In Comparably’s weekly Women’s History Month series, we have been recognizing female executives from our Best CEOs list. Highlighted this week is Lidia Yan from NEXT Trucking, a Los Angeles-based, venture-backed company innovating the transportation sector by boldly taking on the challenge of digitizing the $800B freight trucking industry. Its intelligence matching technology capabilities transform the way shippers and truckers engage and communicate to maximize productivity while remaining trucker-centric.The on-demand platform allows shippers to instantly find truckers with capacity and have real time tracking updates and transparency with the movement of their freight throughout the entire shipping process.
Since Lidia co-founded the company five years ago, she has been very careful in curating a leadership team, board, and employees who are truly passionate about what they are doing. Her mission to change the lives of truckers in a meaningful way is part of the company’s core values, and ultimately the reason for its success. NEXT employees have consistently raved about Lidia’s leadership so it is no surprise why they have rated her as among the best of other top CEOs in the country.
We were very fortunate to have this exceptional innovator share pieces of wisdom with us during a recent Q&A session. Read on for an excerpt of how Lidia overcame her biggest challenge, how she separates her professional from personal life (she co-founded NEXT with her husband), and how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted the company.
——–
How has the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic affected your company and industry?
As a shipping provider, NEXT is exempt from this mandate as we are considered an essential service. Without trucking, there would be nothing on the shelves. These challenging times show just how critical logistics is to the American economy and we are to power the movement of essential goods. In order to maximize our impact, we’re also actively reaching out to medical device and food & beverage manufacturers to ensure that their supply chain and logistics needs are met.
What was the biggest challenge/obstacle you faced and how did you overcome it?
I’m a 5’2 Asian woman who was looking to get into the trucking space; it was pretty obvious that I didn’t look the part. In fact, I regularly attended meetings where people thought I was someone’s executive assistant or intern. That said, I always found it empowering to be knowledgeable in the space. When we started NEXT Trucking, we spent days at the ports asking drivers what they would want out of an app, and how we could improve their lives. We were incredibly prepared with first-hand research and knowledge when we began the company. It was really empowering to know as much, if not more, than the people we were talking to, even if I didn’t look the part.
How do you define and set the tone for workplace culture?
There are two ways to think about corporate culture, especially in tech. The one that seems to be most common is based on giving out t-shirts, service beer in the office, having a lounge, and all of the other things that tech companies are doing to compete for talent. The deeper, harder side to address is a company’s mission and vision. For this, it’s incredibly important to know what your customers think of you. If your customers love your service, then maybe building as a service-oriented culture is the way to go. Conversely, if your customers view you in a way that isn’t aligned with your goals, it’s a clear indication that something needs to change. For us, we listened to our customers, and concluded they were trying to simplify things, and eliminate lots of waste from their supply chain. More and more, we realized they wanted “painless freight,” so we made that into our vision statement.
How important is self-care, and what do you do to unwind, relax, or relieve stress?
I’m in a bit of a unique situation, because my co-founder is also my husband, which makes it harder to find time to think about anything unrelated to the business. To address this, we actually set times of the day where we’re not allowed to discuss NEXT Trucking; we can talk about anything except work. Sometimes that means we take our dog for a walk and talk about anything else. Sometimes that means we do our own thing.
