.

Sarah Hempstead: So you mentioned golf, and I do want to pivot to that for just a minute because many of the leaders that we talked to learned a lot of their leadership skills through something like a sport. I know you went to DePauw to play golf in part, right? 

Audra Blasdel: That's right. So grew up playing golf, it was a family game, so there's that family thing again, and played through high school and was asked to come out to DePauw University and play golf, and that's actually how I found DePauw, which was a really great piece.

But it, golf is a unique sport. You play individually, you can score individually, you can succeed individually. But when you're in high school and college, it becomes this very team focused piece. And that is that moment when you realize that It is as much about everybody else around you and their success that can create your own.

And you build that understanding that it can't be you and you alone, because that was a much harder path to row or swing, if you want to say, versus working together as a team, trying to do your best to ensure everyone's success. Because if you could, as a team, be successful, you could go a lot further, a lot easier.

Sarah Hempstead: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, When you weren't playing golf at DePauw, you were studying, what did you think you were going to do? Oh, 

Audra Blasdel: this is, this is always an interesting question. So DePauw University, amazing liberal arts college, really enjoyed my time there. Um, for my mother who's listening, yes, if I wasn't golfing, I was studying or church or church.

Library or church. Library or church. That was a hundred percent it. I went to DePauw and ended up, thought I was going to go and major in computer science and math, made a tiny, tiny change and switched to computer science and economics. Just a love of data and application of that data and application of mathematical concepts, all the things.

Like I said, right after college, I left and went and ran golf tournaments. I don't know that I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew I loved those things. Sure. And I just started building from there. What is it that I loved? What is it that I liked? What is it I could learn? As a liberal arts educated person, you're taught to love learning, to learn quickly and to think critically.

And I think that just from there, I took the opportunities in front of me. And built on those and took as many skills as I could from each of those to then start to find, try to find what the next passion was. 

Sarah Hempstead: So you didn't really have a predetermined job in your head as a college student, is that right?

Audra Blasdel: Yeah. I can look back now. Uh huh. And I can more comfortably, that was the case. But yeah. It's, I think we put a lot of pressure on college kids these days to have every answer. And honestly, high schoolers, to have every answer. And when I get the opportunity to sit down with college kids, which I do from time to time, and they're like, how did you know?

How did you know? How did you know? And I was like. Let's recap my career for a second. It is very clear I didn't know, but instead used all the things I learned to just find my way to the thing I love. 

Sarah Hempstead: Pulled you away from golf and back to the city? 

Audra Blasdel: So away from golf and back to Indianapolis, if you love the game of golf, don't work in the game of golf.

I mean, you don't get to play a lot. You just get to watch other people do the thing you want to be doing. Yeah, doing the thing you want to be doing. I think the other thing was, I quickly realized this was not my calling. And the safe and secure place to come back to was home. Sure. And from there was able to, through a previous internship that I had done in college, was able to find my way to working with Spark Graphics out on the east side, really great family-run company that was growing at the time.

And that is where I started running true projects. I had been running events. I had been running golf operations and logistics and the whole thing. But that was the first real pass at some projects. You've got clients, there's a client liaison, so I was doing customer service, but I was also, they'd pick up the phone and call and be like, Hey, we need three signs by 3 p.m. And it was like, all right, we've got to know the process. We got to have the graphics. We got to have the files. We got to go to print. We got to do this. We got to do that. And it's like managing those pieces and working across a team of people who had the same objective to achieve the same thing, to get that project done, it, the fire was lit doing that work.

And then it was a matter of finding my way to where the right places would be. 

Sarah Hempstead: So it's interesting because if I look at all the different places and spaces you've worked, it's gone from smaller companies like that all the way to the Children's Museum, from profit to not-for-profit. Um, I want to talk about, for a while you owned your own company even, but first I want to go to the Children's Museum because I think everybody listening has probably been to the world's largest Children's Museum and it's a pretty far piece to go from managing a project with three signs to managing a staff of a hundred plus and all the joys that come with making the guest experience as seamless as it is.

