Leadership

Lydia McGee is the Principal Public Affairs Representative with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Through the Business Outreach program, she works to promote business and economic development in the area of contracting opportunities for regional, small, and disabled veteran businesses. This program represents a current reinvestment of more than $1 billion in small businesses. As the regional, small and disabled veteran business program outreach representative, she is charged with identifying and vetting businesses that are positioned and seeking to do business with the Metropolitan Water District.

Lydia oversees Metropolitan’s training, coaching, and mentoring programs for Small Business Enterprises, Disabled Veteran Business Enterprises, along with hosting and participating in various training workshops. Lydia hosts Business Outreach’s signature event Connect-2-Met and/or Connect-2-Vet twice a year. Lydia represents MWD in industry groups, professional organizations and supplier diversity advocacy groups, demonstrating MWD’s commitment to partner with and assist in the development of small business capacity building.

Jaymee Lomax is The Vice President of WBEC-West. WBEC-West is a regional partner of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), a coalition of corporations, Women Business Enterprises and regionally focused women’s business organizations. As an affiliate organization, WBEC-West implements the certification standards of WBENC throughout Arizona, Colorado, Southern California, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam.

WBENC certification is nationally recognized and accepted by more than 10,000 major corporations. We also support corporations in their efforts to include WBENC Certified WBEs in their supplier diversity programs. Previously before taking on her new role Jaymee was the Senior Diversity Advisor for San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), a Sempra Energy utility. SDG&E is a regulated public utility that provides safe and reliable energy service to 3.4 million consumers through 1.4 million electric meters and more than 860,000 natural gas meters in San Diego and Orange counties. The utility’s service area spans 4,100 square miles.

Jaymee is committed to Supplier Diversity and is very proud to be a part of the WBEC-West team. Jaymee is responsible for impacting women – owned business in the community through education, networking, and community development. Enhancing Corporation and WBEs relationships, outreach programs and creating business opportunities for WBEs.

Jaymee has shared her expertise and knowledge with the community by serving on Executive Boards and committees for several diverse organizations Jaymee is an award-winning diversity professional who has received numerous awards and nominations in recognition of her support in the diversity arena.

Alexander Kim is Founder & Principal of Three Kings Public Affairs, a government, business & community affairs consulting company helping with clients (ie. Korean Community Services, The Irvine Company, etc.) with accessing the government and providing outreach to community leaders in the Southern California region. He also is Co-Principal of Windfall Strategics LLC specializing in business/marketing consulting for domestic & international businesses.

He has over 20 years of experience in government affairs serving as Central Area Director for City of Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, Deputy Director to State of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senior Adviser to City of L.A. Councilmember David Ryu, Public Affairs/Community Manager of SoCalGas (a Sempra Energy utility), & most recently as District Director to State of California Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris representing the beach cities of South Orange County.

Alexander has served on several State of California commissions to represent the public (Board of Optometry Board, Board of Naturopathic Medicine Committee, & Board of Behavioral Sciences). He currently serves on the government committees for the Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer’s Korean-American Advisory Board & the Orange County Transportation Agency (OCTA) Diverse Community Leaders Committee.

In the community, he serves on the boards for: Titan Institute (an Education Tech non-profit for underserved community), PBS SoCal/KCET Community Advisory Board, Asian Business Association of Orange Co. (ABAOC), Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance (OCAPICA), Korean American Coalition of Los Angeles (Advisory Board), Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce in Orange County, and the Asian Pacific American Public Affairs Association – Orange County Chapter (APAPA-OC).

Alexander strongly supports our nation’s military and America’s veterans. In 2011, the United States Navy honored him as a “Key Influencer” to fly in a Boeing FA-18 Hornet with the Blue Angels as a reward for helping successfully recruit numerous diverse candidates to their Naval Officer program. He also helped lead the Veterans initiative at SoCalGas to help recruit, retain, and involve veterans to help other veterans in the Southern California region.

Alexander graduated with a MBA from Pepperdine University and is a frequent guest lecturer on government/public affairs. He is a Network of Korean Americans (NetKAL) Fellow at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Social Work. Alexander obtained a B.S. in Biology/Minor in Political Science at U.C. Irvine where he co-founded the University of California at Irvine (UCI) Korean American Alumni Chapter as its first president and remains active as an alumni in the Anteater community.

Michael is an accomplished supplier diversity and supply chain professional, with experience managing compliance, rules, regulations, and public laws for various corporations – including a woman-owned general contractor, a few of the Nation’s largest public utilities, and most recently with a globally recognized healthcare system. His experience also includes creating and managing strategies, goals, and programs that exceeded over $2 billion dollars in spend annually with small- and diverse-owned businesses, ultimately leading to being honored by various community leaders for his efforts and recognized with awards by numerous local and national business organizations.

During his career, he has also successfully led large cross-functional project teams, managed multi-million-dollar budgets, negotiated large settlement agreements, and led the execution of strategic sourcing efforts to include small and diverse-owned businesses…in addition to other contract management activities.

In his quest of helping to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment for all, he has also leveraged his managerial and analytical talents, to lead and support employee resource groups, at several corporations, that were focused on company-wide Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion related efforts. Michael also serves on the Strategic Council for The Diversity Advisors, a group of passionate DEI-focused business leaders who have come together to provide strategic direction to various organizations – ensuring diversity of thought and inclusion is embraced far and wide.

Michael has also served on the advisory boards of several non-profit business organizations and when he is not passionately working to advocate for DEI efforts, you can find him at the beach, enjoying a hike, or spending quality time with his spouse and son – while also enjoying an adult beverage and watching his favorite football team, the San Francisco 49ers, win.

Ed Hart is Senior Vice President and Director of the Center for Family-Owned Businesses for First Bank of St Louis, a 4th generation privately held, family-owned bank. He resides in Southern California with his wife Laurieann, and together they have eight grandsons!

Possessing an extensive background in leading family-owned businesses, Ed has helped hundreds of family businesses with his expertise and sound leadership. Most recently, Ed assisted a start-up financial services provider in their launch of an Institute for Entrepreneurship, focused on working with small-to-medium sized, minority-owned businesses around Southern California. Prior to that, Ed led the Cal State Fullerton Center for Family Business for 11 years, where he created educational programs for hundreds of family businesses, raised millions of dollars for the Center and the university, and in 2019, took a group of CSUF students to Vietnam on a study abroad program to visit several family businesses.

Ed has developed a reputation as an ambassador for the success, legacy, and leadership development of family businesses, and the underserved populations around the country.

Throughout his career Ed has developed Executive Education programs for the USC Marshall School of Business, taught Sports Leadership and Sports Finance at UC Riverside for 8 years, served as the General Manager of a professional minor league baseball team, and was the North American Business Development Manager for an Australian technology company that serviced the sports and hospitality industries.

He is a published author, sought after public speaker, and hosts the From The Hart Podcast, which is heard in 101 countries, and has hundreds of thousands of listeners annually.

“The most rewarding investment of all is a relationship.”