I am Councilmember Twilight Carter, Chair of the Resilience Committee, and it's 1001, so let's get this party started.

Call the meeting to order and recognize staff from Council Member Tarcha Jackson's office, Councilmember Tiffany Thomas, Councilmember Joaquin Martinez, Council Member, well, Mayor Pro Tem uh Cassex Tatum, and Councilmember Julian Ramirez.

Online, we have Council Member Staff from Council Member Jackson's office.

And we're so grateful for Cisco being here today for our presentation.

We have Ryan Forth from the South Texas Region, who is the South Texas region president, and Verdetta Blow, who is the VP of Enterprise Risk Management and Global Business Community.

Come on down and we look forward to your presentation.

I know you guys are doing a lot of uh work in and around the city, and so we're excited to hear from you today.

Chair Carter and Honorable Council members.

Thank you for the opportunity for us to present to you today at the Resilience Committee.

Again, I am Vendetta Blau, the Vice President of Enterprise Risk Management and Global Business Continuity and Resilience at Cisco.

And as a Houston-based company, we appreciate the city's leadership on resilience and the opportunity to partner in that effort.

Good morning, and uh I'm Ryan Forth, uh the uh Cisco's uh South Texas uh region president.

Well when disasters hit uh restaurants, hospitals, and others rely on us to keep food moving.

That makes our operations part of the city's uh critical uh infrastructure.

Our presentation today shares how we take care of our colleagues and customers during disasters uh utilizing our resiliency strategies.

Next slide, please.

Today we will cover just a brief overview of who we are as a Houston-based company, our presence here in the city, an overview of our business continuity and resilience program, disaster support, and then we will close with a few recommendations before we move into QA.

Next slide, please.

All right, so at Cisco, we pride ourselves on living out uh our purpose, which is connecting the world to share food and care for one another.

We execute that mission out of 337 distribution points across 13 countries, led by over 75,000 colleagues uh worldwide, uh, which we support over 730,000 customers, of which encompass all areas where meals are enjoyed away from home, including restaurants, hospitals, schools, education, government, and hospitality establishments.

Next slide.

We are located in West Houston.

Our current headquarters building was built in 2008.

We are Houston's first lead gold building for new construction.

Our office houses about 1,200 employees give or take, and we provide support services to all 13 operating countries in which we operate across the world.

Next slide, please.

We are deeply rooted in our community that we're proud of through partnerships like the Houston Food Bank, where we donate more than $400,000 of perishable goods uh uh annually.

We're also a proud um uh sponsor of the Houston Livestock Show in Rodeo.

We're um we are the exclusive provider and have been for many years.

Um, and we're really excited um here to be uh part of the host uh city committee for the World Cup as a donor and the exclusive provider for the FIFA Fanfest that we're all excited to get kicked off here next week.

Next slide, please.

Outside of our broadline distribution center there on the north side, we also have a specialized meat and seafood manufacturing facility called Buckhead Beef, where we process and manufacture meat, poultry, seafood, things of that nature to the same customer base.

We also over a little over a year ago opened up two cash and carry locations that are branded Cisco to go, one just off the Katy Freeway and one uh just on the corner of the uh energy stadium.

Next slide.

That's what I just talked about.

So next slide, sorry.

So Cisco's business continuity and resilience program is governed by my team under the oversight of our executive leadership team.

Execution actually occurs locally with responsibility placed on individual operating sites that have the resources to address local needs rapidly and effectively.

We take a very proactive strategic approach to business continuity and resilience planning through a cyclical progressive process that includes the integration of multiple contingency plans.

In a disaster, we may prioritize delivery of emergency products and supplies, including bottled water when it's available to our essential customers while continuing to work to meet all of our customer needs.

We do over-index on our most vulnerable communities, so hospitals and nursing homes, and of course, first responders who are the boots on the ground in an immediate disaster.

Next slide, please.

Internally, our function operates centrally from our global support center and our West Houston headquarter office, where we have enhanced resources to oversee advanced preparation strategies to mitigate the business impact of various disruptions, particularly the risks associated with extreme weather events that are prevalent this time of year.

As we know, we're right at the beginning of Atlantic hurricane season, which started June 1st and will go through the end of November.

Our team provides annual readiness training and resources ahead of and during severe weather season, and we monitor imminent weather events daily, and when necessary, we assemble an internal cross-functional departmental support team to work directly with our regional operations leaders, such as my partner here, Ryan, and those affected areas to activate business continuity plans and other resilience resources.

