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Laura Liotta is the President of Sam Brown Inc. Healthcare Communications, which she founded in 1999. She is an accomplished, healthcare public relations and corporate communications executive with 35 years of experience supporting all sectors of the healthcare industry: life sciences, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical device, venture firms, healthcare services, patient, advocacy, and nonprofit organizations. Sam Brown Inc. is fiercely independent, mid-size agency with deep expertise and experience helping a wide range of early- to late-stage biotechnology and pharmaceutical clients communicate their value through all phases of development and direct to patients. The agency has helped numerous public and private company tell their story creatively and strategically through analytics, public and media relations, outstanding creative services, and digital and social media within the life sciences space. Day to day, Laura is focused on Sam Brown agency management, business development and ensuring outstanding client service. She is an experienced communications strategist and a trusted advisor to C-suite executives and board members. She has a seat at the table for strategic planning, messaging and counsel. In her long career, Laura has worked on significant corporate events such as company launches, financial raises, IPOs, deals and acquisitions, and exits, while also facing numerous business and clinical issues facing the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Laura is an experienced and well-respected media and presentation trainer to a variety of spokespeople, including CEOs and executive leadership teams, Board members, Scientists, KOLs, Advocacy, Celebrities and Patients. At Sam Brown, training and messaging is seen as an critical extension of the corporate and brand strategy and not delegated to an external trainer. She has a deep understanding of the pharmaceutical and SEC regulatory environment and need for guardrails. Laura has successfully trained thousands of people for broadcast, print and online interviews, plus podcasts. Laura started her public relations and public affairs career at DuPont Merck, Nexell Therapeutics and Smithkline Beecham. She is a graduate of Rowan University with a BA in Communications with Public Relations specialty. She lives in Villanova, Pennsylvania, is most proud of her 3 children and the Sam Brown team. More of Laura: Website: sambrown.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lauraliotta/ Facebook: @sambrowninc Twitter (X): @sambrowninc
Life Sciences expert Karen Tkaczyk joins VistaTalks host María Roa on this podcast episode. Karen is a distinguished figure in the translation and language services sector, particularly within the life sciences domain. Currently Director of Sales – Life Sciences at Vistatec, Karen possesses a rare blend of scientific expertise and linguistic prowess, making her contributions invaluable to companies aiming to globalize their operations. Karen's journey is a testament to her passion for chemistry and languages. With a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge, her career began in the pharmaceutical industry, working with giants like Zeneca (now part of AstraZeneca) and SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline). However, her linguistic skills, honed through a minor in French and an Erasmus year in France, paved her way into the localization industry. This unique combination enabled her to transition seamlessly from translating chemical documents as a freelance linguist to playing a pivotal role in helping companies navigate the complexities of going global. Karen's expertise is in translating languages and understanding the nuanced requirements of the highly regulated life sciences sector. Her work involves helping organizations translate complex, regulated content, such as FDA submissions and patents, which demands linguistic skills and a deep understanding of the subject matter. Her current role involves assisting in growing the Life Sciences Division at Vistatec, securing new clients, nurturing strategic accounts, and leveraging her extensive industry experience to provide tailored localization solutions. During her conversation with host María Roa, Karen discussed several key topics, including the evolving landscape of clinical trials, the impact of regulations on the life sciences industry, and the potential applications of AI in this field. She highlighted the importance of understanding and adapting to new regulations, like the EU's Medical Device Regulation (MDR), and the shift towards decentralizing clinical trials post-pandemic. Karen also shared her insights on the critical role of diversity and inclusion in clinical trials, emphasizing how varying responses to treatments across different demographics necessitate a more inclusive research approach. Furthermore, she touched upon the significance of real-world evidence and data in complementing clinical trials, offering a more comprehensive view of a treatment's effectiveness across diverse populations. Beyond her professional achievements, Karen is also gearing up to host a series of podcasts and discussions for Vistatec's Life Sciences Division, focusing on the life sciences and healthcare sector. This initiative aims to share knowledge and insights from experts within the field, further solidifying her commitment to fostering understanding and innovation in the localization of life sciences. Karen Tkaczyk's story is a reminder of how the intersection of diverse interests and expertise can lead to groundbreaking contributions in specialized fields. Her dedication to bridging the gap between science and languages enhances the global reach of life sciences companies and ensures that advancements in healthcare are accessible to a worldwide audience. As we navigate the complexities of a rapidly evolving industry, Karen's work serves as a standard of excellence and innovation in the localization sector. Catch the full episode of VistaTalks featuring Karen Tkaczyk to dive deeper into her fascinating journey and expert insights into the future of life sciences localization. https://www.vistatalks.com
Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London's Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good. Today we bring you an interview with John Browne. Lord Browne is the former CEO of BP and now one of the world's most prominent climate tech investors. He has served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, Intel, DaimlerChrysler, and SmithKline Beecham.John joined BP out of university and rose up the ranks to become CEO between 1995 - 2007. He turned BP from a former national oil company into the world's third biggest corporation. He is widely regarded as one of the top CEOs ever to emerge from the UK. Two years into his tenure as BP CEO, John was accused of “leaving the church” by fellow Big Oil executives after a landmark speech at Stanford in 1997 in which he acknowledged that climate change was manmade and called for action.These words may be uncontroversial now, but in 1997 they were both brave and very important.Today John is the Founding Chairman of BeyondNetZero, a multibillion dollar climate fund launched with General Atlantic.John has been an influential advisory board member at Giant Ventures since we started the firm. He and I previously wrote a book together, Connect: How companies succeed by engaging radically with society.In this conversation with FT columnist and author Gillian Tett, John provides a state of the union on climate change, 25 years on from his historic Stanford speech. They cover everything from climate finance and carbon markets to the role of oil and gas companies in decarbonisation. The episode was recorded shortly before the UN COP climate talks - so you will hear John and Gillian debate the UAE's controversial role as COP host.Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.Building or investing in purpose driven companies? Read more about Giant Ventures here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This podcast format is inspired by the Charles Dicken's novella “A Christmas Carol” whereby Phil Jeffrey (Bicycle Therapeutics), Beth Williamson (UCB) and Daniel Price (Nimbus) discuss DMPK Past, Present and Future with Scott. Key elements discussed include the evolution of DMPK as a predictive discipline that links helps the chemistry of drug design with the biology of drug disposition and effect.The episode addresses the following questions:The founding names and principles of DMPK and the emergence of Discovery DMPKToday's use of technologies and in silico modelling and DMPK's role in the 3 pillars/5Rs and PK/PD The outlook for better prediction with advances in AI/MLSpeakers:Phil Jeffrey - Senior Vice President of Preclinical Development at Bicycle TherapeuticsPhil Jeffrey is now semi-retired after contributing to DMPK for over 35 years in the pharmaceutical industry. Most recently, Phil was Senior Vice President of Preclinical Development at Bicycle Therapeutics and previously has held positions at Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, SmithKline Beecham and The Upjohn Company. Phil is a longstanding contributor the Society for Medicines Research and is an Honorary Professor at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London. Phil has a wide breadth of experience across DMPK from, Drug Discovery and early lead optimisation through to clinical proof of mechanism and proof of concept across a wide variety therapeutic areas and drug modalities and made significant contributions to the advancement of understanding the CNS penetration of drugs into the brain. Beth Williamson - Head of ADME in the DMPK group at UCBBeth graduated with a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Liverpool and is now Head of ADME in the DMPK group at UCB where she also represents DMPK on projects throughout discovery and development. Beth's work has focussed on in vitro and in vivo ADME assay optimisation and validation within drug discovery, particularly to address bespoke questions. Beth has worked in the fields of oncology, neurology and immunology. Her main research interests include drug-drug interactions, extrapolation of pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo data for the prediction of human pharmacokinetics and application of AI/ML approaches within DMPK. Daniel Price - Vice President of Computational Chemistry & Structural Biology at Nimbus TherapeuticsDr. Daniel Price is Vice President of Computational Chemistry & Structural Biology at Nimbus Therapeutics, where he leads a team of internal and external scientists focused on delivering breakthrough medicines through structure-based design, leveraging both physics-based and knowledge-based predictive modeling. Before joining Nimbus, he spent 16 years at GlaxoSmithKline, where he led a team of computational chemists and data scientists across diverse areas of structure- and ligand-based drug design, high-content screening analytics, predictive ADME, predictive synthesis, and chemogenomics. He has led drug discovery programs, contributed to 4 clinical candidates, led the development of GSK's first generation R&D data lake, and authored/co-authored 26 publications. Dr. Price received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from University of Colorado at Boulder followed by his Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry from Yale University with Prof. Bill Jorgensen. He completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Charlie Brooks, III at The Scripps Research Institute prior to joining GSK. Stay tuned for more podcasts in our Pharmaron DMPK Insights Series!
Laura is joined this week by Laura Liotta, President of Sam Brown Healthcare and Communications Agency, where they discuss misconceptions of healthcare PR and the importance of authenticity in communication with clients, patients, and the team. In this episode you will learn: About misconceptions surrounding PR and celebrities using medical options in the healthcare industry. The importance of collaborative agency-client relationships and how the client's influence sets the tone for the company. Laura's experiences in the 90s working in the pharmaceutical industry during the HIV/AIDS epidemic and how it inspired her of the importance of incorporating patient voices in healthcare communications. The importance of confidence, which comes from expertise and experience, but for that ‘IT' factor in interviews. And as an added bonus…Learn about the fun activities her team engages in, such as pre-presentation rituals and annual retreats, to foster camaraderie and teamwork. 24 Hour Challenge: Curate your social media feeds to control how you are influenced. Follow positive thought leaders such as Mel Robbins, Oprah, Tony Robbins, Simon Sinek, and Brene Brown. About Laura Liotta: Laura Liotta is the President of Sam Brown Inc. Healthcare Communications, which she founded in 1999. She is an accomplished healthcare public relations and corporate communications executive with 35 years of experience supporting all sectors of the healthcare industry. Sam Brown Inc. is a fiercely independent, mid-size agency with deep expertise and experience helping a wide range of early- to late-stage biotechnology and pharmaceutical clients communicate their value through all phases of development and direct to patients. The agency has helped numerous public and private companies tell their story creatively and strategically through analytics, public and media relations, outstanding creative services, and digital and social media within the life sciences space. Laura is an experienced and well-respected media and presentation trainer to a variety of spokespeople, including CEOs and executive leadership teams, Board members, Scientists, KOLs, Advocacy, Celebrities and Patients. Laura started her public relations and public affairs career at DuPont Merck, Nexell Therapeutics and Smithkline Beecham. She is a graduate of Rowan University with a BA in Communications with Public Relations specialty. She lives in Villanova, Pennsylvania, is most proud of her 3 children and the Sam Brown team. You can connect with Laura Liotta in the following ways: Web: www.sambrown.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraliotta/ You can connect with Dr. Laura Sicola in the following ways: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlaurasicola LinkedIn Business Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vocal-impact-productions/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VocalImpactProductions Facebook: Vocal Impact Productions Twitter: @LauraSicola Instagram: @VocalImpactProductions Website: https://vocalimpactproductions.com/ Laura's Online Course: virtualinfluence.today See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this podcast, Scott Summerfield, Senior Director, Pharmaceutical Metabolism at Pharmaron discusses his recent publication on Free Drug Theory (FDT) with Simon including the principles, arguments, and project impact. This article was an invited contribution to a special edition of the Pharmaceutical Research Journal recognizing the achievements of Professor Margareta Hammarlund-Udenaes and Kp,uu.The episode addresses the following questions:What is the FDT?How FDT relates to fundamental physical and biochemical principles?How ambiguity in its definition can hamper discussions in drug design?Importance of linking drug-at-target concentrations to drug-target bindingHow to apply FDT as a starting point to understanding concentration-effect relationships and PK/PD?Speaker:Scott Summerfield, Ph.D. - Senior Director, Pharmaceutical Metabolism at PharmaronDr Scott Summerfield is currently Senior Director and Head of Pharmaceutical Metabolism at Pharmaron where he leads the UK group and its support of the Life Sciences industry. He studied Chemistry at Coventry University followed by a PhD in Biological Mass Spectrometry at Warwick University and then a Post Doctoral fellowship at Manchester University. Scott joined the Pharma industry in 1997 as a member of SmithKline Beecham's DMPK group. At the formation of GSK he moved to Neuroscience Discovery serving in a range of roles from leading the bioanalytical and biotransformation team, DMPK program representative, and member of the company's Blood-Brain Barrier Working Group. Scott has led WW groups supporting nonclinical and clinical PK and Biomarker Bioanalysis and has published over 60 scientific articles and book chapters. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a children's book author, a professional Coach, and a Kung Fu instructor. Reference:Summerfield, S.G., Yates, J.W. and Fairman, D.A., 2022. Free Drug Theory–No Longer Just a Hypothesis?. Pharmaceutical Research, 39(2): 213-222. Stay tuned for more podcasts in our Pharmaron DMPK Insights Series!
099: Dinah Liversidge helps people go from “thinking outside the box”, to “no-box thinking”. She's a Coach and Trainer with almost 25 years experience and she's an Independent Celebrant. Her background in Corporate started at SmithKline Beecham as a PA to the Marketing Manager for Anti-infectives, which was to lead to 14 amazing years of opportunity, travel and event management. Dinah has been an entrepreneur since 2004, setting up and running five successful businesses in diverse sectors, she now lives a ‘portfolio lifestyle' pursuing several of her passions. Dinah lives in Carmarthenshire in South-West Wales with her husband, John. She Coaches people who are ready to change their mind-set stories and create new, positive habits for life and business. She speaks and delivers training Internationally and works as and trains Celebrants in the local community. She adores cats, cars, conversation, connecting, collaborations and much more. More about Dinah: https://www.dinahliversidge.com/
To be successful in treasury, it's important to build an intimate understanding of your company from top to bottom. That advice comes from this week's guest on The Treasury Career Corner who joined the show to provide expert advice to treasury professionals. John McAnulty, former Group Treasurer at Richemont, discusses his route into the industry, how the treasury world has evolved and how he has navigated crises over his 30+ year career. Plus, he highlights the key traits he thinks professionals require to make it in treasury. John McAnulty was appointed Group Treasurer of Richemont, a leading luxury goods company, in 2000 and is based in Geneva. In addition to coordinating all treasury activities, he is responsible for overseeing the Group's global pension, insurance and enterprise risk management programmes. He left this role in September 2022. Prior to joining Richemont, he worked from 1989 for SmithKline Beecham plc undertaking a variety of roles in finance and strategy development. From 1985, he worked for the Midland Bank group, first in its leasing subsidiary and subsequently in the banks' central finance function. Born in the UK, John holds a degree in Business Studies, a Post Graduate Diploma in Finance and is a Fellow of the Association of Corporate Treasurers. On the podcast we discussed… How John approached treasury as a newcomer The evolution of automation and tech in treasury Making an international switch How entering treasury has changed over the years The benefits of being curious How Richemont changed during his time there You can connect with John McAnulty on LinkedIn. Are you interested in pursuing a career within Treasury? Whether you've recently graduated, or you want to search for new job opportunities to help develop your treasury career, The Treasury Recruitment Company can help you in your search for the perfect job. Find out more here. Or, send us your CV and let us help you in your next career move! If you're enjoying the show please rate and review us on whatever podcast app you listen to us on, for Apple Podcasts click here! If you're interested in learning more about the fundamental pillars of treasury, download my free Corporate Treasury eBook by clicking here!