So could you tell a story about either one of the most fun or the most challenging, maybe it's the same. Um, Uh, event or activity that you did manage through at the Children's Museum and what you learned from those big experiences that you can apply on everyday projects. 

Audra Blasdel: The Children's Museum is one of the most amazing places, like you said.

We all know it. And there, it is create, there is a team of people there. And I had a hundred of the 320 on the staff there that. We really all truly have a passion for how do we create an experience that is transformational for those coming in. And that is, it's the Children's Museum and the first focus is the kid, but we talked often about how that experience is transformational for everyone who is coming with that child, whether that's a parent, a guardian, an adult of any form that was there with their child.

And. Seeing a team rally around that mission, that vision, that focus, in such a meaningful way to be able to achieve such great things. Little known fact, we, at the Children's Museum, they build a lot of their own exhibits. So a part of that 100 member team was a fabrication team of artisans and sculptors and a wide variety of trades.

I think the biggest thing to watch there was just how that team rallied together. One of the most challenging timeframes, and it was for everyone, was the pandemic. And I, I can't talk about experiences and things that we did well at the museum, or really what you're getting at. Like, when was it that, how was it that all these things came to be without talking about the pandemic?

Sure. Sure. Um. Here we are, we're an organization, and one day we're letting everybody who could possibly want to come in, and the next day we're trying to figure out how to take this highly interactive, high-touch experience and preserve as much of it as possible while also staying safe with some of our most vulnerable population during the pandemic.

Right. And it would have been a really easy time for a lot of folks to just be like, scrap it all. Let a few people in, and that's all we're going to do. But there was a really awesome group of people who said, No, let's figure this out. And how do we still do things like have bunny sorcerer X around the Easter time frame?

And how do we still do things like a Santa or a slide or something within those holiday time frames? Like, how do we preserve some of that experience? How do we also start to message and frame what has to change and how do we do all of that? And it was a whole contingent of people who, with some really creative thought processes, we had an outdoor haunted house that year, never would have dreamed that we'd put a haunted house through the middle of a sports experience.

And it just was a matter of watching that love and that passion for that vision and the mission of the museum come together in a way that allowed us to get through something Difficult. Everybody was having their own personal experiences and then we were trying to figure out how to also make it happen at the museum.

But I think it was one of those times where the relationships that were good became great and where we really moved that needle forward on that front. 

Sarah Hempstead: And it's interesting you talk about, uh, the draw of family and I did not grow up here, but one of my form, but I had family here, so one of my, one of my formative memories of coming to Indianapolis.

was experiences at the Children's Museum, because we would go every time. And those spaces and places were and are so unique that they stick in your brain from when you were a child. Mm hmm. And being there with family. And that, that's what you, that's what you preserved is the opportunity to be together with family in meaningful ways, which is, it's really special.

You can't get that back, really. 

Audra Blasdel: No, you can't. And you, we all had gone through a couple months of, a month or two. We were closed March to June, so however many months that is. And when we went to open, it had been a long couple months getting to that process. But when you walked in and you saw those first families walk back in, and those kids eyes light up, and we'd all talked about smiling with your eyes, and if you ever needed a demonstration of how to do it, just watch those first kids walking in.

And they're finally getting to come back and they're finally getting to see this children's museum that they love. That is like that moment that makes it all worth it, right? And that happened every day, but when we had been without that for so many months to see that again, like that was very reinvigorating for the team to know we were still able to make that smile happen.

Sarah Hempstead: So let's go to, you've done project management like that on your own as well, the other end of the other end of doing this for a hundred people is doing this when you're a team of one doing this for clients. Can you share how you leapt into being an entrepreneur like that? And where are the through lines between running like two big teams of a hundred to working on clients essentially on your own?

Audra Blasdel: That was an interesting phenomenon, how that came to be. I was working for Marion University, I was probably about six months pregnant, and you start to have that moment where you're going, wow, okay, like. I'm getting ready to add a baby into this whole mix of life. You should also be a 

Sarah Hempstead: small business owner.

Make this all much easier. 

Audra Blasdel: But somehow someone in my network and actually still a very good friend of mine and advisor that I turn to too often. said, Audra, you can do this and this is a route for you to be able to say, okay, today it's one client, right? We're going to do one client. We're going to be two clients.