And some of these include we have an established mass communications and a threat monitoring technology that we use.

We trigger preparedness processes such as generator backups for power redundancy.

We ensure that our facilities teams are inspecting and repairing roofs and other fencing and structural facility items ahead of natural disaster storm events, and then we confirm that our fleet are weather ready, and if we have to shift business to a different location, we ensure that my colleague Ryan and his team that they are focused on running the business and we take care of all of the preparedness measures.

We also run simulation scenarios to test and minimize weather-related disruptions that focus on ensuring timely deliveries, routing and safe passage of our fleet, and then prioritizing of course our customers and those communities that we serve.

Externally, we are very proud to be a member of the Greater Houston Partnerships Resilience Advisory Group.

I serve on it along with Cisco's Chief Technology Officer.

The Greater Houston Partnership has convened a forum for Houston's companies.

These are the large Houston-based companies, and we partner on sharing regional resilience insights with the goal of positioning Houston as the most resilient coastal city in the nation.

The Greater Houston Partnerships Advisory Group has been incredibly effective in connecting us with Houston area leaders to share those best practices and coordinate resilience efforts where possible.

In fact, we were able to work with the Greater Houston Partnership to design passage letters for our Houston drivers so that they can get safe passage into disaster prone areas to ensure that we can serve our customers when disaster strikes, particularly again, our first responders and those vulnerable communities, communities such as hospitals and nursing homes and schools when schools are in session.

During disasters, a cross-functional team within Cisco, including my business continuity team, our region's regional leadership such as Ryan here, our communications teams, our government relations teams, we all ensure that we coordinate with the City of Houston officials, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, and the Houston Emergency Center, the Office of Emergency Management.

Working with officials has been a mutually beneficial experience as we have been able to supplement community needs while receiving support for our colleagues, customers, and our operating sites.

Ryan is going to share more about how his South Texas region directly supports Cisco's customers and communities.

Next slide, please.

Again, as I said, as I mentioned earlier, our mission of connecting the world to share food and and care for one another really comes out in the case of disasters.

That our customers obtain enough inventory ahead of landfall, right?

Making that preparation before a storm is here.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Barrel, as you see here, we were the proud to partner with local officials to support a community.

We did not we donated food and water to the West Grey and Southwest multi-service centers, which served as cooling centers during those times for folks that were affected.

Our donation included 23,000 bottles of water, 8,000 bags of chips, 10,000 pieces of fruit, and over 6,000 servings of juice to help those in need.

We were honored to work alongside our city leaders, including Mayor John Whitmire, Congresswoman Elizabeth and former Congress member Abby Kamen to provide that relief during this challenging time.

So which obviously was impacted.

Cisco was proud to step up, provide food and being one of the first responders there at the site, dropping water as well as financial donations from across our organization.

Next slide.

So as we think about the upcoming hurricane season, we have prepared a few recommendations for the committee's considerations based on our experiences during disasters.

We believe that these will help strengthen the resilience of the city of Houston.

First, we recommend that essential food service operations, particularly those serving hospitals and vulnerable populations, be prioritized as critical infrastructure for power restoration.

Second, maintaining flexibility for large fleets to access disaster areas through tools like the driver credentials or the passage letter that we were able to obtain are critical to keeping the food and supplies moving throughout our supply chain for the city.

This is something again that we were able to work with through the Greater Houston Partnership, and we did this prior to last year's hurricane season.

Thirdly, direct lines of communication between major operators and the Houston's Office of Emergency Management are essential for real-time coordination.

We are grateful to have received a direct line to that Office of Emergency Management officials and an open seat at the emergency center to directly coordinate and align efforts during a disaster emergency.

We would recommend the same approach for other large Houston-based companies as well to minimize the disruption during these disasters.

And then lastly, providing voluntary guidance for Houston employers to keep their employees safe during natural disasters so that as they prioritize home, they can prioritize the response and recovery efforts for the city.

Cisco rolled out our annual training for our own colleagues ahead of the start of this year's hurricane season, and we're very excited about the results.

As Houston continues to face more frequent and severe weather events, strengthening coordination between the public and private sectors will be critical to ensure the city remains resilient.

We really appreciate the city's partnership and the leaders here on the resilience committee, and we look forward to continuing our work together to ensure Houston's communities and its food supply remains strong in the face of future challenges.