What you'll learn in this podcast episode It's generally accepted that effective E&C programs are based on values as well as rules. But applying those values to real-life situations can be difficult. This has been particularly true during the pandemic, as organizations make hard decisions in many instances and chief ethics and compliance officers play a key role in guiding those efforts. How can values help CECOs sustain ethical performance—and even excel—in the face of such change and adversity? In this episode of LRN's Principled Podcast, host Susan Divers talks with Scott Sullivan, Chief Integrity & Compliance Officer at Newmont Corporation, and Joe Henry, who just retired as US Compliance Officer at Braskem. Listen in as they discuss the difficult choices they faced in providing moral leadership in their organizations—how those choices were made, by whom, and what the examples say about the role of the CECO. Principled Podcast Show Notes [1:58] - Scott's role as the CECO at Newmont Corporation, the challenges faced and how he applies his values. [4:50] - Ethics and compliance at the heart of Newmont's decision making during the pandemic. [6:10] - Joe's role at Braskin and the challenges he faced. [11:20] - The role of Joe's values in influencing colleagues to change the decisions they made. [13:35] - The lessons learned from these tough experiences in the company. [16:12] - How both company's ethical cultures emerged after the pandemic. [19:50] - Other circumstances which strengthened the respective ethics and compliance cultures. [27:25] - The most important areas of focus for an ethics leader in resolving difficult questions. Featured Guest: Joe Henry Joe Henry was the US Compliance Officer for Braskem, a multi-national Chemicals and Plastics company headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He led the Ethics, Compliance and Risk Management efforts for Braskem's US operations including commercial, manufacturing, logistics, management and Innovation and Technology (R&D) functions. Prior to joining Braskem in January 2017, Joe was a Compliance Director at GSK, a global pharmaceutical company, and worked in various ethics and compliance roles since 2003. Investigations oversight, Compliance Operations, Methodology development, process assessment and improvement, policy and procedure management and managing government oversight programs were some of the responsibilities he successfully fulfilled while at GSK. Prior to his GSK Compliance roles, Joe worked at SmithKline Beecham as an Information Technology Project Director and with IBM Sales, Technical Support and Product Development. Joe earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and an MBA from Saint Joseph's University. He also earned his certification as a Leading Professional in Ethics and Compliance from the Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI). Joe and his wife reside in Lewes, Delaware and he retiredg at the end of March 2022 to pursue personal interests, travel and enjoy more time with his 3 grown children and two grandchildren. Joe continues to provide advisory and investigation services on an as-needed basis to Braskem's US Compliance department. Featured Guest: Scott E. Sullivan Scott E. Sullivan is the Chief Integrity & Compliance Officer of Newmont Corporation, the world's leading gold company. Newmont has approximately 15,000 employees and 15,000 contractors and has 12 operating mines and 2 non-operated JVs in 9 countries. Mr. Sullivan oversees, develops, implements and manages Newmont's integrity and compliance program including ethics, anti-bribery, corporate investigations, and global trade compliance. Previously, Mr. Sullivan was the Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer of a global manufacturer of fluid motion and control products with approximately 17,000 employees operating in 55 countries. Mr. Sullivan has written and contributed numerous articles on compliance programs, anti-bribery/FCPA, export controls, economic sanctions and other ethics and compliance topics to a variety of publications. Mr. Sullivan is also a frequent local, national and international speaker, moderator and conference organizer on compliance, anti-bribery/FCPA, export controls and economic sanctions. Featured Host: Susan Divers Susan Divers is a senior advisor with LRN Corporation. In that capacity, Ms. Divers brings her 30+ years' accomplishments and experience in the ethics and compliance area to LRN partners and colleagues. This expertise includes building state-of-the-art compliance programs infused with values, designing user-friendly means of engaging and informing employees, fostering an embedded culture of compliance and substantial subject matter expertise in anti-corruption, export controls, sanctions, and other key areas of compliance. Prior to joining LRN, Mrs. Divers served as AECOM's Assistant General for Global Ethics & Compliance and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer. Under her leadership, AECOM's ethics and compliance program garnered six external awards in recognition of its effectiveness and Mrs. Divers' thought leadership in the ethics field. In 2011, Mrs. Divers received the AECOM CEO Award of Excellence, which recognized her work in advancing the company's ethics and compliance program. Mrs. Divers' background includes more than thirty years' experience practicing law in these areas. Before joining AECOM, she worked at SAIC and Lockheed Martin in the international compliance area. Prior to that, she was a partner with the DC office of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal. She also spent four years in London and is qualified as a Solicitor to the High Court of England and Wales, practicing in the international arena with the law firms of Theodore Goddard & Co. and Herbert Smith & Co. She also served as an attorney in the Office of the Legal Advisor at the Department of State and was a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN working on the first anti-corruption multilateral treaty initiative. Mrs. Divers is a member of the DC Bar and a graduate of Trinity College, Washington D.C. and of the National Law Center of George Washington University. In 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 Ethisphere Magazine listed her as one the “Attorneys Who Matter” in the ethics & compliance area. She is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Rutgers University Center for Ethical Behavior and served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Practical Training from 2005-2008. She resides in Northern Virginia and is a frequent speaker, writer and commentator on ethics and compliance topics. Mrs. Divers' most recent publication is “Balancing Best Practices and Reality in Compliance,” published by Compliance Week in February 2015. In her spare time, she mentors veteran and university students and enjoys outdoor activities. Principled Podcast Transcription Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers. Susan Divers: Hello, it's generally accepted nowadays that ethics and compliance programs that are effective are based on values as well as rules, but applying those values to real life situations can be difficult. This was particularly true during the pandemic when organizations had to make hard decisions in many instances in unprecedented circumstances, and ethics and compliance officers frequently played a key role in guiding those efforts. How can values actually help ethics and compliance officers sustain ethical performance and even excel in the face of change and adversity? Well, hello and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast. I'm your host, Susan Divers, director of thought leadership and best practices with LRN's advisory group. Today, I'm joined by two thoughtful ethics and compliance professionals, Scott Sullivan, the chief ethics and integrity officer at Newmont Corporation, and Joe Henry, who just retired as the US compliance officer at Braskem. We're going to be talking about the difficult choices they face in providing moral leadership in their organizations, how those choices were made, by whom and what the examples say about the role of the chief ethics and compliance officer. Scott, I'm going to start with you. Can you talk about your role as the CECO at Newmont and some of the hard choices you've faced and how you applied your values? Scott Sullivan: Sure. And thank you, Susan. It's exciting to be part of this podcast and it's a subject I'm very passionate about. So while Joe will be tackling some specific examples, I thought it might be more beneficial to start with a bit on process and approach. So when your values are tested in trying times, this is when the rubber meets the road. So the least common denominator approach, or what is accepted, what is condoned, often becomes your culture. It's not the pronouncements and the platitudes, but rather what you do on the ground or in crunch time. So during COVID, which by the way is not yet over or gone, we faced numerous challenges like everyone else, our values of safety, responsibility and integrity were at the forefront of what we did and said every day. As our strategy rolled out, we had to consider the full spectrum of stakeholders from vulnerable indigenous communities in which we operate to suppliers who were dependent on us to our employees. In some cases in the early days of COVID, we even went into what's known as care and maintenance mode, which is basically shutting down except for essential services to protect the health and wellbeing of a variety of our stakeholders. We also deployed over 20 million in a COVID fund to assist communities around our minds with COVID type issues and challenges. We were active partners in the COVID struggles. We protected our employees with PPE, with vaccines, with health checks, et cetera, all this being said there were numerous and oftentimes competing opinions on what to do, being strong proponents of our values, and always circling back to them as a gut check when we made decisions, some of them which might have turned out to be controversial, was an excellent moral compass. It made us focus on not just what the short term, but what the long term was and what the consequences could be, both the good and the bad. It was our collective corporate decision that we had to make. As a compliance team. Part of our job was trying to read the tea leaves and anticipating what was coming. Fortunately at Newmont, we have a fantastic executive leadership team who gave us the space to support them and the organization this endeavor. We invited in diverse perspectives, we had spirited debates and we pressure tested key decisions that mattered most. I'm proud of the approach that we took as an organization whereby no means perfect, but I think it has served us quite well. Susan Divers: Scott, before I turn to Joe, one of the things that strikes me about what you just said is it sounds like ethics and compliance was really at the heart of decision making in these difficult areas that you mentioned. Am I reading that right? And if so, how did you achieve that? Scott Sullivan: Yeah, I think, health and safety for sure was I think the heartbeat, if you will. Perhaps we were the supporting role, but really as COVID evolved over times, the issues got more complicated as they went. So you had initial true health and safety issues, in some cases life and death that you had to do, but then you had a whole series of decisions around employment, around vaccinations, around care and maintenance. And what do you do with communities, where the donations go? How do you ensure that you're not supporting corruption when you're doing the good deed of making donations? So I think as COVID evolved and as the challenges around COVID evolved, we became more integral and more integrated to those decisions over time. Susan Divers: Well, and that's really a good example of how it's meant to work. Yeah, the ethics and compliance department isn't defective if it's often a corner, but it is effective if it's right at the heart of difficult choices, and that's a perfect segue to Joe. Joe, do you mind outlining your role at Braskem and then talking about some of the actual challenges you faced in your role in those? Joe Henry: Certainly. Thank you, Susan. Thank you for the invitation to join you all today. Let me start off by saying that Braskem leadership team is a caring and forward looking group and primarily based in the US headquarters in Philadelphia. And that information will be important in a minute or two. Early in the pandemic two of our sites operated for 28 days via a live-in where our workers stayed on site, quarantined from family and other outsiders to operate our plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. These plants produce polypropylene, which is a key material for personal protection equipment, such as surgical gowns, face, shields, gloves, and masks. So our workers were willing to do that. And our Braskem leaders provided all the essentials for this live-in. And our team members were paid for every hour on site. So Braskem tries to do the right thing. And during that time, all other team members were directed to work remotely during the pandemic. Eventually after our operations were deemed essential to US business interest, all of our plants reopened with strict masking and quarantine requirements, including restrictions in travel. One of our first policy decisions developed in Philadelphia was to require workers to quarantine for 14 days after travel if they had traveled from their home county. Works for Philadelphia were pretty close around in the urban area. The policy, and it worked for salary team members who could work from home, but not for hourly workers who worked on site and who would not be paid for the time they must quarantine. So at our Texas sites, this policy was problematic in that it would not be unusual for a worker employee to travel to the next county to care or check in on a family member. Therefore, compliance was asked to intervene. And as a result of that, our intervention, we extended the travel range and only had the policy applied to travel outside usual circumstances. The other one is more around vaccines. So one other example as vaccines became available, again, I remember they were under emergency authorization. There became a drive by Braskem management to encourage team members to be vaccinated and to push required team members to be vaccinated or else be terminated. The impetus for this requirement was that several people at manufacturing sites were complaining about being vaccinated and still having to wear a mask because others were not vaccinated. We discussed the proposed requirement at the leadership team meeting, which US compliance is a part. And then there was actually a discussion in our industrial team where we're not a part and they mandated this vaccination or termination requirement by a majority vote, not a consensus vote. I received a call from one of the dissenters. He was concerned that many of his employees would resign or be terminated because they did not trust the vaccine yet. His plant would be greatly affected. I brought this to the attention to the US leadership team that the vaccines were not yet fully approved and that no matter how administratively burdensome the CDC's recommendation was vaccination or regular testing. So I informed the group, I thought our requirement was overly restrictive. It infringed upon employees' rights, and I would not approve any of these terminations, in the US, the US compliance officer approves all terminations. So I had some leverage there. So what happened is we implemented weekly testing for team members who were not vaccinated. And that seemed to resolve the situation. By the way, it was helpful that I was fully vaccinated and boosted and it was clear, my personal beliefs were not a factor. Susan Divers: Wow. That's a very striking example, Joe, there's a couple of things I'd like to pursue a bit. One is, it's clear that people brought you into these decisions that they turned to you as a resource, it sounds like certainly in the case of be vaccinated or terminated before the vaccines were fully approved, but also it sounds like you were asked to intervene on the travel restriction. Is that correct? Joe Henry: Yes. Susan Divers: And was that at a senior, if I can ask, or other level? Joe Henry: I would say the vaccination or termination decision was a senior management at one of our industrial sites had the concern. And then the travel policy was probably, as I recall from one of the HR leaders at the site saying, Hey, we have some employees that are in unique situation here, or maybe not so unique, but different than what we would have from an urban center versus someone working in a more rural area. Susan Divers: Well, that's another good example of how a compliance and ethics and compliance program should work. It should be a resource and be welcomed into decision making, particularly on very difficult and tricky issues like the two that you just described. Can you talk about the role of your values in convincing your colleagues and your leadership to change or moderate the decisions that they made? Joe Henry: Absolutely. That was probably the driving force is our code of conduct, we don't dictate to people how they must behave, especially outside of work. It's fortunate that US compliance and compliance department of Braskem is independent and we're objective. And we're very visible. So people know us and people are willing to approach us. Again, that's why I started off the leadership team, it had the best of intentions. They heard from one group that says, Hey, we're tired of wearing masks. We want to be productive. And they reacted to that without understanding the potential consequences and the potential issues they may have with our own code of conduct. And that we couldn't mandate someone put something that was not yet fully approved. And that actually went further than what the government was telling us we needed to do. Which isn't uncommon. Our policies and procedures are frequently tighter than what the law requires. But in this case, we had to recognize that people have freedom of association and freedom of choice about theirselves. Once we brought all the potential consequences and perspectives of all affected team members, I think we reached the right decision. Susan Divers: So was that a difficult process, would you say, was it time consuming, or once you played that role of honest broker, was it something that people widely accepted? Joe Henry: Yes. Yes. I would say, we did use a lot of influence in... Basically had the show them what the consequences are, why their actions might not be entirely appropriate. So it wasn't a matter of authority. It was a discussion and it was a lengthy discussion, but I think everyone was fairly open minded and recognized that it was going take some more work and maybe we were going to have to spend some more money, especially getting a company to do the testing for us on a weekly basis. But I think they quickly arrived that it was the right decision. Susan Divers: Well, that's a great example. And thank you for sharing that. I'm going to go back to Scott for a minute and then to you Joe and ask. So obviously these were pretty intense situations that you dealt with. What lessons did you learn from that experience given your role in the company? If you could discuss that a bit, that would, I think be very helpful. Scott Sullivan: Sure. Yeah. Building on my prior comments a bit, I would say there were a few learnings and perhaps a few aha moments that we recognize along the curve. I think one was, you need to think both long term and short term. So whether it's your employees or your stakeholders, you might have a decision today that is different than the consequences tomorrow. So really making sure you're not just stuck in the moment, but you're thinking about the long term of the consequences or actions that come out of your decisions today. Playing off one of Joe's comments about culture and values, modifying a Warren Buffet quote a little bit, "Values take a long time to build, but they can be destroyed in a heartbeat." And people watch, I think that's the one that organizations often forget when they're looking at their culture, it's that whatever you allow or condone becomes your actual culture. So I think it's really important to practice what you preach and stay true to those values or before you know it, or right under your nose, you lose them. And that's true, perhaps even more so in the darkest days. So, how you're treating your employees and what people did with respect to terminations, or extending compensation during COVID, all eyes were on that. And I think that has longterm consequences for employees is they think, well, how did my employer treat me during those dark days? Did they exit us from the organization? Did they treat us poorly? Was the mighty dollar, the only thing that mattered? And again, for us, we have a social license to operate in the locations we do. So you have to think about that holistically, the full ESG perspective and look at all your stakeholders. And I think a little bit about what we've been talking about as well is anticipating the pushback, where are those pressure points, or focal points that are likely to come up and figuring out, like we always say, you can't take a program off the shelf, but customizing or figuring out what works best for you? And then hopefully that leads to you and many more in your organization becoming both values, beacons and champions to help the organization propel forward. Susan Divers: So in other words, it really can become a tremendous positive as long as you stay true to your values. And you're actually strengthening your culture, not destroying it to go back to the Warren Buffet quote. And Joe, based on your experience, do you think that your ethical culture at Braskem emerged stronger as a result