And that way you work when you need to work, but you have some flexibility, you get to call the shots. And I think it was good advice for where I was mentally, like trying to figure out, I'm running a campus, I'm running massive construction projects, the phone, those were highly demanding jobs, and big jobs, I loved them, I couldn't wrap my head around having a, bringing a kid into the mix, and what that would mean.

And so it did, it gave me this really great opportunity to step my way back into professional life and in some ways maintain some control. We were very lucky, my income could shrink to nothing, but we were in a position where that was feasible, had found a resource to be able to do flexible care for our son.

And it worked out. And then I found that I loved it. This was like starting with a new team every time I started with a new client. And it was all the joy of learning that team, learning that owner, understanding what challenges they had, and they were new and different challenges every time. And getting to kind of the part that some people don't like, like the messy part in the beginning that a lot of people don't like, I love because this is where I'm going to learn the most and then be able to leverage that to do the most for someone.

And that, so that was a ton of fun to be out there doing that. on my own and gave me a great opportunity to go to the Children's Museum on Tuesday mornings with my son from 10 to noon and then take him back and it was nap time and I got work done and that was our Tuesday most of the time. 

Sarah Hempstead: So all of those lived experiences, so from the children's museum to running facilities at Marion, I think golf event planning probably factors in there somewhere, to being an entrepreneur, all, all of those things roll together to make you the perfect fit for Waypoint strategies.

For listeners who don't know what that service does, you can talk a little bit about what Waypoint is all about. And how we can help with those messy situations. 

Audra Blasdel: I appreciate the vote of confidence on how I'm the right person to do this, which is hugely appreciated and very flattering. But Waypoint Strategies is built around the concept of helping owners build, maintain and operate their facilities or their campuses, to boil it down.

We really work from a place of that solutions to projects and solutions to issues have to be more than technical in nature. So oftentimes when we're building buildings and we're in these very technical fields. We tend to turn towards very technical answers, and at Waypoint, we think it's bigger than that.

We think those are really important pieces, but we believe that all of it starts from building a fundamental understanding of an owner's mission, vision, and values. And then meeting them where they are, finding out what their big challenges are, where it is and how it is they need to be supported in order to be successful, which is also co defined by them.

And doing that and delivering solutions that are delivered with understa understanding, respect and care, which is an interesting concept to introduce into the world of owner's rep work and facilities and buildings that we can also care. 

Sarah Hempstead: So when you talk about it like that, it's, you sound like an owner, someone who has run a campus and who relies on people who can come alongside it as a partner.

Audra Blasdel: That's right. And I was really lucky and fortunate in our conversations about doing this that you and Smith Associates really embraced this idea. When we sat down and talked about what Waypoint Strategies would be and what I wanted it to To be, it was very much embraced that it has to be built from the concept of where my biggest pain points were as an owner, which I knew from talking to colleagues were their biggest pain points, right?

Where is the support in execution? Where is the support in making sure I have a handle on not only getting this built, but what do I do after it's built? Often, everybody's so excited about cutting the ribbon. That they sometimes And then they walk away. And then 

we walk away. 

Having been the owner, where concepts around maintaining and operating were sometimes the afterthought of trying to bring those more to the forefront of the work that we're doing.

And how do we, how do we do that in a way that, that is from a place of understanding that the role of the owner isn't easy? 

Sarah Hempstead: So that, that gets to the topic of balancing client needs. Projects aren't, large scale capital projects are not easy. And often, clients know what they need, but not how to get there.

So can you share, share an example of how you navigate clients who have a question or a need, and how do you work your way through, how do you get them what they want? Which is beyond really what they just need. 

Audra Blasdel: Correct. And I think your differentiation of want and need within both of those is, is critically important when we stop to think about this.

It also reminds me. A bit of, I was listening to a podcast the other day. I'm a podcast listener. A lot of them are great links for my drive to work. And. The podcast was talking about parenting styles, particularly with preteens and all the drama. So I'm doing some early research here. You're getting ahead of the game.

