"Keep track of your time."
Naomi smiled.
"I have a phone."
He laughed.
"That wasn't what I meant."
She looked up.
He continued.
"Don't let other people convince you their emergencies are always more important than your life."
Naomi remembered those words.
Although it would take years before she learned how to follow them.
College was difficult.
Her courses demanded long hours of study, and she worked part-time to cover expenses not included in her scholarship.
She studied supply chain management, industrial systems, data analysis, and optimization.
Her favorite subject was operations research.
She loved the idea that careful planning could solve practical problems.
A hospital needed medication delivered.
A manufacturer needed specialized components.
A warehouse needed equipment.
An airport needed the right vehicle at the right place at the right time.
Every system contained constraints.
Time.
Money.
Distance.
People.
And the consequences of failure.
Naomi wanted to understand how to design better systems.
During her senior year, she completed a project examining delays in transporting temperature-sensitive medical supplies between regional facilities.
The research revealed something surprising.
Many delays weren't caused by aircraft or trucks moving too slowly.
They came from poor coordination.
A shipment might sit in a warehouse waiting for paperwork.
A courier could arrive at the wrong facility.
A hospital might receive inaccurate arrival information and schedule personnel unnecessarily.
And a small communication failure could disrupt an entire chain of carefully planned work.
Naomi began wondering whether software could make those systems more reliable.
She presented the idea to her professor.
He listened.
Then asked, "Are you planning to work for a logistics company?"
"Maybe."
"Which one?"
She hesitated.
"I was thinking about starting one."
He smiled.
"That's ambitious."
Naomi nodded.
"I know."
He studied her.
Then said something she never forgot.
"Ambition is useful. But you need to understand who will suffer when your system fails."
She considered.
He continued.
"Build something people can trust on a bad day, not just something that looks impressive during a presentation."
Naomi wrote that sentence inside her notebook.
Years later, she would keep the same notebook in her executive office.