of the types of difficult choices that people made in those circumstances? And are there any other lessons learned from that, that you would want to highlight? Joe Henry: So I believe our culture has gotten stronger. The ethics and compliance group and officers know they need to stay ever vigilant to ensure that passions do not overtake the organization's foundational values. We live in an impatient society that is quick to react and does not always consider all perspectives and unintended consequences. So this experience gives us an opportunity to talk to the leadership team and say, Hey, let's take a breath here. Let's look at this. I think when you're more thoughtful about these decisions, I think the decision will be better, probably strengthen your culture versus weaken it, or undermine it. But I do know that my successor's still facing these challenges. Susan Divers: Yeah. Although you're building ethical muscle at the same time, I want to highlight what you said about stop, pause, think, or you said it a little differently, but our chairman of our board, Doug Sideman, has written extensively about the benefits of pausing. And we do live in a impatient world and one that moves at light speed, particularly with social media. And I think Scott, you would agree with this too, that stopping and getting everybody to slow down and look at all the potential ramifications and equities. Joe's example of employees in Pennsylvania versus employees in Texas, I think is a very telling one. And that, that is really, I think what's needed to deal with particularly moral leadership issues. Scott, does that make sense? And also if you could talk about whether your ethical culture came out stronger as a result of the pandemic, that would be helpful. Scott Sullivan: Yeah. I think you often see in some areas the short term view or this, in the impatient world, as I like the way Joe characterize it, you see the pitch forks and the torches coming out in any particular topic. And so part of our job is to say, let's pause, let's think this through, the unintended consequences, the longterm consequences, I think for sure our ethical culture has emerged stronger. It really gave us ample opportunities to do the right thing and to put theory into practice. So one of the things coming out of the tragedy of COVID is it really gave us an opportunity to show our values and do the right thing in those dark days. And I think that also that consistency of messaging and values, it's not one offer. There's one big case. I think that really builds trust with stakeholders and gives you an opportunity to show that you're a different kind of company. So even in the dark days with bad or troubling news, you're going to be transparent and that we stand true to our values and hold ourself accountable to those values. So that consistency of operational model, I think extends well beyond ethics into business and health and safety. When faced with a challenge, we're going to think about it, be very thoughtful in what we do and ultimately do the right thing for the entirety of the stakeholder community. Susan Divers: Yeah, that sounds like very sound holistic decision making. Joe let's let's switch gears a little bit. We've talked about the pandemic and the challenges and how both of you feel that your ethical culture got stronger as a result, and you both played pivotal roles in the ethics and compliance programs, played pivotal roles in helping your organizations navigate. Can you give some other examples outside of the pandemic of having to do that? Joe Henry: So I mentioned one of our values is the freedom of association. As a result of the summer of 2020, George Floyd death and all, we had some outsiders, some activists and DE&I consultants recommend some potential path forward for the company. One of those, including tracking managers' social media profiles, and other forms of public expression and see whether they should continue to be leaders in the company or not. For instance, should we sanction a manager for attending a pro-life rally, or another manager for posting their support for the police on their Facebook page? That type of monitoring is not aligned with our code of conduct. We declined that recommendation. Again, the passion was there. Hey, we got to weed these people out. Well, no, we have to make sure that when they're working for Braskem, they're aligned to Braskem's values and that they're not diminishing our name in the public. And then most recently we've discussed how and when should compliance be involved in handling microaggressions. And we've agreed that microaggressions are supposed, should be handled between the two people in the first instance, maybe in a second or third occurrence, that it's handled, the person's called out publicly. And if it's repeated, then it's no longer a microaggression, it's an aggression. And then it comes to human resources or compliance. But those are some of the choices where, again, we relied on our code of conduct and relied on our proven policies and procedures regarding our ethics line to preserve the culture and continue to move the company forward and evolve the company. Susan Divers: Well, and that's another excellent example of pausing and looking at all the ramifications and carefully analyzing whether it is consistent with your code or not. Scott, do you have similar examples outside of the pandemic experience? Scott Sullivan: Yeah. So we've been on a journey of what I would probably call radical transparency in the ethics and compliance space, so where we're willing to show the good, the bad and the ugly to advance the health of our culture. It is a journey, so we're not perfect by any chance, but we're now more transparently and willing to share internal stories and struggles with our employees. I used to laugh all the time that most companies will say something happened to somebody, sometime, someplace with some result. And that leaves everybody, what the heck is that? What happened? And what are the expectations I know? So we've decided that we want to clarify expectations for employees. We want to at least establish the baseline for ethical behavior. And we want to ensure really that fraudsters or predators are held to account in the organization wherever and whenever we can. And also there's an evolving view about when something happens in our organization, what do we do to ensure that those individuals or groups of individuals are not just set free and allowed to go into the general community and repeat those damage? How many times have we all learned in the compliance profession, individual moves from company A to B, to C to D. And when you do the investigation, there's a long track record that history being repeated at different organizations. So we have done cradle to grave exposes, including one with a public press release, where we actually lifted the hood and told the full story. So most times it's fairly detailed internally and the reception has been excellent. It's advanced our culture ball pretty dramatically. As I mentioned, that being said, it's really, we're still on the journey, but we feel that practicing what we preach and not allowing performance to excuse misconduct or cornerstones of our culture. So even when the outcome is internally painful and extremely disappointing, we've been trying to promote this. So it's not just you do it once, because you can't fake it. And if you do it once, you see big scandals in organizations and periodically it's a big splash in the paper. And we've had similar things where you've had a case that we did our first radical transparency case. And I think the organization, the employees were saying, okay, is this a new way that we're going to operate, or is this the company's hand was forced and they felt they had to do it, so they did it? And so I think that whole concept of you can't fake, it's got to be genuine, it's got to be demonstrable and it's got to be sustainable, is really important. And as an aside, I think most companies can get compliance correct, or they get it right. That's to say that it's the right side of the brain, it's the math science side. It's one plus one, plus one equals three. But when you get to integrity, you get to ethics and culture, that's the equivalent to me, the left side of the brain, it's the English history. It's a little bit more soft. It's touchy, feely. It's hard to measure, but I think it's far more impactful. And that is often where I see organizations fall down, because it's so hard to do. And it's so hard to say, what is it? And it feels like it's subjective, or judgemental, or it's just real hard to do. So I think companies that focus on getting the integrity or the culture piece right, are so far ahead of the curve and getting everything else right. And that's not just in the ethics and compliance space, because I think that could be a proxy for good governance. It could be something that is a springboard for doing other things in an extraordinary way or well above peer organizations. Susan Divers: That's so interesting that you framed it in those terms. Something we talk about a lot and we're not alone in that in this area is that you can't just look at your ethics compliance program as a checklist and say, I'm good to go because I've got policies, code, training, audit, it has to be living and breathing. And that's where the touchy feely comes in. And the research, interestingly, it shows that if you have organizational justice where you're holding people to the same standard, and I hear you both talking about that in what you've described today, then you have the lifeblood and a strong foundation for your ethics and compliance program and activities. But if you don't, if there's two standards of justice, or what I'm hearing today too, is if there's a rush to judgment where some people get trampled in that rush, then you don't really have a strong foundation for your program. Joe, would you agree with that as well? Joe Henry: Yes, I absolutely do. Yeah, it has to be thoughtful, fair. We haven't gone to the extent from a transparency as Scott Newman have us to naming particular people, but we do anonymize those situations and publish them or even present them as lessons learned. Susan Divers: Yeah. That's very powerful. Well, we're starting to run out of time, but two questions before we terminate, which is what are the most important areas of focus by an ethics leader in resolving difficult questions? You've both given great examples of how central ethics and compliance was to tough decisions. But if you're a relatively new ethics leader, what are some of the key things to really bear in mind when those tough issues come up? Scott, you want to lead us off on that? Scott Sullivan: Sure. So I think as we've both mentioned, and same with Susan, the tone at the top is really important. So getting your executive leadership on board, otherwise the likelihood of success drops pretty dramatically. And I think as we've also both said, relationships matter. So build them wherever and whenever you can. And I think it's always that rainy day fund, you build credit in the bank, you build street credit. So for the bad news bear moment you have to come in, I think that's really important. So they understand who you are. You're not just a cry wolf person, you're thoughtful, you're methodical. You do all the things the way the organization would expect. And I think, for all of us, unfortunately, and you can see the business partnering go too far. So I think not withstanding that you always have to remember that there will be times undoubtedly as a compliance officer, where you have to put your neck on the line and hopefully your organization does not have a kill the messenger culture, that's not a fun organization to be a part of. And I think value based decisions are toughest in downturn markets and during crises. So we've come out of a pandemic and now we're going into what seems to be a downturn market. So I think the key message there is really prepare in advance and look at your rainy day credits and figure out where you're going to have to put your stake in the ground and move forward. Susan Divers: So build up your relationships and your credit and your goodwill. Joe, something to add. Joe Henry: I do that. I wholeheartedly agree. I think that what Scott mentioned is the most important area, but another area of focus is the company's values, which usually describes in the organization's code of conduct and implemented through your policies and procedures. And I remind the executives and our team members, employees, the code of conduct and policies are approved by the board of directors after thorough and thoughtful review by the executives, by the stakeholders and by compliance. So they're not done instantaneously and there's a lot of thought, there's a lot of reason why we have them and they shouldn't just be dismissed quickly because the particular circumstance. These documents provide the desired ethical direction of the company and have been very useful in resolving difficult decisions in the past, especially with well-meaning, but passionate team members. Go back to the foundation and consider it maybe, maybe, maybe we do need to make a change to the code of conduct or a change to our values, but at least reference it and have that discussion before taking any severe action that may have unintended consequences. Susan Divers: That's a very good point. One of my colleagues describes the code of conduct as your culture written down, and using it as a focal point and a way to ensure that major decisions and discussions include values, I think helps make it a living and breathing document. Well, this has been such an insightful conversation. I wish we could continue it talking about tough choices, I think is really helpful for people at whatever stage they are in their ethics and compliance journey and profession. So I want to thank our listeners. My name is Susan Frank Divers, and we'll see you the next time on Principled Podcast. Thanks Scott. Thanks Joe. Joe Henry: Thank you. Scott Sullivan: Thank you all. Outro: We hope you enjoyed this episode. The Principled Podcast is brought to you by LRN. At LRN, our mission is to inspire principle performance in global organizations by helping them foster winning ethical cultures, rooted in sustainable values. Please visit us at LRN.com to learn more. And if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And don't forget to leave us a review.
On this episode of Fired Up, Bob Corscadden, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for El Toro, talks about the best way to define and address – one-on-one – your prime audience. Highly effective targeting that leans into the digital sphere without cookie reliance. Bob joined El Toro in 2020 and has established his career expertise by spending critical time with such organizations as SmithKline Beecham, Nabisco, Tyson Foods and Kellogg's. He has led strategic development, innovation, research & development, and all aspects of marketing. Bob earned a bachelor's degree from Marquette University, and an MBA from Columbia University.
In this episode, Chrissie discuss the data sources used for pharmaceutical research and developments, the ethical issues arising with the use of data in the pharmaceutical industry, and what the future of AI looks like in the pharmaceutical industry. About Christine Fletcher Chrissie is the Vice President of Development Statistics at GlaxoSmithKline. She leads a group of statisticians supporting the development of new and approved medicines in immunology, hepatology/gastrointestinal, respiratory, cardiovascular, neuroscience, HIV, global health and infectious disease areas. Chrissie has worked in the Pharmaceutical Industry for 30 years and has experience of developing and commercializing new medicines in a variety of clinical disease areas across all phases of clinical development. She previously worked at Amgen in a variety of leadership roles and began her career working at SmithKline Beecham. Chrissie is actively engaged in statistical societies, pharmaceutical trade associations and initiatives relating to the Pharmaceutical Industry. Chrissie is the Chair of PSI, a Council member of EFSPI, and a member of various European and International Special Interest Groups. Chrissie is a member of the EFPIA Clinical Research Expert Group and is leading the Innovation in Clinical Trials sub team. Chrissie is the lead EFPIA representative for the ICH E9(R1) Working Group, and she is co-leading an EFPIA/EFSPI estimand implementation working group. Chrissie is a Chartered Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS). Chrissie has an MSc in Applied Statistics and a BSc (Hons) in Statistics with Management Science Techniques. Overview The pharmaceutical industry has had many advancements thanks to data and AI. Chrissie discusses how these advancements have supported the research for vaccines during the pandemic. We spotlight the ethical problems that may arise when using data in the pharmacy industry. From her 30+ years of experience, Chrissie shares her advice for those who are looking to work in the pharmaceutical industry. She closed out the podcast by discussing what most excites her about the future of AI. Learn more about our mission and become a member here: https://www.womenindata.org/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/women-in-data/support
Back in action, in this weeks episode of the Bank On Dividends Podcast, Banky takes a deeper look into the Pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline: Ticker "GSK". Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, GSK was the world's sixth-largest pharmaceutical company. In August 2016, it had a market capitalisation of £81 billion (about US$107 billion), the fourth largest on the London Stock Exchange. But is GSK a stock to consider when building a portfolio you can bank on! Follow on Instagram and Twitter @BankOnDividends https://linktr.ee/BankOnDividends Use the above link for a free share & Also support the Podcast with a one-time donation! Thank You All!
Chip has served as Genocea's President and Chief Executive Officer since February 2011 after serving as Chief Business Officer from August 2010 to February 2011. Chip has also served on Genocea's board of directors since February 2011. Prior to joining Genocea, he served as Chief Business Officer at Vanda Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company he co-founded in 2004. Prior to Vanda, Chip was a principal at Care Capital, a venture capital firm investing in biopharmaceutical companies, after serving in a variety of commercial and strategic roles at SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline). Chip holds a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Trish Egan is a born and bred Sydney girl, but she has had a lifelong love of horses from a young age, further fuelled when Dad would take her to the races as a child. Looking back, 12-year-old Trish - who secretly penned a letter to the Chairman of the Australian Jockey Club asking how she could secure her “dream job” of being a strapper - would never have thought she'd be taking the reins as Chair of the Australian Turf Club over four decades later. Despite being told that “stables were not the place for young ladies” and perhaps she needed to think about a different career, Trish never gave up on her racehorse dream. Now, after years after cutting her teeth with Unilever and going on to carve out a successful career in marketing and sales with multinationals such as SmithKline Beecham and Kellogg's, then moving to the not for profit sector with Vision Australia and now as COO of Diabetes NSW & ACT, Trish's board journey has led her back to the stables. In 2015 she started her NED career when she was appointed by the NSW Minister of Gaming and Racing as an independent director of ATC in Sydney. Now Chair, she is playing a role in securing a future for the industry - “it's really important that you have an understanding of what the next generation thinks about your product, not just the generation you're targeting” - and ensuring the welfare of the ex-racehorses as Trustee of Racing NSW Thoroughbred Welfare Fund. LinkedIn: Trish Egan | Claire Braund (host) Further Information about Women on Boards (WOB) For further information about WOB membership, events & services, please visit our website. To receive our weekly newsletter, subscribe to WOB as a Basic Member (free). Join as a Full Member for full access to our Board Vacancies, WOBShare (our online member platform) and more.
Change Makers: Leadership, Good Business, Ideas and Innovation
Sir Charlie Mayfield chairs Be the Business and the Productivity Leadership Group, which focus on stimulating and encouraging competitiveness and growth in businesses across the UK. He was Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership from 2007 to 2020, having joined the Partnership in 2000, with responsibility for business strategy and development for both John Lewis and Waitrose and for developing the Partnership's online strategy. He became Managing Director of John Lewis in January 2005 before taking up his appointment as Chairman of the Partnership in March 2007. Charlie began his career as an officer in the army. He joined SmithKline Beecham in 1992 and became Marketing Manager for the Lucozade brand, before moving to McKinsey & Co in 1996, where he worked with consumer and retail organisations. He also serves as chairman of QA Limited, a leading technology and IT skills solutions provider, and a trustee of The British Museum and Place2Be. He received a knighthood in June 2013 for services to business.This episode was released as part of Change Makers X Scaleup Week, a special series of conversations in partnership with Scaleup Week – led by BGF with the ScaleUp Institute – about the crucial issues and opportunities facing growing businesses as they navigate towards a sustainable, diverse and prosperous future.