I like it. Ahead of the game. A little pre planning. Kiddos. Project management. Gotta look what's ahead. Yep. We have to be thinking in the forefront. Got an eight, almost nine year old, so we're well on our way. Listening to, to the podcast, it was an interesting concept around not stealing someone's glory and finding the solution.

Right? That in and of itself can be disenfranchising to someone. And I think when we think about how we get an owner from a place of here's my need, here's my need, here's my need to here's how we can help you, it has to be co curated. And we do that by starting to listen, really starting with understanding the tell me more concept, the dig deeper.

Okay, now let me research that, let me talk to a few more people, let's analyze that. And I know all that seems really cumbersome and unrelated to project, but that's really where we're going to start to define what their true success looks like. It's easy to pinpoint that success is building the building or getting the boiler changed or having a new air handler delivered.

That's easy success to pinpoint, but when we start to embark to do that, there's success that's bigger than that. And Waypoint, being named Waypoint, is about charting that path, right? How do we guide and direct and present viable solutions to owners that are set within framework of their reality, right?

And that, I think that's really important. We have to work with them to help define their success and then how to get to their success. Coming in and just telling them the answer is, could be a bit disenfranchising. Like it seems like that's the right way to go, right? You want to be all knowing, but that answer may not work for them.

And I think it's going back, it's listening and starting from a place of understanding that not every owner's the same. And then how do we build their unique path, their successful path to get to where they want to go. 

Sarah Hempstead: Which sounds like server leadership. Yeah. 

Audra Blasdel: That's fair, and, and huge draw is definitely that servant leadership framework that I always experienced when working with Schmidt as an owner.

And then being able to parlay that into waypoint strategies and the philosophy of waypoint strategies. Is, was a big selling point in me joining the team here. 

Sarah Hempstead: Servant leadership certainly wasn't Wayne's idea, but it was his foundation for how Schmidt was built. He would always say it's a Sunday school idea.

It's much older than any leadership book. The catchphrase is good. The idea is really old, is first, first seek to understand before you can lead anything. You better know where you're supposed to be going first. That's great. You've mentored teams in a lot of different roles. You've had some mentors of your own, I suspect as well.

So who do you look to now or who did you look to as you were finding your way?

Audra Blasdel: I think I was really fortunate looking back on my career. I worked for a lot of people who, not all of them, but a lot of them saw more in me than I saw in myself. And that I think was a big piece and very formative for me and having people push and say, you, you can do this and this is in your capability and you.

You need to do that. And those are the folks that I always kept around. Right? And even when I moved jobs, those are the bosses I would call up and be like, Hey, this is what's going on now and I need help. And then as my network started to grow, I picked up some other folks along the way who I had done projects with, and I picked up some folks along the way who I had just crossed paths with and found through networking.

I hate to start naming names because then I'm going to leave someone out. It's the fault of trying to do that. But there, there are a lot of folks who I call on a regular basis and truly reached out to you as a potential mentor when this whole conversation started. Having always realized that you were the working mom, running a company, how does this go?

You were well connected within the community and how do I find, you know, my way to whatever's next? I knew what was time for next and was trying to find that. And I think for me, those were the mentors that helped me. We're the ones who would sometimes say, no, you have to go do this because this is what is going to move you to the next level.

And we believe in you. They paired that with, we believe in you, which was also really helpful to have. 

Sarah Hempstead: One of the questions I hate it when that people ask me all the time and without fail, people will ask me how you do balance life. And they always, they always ask me that because I'm a girl and I have kids.

So that's always the mom question, but really it is a topic that I'm, I'm interested in for. Really all people, whether or not they have kids, male, female, whatever, balance is difficult. And I'd put on the table also things like volunteer opportunities and hobbies or other things you have a passion for, golf.

How do you think about that as a whole person in the world? 

Audra Blasdel: That to your point, like this is the question everybody thinks there is like some sort of unicorn answer. If I just ask the question enough times. Someone is going to give me the unicorn answer. But I have to give credit, we were at the Marion Luncheon for Women and Jill Lacey was one of the panelists and this question came up and the other panelists gave really great answers, right?

