New operations officer named by Acoma Enterprises

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

PUEBLO OF ACOMA — A new chief operations officer for Acoma Business Enterprises has been named: Charles Schmidt, the former director of information systems.

Schmidt will oversee all the non-gaming operations of the tribe, including two travel centers, one at Interstate Highway 40; Sky City Communications Co.; the Haak'u Museum; Sky City Cultural Center; and a new 70-room, $11 million Hampton Inn and Travel Center to be constructed in Grants next year.

Schmidt said in his 5 1/2 years at Acoma Business Enterprises, a lot of what he has done as the director makes the move into the COO position comfortable because it is nearly identical, such as budgeting and supervising people in various positions.

He has a bachelor of arts degree in business administration from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and immediately prior to working at ABE was a manager for Qual Med in Pueblo, Colo., a large health insurance carrier based in California.

He will have “operational control and management” of the various facilities which will entail financial administration and budgeting, customer service, personnel(staffing), and organizational procedures, he said.

“Evaluating and measuring different expectations in all areas such as trying to decipher why there is a high turnover in employees,” will also be pat of his responsibilities, he said.

“There is a shortage of talent everywhere,” he said.

The challenge as COO is twofold, he said: One is efficiency the other is doing the right things at the right time for the right reasons.

“We (ABE) are still a young company, we are only nine years old,” he said.

The Acoma Tribal Council developed ABE to be able to operate the tribe's businesses and to develop new and diversified businesses, Schmidt said he decided to go into information systems when he was younger and realized there was more to computer than just programming.

“Programming the same two lines of data for hundreds of possible variations loses its creativity real fast,” he said.

He spent three years in the U.S Marine Corps., and has been a resident of New Mexico since 1985.

He is married and has two children attending school in Albuquerque where he and his family reside.