The ultimate form of Return of investment is being able to pay it forward to that one thing that brought you to where you are now. Willie Deese, former president of Merck Manufacturing division and the current vice president of purchasing at SmithKline Beecham, shares with us how his difficult assignments brought him the values and talents that he has today.He will share with us his efficiency in driving a business forward and how diversity isn’t just about color, but also in thought, experience, and background, and how these will ultimately produce better solutions to problems.Let’s jump right in and see how you can also climb the corporate ladder and pay it forward to your mentors and teachers. [00:01 - 10:33] Opening Segment I welcome today’s guest, Willie DeeseWillie’s background storyWillie talks about his life in Digital Equipment Corp. [10:34 - 21:56] Working Your Way Up and Never StoppingGrowing in tough and dirty situationsHelping others succeed by setting an exampleSmithKline Beecham: Willie’s life after the plant Balancing the work with family life[21:57 - 28:13] Efficient Business DrivingThe importance of a manufacturing sector in a companyDriving business operations[28:14 - 38:44] The Red Pill MomentWillie shares what drives him to get things doneWillie’s thoughts and actions on diversityExpanding horizons, diversifying solutions[38:45 - 47:09] Giving Away $10,000,000Knowing others’ struggles call for actionWillie talks about his motivation behind the generosityPaying it forward to the university: The ultimate return of investment[47:10 - 50:25] Closing SegmentWhat should the listeners take away from this?Tough assignments and hard work build more character and resiliencyBe prepared to give back in either equal or greater measureTweetable Quotes:“If someone is gonna invest time, talent, and knowledge in you, they shouldn’t have to work harder than you, and you should never do anything to embarrass them.” - Willie Deese“Whatever you set out as a goal and you accomplish that, then it’s time to set a new goal.” - Willie Deese“I never thought that I was better than anyone else, but I never thought that anyone was inherently better than me.” - Willie DeeseResources MentionedMerckSmithKline Beecham (GlaxoSmithKline)You can connect with Willie by visiting his LinkedIn. LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to explode their business growth by sharing this episode or click here to listen to our previous episodes.Dreamcatchers is an inclusive organization that targets people’s interest in being more instead of a certain demographic. We have people from all walks of life at many different ages. Find out more at www.dreamsshouldbereal.com. Find out more about Jerome at www.d3v3loping.com or www.myersmethods.com
I asked Nawal Tandon to write me a bio that represented his Journey and this is what he sent me (see below)... we talked about his journey in life, his purpose and the balance of traditional beliefs of our parents and new beliefs of the next generations who immigrate to Canada and North America from India. Nawal Tandon's Journey Born in Jalandhar city, India in 1964 in a culturally rich family. Father was an Accountant and a flute artist. Mother was Home maker Three brothers, settled in India. Career in India: Pharmaceuticals sales career: 1986-2006 SmithKline Beecham, GSK and Serum Institute of India. Migrated to Canada in 2006 Toronto 2006-07: worked with Bell Canada Surrey: Nov.2007 to till date Started Drishti Media Group in 2010 and launched Drishti Magazine, South Asian lifestyle magazine. 2015: Launched Drishti Awards 2020: Celebrating 10 years anniversary of Drishti magazine Core values: Faith, Knowledge, Leadership, Integrity, Optimism, Community Service, Community involvement: BC Children's Hospital Foundation, Langley Memorial Hospital Foundation, Liver Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society, Canada India Network Society, Perminder Chohan Foundation, SABA, BCIBN, SFU Diwali Gala, IC-IMPACTS I believe in Karma and that is my religion.
Max: Welcome to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast, a show about innovation, technology and leaders in the recruitment industry. Brought to you by Talkpush, the leading recruitment automation platform.Hello everybody. And welcome to the Recruitment Hackers podcast with Max. Today. I'm pleased to welcome Elaine Davis, Chief Human Resources Officer at Continuum who is going to tell us about her 25 years of experience in the industry. And we'll focus a little bit on the recent crisis we've been through and how it's affected the talent acquisition team at Continuum, and her experience working with some of the largest high volume employers in the world. Elaine has worked with Conduit, Xerox, JSK, and has vast experience in sourcing, and the art of sourcing at scale —, which is how we started our, email exchange, Elaine. So to kick things off, welcome to the show, Elaine. Great to have you here. Elaine: Thank you, max. Appreciate it. Max: So, would you mind starting off by telling us a little bit about Continuum? (your current company). Elaine: Oh , yeah. So continuum began life as a carve out from a larger company called Conduent. And, Continuum has been standing on its own, since February, 2019. It's primarily the customer care business from the Conduent company. Conduent had been a carve out from Xerox, a huge company.And I was with Xerox at that time. And with Conduent. I left Conduent right after it actually became a standalone company itself in 2017 and took a couple of years off. Did some work in venture capital and got interested in HR... Yeah, well, the HR, well… I enjoyed the venture capital space. I was sort of the firm's expert in HR technology, the HR technology space, where there's a lot of really interesting things happening, particularly in talent acquisition.And then I got a call from the folks that were carving out Continuum and they asked if I'd come back into a more standard corporate role and set up the HR timekeeping, payroll and communications functions for Continuum. So I said, yes. Max: Timekeeping, payroll and Talent Acquisition.Elaine: And all of HR. And, Oh, I also run communications, which is the fun part of my job. Max: Great. Well, I'm happy that you got to experience basically, kind of like, can we say that you went from a bigger, to a smaller, to a smaller company? Are you, are you feeling that, you're moving towards the more human sized organizations over the last 20 years?Elaine: You know, the problems and the issues and the things that need to be solved for are the same, no matter what size the company is. You know. It's all human behavior related and it's all revenue related. So what I would say is fun about being in a smaller company and we're about, 15 to 16 thousand people or so, about a half a billion in revenue.It''s fun to sort of own a big piece of that. So, I mentioned various planks in my world. Right? It's a lot, but it's manageable, for me. And, I get to impact a whole, a pretty big swath of daily operations in the company, and that's fun. And some of my previous experiences with big companies, I had great jobs and was working with great people. But, boy, it's hard to turn a big ship around. Max: Well, 15,000 it's pretty massive already. That's what you said, 15 to 16 K was this headcount and Continuum today?Elaine: Yeah, we, we go up and down seasonally. We have some pretty big healthcare clients and there's a portion of their year where they're doing healthcare open enrollment.And so we increase our head count to support them on a seasonal basis so we can get up to 18,000 depending on the client and the time of the year. But to me, it feels small because when I was at Xerox, it was over a hundred thousand then, at Glaxo Smith Kline. we were over a hundred thousand, so 15 to 18 seems very small to me.Max: Okay. Well, one day I hope Talkpush can... I don't know if we want 15,000 employees, but if we could have 15,000 users, that'll be a good start, you know, at least two years before we get there. Well for our listeners who aren't familiar with the concept of a carve out, this is when a company's shareholders decide they're going to take a piece of the business and it's going to run better on its own than it does as part of the mothership.And you're part of two carve-outs, but within the same group. So that's pretty unique experience in itself. Can you share with me, what do you think is, you know, maybe the specifics are deal by deal, but what do you think is the motivation behind a carve out? Is it a size question where you think you run better and faster at 15 K, then you run at 50?Elaine: I really can't pretend to understand the motivation of the carve-outs other than it's financially driven. And I think it has more to do with stripping out underperforming assets. So that the company left behind can, focus on it's, I guess I use an old nineties word, you know, core competencies, in the Conduit, Continuum carve-out, Customer Care business was not performing and Conduit wanted to strip it out and let it stand on its own.It's actually been a great business on its own and not weighed down by the larger infrastructure of a big company. You know, you're right. I've been part of some interesting transactions. When I was first at Glaxo, in the United States, we did a hostile acquisition of a company called Burroughs Wellcome company, also a British pharmaceutical. That was quite a ride. And then Glaxo merged with SmithKline Beecham. That was a wild ride. Massive, pharmaceutical engines coming together to try to build research pipelines and get drugs on market, faster deal with the patent expirations, which were financially devastating for a lot of the pharmaceutical companies.So I've been involved in some interesting transactions. Almost always in an HR tech and HR technology role, sometimes in a commercial role. I've done Commercial Strategy and Marketing for businesses as well. So through all of it, I mean, I've had great opportunities to understand the levers of profitability.And big or small, I mean, in the end, you're trying to solve the same problems and that's even true in Talent Acquisition. Big or, small, you know, you have to make your way in a crowded field of employers and figure out a way to differentiate yourself, attract the best people and make their onboarding as gentle as possible, and to get them as productive as possible. And particularly in the call center business, that is super important because after you've hired people, you're training them. And that entire time that you've got people that you've hired, onboarded and you're training them, you're not generating any revenue off of that.That's an expense that a call center company has. It has to shoulder until you can get that person on the phone or on a chat or whatever, to start driving, to start building revenue. Max: I heard somebody told me that if the new hire, the agent, in a call center environment stays there for three months, that's long enough to pay for the hire. Anything beyond that is where the margin starts to be generated. Elaine: That's probably about right. Actually. But I will say that, I have been very focused on driving down cost per hire. I actually had to laugh the other day because at first I thought it was a joke, but somebody... I get a lot of... everybody, all your listeners and you get a lot of marketing emails right?And I got one from a company that wanted to tell me that they could help me hire a call center agents at the low, low price of a thousand dollars per hire. And I actually thought it was funny because I can hire — my metrics are under a $100 dollars per hire. So yeah. So, because everybody counts things differently.Max: Yeah. I need to make sure we're counting the same thing here because a hundred dollars… Are we talking marketing cost per hire or total cost per hire?Elaine: I am talking, marketing and assessment and background investigation per hire. Yeah. Max: Amazing. Which geography?Elaine: This is U.S.Max: Wow. Elaine: Yeah, it can actually be more expensive, not in U.S dollars, but it can be a little pricier on a cost per hire basis than some of the international markets, because some of the backgrounding is more extensive and much more expensive to actually run.Max: Well, I think that's a great metric. It seems that, you know, given that we're entering a recession or in the middle of a recession, that people will take another look at cost as a driver for decision. But of course, bringing the cost down also means that you can hire from a broader pool and you can be a little bit more picky, perhaps. It's a lever to increase quality, eventually, and retention, which as you were saying is the real cost of the business, because you've got high turnover. So if you bring the cost down, then, you know, a wider funnel means the whole journey benefits from it. Elaine: So you're absolutely right. That's insightful. You understand what I'm doing. I have a huge funnel. The other day.... and we're not in a rapid, robust hiring phase right now, today. We will be ramping up shortly, but right now we've come through the pivot. Out of the brick and mortar to people's homes and establishing our work at home model and trying to keep things reasonably stable. So we haven't been doing a lot of hiring, I think in June, we need to hire just in the United States, around 6 or 700 people.That's not a lot for us. I checked into our lead flow and we have 14,000 leads. So, That's a lot to hire 5 or 600 people. Right. So the funnel is wide open. And you're right. That is what helps me get to— there's goalposts or gates along the way. Right. If you're going to talk, you know, we're going to make it super easy to connect with us. Super, super simple. Whereas, you know, we have quick apply. We're scraping an XML feed. We are contacting you within seconds of you showing interest in us. Literally. I have a very, very rapid response. And then there's some gate posts, right? You got to schedule an interview with us and you gotta show up for the interview. And then assuming you get through that and it's not terribly difficult to get through it, to be honest.You've got to go through our assessment process. So people start to self select out. They don't want to do those things. It's not as easy as they thought it was going to be, they maybe don't want to take an assessment. So people start to self select out. But if I'm doing all those things right, and I have enough at the top of the funnel, I'm going to end up with, you know, I overfill classes every week. So in call center, you're hiring training classes, right? So you might have a training class, I think we have one starting on July 6th. We have 400 people starting, so I'll hire 480. I'll actually hire and onboard that many because, you know, the final gate post is, or mile marker, or whatever we call it is people actually showing up for the training, right.They actually need to show up, pass their drug screen, pass the background and they have to show up. So there's a lot of ways that people can fall out along the way. So I absolutely have to have that funnel wide open with a big pool of people. So I can end up with the people that I need at the very end.Max: Yeah. you can, you know, get mad and scream yourself, mute, at candidates for not showing up and dropping out. But, you can also accept the fact that, well, I mean, these are positions, which are not necessarily, you know, long term career plans and it's okay to get some dropout. You got to build around that. So completely agree with you. I'm still trying to digest your $100 dollars cost per hire. I remember seeing those studies that said that even for call center employees, a $1000 dollars cost per hire was the industry norm just a few years ago. And obviously being in a in a buyer's market, if you're an employer where there's going to be a lot more job seekers out there in this market today we're, you know, in the middle of a global recession. But, then of course there were all these other factors.So where do you think you got to, how did you, I mean, first of all, was a thousand dollars per hire, ever a number that was reasonable to you, at some point in your 25 year history in talent acquisition?Elaine: I can tell you that when I was with Xerox. When Xerox owned what became Conduent, Xerox had about 140,000 people in the company.This is a short several years ago, right. And 100,000 of those were BPO people. And the other 30,000 were the traditional document technology business, right, that we all think of. When we think about Xerox, we think about the machine, right. And the paper. But, a 100,000 of that was a very big BPO company.And I ran a lot of the HR business for that company and I ran Talent Acquisition. And we processed a million candidates in a 12 month period, candidates, applicants to end up with about 85,000 hires. And we were probably spending more than a thousand dollars per hire. It was such an overwhelming huge business and I was running it, so I can say this, we weren't doing it well. We didn't have control of our financials. We didn't know what we were spending. It was really super messy. Right? It was messy.Max: You said 85,000 hires and a $1,000 dollars per hire. That's like $85 million dollars.Elaine: Well, you know, it was geographic. So in the U S we were spending a thousand dollars to hire, but in other geographies, we were not spending that much. I mean, my budget wasn't quite 85 million, but it was very, very large and I never felt like I really had control of the process anywhere in the world.It was messy. It was a huge company. And then of course, Xerox divested that. And then it was divested again. So, you know, it's hard to keep track of all of the numbers. That's maybe why the shareholders were not happy. Max: Well, I've had many opportunities to sell to companies because Finance or Procurement was looking into TA and thinking “I don't know where the money is going.”Elaine: It's a mess. And I'll say one of the things that I really appreciated about being part of a carve out. So we're, we're owned by a private equity firm in Los Angeles called Skyview Capital. And the people in that firm they're sort of industry and function agnostic.They have a variety of companies that they either own, or they're heavily invested in from food processing to a cold brew coffee company, to our company, a security company. It's interesting. It's kind of all over the map. And what's been great about being part of that experience is that they're just trying to solve problems and make money.So when I joined about a year ago, the company Continuum had been stood up for a couple of months, had been carved out and they were trying to get their arms around it and figure out what the business model was and how we were making money. Or if we were making money and how things were working. And the first thing they saw was that the recruiting engine was broken. And how they figured that out is because the revenue engine was sputtering.And that's because in the call