But Jill stuck out to me because she was like, let's all just agree that this isn't really possible. That's a great answer. It was a really great answer that day. And it was the first time I thought, okay, I'm not crazy for feeling like this is just one big set of trade offs and my economics brain starts to kick in when this comes up and it becomes about opportunity cost and that concept starts to drive it and on a macro level, you set those goals and you position yourself in a way to be able to achieve as many of those as possible.

And, and you choose career and what you want to do and who you're doing it for and with to help drive some of that. And then you also set the personal side next to that. And then on a micro level, on a day to day level, it's about making the best choices you can make for that day and being okay with the thing you're not choosing.

And finding that balance on a micro level, knowing that hopefully you've made all the right macro decisions. And you're getting to where you need to go. And when you find that's not working, then you start to make a change and you change the macro and that drives the micro and all the stuff in between.

Right. Kind of a crazy, crazy concept. Can't manage to distance myself from the economics too far, but it is about the opportunity costs and the daily choices we make starting to become more what you're okay with. It's you, I often say, I want to be a good person who does good work for good people, and at the end of the day, I want to be.

I want Lana to say I was a good mom and Jacob to say I was a good wife. I'm strategically not using great because there's too much pressure in great. 

Sarah Hempstead: Now, great is a big word. Great's a 

Audra Blasdel: big word. Listen, 

Sarah Hempstead: we can be great sometimes. 

Audra Blasdel: Right. We can be great sometimes. I'd like to be good most of the time, right?

And so I think it's, let's not pressure ourselves to set an expectation we can't hit. Let's set a bar we can get to, right? 

Sarah Hempstead: Mm hmm. So when you think about, so you think about your professional career, is there one moment you would define as great? Is there one professional moment where you're like, that moment was great.

That project was great. 

Audra Blasdel: That's a hard one. I know. It's hard 

Sarah Hempstead: to pick your favorites. 

Audra Blasdel: It's hard to pick favorites. It's hard to pick favorites. 

Sarah Hempstead: Okay. They're all your favorite, but if you had to pick one favorite. 

Audra Blasdel: One favorite. I, I think the moment when I look back on my professional career that might have hit the accelerator the fastest was 2008 working for the Department of Transportation.

We had gone through the economic crisis. They had issued the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars and the Department of Transportation. Somewhere along the line got the bright idea to say that we had a bunch of shovel ready projects across the U. S., the Federal Highway Administration did. And that may or may not have been true, I'm not going to debate that, uh, uh, here, but what ended up happening was the state of Indiana had 658 million that we needed to spend in a year on road construction projects.

And there was a strong desire that we do to make sure money got spent in all 92 counties, That we had projects that had economic impact associated with those, that they were tied to some of the, some of those big things that Mitch Daniels was trying to achieve with that. And in doing that project, I was originally supporting the person leading had to step away.

I fully expected someone else to be brought in to run that. And instead they said, what's happening? You can do this. We believe in you. Sure. So back to that. Yeah. Yeah. You run this and that was a phenomenal experience around how you build consensus quickly, how you build processes within processes that allow you to be efficient and to move at the pace that we needed to move and working across the entirety of the department and the entirety of the state to do that.

If I have to pick a project, so I picked that as a program, right? Like just running that in general was huge. Within that, there was a very. Special Project. Right outside of Allen County. And even though we were dealing in road dollars, the county came to, in opening the doors, the county came to us and said, We have a railroad bridge coming out of a soybean factory that is weight limited.

And that's creating a lot of issues for the sustainability of the soybean factory. 

Sarah Hempstead: Sure. 

Audra Blasdel: And we would, we need to find a way to fix this bridge. And I don't, I, we weren't in the business at that time of saying no to projects, but we were like, wow. 658 

Sarah Hempstead: million. Yeah. Yeah. 

Audra Blasdel: 650 million. We're not saying no to projects.

But man, this one's going to be tough. So start scouring the federal regulation, which I spent a lot of time doing more than I like to admit, and I found more or less a loophole where if we could demonstrate that we could offset semi truck traffic and bridge needs by fixing railroad lines, then we could use highway dollars on railroad lines.

