FEBRUARY 2023

FEATURE
Ingredients for Success
Three friends, two cultures and one great company
BY PAUL NATINSKY
Almost three decades
ago, three friends joined
forces for a professional
journey none of them could have
predicted.
Patrick Tomina and Eric
Hardy met at University of Michigan-Dearborn.
They came together
from very different backgrounds—Tomina
is Chaldean
and has roots in independent retail
businesses; Hardy is African
American and from a family in
which his father worked for General
Motors and expected his son
to follow a similar path.
Pat and Eric were initially
bound by their common interest
in engineering, but their
relationship deepened as they
worked together to form a company
based on their common interests
and values that each brought to the
equation.
“27 years ago, people didn’t really
understand our business relationship
because they’re looking at a Black
guy and a Chaldean guy and they are
thinking ‘Why are they so close? Why
are they doing business together?’ I
don’t think that happened that much
back then,” said Tomina.
Hardy summed it up in a sentence.
“Like-minded people, regardless of
culture, can come together.”
The first venture for Tomina and
Hardy was to form a company that designed
websites. Intended to be fun,
the venture was a hobby cooked up in
the U of M Dearborn computer lab.
And then there were three
Eventually, Hardy left engineering for
IT consulting. It was at this career stop
that he met Keith Echols. Echols was
working at Detroit Edison at the time
and was Hardy’s second client. The
two found themselves working deep
into the night on a project in the state’s
Thumb Region. On the long drive
home, the conversation deepened,
and they began to think there might be
something there, said Echols.
W3r team played fowling and threw axes at a recent outing at the Hub, in Novi.
Hardy said Echols, who is a few
years older than Hardy and Tomina,
was the first Black executive with
whom Hardy had worked. “He was a
demonstration of what was possible
for folks who looked like us.”
The idea of working together jelled
when the three came together on another
project. They decided to establish
a company based on the idea that strong
personal relationships and contributions
from different cultures could blend
with strong professional skills. The three
principals planned to harness this business
philosophy and use it to drive solutions
for their clients. Thus, was born
w3r, with Hardy as CEO, Tomina as CFO,
and Echols as Executive Vice President.
Technology at the core
Hardy says w3r “is a technology firm
at our core.” The company focuses
its effort mostly in three industries:
healthcare, financial services, and insurance.
w3r operates mostly in technology
spaces, handling challenges such as
cloud transformations, data management
and application development.
Branching out into healthcare, the
company now also owns a nursing and
case management practice and operates
a healthcare employment agency.
Diversity in w3r’s interests reflects
the company’s corporate philosophy,
which stems directly from its principals.
“It was the differences in our backgrounds
that allowed us to be successful,”
said Hardy. Tomina brought elements
of the Chaldean community to
w3r, Hardy and Echols brought Tomina
into their circle, including the National
Society of Black Engineers. The
trio never led with the fact that their
company was minority owned, though
it was obvious as soon as they walked
into a room, said Hardy.
The formula has worked well and
allowed w3r to form trust bonds and
long-term relationships with clients.
w3r did a recent pitch-and response
with a financial services client,
part of a 17-year relationship. The
project at hand is to help the bank
through its organizational move from
Michigan to another state. In this process,
the client will have to divest itself
of key property assets. w3r will work
to help them take the core operations
and put them in the cloud.
“We’re the guys behind the scenes
doing the architecture work as well as
the development work with the companies
to allow this modernization of the
environment to happen,” said Hardy.
The transition has to be seamless.
Conquering COVID
w3r’s corporate structure
helped it meet challenges outside
of its core business. The
company used its strong internal
relationships to weather
the COVID storm well. Hardy
credits the company’s roots in
engineering training among
the principals and a conservative
management style.
Tomina credits the company’s
closeness and strong communication
with its employees
for helping it retain employees
and develop flexible COVID
personnel policies.
“There were a lot of companies
that during or after CO-
VID, that had hard lines with
their employees. Many of our
employees are close friends of ours—
we go out to dinners together; we
see each other all the time outside
of work. We allowed our folks to do
what they wanted to do. So, if they
wanted to work from home, we provided
them with the tools to do that.
We didn’t put any hard lines down
that said ‘Hey, you’ve got to be in the
office three days a week, or you’ve got
to come back to the office full time.’”
Hardy said the company had one
of its best years ever coming out of
COVID as the demand for work-athome
technology spiked.
The home stretch
Hardy said the partners are driving
revenue to $100M in annualized
revenue over the next five years. At
that point they likely will have serious
conversations about succession
plans that help make the organization
younger. Just like the old days
the trio talk and see one another
frequently, so they are on the same
page.
However it shakes out in the end,
w3r’s journey has, thus far, been as
much fun as a college joy ride—with
the satisfaction reserved for grownups.
18 CHALDEAN NEWS FEBRUARY 2023