center business, if you don't have people in the center to answer the phone, you're not going to make any money. Recruiting drives everything. Max: You get penalties. Penalties for being slow to hire. Elaine: Oh, sure you do. Yeah. So recruiting is the revenue engine. You need the people in the seats answering the calls or you're not going to make any money. So they very quickly saw that when I joined, they were laser focused on how do you hire people in this environment? And they were not HR people. They weren't Talent Acquisition people. They were smart people, some with deep technology backgrounds and they just tore the thing apart and said, we're going to solve this problem one step at a time. And they did, and they helped us build a really phenomenal lead generation machine, an AI based machine that we use. And I think it's our competitive secret sauce I can hire faster and cheaper than any of my competitors.Absolutely. Hands down every day, all day long. Max: And something I've noticed as well. Some of my hardest, and I mean that in a complimentary manner, hardest customers to work with are those who do not come from an HR and TA background, but who come from Operations or Finance. Because they're like, everything's on the table, right? Why are we doing this assessment? Why are those two things not merged together? Do you really need to ask 10 questions, etc, etc. Why aren't we spending more time on this channel? That's more cost effective, but I guess it's the cost of like these relationships, right? When, if you're in one place for too long.Elaine: You know I've spent a lot of hours at this company trying to reshape how we do business. And I thought I knew how to do transformations because as a veteran of big companies, you know, you're going to go through one or two transformations. And, I never felt like a lot got accomplished by any of them in the really big companies I was part of. They were just a lot of PowerPoint decks and consultants in the room. And what's been interesting about this experience has been working with our owners, our private equity owners and people that they've brought in to help. Yeah, in the beginning they would say to me, well, I said, you know what?This is an advertising problem. We have a recruitment marketing problems. So I'm going to go solve our recruiting issue with recruitment marketing tools and advertising. And I need to hire this advertising firm and that one. And they said, hold up. No, we're not convinced it's an advertising problem. You need to prove that to us. So we went through a lot of exercises of me trying to prove what I believed because of my long background in Talent Acquisition and in HR. And I was wrong. They showed me how my thinking really was kind of mired in what my background was and what my belief system was.And they showed me that just by walking through and solving problem by problem at a very detailed and basic level, I came to different conclusions. And that was hard. Max: You just told us Elaine that you have a huge front of the funnel. And hence, naturally if advertising was not the secret sauce, the secret to making this, wide funnel work, where are you getting all those leads, for so cheap?Elaine: Well, I think that we had advertising, but we weren't capturing. The game now — everybody knows how to generate leads. The game now is converting. It's assessing and converting. So we now run contests as we've moved from using our recruiting engine in the U.S to our other markets, Dominican Republic, Philippines, Netherlands, Jamaica. We run games with our recruiters to show who can convert the most at quality. So what we did was we simply moved the problem down the body of the snake, right. In the beginning, we weren't getting leads. So then we got a bunch of leads and then we had to figure out, okay, how do we convert them?So we worked on converting them. And then we thought, oh gosh, we need to convert the right people. So we worked on assessment, so we just keep moving the problem further down our snake. You know, now we're kind of through, we've gotten through getting the right people. We've got great assessment metrics in place. We reshaped our backgrounding, to lower the barrier, but not the bar for us to bring people in. One thing about the call center business and one of the reasons I like it is that it's a first opportunity for a lot of people to, you know, to put food on the table for their families all over the world. It's an entry level opportunity for people that don't have a lot of opportunities. Max: it's not sexy for people who have been a few years in their career necessarily. Although you do have veteran call center agents as well. Yeah, but it's easy to forget, you know, what it's like to be a 20 year old coming out of school. I mean I was paralyzed at the thought of picking up the phone and talking to somebody just 15 years ago. It seems completely insane to me, but you know, I remember that. Elaine: Yeah, and in some countries, it's the difference between what stands in front of them and, and starvation. I mean, it really is.It's an opportunity for people in developing countries who don't have any opportunity, particularly women to put food on the table. And it's also a job that can be a second chance for somebody. And there's no shame in being an employer who can offer somebody a second chance.it's not a glamorous sexy job, but we have some examples in the company of people that have gone from basic call center agents to Supervisors, Operations Managers, they switch over to training. They come into recruiting. Max: I've loved it. I've been dealing with this industry for four or five years now.And, I feel absolutely inspired by, you know, the fact that it drives the launch of so many careers and it helps so many families. So I love it. I love just the high volume space for that reason. It's just how many people can you impact. And I wanted to ask you about the recent experience with the work from home transition, and how it's affected the morale of your team, of people who are not driving to work anymore, working from their PJ's shaving, et cetera. Are you starting to feel, you know, the weight of this lockdown affect the morale or if people are just finding it beautiful, the new normal?Elaine: From a corporate standpoint, you know, my global HR, payroll, etc. teams we've almost always worked remotely. when Conduent released this company, when it was carved out, we didn't really have headquarters. And people just worked where they worked.They left their office at Conduent and moved into their homes. So from an exempt perspective, we've all been home for quite a long time and we know how to work that way in Recruiting and Talent Acquisition. We're in a cloud. My recruiters are all over the world and the model that I'm running is, if I have a lot of volume coming into the U.S, a lot of leads coming in, and my U.S team is asleep, then my Jamaican team will pick that up and do the interviews or my Philippines. So I'm running a kind of 24 hour global model for grabbing those leads and converting them. So we were very accustomed to that, but ...When COVID hit us in early March in the U.S, so the leadership, most of the leadership is in the U.S. Initially we felt kind of paralyzed. We weren't sure what to do or what was going to happen, but we quickly realized that we needed to get everybody out of those centers and home before we were told to — all over the world, and we have 14 locations, Europe, Asia, etc, like our competitors do.And everybody was sort of working that from a different angle. How much revenue can we save? How much, you know, what kind of profitability can we gain? What do we have to do with managing our clients? What are they thinking? And I was kind of focused on what do we have to do to make sure that these people can continue to put food on the table?That was where I came from. I wanted to make sure — and I made sure people knew it. So when we told staff around the world, come to the center today and be prepared to walk out with your computer and, you know, whatever else they needed to be productive at home. I made sure that they understood that we're doing this because your health and safety and your ability to generate an income to take care of your family is the most important thing to this company. And if we do all those things right, and support you, the revenue and the profitability are going to come. And you know what, I wasn't even sure I believed that myself in the beginning, because it was so chaotic and it was so hard in the Philippines, they were shutting everything down. We had to hire vans to get people out of the centers, with their computers. We had to send people out to people's homes. People were locked in their homes. It felt chaotic to me. But for me as an HR professional, I just kept focusing on what do I have to do to make sure these folks can buy what they need to feed their families? And I made sure people knew it and I think it really helped coalesce our company around that feeling that, yes, it's not a cliche, we really are in this together and we're going to help you so that you can help our customers. And by doing that, we're all going to get through this one way or the other. Max: I think it sounds like I went through the same thing you did. And for me it was really helpful that I was, you know, I was a professional when 2000 and 2009, the 2000-2001 crisis, and then 2008. As the world falls down around you, and we hadn't had a real crisis of this magnitude since 2008, then you can, you can be a rock, even if you don't a hundred percent believe in it as the walls are falling down. Elaine: Yeah. I thought about, there's that sort of famous Ted talk by Anne Cuddy. Who's a Researcher. I think she's a linguist. I could be wrong, but I think she's a linguist and she uses that term, fake it till you make it.So I just kept thinking, we're going to get through this. Everybody's going to keep a job. We're going to be able to meet payroll. We're going to be able to service our customers. And I just kept saying, this is where we're going. You know, in a crisis, you got to pick a direction and march and just go and bring as many people with you as you can.And then the other great saying is, of course, never let a good crisis go to waste. So we used the crisis to go back to our customers and say, look, we're a work-at-home company now. And everything we do from now to the foreseeable future, which could be tomorrow, actually the way things are going, we're going to just be making that model more robust. And we're going to change how we hire and who we hire. Now we're looking for people who are perfectly happy to work at home, as opposed to people that are doing it because they have to.So we just took that first mover position and said, we're a work-at-home company, and this is how we're going to do it. As opposed to, sometimes in call center, you kind of get told by your customer how you're going to do things, how you're going to hire — there's a lot of rules. It's a commoditized business. The providers don't have a lot of say, and we've had a little bit of opportunity to say, look, we pivoted faster than any of your other channel partners. And this is true. It's a true statement. We pivoted faster. So, we're moving down this road really quick and come with us and we'll be the better for it.Max: Nice. I think that this crisis has also been an opportunity for us where some companies were waiting to do digital transformation, kind of sitting and waiting for a reason because you can only really take on one or two big transformation initiatives every year. And they were, you know, that gave them the extra nudge.So we got, obviously things slowed down to almost a standard standstill in March and April. But since then, you know, we're having some good discussions. One thing, I guess, how do you adapt your recruitment process to hire work-from-home agents? I guess you're looking for, you said, the more autonomous people. Maybe check their internet speed? Any other tips and advice on how to adapt the recruitment process for work from home. Elaine: Well, you got to make decisions about — so just focusing on the United States, you know, where we had, I think, 13 or so locations, just in the U.S. So we were very limited to these geographic markets. And most of them are where our competitors are too.So El Paso, big center for us, we have a thousand people, 1300 people in the center and all of our competitors are right down the road from us. So that drives a certain way of recruiting and a certain way of thinking about retention and a certain amount of kind of looking around the corner to see what your competitor's doing and what kind of taco truck they're bringing in that day.So in the beginning when we started to think about hiring, we thought, well, gosh, we should just still hire around those locations because what if we go back, we don't want to have people all over Texas, we want them near El Paso. And then we, pretty quickly, threw that out the window and said, forget it, we're a work-at-home company now. So, you know, we went through a process of looking at the various states that had attractive labor markets, attractive tax implications. Like any company, we ran the gamut of where we want to hire, where we want to try to source candidates from and we came up with some pretty interesting things. Max: So you went full, work from home.Elaine: Pretty much. Yeah. But we're staying away from the coasts, you know, because those are expensive places to do business. And we have a lot of data about where the people are, the kind of people that we think would be happy working for us and want to stay with us. And we've got a lot of data on how they want to be paid and we're kind of playing with some of those models. And we're offering different money and incentives in different metro areas or in different rural areas. I mean, we're playing with a lot of information. Max: I'd like to point you to, I'll send you the link. I'll put it for our listeners too, the link, the link to the salary grading. I mean, I think they phased it out, but there was a company called Buffer, which specialized in social media blasting and communication. They were work-from-home from inception and they had a salary grid that was per state. They would openly share to all of their employees, you know, for the same exact role, same exact expertise. Your salary is going to be 20% more because you're based here. And the transparency is something that is part of their core values. So it works for them, but basically they even, I think they still do to this day, publish the salaries of every one of their employees online.Elaine: That's a bridge too far for me. I've always been in favor of salary transparency in terms of showing people what the range is, showing what the midpoint is showing what the geographic differential is. I've always said that companies should do this. But I've also always said that people shouldn't do performance ratings.I've never believed in performance ratings and I still don't. Assigning a number to people based on how they perform is just not something I've ever been interested in. But that's a different discussion.Max: Yes. Agreed it's a different discussion. I have already taken a good chunk of your time. And I really think we got a lot of great insights there about, BPO industry and thank you for sharing. I wanted to ask you one last question, which is if there's one area where you feel like there's still some automation left? I mean, it sounds like you've built such a great automated journey for your candidates. And you've talked about how you kind of started at the front of the funnel and then, you know, eventually tried to automate screening and then improve the quality of the people's screens so that you improve retention. Now as you look through this entire end to end journey, is there still some pockets of opportunity? What's the next piece that you want to automate, or you want to accelerate? Elaine: The part that I'm not doing yet is you know, the integration of the technical components of Talent Acquisition can always be improved. There's a lot of people out there building interesting stuff and trying to connect it to ATSs.And that's all pretty interesting, but I'm kind of, I feel like I've kind of moved beyond that. What I need to do. And I think all Talent Acquisition professionals should be thinking about is, following that lead through conversion to trainee, to productive employee and tying. I can't really know. I shouldn't be tracking cost per hire if I'm doing this right.What I should be tracking is value per hire. So how that person that I scraped off of an indeed quick apply site, how much value did that person bring to my company? That's what I should be tracking. I'm tracking the wrong thing. Because it's the easy thing to track. But if I'm doing all these things right, and I'm going to the right places to source my people, I'm training them effectively. I also have operational training, so all of those new hires come to me to be trained to answer phones for our customer service chat or whatever. I should be able to point to what's the value of that class that I started on July 6th, six months later, what value did they drive for my company?And I should be able to prove that. So that's what I'm thinking about next. Right? Max: We've got to find a name for this magical number.Elaine: Yes. Max: We have the CPH, CPL marketing CPH, MCPS. Now we need to have...Elaine: Yeah, but isn't that the end? I mean, that's the end game, right? What value did that lead that I converted bring to our company and how do I express that value? That's that's the name of the game. That's what I'm trying to do. We're trying to make money. We're trying to be profitable. So I have to distill that. And that will really tell me whether I've been successful with that front of the funnel or not. I'm measuring it along the way, but the end game still hasn't been answered and I'd like to get there before the next crisis. I'd like to know the answer to that question soon. Call me in a year. Max: I will and I thank you. And I want to end it on this positive note and your contagious laughter. And thinking about, it's wonderful that you're already thinking about the next crisis, so thanks for your time. Thanks for sharing.And we'll be in touch in a years time. Elaine: Thanks, max. Good to see you.Max: There you have it. That was Elaine Davis, Chief Human Resources Officer at Continuum with some awesome insights on how to build a recruitment marketing machine that delivers thousands of hires at less than a hundred dollars cost per hire in North America. What a performance. Thank you, Elaine, for all your insights.And I hope you enjoyed the show. Please, if you didn't, subscribe to the recruitment hackers podcast for more of the similar content. Please leave a review. That will help us get the word out there. And, please listen to one of our other episodes. Thank you very much and hope to see you on the podcast soon.
