>> From Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley it's theCUBE, covering the Churchills, 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Santa Clara, California at the Churchills. It's the ninth annual awards banquet put on by the Churchills Club, and this year is all about leadership. We're excited to be joined by our next guest who knows a little bit about leadership. He's Carl Guardino, the president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Carl, great to see you. >> Great to see you, too, Jeff. >> So what is the Silicon Valley Leadership Group all about? >> The Silicon Valley Leadership Group is an association of about 360, primarily innovation economy employers that want to make a positive, proactive difference here in the region, as well as in our state and across the United States. >> What are some of the hot topics that are on top of the plate right now? Because there is a lot of craziness kind of going on here in Silicon Valley. >> There is. But what we try to do is impact those issues that are as important to families in their living rooms as they are to CEOs in their board rooms. And here in the bay area, we call those THEE issues. An acronym, T-H-E-E. The T, traffic; H, housing affordability; E, education; and the fourth E, the economy. And we try to bring together diverse points of view for those areas that unite us, where we can actually solve some of those challenges. >> Right, and those are big, big challenges. And you work both with public as well as private groups to try to bring them together to make movement on those things. >> We're a bridge. And the first thing about a bridge is that you try to bring folks together to cross the bridge and work together. The second most important thing about a bridge is that you build them, you don't burn them down. And that's the role that we try to play with 360 highly engaged CEOs and c-suite officers. >> And it's only appropriate, because tonight you'll be sitting down in a conversation with the mayor of San Jose, Sam Liccardo, to kind of get into some of these issues. San Jose seems to be on a roll right now, a positive roll. A lot of positive news coming out of San Jose. >> Yes, and that always starts with leadership rather than luck. San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo, 10th largest city in the United States, has been able to strike that balance of being pro-innovation economy, while also caring deeply about his citizens, the residents of San Jose, 1,053,000, and how we make sure that we have a strong and vibrant economy, but also a great quality of life. >> Right. So how do you even begin to - we'll start with traffic. The T in the THEE. To address that issue, it's so multifaceted, right, it's so tied to jobs, it's tied to housing, it's tied to the growth of the economy, you know, unfortunately freeways are slow to build, public transportation's expensive, but we continue to see growth there. How do you kind of eat that elephant, one bite at a time, with something like traffic? >> Well the role of the leadership group is, again, by bringing people together to solve complex problems in a democracy with winning solutions. So we'd rather win than whine. And when it comes to traffic, one of our core competencies is actually to lead and run ballot initiatives to fund transportation improvements throughout the region and the state. In fact, in the last 30 years alone, I've had the pleasure of going on loan from the leadership group to run ballot campaigns for transportation improvements that have totaled 30 billion dollars in revenue through those measures, approved by voters to reach into our own wallets, rather than our neighbors, to build improvements that, this Christmas, in time to go into your stocking, we'll be bringing BART to San Jose, and working on the electrification of Caltrain, linking transit and better road improvements, making it better for all of us trying to travel throughout this region. >> Right. Good, we need it. >> We do. >> And on the housing, you know, because the housing is also very closely tied to traffic, and we see that the old days of single-family homes on big pieces of dirt, those are going away. They just can't support it in higher density areas like San Fransisco, San Jose, to bring those jobs next to that. So we're seeing a huge transformation in the housing space as well. >> And we need a huge transformation, both in transportation and in housing. And it's really the flip side to the same coin. T, for tails, or transportation; H, for head, or housing. And you have to make sure that you keep those linked. In fact, one of our initiatives right now is to work with all six, fixed rail transit operators throughout the nine bay area counties. What are the current and future uses of those half miles around every fixed rail transit stop that you have? How do we maximize those uses? Here's a great example. What Google wants to do in downtown San Jose, at the Diridon SAP station, is only because of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group's work to bring BART to that station, electrify Caltrain, light rail is there, Amtrak, ACE, et cetera, and they want to have 20 to 25 thousand future Google employees there within the next 10 to 12 years. Why? Because it is a sustainable location that doesn't rely on you and I slogging through traffic in our single-occupant cars. >> Right. I can't wait to see what you guys do to El Camino. That's the next one that's going to - as somebody once said in one of these traffic things, it's just a bunch of old retail stores with empty parking lots, just placed by Microsoft. Or excuse me, by Amazon. So I think we'll see a big transformation with housing and jobs, you know, along that quarter, which happens to parallel the Caltrain, and is near and dear to my heart. So a lot of good opportunities I think to make improvements. >> Jeff, there is. And as hard as transportation and traffic solutions are to put into place, housing is even tougher. And while Bay Area residents think housing is the bigger crisis, the solutions are tougher to come about, because the community isn't as united on those solutions. So the role that a group of employers like ours play, is how do we bring people together around solutions that make sure that we build homes, that are good for everyone in our society. >> Well Carl, I like your positive attitude, a lot of winning and no whining, so I wish you nothing but success. And we'll be watching. >> Thank you, Jeff. >> You're welcome. He's Carl, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at the Churchills in Santa Clara, California. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.