And sat down with my colleagues at the Federal Highway Administration and said, this is what we want to do. This is how we want to do it. This is why, [00:31:00] here's the math, I talked to the engineers, like, all these things have brought the whole case and after a little bit of discussion on their side and a little negotiation back and forth, we found our way to fixing that bridge and that ended up saving that soybean factory, which meant we actually saved jobs, which was the whole point with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and it wasn't long after that that that factory expanded.

Cool. And they were actually able to expand their capacity utilizing that bridge. And I think it's a little project that probably gets lost in the shuffle somewhere most of the time, but it was a really meaningful and impactful project. And it was the moment when not just the light bulb of, I love projects goes off and I love construction.

But also, the lightbulb of, man, I really like when these projects make a difference, and when we have a really great story to tell. 

Sarah Hempstead: You can see the smiling in their eyes. 

Audra Blasdel: Yeah. That's a great 

Sarah Hempstead: project. That's a great story. And not one that I'd ever heard before. Of course, I'd read about the 658 million, but not about that bridge.

Right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna draw us to a close. A couple last questions. One I ask everybody about self care, like what do you do to refresh yourself? With all the different fun things you have to do and all the different work things and all the different family, do you have a strategy for staying whole and sane?

Enough? Enough. 

Audra Blasdel: Enough. I think for me, we've been very lucky. Our son is incredibly active. He loves all things outdoors. I was raised loving the outdoors. I was a golfer, so you were immediately, automatically outdoors with that, but our family camped and that's how we saw the U. S. We camped, took camps, eventually added air mattresses.

As we got older, it got upgraded a little bit by grandma and grandpa, and it turned into some other things, but really just always active and always outdoors, and been very lucky that Jacob embraces that, and now our son Landon embraces that as well, so it is often entail. Some form of activity outside, a lot of snow skiing, a lot of mountain biking, a lot of sports, golf, soccer, on down the line.

And whether it's doing that with him or do it or being there as a part of it. I think that's where I get my refresh and my whole from is from those activities outside. We have some grandmothers that would appreciate them being less adrenaline focused, maybe more golf, less mountain biking, but I always look and say he's outside.

He's playing, he is loving it every minute of it. And that is the refresh right there. 

Sarah Hempstead: That's awesome. And then 

Audra Blasdel: finally, 

Sarah Hempstead: I always ask our guests, what are you reading that you'd recommend everybody reads, or what is a book you go back to? Because it's formative. 

Audra Blasdel: Yeah. You probably shouldn't admit to the person who's your boss and, and is a self declared avid reader.

I am not the biggest reader. I'm a, as you've heard me reference, I'm a podcast listener. I love This American Life, Freakonomics, and some other really great  podcasts. I have, however, started to dig more back into reading and finding the value in that. I started and I'm working my way through. range, which was actually one I heard about from Dr.

Marco Clark, president of Holy Cross College on this very podcast. So doing my research. Good, good. On multiple fronts and, and heard about that and that speaking to being a generalist really speaks to me and that all of those pieces. And then the one I'm most, I'm actually really excited about, and for me to be excited about a book, is something, says something, and it's on hold, or I'm in the wait list right now at my virtual library for how big things get done.

And I heard about it on an NPR segment, uh, really excited to read this one, the summary, it combines a lot of real life experiences with data and economic like terms. Interesting. So this is like melding my love of. Experiential learning alongside data, and hopefully I haven't built it up too much in my mind, and it turns out to be as good as I think it's gonna be, but it really is, does seem like a, you know, perfect, very appropriate book for me to be reading as we're launching waypoint strategies.

How do big things get done? 

Sarah Hempstead: Excellent. That's a new one. I have made a note of it. Thank you for joining me today for a conversation. This was lots of fun. I learned a lot of things I did not know. And to learn more about Waypoint strategies, listeners can find us online at LinkedIn and Facebook or visit waypoint strat.

com. And this has been Luminate, navigating the unknown through creative leadership. Thanks for listening. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to our podcast so you'll never miss an episode. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, at Schmidt Associates.

Until the next time, keep navigating the unknown with creativity and confidence.