Sheneisha sits down and chats with Dr. Jacquelyn Malcolm, the CIO and VP of Enrollment, Marketing & Communications at Buffalo State College, about the non-traditional route she took to get to where she is and a whole lot more. Remember, you don't have to take the cookie-cutter format or strategy that is laid out before you. You can navigate and go into different realms!Connect with Dr. Malcolm on LinkedIn!Visit our website!TRANSCRIPTSheneisha: "Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it." - Maya Angelou. What's up, Living Corporate? It's Sheneisha, and today we'll be discussing the rise of success for black and brown women. Our guest today, with nearly 20 years of distinctive higher education experience to Buffalo State, including her previous role as associate vice president and chief marketing officer at Catholic University in DC. Our guest has held leadership roles in marketing and communications, as well as extensive experience supporting enrollment management and technology efforts at multiple institutions. Our guest was the executive director of marketing and communications at Delaware State University, where she also worked as the executive director of integrated marketing. Before returning to Delaware State in 2015, she worked at the University of the District of Columbia for seven years, where she served as an executive director of interactive media and Portal administrator, executive director of alumni relations, and assistant vice president for marketing and communications and alumni relations. Prior to joining the University of the District of Columbia, our guest worked at the University of Delaware as an assistant director of alumni relations and at The George Washington University as [?]. She earned her B.S. in business administration from Drexel University and an M.S. in project management from The George Washington University and completed her doctorate of education and educational leadership from Delaware State University. Let's welcome our guest chief information officer and vice president for enrollment, marketing, and communications at Buffalo State, Dr. Jacquelyn Malcolm.Jackie: Hello, everyone.Sheneisha: Yes, yes. Dr. [laughs] Dr. Malcolm, welcome to the show. How are you?Jackie: I am well. I'm well, thank you. How about yourself?Sheneisha: I am well. It's so great to have you here with us today. So we gave this elaborate and most beautiful intro. You have accomplished so much. What else would you like the Living Corporate family to know about you? Jackie: Wow. You know, I pride myself in being an African-American female from a relatively small town in Delaware and I sort of grew myself into this career and took a non-traditional path, and just certainly want to let your viewers know that it's okay to take non-traditional paths. Quite frankly that is one of the reasons that I'm able to do so many things is because I did take a non-traditional path. Sheneisha: Yes, yes. I definitely saw that and read that within your bio, and it was quite intriguing. Quite intruiging. I'm so glad you're here to share that with us today, and I'm sure our listeners are going to be elated to hear your non-traditional role and your path. So let's get into that. So what was your path to becoming the chief information officer at Buffalo State? And what does that role consist of?Jackie: Sure. I actually started out as a fashion design major at Drexel, and Drexel is an institution that affords their students cooperative education. So you get to get yourself a job and experience prior to even graduating from college, and through that process I found that I wasn't getting the jobs that I wanted to get and wound up actually working for a company now called GlaxoSmithKline, but which was SmithKline Beecham at the time, and I worked in their convention planning department. So I was the person who helped them get prepared to go to their conferences and things like that, and I absolutely fell in love with the field of marketing. So I came back after that experience at Drexel and changed my major and went on to--I actually started out as a work study student in the financial aid office at Drexel as well, and that's sort of where my career in higher ed started. And then after I left Drexel and made the decision to go straight into my graduate degree, and that was at George Washington, and I was so incredibly glad that I was able to do that and was afforded the opportunity. So that's where I really worked hard. I got my master's in project management and after that moved on to a company in Wisconsin to be a marketing coordinator. So that was really where I got the start of my marketing experience. And I didn't sort of like corporate America too much. You know, it didn't sit as well as higher ed did with me, and so I moved back to Washington, D.C., which is where I gained some more experience at GW working in the alumni relations office in the law school. And I really enjoyed that experience. I loved higher ed. I loved being around students. I really loved just having the opportunity to be around education all of the time and loved that experience, and I went on to do other things in higher ed, as you stated, and, you know, several positions within marketing. And then when I was at the University of the District of Columbia, I went on to--I was marketing a new Portal product, and it was sort of that centralized place where all of our students would register, they'd get their news, their announcements, all of that good stuff. So I was mainly the marketing person, but as a marketing person I tend to really immerse myself in the technology, in the solution, and so I did all of the training and I did all of that, and I had a conversation with the project manager at the time, and I said, "I know part of the work of implementing this solution is hiring a Portal administrator. Can I have a conversation with that person?" And he said, "Well, actually we don't have that person yet." And I said, "Oh, you don't?" And I said, "Well, how can I be helpful?" And he said, "Well, you know, you're a marketing person. You can take on managing the functional side." So I went back to my supervisor, and--you know, I'm a long-term marketing professional at that point, and I said, "Technological solution? Me? I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if that's my strength," and I really pushed myself, and I trained, and I worked really, really hard, and it was a case of having really, really good people around me who were willing to help me learn. And so did that for a few years and marketing, you know, for the Portal. I did technological communications as well. So I had such great experience and really pushed myself out of my comfort zone. And went on--the institution where I was went through a lot of layoffs, and there wasn't a lot of staff, and I was having some trouble getting some of the things that I needed to manage the product, and so I sat down with somebody, and he said, "I'm gonna show you how to do the technical side of this," and I said, "Wait a minute." You know, I took on the functional side. I don't know if I can take on the technical side. And I'm saying "This is a lot," you know? But I said why not? What do I have to lose? I can either not get the experience and continue on my path or I can get some really great technological experience, and that's what I did. I wound up being both the functional and technical administrator for this Portal product. So I would up being a system administrator, right? So here I go, this sort of, you know, self-made marketing person in higher ed, and I'm now doing this technical stuff, which I found I absolutely loved. And so taking that chance and really pushing myself out of my comfort zone and really wanting to grow my professional skill set really helped me get the position where I am now as chief information officer and vice president for enrollment, marketing, and communications at Buffalo State. And I never forget the day I saw the job on Inside Higher Ed. I called up a friend and I said, "There's this job, and it's just so eclectic, and it matches my eclectic background," and she said to me, "So what do you have to lose? Go apply for the job," and I said "What do you mean?" And she said "Well, just go apply for it." And so I did, went through the interview process, and got the job, and I never in a million years ever thought that I would have a leadership role in all of these areas. And speaking to my president about sort of this level of innovation that she had to even fashion this role, and she said "All of it intersects," right? Enrollment, marketing, communications, and the systems that support everything that we do day to day, it all intersects, and so it makes so much sense. And as I do my work now and I help my staff understand why we were all put together in the way which we are, it makes so much sense, and they're learning things about processes and things that they would have never had the opportunity to have that much insight into without this role being fashioned the way it was. And so, you know, my career has been set upon sort of taking chances on myself and educating myself. I consider myself to be a life-long learner, and that's really important to me. I don't ever want to consider myself to be the complete expert in anything, because, you know, the fields that I oversee are ever-changing anyway, and so I can never be in a position just to say "Well, I got this degree," or "I got this job and now I'm all set." And I will continue to push myself. Even though I do have my doctorate, I continue to do leadership academies and to hone my skills, and I just completed a CIO leadership academy. And so there I think it's really, really important to ensure that you understand that there never really is an endpoint to learning and educating yourself.Sheneisha: There isn't, there isn't. A life-long student. I really like that. A life-long learner. That is great. So what does your role consist of, being the chief information officer? Like, what is it? What do you do for those who may not know?Jackie: So as chief information officer--so sort of that third, if you will, of my position encompasses overseeing the institution's entirety as it relates to information technology. So my spam includes areas in instructional design, technology support services. So that's our help desk. It is our computer help, who goes around campus and supports our constituents, and it's also managing all of the network infrastructure and architecture that all of our systems sit within, as well as enterprise data and analytics, which is all of our sort of major systems, and institutional research as well. So I really can flux between "Hey, we're thinking about some sort of security measure for the network," to "We need to pull this data," to "We're implementing a new CRM system." And so it really runs the gamut. The beauty of my job, because I sort of have these buckets that I oversee, is that they all intersect, so I could spend one or two days a week really focused on IT and, you know, another day on enrollment, and two more days on marketing and communication. So it really just runs the gamut, you know? That's another reason why I love my job and the way it's fashioned. No two days are alike truly, and it really allows me to stay on top of my game, because I am literally hopping from initiative to initiative, and my team, including students, is about 275 people, so I'm [in] one of the largest areas within the institution. So one thing I will say that through--as I've grown through my career, the leadership component is so incredibly important, and to learn how to, you know, talk with IT folks and give them the leadership and the professional development that they need, but then turning and switching gears to really supporting my marketing and communications folks or my enrollment folks. And so it's really an interesting dynamic when, you know, each of those groups speak differently from a leadership perspective, and so I have to be able to maneuver myself to be in this position to support them as they need as well.Sheneisha: Wow. This role is, like you said, multi-faceted. There's so many different things that you can do, and like you said, no day is alike. That's--I mean, you're always staying interested and definitely loving what you're doing.Jackie: Right, absolutely. I absolutely love what I do, and I will say that having strong--reporting to strong leadership is really important too, you know? I know a lot of the folks listening to this also know how important it is to have a really great boss that supports you. I have run the gamut. I've had some doozies, but I've also had some really great leaders, you know? Where I first truly learned leadership was from a supervisor that I had at GW law school, and he was a retired Navy judge [?] general. We really clicked 'cause I'm a military brat, and, you know, he came--I was literally 22. I didn't know anything from anything, and he put so much trust in me, and every day he came to my office and he said, "Is there anything I can do to support you?" And that really stuck with me about how you truly treat people when you're leading teams, and it's so important to know that people are coming with multiple things. They're coming with their life issues, and they're coming with stressors and pressures from work, and how do you work alongside that to create success, not only for them, but for the organization or institution that you're working for? And so that's sort of where I really understood the importance of good leadership and sort of, for me, the innate desire to truly ensure that I'm consistently learning how to be a good leader. And I look at it - how would I want someone to lead myself, right? And I would want transparency and compassion and communication and support and professional development. I would want all of those things. So I try to really truly lead by example and not just talk the talk but really walk the walk.Sheneisha: That is some very good information. I think is extremely important to have great leadership. The fact that the gentleman trusted you and supported you, those are some great key elements in helping you and your development as well. And I know that you mentioned that you continuously take part in leadership academies. So with you taking part in those leadership academies, is that something you search--clearly you must search for it on a regular. Are you leading any of those academies? Do you like to actively participate? How frequently?Jackie: So I actively participate in leadership academies. I also do a lot of panel discussions. As a minority, as a female, especially in the world of tech, we are few, far and in-between, and so I feel sort of it is my life's work to really allow other minorities, black or brown, right, to be able to see themselves in these roles. And then, you know, I do a lot of work alongside really talking to women specifically and helping them understand that while we want to advocate for ourselves in this field, we can't do it alone, without our male counterparts and supporters. Because a lot of times I think sometimes, you know, women-led initiatives are like "Oh, we're females, and that's just the way this goes, and we don't want any males around us. We're doing this on our own." And I'm all for women's empowerment, but I think you also have to see the value in understanding and making sure that you get the support from others around you. And so for me it really is sort of that, my own professional development and growth from a leadership perspective but also showing others what it means to be a female in tech, and I have frequently been the only African-American in the room, frequently the only African-American female in the room, and so some folks say "How does that make you feel?" And it sort of empowers me, right? And I think it allows me to show others that, you know, we can be at the table, and we can be just as qualified and educated as the next person around that table, and so I always say use that to your advantage. You know, people say, "Well, you know, they're just picking me because I'm African-American." If that gives you a unique experience to learn, take that experience. That's not a bad thing. But then how do you then advocate for other minorities to be in the room with you, right? So that way you're not the only one, but then you can give that experience to others, and that's also really important as well. I've been, you know, a benefactor of other minority leaders saying "We want her to be at the table. We want her to be a part of the discussion because she creates a level of diversity in the discussion," and so I think it's always important to remember that it's not only about you elevating yourself, but it's making sure that when you're able you're elevating others as well.Sheneisha: That is so powerful in itself. I think it's super important, especially as not only women but people of color, that we are able to get to a place where we can reach back and pull one up, or pull several up. Definitely we're always in a place, like you said, where we may be the only one in the room. We may be hired for that reason. But like you said, use that to your advantage, and clearly you possess something unique, so why not leverage it? Why not level up on it and make sure that when you do get there you're not just there? [laughs] If you're gonna be there, be there and make sure that they know that you're there. [laughs]Jackie: That's a thing. That's why it's so important for me too, you know, when I'm asked to speak at different events and really be a representative, you know? Both because of the fact that I'm female and the fact that I'm African-American, you know, I use that to the advantage of saying "Yes, I want others that look like me in the room," and "You can be there, and you deserve to be there, and you've earned the right to be in that room," and, you know, when working with students that's really important for me, you know, as we have our female students who, you know, need our knowledge and our support and our network and, you know, I always--at the events that I speak, especially the ones that are free, I send them out to our students. Come, whether you're male or female. Come. You know, participate, network. Let me introduce you to some folks that I know so you can build your network. And I [?] that in my example they would know to be able to do the same as well, right? And it's really important for our students to be able to see that now. And I also hope that I can show how you come to the table ready to go and to be taken seriously, you know? There's a time and a place to be, you know, individualistic and be who you are, and I'm certainly not saying to cover up who you are, but you gotta know there's a time and a place for everything, you know? I also am--you know, I'm an African-American female, you know, and I wear a mohawk. You know, my head is shaved, and so I've had my angst and anxiety about walking into a conservative environment, and I say "You know what? This is who I am," and it makes me no less worthy of partaking in the conversation, and it certainly doesn't make my work any worse for wear, right? And if anything, it allows me to stretch my limits and be creative and to show people that my creativity doesn't then diminish my professionalism, and I like to be able to show the students that as well, that you can have an air of individualism, but just know your environment, right? Know what's gonna be receptive. And it's unfortunate that we still live in that space where we just kind of have to be a little bit more concerned about who we are as individuals regardless of race, you know? But I think it's really important to know the time and the place and the space, you know? And it's that just our reality, you know? It's not, you know, neither a good or a bad thing. It is just a thing, right, that we just have to respond to, so. Sheneisha: Absolutely. Being unapologetically black. Unapologetically you. [laughs]Jackie: Right? You know, I walk in a room and, yes, I'm African-American, yes, I shave my head, and I'm ready to go. Let's have this conversation.Sheneisha: I love it. [laughs] I love it.Jackie: Yeah. It's interesting too that there are times when I've--like I said, I've been really concerned, like, "Oh, they're gonna think I'm a rebel, a renegade," you know? 'Cause I shave my head, and I said "You know what? Then that's your loss," right? That's your loss for not wanting to have me at the table because of something that you're not okay with, Because I'm okay with it, right? And so to, like you said, really be unapologetically black, female, I also tell my students too when, you know, you're in a position of interviewing for a job and getting a job offer, negotiate. Know your value. Know your worth, right? Don't just take whatever somebody gives you. If you feel that that person's offering you $50,000 and you're bringing $75,000, tell 'em why, you know? The only thing they're gonna do is tell you no or "We don't have that level of budget." You have to understand if you're willing to take that intentional risk, right? Because it's that too. And that's something that--those are two words that, you know, my current president said. She said "We are in times now where you have to understand when you take intentional risk," right? You can't always be the one to say "Well, I'm not gonna take that risk," or "I'm not gonna put myself out there." My whole career and professional journey has been really predicated on taking intentional risk. I'd never be in IT if I didn't, and also understanding and knowing when you take that risk, and sometimes you take that risk without compensation for future gain. That's also important too. Because I think we're all focused on "Well, you're not gonna get that out of me if you don't give me money for that." And I'm not saying give up everything for free. I'm saying, again, be intentional about where you want to take that risk for future gain.Sheneisha: Speaking about taking that risk and being intentional, I notice--okay, so in higher education there's often a level of classism, right? So how did you navigate having a non-traditional background and getting into this space as a black woman? Of course taking that risk, but how were you able to navigate that to get here?Jackie: Yes. You know, I will definitely say, you know, higher ed is an interesting environment because we're based on credentials, right? And so I would say that to be successful in this environment, you're gonna absolutely have to come with your credentials, you know? I made the decision very early on in my career, you know? By the time I was 22 I had both my bachelor's and my master's degrees. I wanted to make sure I at least had the credentials in place to be able to garner some long-term benefits from that, you know? I had about a 20-year break between my master's and my doctorate, and in the field in which I'm in, you know, even though I'm in academia and I'm not on the academic affairs side--so the faculty side, the [?] side, for me getting my doctorate was more of a personal piece, because it wasn't necessarily something I absolutely needed to progress in my field in higher ed. But I did know that if I wanted a leadership role, that was gonna be key for me. It was fine if I was gonna be executive director, but once you start reaching into the vice presidential realm, especially in higher ed, you're gonna need to have your credentials, right? So I knew me having my doctorate was gonna be very, very important, and I will say, to anyone listening, it's gonna be acutely important to know your space, right? That's important for higher ed. It may not be important, you know, if you're in a different type of space, right? And so that's really, really important, and know where you want to go long-term as well. And you may say "Well, I don't really need that right now." Maybe not right now, but will you in the future? And what does it open up to you as far as options go? I'm all about options. I don't want to ever stymie myself into only being able to be in certian fields because I've only done but so much. So again, in higher ed, that's what we're about, right? We're about those educational credentials. And I always say to folks too, you know, maybe you don't want your doctorate, but maybe you're doing micro-credentialing. Maybe if you have your bachelor's you're looking into, you know, stackable certificates to get you to a master's, right? And so there are options out there. So, you know, know what those options are and how they could potentially be beneficial. You know, it's different in the K-12 environment, where you get additional dollars for every degree or certain number of credits that you get. That's not the way it works once you get into the higher ed realm. But while it doesn't necessarily make an immediate return in a certain position, it did for me long-term because I knew I wanted to go on to be a vice president, and ultimately my goal is to be the president of an institution. A beautiful thing for me is that right now my president at Buffalo State is an African-American female. I can't tell you how encouraging that is. She is absolutely one of the most amazing African-American female leaders I've ever encountered. We call her our sage. She is very calm. She's very thoughtful. She's very