So we'll pause there and open it up for questions.

Any questions for Ryan and I?

Thank you for your presentation.

Also, I would like to acknowledge Councilmember Panzarella has joined us as well as staff from Council Member Peck and Council Member Castillo's office.

That's such a collective of the industry leaders in the city.

And I think that the recommendations that you have in front of me, my first thought is how do we ensure that everyone has that information?

Because I think certainly as it comes to uh you know customers, but also those critical needs for nursing homes and hospitals and where that's the high priority needs in the past.

I know that we've struggled with we've got nursing homes with power issues, we've got nursing homes with water issues, and and certainly uh these are these are very important uh and great recommendations.

Um you know, I uh I your network is probably, I think you have the largest fleet of trucks in the world.

Is that what I remember hearing?

I believe it's probably the third outside of the two largest logistics companies in the U.S., yeah.

That's pretty incredible.

So you have a huge network.

Um it looks like Councilmember Panzarella has a question.

Thank you, Councilmember Carter, and thank you so much for the presentation here.

Um would y'all be able to go back to the slide about the resilience centers.

I think it was West Gray, and there's one other.

Yes, these two.

And you know, I just want to say West Gray's in District C, we we very much appreciate the support that you all do and the hard work that that you put through in these you know difficult situations.

We'd love West Gray to continue to be a center for this.

Just curious, how did these locations get selected in the past?

Is you know, are these going to be the same locations going forward?

How does that kind of so um specifically I believe it came from uh the uh councilwoman that I had mentioned earlier?

Um, we are certainly open to the idea of uh prioritizing which centers you would like, you know, as a contingency plan before the next disaster comes because we all know that would you know probably happen, but we can certainly write follow up.

Um, I mean, I would say basically you guys let us know and uh help you know prioritize for us which centers you would like.

Great.

Perfect.

Thank you.

In the past, it's most often driven on based on need and accessibility, and when these multi-service centers are set up, it's uh you know, accessibility also.

It's it's what what are the community needs and and where uh where that central location is for distributions and such ice and water and such, and there are other areas that sometimes perhaps aren't as easy to get to, and perhaps we lean into local partners, uh certainly your partners, but local partners such as HEB or some of the other networks.

So it's it's it's a it's a broad broad base of of uh support.

Uh question from Councilmember Peck's office.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh and I thank you for the presentation.

I wanted to follow up uh um on a question from Councilmember uh Panzerella.

So um is it possible for a district office to request this disaster uh relief in a certain area?

Because for example, West Gary and Southwest are not uh near the spring branch area and district A.

So is it possible to request from Cisco directly uh from a council member office?

Is that possible?

Yeah, I would say that is possible, right?

It would be a a request, and obviously, depending on where the storm hits, where you know, you know, where the biggest impact is, hopefully not on the north side on our and at our facility.

Um, and then basically it takes uh some time to understand what our bandwidth will be usually within the first couple of days, right?

Power at our own facility.

We do have a generator um that you know that keeps us operating.

Um, but as Vendetta uh mentioned, we usually like to make sure our colleagues are safe at home and they've got that situated.

Um, right, plan B is um identifying how many folks we can get in.

So it really comes down to that.

But yes, we can certainly follow up afterwards and uh detail a plan on how those requests would come in and ultimately um uh right have a plan on how we decide which ones we can actually get to.

That'll be great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

I noted in your presentation you have I think 1,200 employees at your headquarters.

How many employees do you have uh countywide, just in the local area?

So we've got roughly about 600 at the broadline distribution center.

I've mentioned um I don't actually have um the that's okay.

I was just curious.

But you're probably close to two thousand, I would say.

Thank you.

Any other questions, concerns, comments, or otherwise?

That was quick.

And we thank you for your presentation, but most importantly, thank you for the work that you do in this support.

I know that uh you have many ask, but you always step up, and certainly we as Houstonians appreciate having the support of the Cisco's of the world because it makes a difference.

It makes a difference every day, but most especially in a time of need, and uh and and certainly your your network and your resources um are invaluable.

So thank you for your presentation.

We have no public speakers signed up.

So I think that wraps it up.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for attending.

Thank you for being here.

Um our next resilience meeting is August the 10th at 10 a.m.

We look forward to welcome you welcoming you all back then.

Thanks a lot and have a great day.