methodical. She's experienced. She's a psychologist by trade. She really has a lot of markers for a great leader, and she is, and she allows us, as myself and my colleagues on the cabinet, to be ourselves and to do our jobs, and I have never been at an institution where I have been truly winning with my colleagues and my president.Sheneisha: That's major.Jackie: Yeah, it makes a huge, huge difference in your productivity, in your desire to learn and your desire to lead your team, especially when you're dealing with a challenging environment. You know, the space of higher ed right now is tumultuous in a lot of the geographic areas within the U.S. I'm sitting smack dab right in one of them. You know, enrollments are set to continue to decrease, and so now, you know, I'm dealing with an environment of how do I remain creative and encouraged and being really a transformational leader for my team in this type of environment, you know, where my colleagues in other areas of the U.S. are doing extremely well in regards to enrollment. So understanding and knowing where you can have your wins and doing the best that you can do to remain status quo where there really isn't a lot of room for growth. So you really need the backing of good leadership to support that environment. Sheneisha: And you definitely had that, from fashion to where you are now, CIO and VP. That's a major--that's a complete different, or non-traditional, route to get to where you are. And let this be--Living Corporate family, let this be encouragement to you. You don't have to take the cookie-cutter format or strategy that is laid out before you. You can navigate and go into different realms. And Dr. Malcolm, I want to say--you mentioned about being a transformational leader and about transformation. I want to ask, what are your thoughts of higher education transforming or evolving into being more corporate-like or becoming more similar to corporate?Jackie: That's a great point to make, because higher ed traditionally has been "We're not corporate America." You know, most of us, we're non-profit, right? So there's that. We're non-profit. I mean, we don't need to function like a corporation. At the end of the day, we still have to keep the lights on, right? We still have to make enough money to do our business, and so I always say to folks that while we're not traditional corporate America, we still need to function like a business, and quite frankly there are pieces we can learn from the way in which corporations run and create success for themselves, right? And so while we're not here making, you know, millions and billions of dollars in revenue and growing services and products, per se, we still have to be better, right? We do perform a service. We educate. And so in order for us to be the greatest at educating our students, we need to be looking at our top-notch programs, and we need to be ensuring that we're offering the programs that students are looking for. You know, sort of the elitist sort of way in which higher ed has traditionally been able to move really no longer exists. Students have options. They have modality options. They have private public options as well. They have HBCUs options. They have faith-based options. And so far gone are the days where, you know, 200 years ago where it was like, "Come and we will educate you, and you should be proud that we are educating you." Students have options, you know? I always say, as I put my marketing hat on, "Students are consumers," and their parents and their families are consumers, and they're gonna be making one of the most expensive life investments they will ever make outside of purchasing a home.Sheneisha: Yes, you will. Oh, yes. [laughs] Jackie: And so the fact that, you know, we can't be pretentious in this space, you know? We need to meet students and their families where they are, and we need to make sure that we're hearing and we're listening to them and giving them the best level of teaching and learning we possibly can, and that indcludes goo dcustomer service, which a lot of times some of us in higher ed have really struggled being a good partner to students and their families, you know? And customer service is huge, and I always say, you know, it's no different if you walk into a car dealership, right, and you walk in for service. You want somebody to pay attention to you. You want somebody to give you a good experience, you know? You make that investment. YOu want somebody to return that experience back to you in good customer service. It's no different for students and their families, and it's really important for us to remember that's the space we're in. Again, we're no longer able to be in an environment where we have an elitist approach. We're all, you know, trying to go after similar students, right? You know, strongly academic and, you know, passionate about getting a degree in higher ed, and, you know, at Buffalo State, a large part of our population is first-time college goers, right? So they're called first-gen, of which I am. And, you know, they're navigating waters that their families have never navigated before, right? I remember going to Drexel, I didn't know anything about financial aid and where I got my meal plan or how I was gonna get my books. I didn't know any of that. And so how do we become good partners to these students and families to ensure that we are saying "We know you don't know, but we're here to help you. We're here to help you have that positive experience. Here's how you do some of these things." And I live in this world, and I love--this is why I love working at Buffalo State, because I can see myself in those students. I was that 17-year-old who didn't know anything about anything, you know? And I needed good people around me to support me and to help me into my college transition, and I just distinctly remember those moments of doubt and--you know, because sometimes what we think is success is "Well, I'm on campus. I got here. I got into college. I made it," right? And that is a level of success, absolutely, especially for a lot of our students. That is a big deal, but we want to be able to take them all the way to graduation, 'cause that's really the ultimate of what we're trying to help them achieve. And so again, I see myself in them. I see the need to support. You know, when I see a student, who, you know, "I just need to talk to someone because I don't understand," I say "Come into my office and let's talk. Let's sit and let's talk and help you in your own unique decision and space," you know? And that's what we know, that we no longer can look at a student solely from the academic side. They're a whole person, right? You know, students are coming in, and not just at Buff State, but overall students are coming in with, you know, autism and depression and anxiety, and quite frankly a lot of things that I think a lot of us didn't come into school with, and so we need to really understand that and what it truly means to support them as a student as a whole.Sheneisha: That makes a heavy impact, when you have someone that's there to just speak to, to listen to you, to help guide you along the way--mentorship, and I can definitely relate. Going to pharmacy school, it was hard. First-generation. I'm like "Okay..." I come from a single-parent home. My sister is looking at me, you know? I'm an example. My mother is in support, okay? So what do I need to do to make sure that I make it to graduation? Who around campus? Because I remember being at FAMU, and the phrase was "It's not what you know but who you know." [laughs] So being able to know someone to get into pharmacy school was major, but, you know, having those people along the way to help me get there, it showed the camaraderie and what we call the FAMUly that was built there to help get me to that place. Look, we need a Dr. Malcolm at EVERY campus. [laughs] At every campus, from small-town universities, college town, community college or whatever, we need you eveywhere. Jackie: Absolutely. And that's key, you know? And like I said, it's so important to really build that network, and that's why I always say to the students "You need to come to this event. So-and-so is gonna be here. You need to see this person and talk to them." You know, it's interesting. I have a deputy CIO who works very closely with me at Buffalo State. He met this gentleman who said "I really need a summer job," and he was really struggling. I had just come from a meeting a few weeks prior with CIOs in the local area who were saying their jobs were going without any applicants. No applicants, right? And we had talked about internship programs, and I said to my deputy CIO--'cause he was talking to the young man--"Why don't you put him in touch with their program?" It was a major health provider, and I know their CIO, and I said "Now, look, you're gonna have to go in. You're gonna have to interview." Like, "I can't do that part for you, but I can get you there. I can lead you there." And he did great. He got an internship. He came back to our office and he said, "Thank you so much," and he said "I am getting experience I never thought that I would ever get in college." And [it was?] a company who has hired our students out of their internships, and I'm hopeful. He is a computer information science major. Smart, ready, passionate, eager. And I followed up a little bit later with the CIO, and they were like "He's doing great," you know? And so again, to your point, you gotta know your connections. You know, other cultures do this very, very well, and we can do it well too, you know? And, you know, this case of, you know, you need to go to that event with your mom. You need to go to this event with Professor So-and-so, 'cause you never know who you're going to meet. And tehre are times when--I get it. You're tired and you're exhausted and you've had a long day, and now somebody's asking you to come to some event, you know? And you're like "Ugh," but then you get there and you say to yourself, "Oh, my goodness. If I had not come to this event, I would have not gotten this level of networking." And so you gotta also be ready and be open and push through being tired and push through being exhausted and push through when you're like "I gotta finish this exam." Yes, you do. And where you can, do your networking. You're not gonna be able to do everything, but allow yourself to create opportunities for yourself, right? So this is exciting work for me. I love what I do every day. This is, I will say, my first job where I come into work every day and I absolutely love what I do. I am supported. I get to do the work I want to do. I get to support students. You know, what we do in higher ed--this is a life-changing type of experience, and, you know, I want to see these students graduate in four years and come out and say "I work at So-and-so," or "I do this," but ultimately I hope that you also say you take the opportunity to give back, right? And as we all have been led and supported by others, I would hope that they do the same.Sheneisha: Speaking about giving back, what--so you've achieved very much success during your career. What steps have you taken to develop yourself, and what does that strategy look like for black and brown women? Like, what would you give back to the black and brown women who are looking to reach this level of success?Jackie: I would definitely say any time there's an opportunity for--you know, like I said, professional development, leadership--in higher ed there is an organization called ACE, and I did their ACE Women in Leadership session, and it was a 3-day session, and it was wonderful, and it was a diverse population of folks, but there were African-American female presidents there. There was just so much diversity in the room, and it was like--they say, you know, "Be a sponge," and it was just, like, asking them every question you could ask them, things like that. Any opportunity that you get to be in a leadership or professional development opportunity, any opportunity that they're doing women in leadership events. I would also say being a part of boards, right, organizational boards. It's really, really important. And I would stress doing it in your field and outside of your field as well. I got tabbed into being on an aerospace board because they wanted diversity and they wanted my marketing skill set, you know? And so, you know, again, stretching yourself outside of, you know, the normal sort of types of activities that yo uwould do as they are related to your discipline. Push yourself outside of that, because the level of networking and experience that you too will get from that is huge, right? And I've had to learn that. And at first I was like, "Why would I want to do that?" And then it was like, "Well, hold on a second. That puts me in a whole different realm." And the level of folks that I meet and get to network with are completely different than those folks that I would typically run into in my higher ed space or in my ed tech space or in the marketing space, right? And so I would say making sure that you're looking at your professional organizations as well. So anything that's related to your particular discipline, but also, like I said, being on boards that really kind of are stretches. And I think a lot of times as women and women of color, we're not taught to stretch ourselves. I'm not sure if it's a cultural piece. We're taught to certainly obtain and learn and, you know, get the degree and get the great job, but I'm not sure how well we're taught to be risk takers, right? And that's something that I stress a lot too with students, that--I mean, certainly if you're risk averse and you want to stay in your space that makes you comfortable, that's okay too, but that's sometimes how opportunities get missed, right? Apply for that job. You know, it's funny. I was speaking to a young lady about a position, and I said "Well, why don't you look at this?" And she said "Well, I don't have all the pieces. I don't have the experience in every area." And I said "That's okay, you have the capacity though," to do that, and I said "We as women are never taught that you don't have to have every single piece." If that job description--if you're missing one thing, then you know what? Own it and say, "You know what? No, I don't have that, but I have the capacity to learn that, and I'm perfectly okay with taking this on," and with the right professional development and the right leadership support I can do that," right? And so again, it's sort of always keeping ourselves safe. You know, our male counterparts do this all the time. They go in, they apply for things they may not even be qualified to do, but goodness, in the off-chance that you are able to get that job or get that experience, that just makes you a better person. It makes you a better leader. It makes you a better professional as well. And that's that life-long learner piece, right? "Okay, so you're gonna learn something different." I mean, I had never walked into a network room before I worked at UDC. I walked in there and I said, "What in the world have I gotten myself into?" [both laugh] I said, "But what does this mean? What does that mean? What are you doing there? What are you wiring? What is the network switch? Where's the network closet?" And you start getting into these conversations with these folks and you're like, "Wow, this is really interesting. I want to know more." And to be able to push myself to broaden my comfort zone at that point, right? So it's like you step out but you broaden it. Sheneisha: You don't settle for safe. You do not settle for safe. You definitely have to branch out and go beyond yourself, because you never know how far you can go until you stretch yourself. Jackie: The worst thing somebody can tell you is no. Well, goodness. And that's okay, and if no is the answer, move onto the next thing. Don't lament over that person saying no, because if it's no, then that wasn't meant to be a part of your journey, right? Your journey is meant to take a different path, and that's okay. And sometimes we also get really discouraged, right? So own those feelings and emotions and say "Gosh, I really wanted that," and let that be the energy you need to empower yourself to either go get that level of experience or manuever in a different direction, but don't lament in that space, right? Just say "Okay, it wasn't meant for me, and I'm gonna move on."Sheneisha: That is great. Because it's not like you've never heard no before, you know? If you hear it, it's okay. Just keep going. They're not gonna stop you.Jackie: Right, exactly.Sheneisha: You know, you've done so much, and you have empowered many, many women I am sure, myself right now being included. [laughs] Now, what has been your experience as a black woman in leadership?Jackie: Hm. Wow, you know... that's a heavy question. You know, I think, for me, I've experienced leadership in minority-serving environments as well as majority-serving environments, and I have found that I have been questioned a lot about my level of expertise, my value, what I bring to the table, and what I have found, the only way you can combat that is to just continue to do good work, right? Be confident, because the minute you question yourself is the minute that you're not focusing on doing all of that great work. You're focused on making that person happy. You're focused on making that person see your worth and your value. And I'll give you an example. I had a situation where I came into this field and several people were doubting my technological expertise, and they said "Well, you don't have a degree in it, and you don't have that many years of experience. You're not a technician." I said "Well, I am, because I've been a system administrator before and I've worked in IT for a number of years." But I feel that, due in part to them not finding value in me, they questioned my skill and expertise, and in response to that I had somebody say to me "Well, why don't you kind of do a round table and talk to them about your experience?" And I said "Well, why would I do that?" "So they can feel better about you." "I'm okay with me." I said, "I can't help them be better with how they feel about me. I know the value that I bring. I am here. I was their choice to bring into this position. They are confident in my skill set." And I couldn't give energy to that, because that is someone else's stuff. That's not my stuff, right? And I'm not gonna own that. I'm not gonna own that for them, you know? And I will continue to do good work. I will continue to strive to be the best leader I can be. I will continue to always learn. I will never ever think that I know everything about my field, because it's ever-changing and I won't ever. That's the beauty of being a professional. I can constantly learn. But I had to distinctively really say "Just because you question my value and my worth doesn't mean that I do." And I don't. And you have to not own that, because people are willing to give you their stuff all the time, especially in leadership. "Go take this because I'm not comfortble with this. I have anxiety over this. I don't like this. You're making me change. I've been in this job for 20 years, and you're taking it away from me and I don't like it," but that's your stuff. I can help you get there if you're willing to take the ride with me, but if you're unwilling to take the ride with me I can't help you get there. This is about a compromise here. I'm not saying that it's gotta be my way or the highway. I'm happy to take you along for this journey, but you're gonna have to allow me to do that. Right? But one thing that I have always--and I think this is what I get from my mom, who is one of the most strong African-American females I know alongside my great-grandmother... never question your value or your worth. I made tremendous investments in myself to ensure that I know that what looks like for myself, and I can't take the energy away from my work and from the students who need to see me in this role and who can benefit from me being in this role, who can benefit from the networking, who I can get them in jobs. I can't take energy away from that work because a person isn't okay with me, 'cause that's not my stuff.Sheneisha: Oh, my goodness. You know what? If I could just--if I could bottle you up and take you with me everywhere I go. [both laugh] I'm telling you. I feel like I can go out here and move mountains. You are so encouraging, and you have so much wisdom and knowledge. And Buffalo State, I mean, you guys made an excellent choice, and the students I know for sure are being motivated and impacted in a multitude of ways and are going to come out on top. Graduation will not just be it. I see great, great things on the horizon for the university. This is magnificent, having you on board. I mean, wow.Jackie: That's my goal, you know? To be able to--at the end of the day, I think also too that when you know the purpose of your work, and so--and also keeping in mind, if I can stress anything to those who are partaking of this conversation, please don't ever think that this is about yourself, because if you--if the work that you do and the progression of your career is about you, boy, you're gonna miss out on so, so much, right? For me, my growth and where I am professionally is about me being in a position to give back and to be able to elevate others, you know, and like you said, each one teach one, but I think what's important for African-American females is there's enough space for all of us, right? We don't have to compete against each other. I want to be able to support you and to do whatever it is you need to progress within your career, whether that is supporting your business and investing in your services and your products or whether that is a conversation, whether that is to put you in touch with someone who can be helpful to you. That's what this is about, you know? This is not about competition. We don't need to compete with each other. We need to support each other. We need to make sure that we understand the value that we have as African-American females and that we are in a position to help elevate each other. Our numbers, if we banded together just on sheer numbers and how we can support each other, ooh, you know? We will continue to do beautiful things. And so I also would stress that this cannot just be about yourself and what you can obtain and what you can gain and how much money you can make. While yes, we all want to be able to support our families and do wonderful things, this is bigger than us as individuals.Sheneisha: 'Cause we are greater women for success. Listen, Living Corporate family, if you have not picked up on these words of advice, words of encouragement--'cause that's definitely what she just gave you, words of advice and encouragement. It's not just about you. We are great women, black and brown, and great men as well, on the rise to success, and Dr. Jackie, thank you so much for your time and for your beautiful words and for your great intellect and knowledge and wisdom and conversation and sharing strategy on how we can take that non-traditional role and make it into something beautiful, your own unique path. Owning who you are, your unique self, developing yourself always, not settling for just mediocre. Making sure that we're realizing it's not just about us, but those who are connected to us, being direct and indirect. And I just thank you so, so much for your time. Are there any shout-outs that you would like to give?Jackie: I would love to give a shout-out to my president Kathryn Conway Turner, and she is just a beacon of light for me and support. And all of my colleagues on the Buffalo State cabinet. I have never had such great colleagues to help support and encourage me. Certainly my family, who without them I would not be here. Goodness, gracious. And, you know, for all of the folks that were willing to invest in me. You know, I just thank everyone for allowing me to become who I am in my truest sense and really, you know, an opportunity for me to really be in a space where I know my own truth, both personally and professionally.Sheneisha: That is so wonderful. How would--if our listeners wanted to reach out to you, do you have an Instagram or a Twitter? I know we have your LinkedIn information that we'll be sure to link below.Jackie: Yep. They can actually always reach me on LinkedIn. That's sort of my most favorite place for folks to reach me. I am on Twitter. I just changed my handle. It's @VPwithamohawk. [laughs] You can reach me on Twitter if you'd like to do that as well. I'm always up for networking and conversation and supporting however way in which I can, so just reach out and let me know how I can be helpful.Sheneisha: Great. You know what, family? That's our show. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure to follow us on Instagram @LivingCorporate, Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through www.living-corporate.com. If you have any questions you'd like for us to answer or read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Sheneisha, and you've been listening to our wonderful, beautiful, talented... I mean, super smart, beyond smart, amazing guest Dr. Jacquelyn Malcolm. Please be sure to reach out to her on LinkedIn. And we'll talk to you guys later. Peace.
Richard (“Ritt”) Carrano is Chief Executive Officer of Purchasing Power, LLC. He joined the company in 2001 within its first six months of operation. Ritt was promoted from Chief Financial Officer to President in 2007, and in 2011 became the CEO. Within his tenure, he has guided the company to achieve consistent, annual double-digit revenue growth, 95% client retention and more than $2.5 billion in processed orders. Initial results for Carrano’s leadership underscore the remarkable corporate culture he has built and advocated at Purchasing Power. Powering People to a Better LifeTM has become both a company tagline and corporate internal philosophy. Prior to launching Purchasing Power, he co-founded and served as CFO for eTour, Inc., an early consumer internet website discovery service that was acquired by Ask Jeeves in 2001. Ritt previously was a management research fellow assigned to new business development at SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline) and began his career with Deloitte & Touche in Washington, D.C. He received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (cum laude) in accounting from the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business. Ritt also earned an MBA in finance from Emory University’s renowned Goizueta Business School in Atlanta. Among his accolades, Carrano was named the Atlanta Business Chronicle's CFO of the Year award for private, midsized businesses in 2008; and GeorgiaTrend magazine’s “40 Under 40: Georgia’s Best and Brightest.” An active volunteer within the community, Carrano serves numerous roles with Junior Achievement of Georgia, which inspires and prepares young people to succeed in a global economy. He also is heavily involved with Inter Atlanta FC (IAFC), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and enhancing the culture of soccer in Atlanta. Additionally, Ritt serves on the Board of Advisors and the Economic Development Council for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce (MAC), the Board of Councilors for The Carter Center and the Board of Directors for FinTech Atlanta. As a champion of corporate social responsibility efforts, Carrano empowers his employees to invest more than 3,300 combined volunteer hours annually to Non-profit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Atlanta Community Food Bank, Children’s Restoration Network, Families First, Partnership Against Domestic Violence, Open Hand, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Relay for Life (American Cancer Society) and Safehouse Outreach.
ParentingAces - The Junior Tennis and College Tennis Podcast
Last week I published an article on the new partnerships between Universal Tennis Ratings and the two major coaching certification organizations, USPTA and PTR (click here to read the article). And this week UTR announced another new partnership with Chinese Tennis organization Love Sports. Now, you have the opportunity to hear from UTR's CEO, Mark Leschly, about how UTR works and what's in store for the future. Since there seem to be a lot of misconceptions around UTR and its algorithm, I thought this would be a great chance to clear up some things and give you a peek behind the curtain. Universal Tennis is the company behind UTR powered by Oracle, a revolutionary system that provides a single, unifying language and standard for tennis players across ages, geographies and genders. The company’s vision is to unify tennis for everyone by bringing cutting edge analytics and community based technology to players worldwide independent of level. UTR is a unique, algorithm-based system for tennis that allows anyone to measure, identify and track their level relative to other players, while also providing tools for coaches and organizers to run UTR Powered Events that are level based rather than age or gender driven. Today the UTR powered by Oracle system is gathering data over 6.5 million match results, across 700 thousand players in over 200 countries. The Company is owned by Iconica Partners (www.iconicapartners.com) and other seasoned investors, advisors and operators in tennis, sports, technology and media. Partners include Ken Solomon, President of Tennis Channel; Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle; Jan Leschly, former CEO of Smithkline Beecham and ATP Top 10; Ken Hao, Managing Partner, Silver Lake Partners; Tennis Media Company; and the LA Dodgers investment group. To sign up for UTR powered by Oracle, please visit www.MyUTR.com. Mark Leschly combines both an in depth knowledge and experience in sports and tennis with nearly 25 years of entrepreneurial management and investment in technology led businesses as a venture capitalist and startup CEO. He is a former ATP ranked player selected to the Danish Davis Cup, two time Captain and #1 player for Harvard Men’s Tennis and a member of the USTA Foundation Advisory Board and USTA Player Development Council. Mark is the Founder and Managing Partner of Iconica Partners, a principal firm investing at the interface of sports, media and technology. He is an owner in several sports teams and leagues including the Los Angeles Football Club (Major League Soccer team in LA), Professional Fighters League (a new MMA league), Team Liquid (esports) and Oklahoma City Dodgers (AAA Minor League baseball team). He is an owner and Managing Partner of Rho Capital Partners, a leading technology focused venture capital and private equity firm with over $2.5B under management (www.rho.com). Mark received an M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and a B.A. with honors from Harvard University where he played tennis all four years. Thank you to STØNE for our music! You can find more of his music at SoundCloud.com/stonemuzic If you’re so inclined, please share this – and all our episodes! – with your tennis community. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the ParentingAces website.
Join our community to receive notifications, event updates, and more: http://soarcommunitynetwork.com Deborah has more than 25 years of professional experience in international economic development, including advocacy, public policy and developing strategic partnerships. She worked with major corporations, governments, non-government organizations, and international organizations to find solutions for issues facing the developing world. In 2009 Deborah founded VirtuArte to help people become more intentional gift givers by assisting them to select the perfect gift for their gift-giving occasion. The gifts are selected from a curated collection of handcrafted works of art by artisans from developing countries. The sales help artisans from around the globe generate sustainable incomes, continue their traditional craftsmanship, share their skills with the next generation and ultimately help preserve their culture. Prior to starting her own company, Deborah was the Director - External and Government Affairs & Public Policy at GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK Bio), the vaccine division of GlaxoSmithKline. She was responsible for setting policy priorities, developing strategic advocacy plans and designing company outreach positions. She joined GSK Bio in 2002. Before joining GSK Bio, Deborah worked for Fisher Scientific Worldwide as Director - Business Development, Rhone Poulenc as Director - International Finance, and SmithKline Beecham as an advisor. Prior to joining the private sector Deborah spent 10 years at the Inter-American Development Bank, an organization that focuses on economic development in Latin America. During President Reagan’s first term, Deborah worked for the Small Business Administration, the Department of Commerce and in the White House Office of Public Liaison.
David Fairhurst is the Chief People Officer at McDonald’s. Prior to joining McDonald's in 2005, Fairhurst held senior roles at H J Heinz, SmithKline Beecham and Tesco. For four consecutive years (2008-2011) he was voted the UK's 'Most Influential HR Practitioner' by readers of HR Magazine and in 2012 was awarded the magazine’s first ever Lifetime Achievement Award for an HR practitioner. McDonald's is the world's leading global food service retailer who, including franchisees, employs more than 1.9 million people, in 35,000 locations serving approximately 60 million customers in more than 100 countries each day. More than 80% of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local business men and women. McDonald’s is known for its operational excellence. They see this as a ‘3-legged stool’ made up by the suppliers, the franchisees and the company. McDonald’s is often a first job of many workers. Their focus on training has provided an amazing legacy of alumni employees to the restaurant. Fairhurst talks about the ‘workforce cliff’. This is the point where the workforce supply and demand converges – the number of babies born versus deaths. In the US it will occur in 2020. With that in mind, the idea of a multigenerational employee group is even more interesting and practical. He explains that research has shown that in restaurants where there are a large age range of workers, there is a positive culture. What do companies need from their employees? This may vary across sectors but it is a good question to ask. McDonald’s has determined three things that they need from their employees, calling these the ‘3 C’s’. Competence Confidence Commitment McDonald’s also has looked at what employees value in their workplace. They found it to be what they call the ‘3 F’s’. Family – work/life balance Flexibility – if family emergencies come up, can the company handle it? Future – ways can you make me more employable or valuable The real power in knowing these things is when you can get these to merge. Fusing the needs of the company with the needs of the employees can produce great results. McDonald’s drives change across its global company by looking at 4 things. First is transforming the culture of their system – the customer is the center and then, by definition, also the employee Secondly, strengthening the talent management process. They want a robust talent pipeline Thirdly, making sure they have the right leaders with the right capabilities in the right structures to ensure they can meet current and future trend. And lastly, they are constantly seeking to strengthen their access to people. These are continuous and do not stop in their goal to lead and not follow. The opportunities are endless but when you take a little insight, it can create a massive impact - when you have 1.9 million employees. Fairhurst’s advice for others is to, “Stop worrying about what you do not have control over. Get sleep and pour over what you can do. The differences you make today will get you noticed.” What you will learn in this episode: How David Fairhurst got to this point in his career What is McDonald’s Velocity Growth plan Why it is important for McDonald’s to make a transformation Challenges McDonald’s has had to overcome The impact of AI and automation on their restaurants Fairhursts advice to leaders, managers and employees The role of a multigenerational workforce What is the ‘workforce cliff’? What Uber and McDonald’s have in common Why is all-day breakfast a big deal for McDonald’s?
https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/telomeretest Recently, I had my telomeres tested by the company "", which offers a simple and surprisingly affordable in-home genetic test that reveals the cellular age encoded in your DNA, specifically by using something called a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay. Teloyears measure your average telomere length by analyzing the DNA found in the many thousands of white blood cells (leukocytes) in just one drop of blood. Then, they enter your data into a mathematical model they derived from measuring telomere length at the population level to calculate your biological age in TeloYears, or the actual age of a typical man or woman whose telomere length is similar to yours. So, for example, my chronological age is 34, but my biological age (I was shocked) was far different. You find out what it was in today's podcast with my guest Jason Shelton. Jason Shelton joined Telomere Diagnostics in 2014 with nearly two decades of start-up, medical device, and consumer healthcare experience. Most recently, Jason was CEO of EarLens Corporation where he led the company’s efforts in product development, regulatory affairs, and operational milestones. Prior to joining EarLens, he served as Vice President of Marketing, Health Policy, and Clinical Affairs for Sonitus Medical, a medical device company marketing the SoundBite™ Hearing System. While at Sonitus he helped achieve critical milestones including product design, development, clinical trials, FDA clearance, reimbursement, and commercial launch in the US and Europe. Jason also held leadership positions at BioForm Medical, Align Technology, and SmithKline Beecham, Inc. (now GlaxoSmithKline). Jason received a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from The Ohio State University and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. During our discussion, you'll discover: -What telomeres are and why they are so important when it comes to anti-aging and longevity...[14:40] -The results of the fascinating NASA twin study on astronauts on telomere length...[18:45] -Why different people of different ages and populations have different telomere lengths...[22:05] -How you can find out your age in "Teloyears" based on a single drop of blood that analyzes your white blood cells...[24:30] -How often to repeat a telomere test to see if what you are doing is actually working...[31:05] -How a "popular" Westernized version of a Mediterranean diet may be flawed when it comes to anti-aging effect...[33:00] -The best kind of exercise to do if you want to decrease the rate at which your telomeres shorten...[49:40 & 64:00] -And much more... Resources from this episode: - - [pdf-embedder url="https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Greenfield-Ben-16004513.pdf" title="Greenfield, Ben – 16004513"] - - - -Book: -Book: Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Jason or me? Leave your comments at and one of us will reply!
Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp. | 04/16/12 | Docket #: 11-204
Dr. Alan F. Westin is Professor of Public Law and Government Emeritus at Columbia University; former Publisher of Privacy & American Business; and former President of the Center for Social & Legal Research. He is the author or editor of 26 books on constitutional law, civil liberties and civil rights, privacy, and American politics, and has been listed in Who's Who in America for three decades. In 2005, Dr. Westin received the Privacy Leadership Award of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, the leading U.S. organization of business, government, and non-profit privacy officers. Professor Westin's major books on privacy -- Privacy and Freedom (1967) and Databanks in a Free Society (1972) -- were pioneering works that prompted U.S. privacy legislation and helped launch global privacy movements in many democratic nations in the 1960's and 70's. He has also specialized in studying the impact of information technologies on national and local governmental operations, from decision-making to citizen services and freedom of information administration, illustrated by his 1971 book, Information Technology in a Democracy. Over the past forty years, Dr. Westin has been a member of U.S. federal and state government privacy commissions and an expert witness before legislative committees and regulatory agencies. These activities cover privacy issues in financial services, credit and consumer-reporting, direct marketing, health care, telecommunications, employment, law enforcement, online and interactive services, survey research, and social-services. Dr. Westin has been a privacy consultant to many U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies and government research foundations. These include the Departments of Commerce and Energy, the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, the General Services Administration, the National Bureau of Standards, Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Science Foundation, the New York State Identification and Intelligence System, and SEARCH: The National Consortium o f State Criminal Justice Information Systems. He has consulted on privacy and helped write privacy codes for over one hundred companies, including IBM, Security Pacific National Bank, Equifax, American Express, Citicorp, Bell Atlantic, Intel, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Prudential, Bank of America, Chrysler, A.T.&T., SmithKline Beecham, News Corporation, VISA, Merck, and Glaxo Wellcome. He has also spoken about privacy at more than 800 national and international business and industry and scholarly meetings since the late 1960's, as well as appearing on hundreds of national and international television programs. He has keynoted privacy conferences around the world, from Canada to England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Hong Kong. Between 1978 and 2008, he has been the academic advisor to Louis Harris & Associates (now Harris Interactive) for more than 50 national surveys of public and leadership attitudes toward consumer, employee, and citizen privacy issues, in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain and Japan. He has also done 20 planning and proprietary privacy surveys for companies, generally with Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, N.J. In 1993, Dr. Westin founded Privacy & American Business, a non-profit think tank that provided expert analysis and a balanced voice on business-privacy issues. P&AB published a bi-monthly newsletter; conducted an annual national conference in Washington on "Managing The Privacy Revolution"; and led a Corporate Privacy Leadership Program and a Global Business Privacy Policies Project. P&AB also managed privacyexchange.org - a global Internet web site on consumers, commerce, and data protection worldwide, covering privacy developments in over 100 nations. The Center finished its work in the Fall of 2006. Also in 1993, Dr. Westin founded - along with Washington attorney Robert R. Belair - the Privacy consulting Group (PCG). This is now the oldest privacy-consulting boutique in the U.S. Its clients include leading financial services, telecommunication, pharmaceutical, health-care, and Internet firms. Current clients include Google, Boeing, and Yahoo! PCG leads the Center for Strategic Privacy Studies and Programs as well as the Program on Electronic Health Records and Privacy. PCG also partners with Harris Interactive on surveys dealing with consumer, employee, and citizen privacy.
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